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Politics South and Southeast Asia Summary lecture 6-12
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Politics South and Southeast Asia Summary lecture 6-12
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Legacies in the postcolonial period:Lecture 6: Civil society and NGO Politics
in South Asia
Tuesday, October 13 2020
Reading Notes
1. Sarbeswar Sahoo, 'Doing development or creating Dependency? NGOs and
civil society in India', South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 36-2 (2013):
258-272.
Objective: role of non-government organizations and the implications of democratization in India –
specifically: role of Seva Mandir in tribal development and democratization
Main question: Do voluntary organizations promote democratization, as has been argued implicitly or
explicitly in the development discourse?
Conclusion
NGOs do not always contribute positively to the democratization process – civil society
organizations may or may not have positive implications for democratization and the
functioning of democracy
Neo-liberal model of development has unintended consequences:
o Growth of a culture of ‘organized dependency’ at the grass-roots level
o Which further affects the larger objectives of empowerment and democratization
“While international and domestic funding has allowed Seva Mandir to exert significant
influence on the tribal development process in Rajasthan, its purely technocratic and apolitical
service delivery approach has not only ‘depoliticized development’, but also unconsciously
developed a culture of ‘organized dependency’ at the grass-roots level, which has often
adversely affected its larger objective of empowerment and democratization.” (260)
NGO of focus: Seva Mandir
An NGO working in the tribal areas of Rajasthan
The oldest and most institutionalized civil society organization in Rajasthan
Methodology: fieldwork for 7 months during 2006-7 and 2008 in the tribal areas of south Rajasthan
Civil society organizations (CSOs)/ institutions
As argued implicitly/explicitly in the development discourse:
o instruments for the survival and sustenance of democracy
o the “missing key” to be acquired by developing countries in order to attain a Western
form of political development
Bound up with the project of neo-liberal globalization and the spread of free market economic
policy
Neo-liberalism (as a specific form of capitalism): monetary stabilization, economic liberalization,
balanced budgets, deregulation, privatization and allowing market forces free rein + restructuring and
rolling back of the state (decentralizing the state)
Public service contractors: took up functions that had previously been the responsibility of the state
+ acted as agents of neo-liberal capitalism and secured the ‘consensus of the marginalized over
unequal social and economic structures
CSOs: civil society organizations
NGOs: non-governmental organizations
o a general sense of NGOs as “doing good” unencumbered and untainted by the politics
of government or the greed of the market
,Legacies in the postcolonial period:
GROs: grass-roots organizations
SHGs: self-help groups
Development assistance: channeled to developing countries in order to build institutions of civil
society + promote democratic development and good governance
Putnam’s idea of social capital: depoliticized notion of civil society that was favorable to the market
rationality of the neo-liberal project
Social capital: norms of reciprocity and the interrelated networks of trust, co-operation and
civic engagement influence the performance of development and democracy
Putnam’s critics:
o social capital is a ‘politically neutral multiplier—neither inherently good nor
inherently bad’
o Putnam failed to recognize the political aspects and power dimensions of social
capital
Sahoo’s ‘missing link’: link between social capital and social change is what politics is about
“Pool of social capital or associationalism itself does not bring about social change; it needs to be
mobilized, politicized and directed towards an end—democratic or anti-democratic.” (259)
Politicization of social capital through collective action is what helps people realize common
community interests
There might be different kinds of politicization, in which some may not even be supportive of
democratization at all
The case of India
state failure in development and the wake of ‘market globalism’ in the 1980s
NGOs came to play a leading role in the development process: seen as an integral component
of a thriving civil society and as [an] essential counterweight to state power, opening up
channels of communication and participation, providing training ground for activists, and
promoting pluralism
Beteille’s and Kaviraj’s Gesellschaft vs. Gemeinschaft
o Gesellschaft = society/social relations: intermediary voluntary associations that’re
secular and open to all categories of citizens; i.e. class
o Gemeinschaft = community: primordial/ascribed institutions based on caste, kinship,
ethnicity, or religion
o Gemeinschaft as having no place in civil society because they are pre-civil,
hierarchical and repressive and are more likely to produce a political order that is
opposed to autonomy, citizenship and the principles of choice
Problem: Such a conception of civil society is, however, grounded in Western
ideas of modernity, citizenship and secular ideology. Civil society can hardly wish
away involuntary and ascribed groups from its domain because they constitute an
important part of the sphere of organized politics.
Civil society: a non-state sphere, where organizations, both voluntary and primordial, are involved in
advancing the interests of different people, ranging from the interests of their members to the more
general interests of wider groups in society (260)
Relationship between the state, NGOs and civil society in India during the post-colonial
period:
‘High-modernist’ ideology of development: the legitimizing principle for state intervention
in a society affected by mass poverty and backwardness so the ideology allowed the First
World from intervening with the Third World, regardless of sovereignty
Gandhian organizations: set-up to provide constructive development programs (basic
education, health, agricultural extension and removal of untouchability to create self-reliant,
self-governing and self-sufficient village communities) and provide a national platform for
organizations involved in community and rural development activities
,Legacies in the postcolonial period:
o GPF: Gandhi Peace Foundation
o KVIC: Khadi and Village Industries Corporation
o AVARD: Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural Development
Nehruvian state: Nehru’s regime – 1st Prime Minister (PM) of India
o act as a ‘benevolent Leviathan’
o serve the public interest
o provide public goods and free basic social services
o major agency of promotion, regulation and funding of CSOs to work closely with the
government in promoting welfare and relief
Regime of Indira Gandhi: daughter of Nehru; 3rd and only female PM of India [preceded by
Charan Singh; succeeded by Morarji Desai]
o Increased centralization and personalization of authority
o When it lost its political autonomy, Congress Party faced an electoral debacle in 1967
+ increase in aggravation (rising prices, food shortages, industrial stagnation,
unemployment, widespread corruption in the government)
o State turned into a ‘weak Leviathan’; capacity to govern declined
All the Gandhian organizations, including the GPF and AVARD, protested against
Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian rule.
o Sampurna Kranti (‘total revolution’): Jayaprakash Narayan had urged Gandhian
workers, NGOs, students and trade union leaders to become part of the non-violent
struggle against the government
o ‘Total Revolution’ joined by Morarji Desai [4th PM of India] who had mobilized the
middle classes in his home state of Gujarat
o Upsurge in the number of strikes, marches, fasts and sit-ins
o June 1975: Indira Gandhi’s 1971 election declared invalid loss of political
autonomy
o June 1975–1977 Emergency Rule: Indira Gandhi’s response to the declaration of her
election becoming invalid – feared she was would be forcefully removed from office
civil and political rights of citizens were suspended, political activities were
banned and freedom of association was cancelled
prohibited the involvement of voluntary organizations in politics; only
‘apolitical NGOs’ were allowed to be involved in social welfare and service
delivery
1976 Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (FCRA) instated to monitor
political associations and voluntary organizations that received foreign funds
Government reserved the right to deregister an organization of a political
nature that was not registered as a political party
Janata government: when the Emergency Rule ended, Morarji Desai became PM under the
Janata Party
o encouraged voluntary work and vastly increased funding and bureaucratic support for
NGOs
o policies were continued and strengthened under Rajiv Gandhi [6 th PM]: facilitated
NGOs working to deliver services and serve as watchdogs
Increasing international development aid and agenda of Cold War politics:
“If […] Western development funding and promotion of NGO activity was a means of
extending influence and countering the ‘communist threat’ by the 1990s, in the context of neo-
liberal globalization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) looked
towards the extension of markets and market actors as the solution to poverty.” (262)
o How states of the developing world were viewed: apathetic, clientele-ridden, corrupt
or overly bureaucratic; positioned as the ‘problem’
Government corruption identified as the major factor for the increasing
poverty and failure of development in the Third World
o Cause for informal institutions (why informal institutions are so strong in SSEA):
state was looked upon with suspicion and sometimes even contempt
, Legacies in the postcolonial period:
how could poverty alleviation and development programs be implemented
when the state itself was institutionally incompetent?
o Finding ways to alter host country policies [was] crucial to effective development
work in the Third World breaking down autarkies and allowing foreign aid
investments into the SSEA economy
o Direct aid to committed citizens and NGOs engaged in community development was
regarded as a highly efficacious option for realizing development objectives in the
Third World
India adopted the structural adjustment policies of the World Bank and the IMF in
1991, which brought about two significant changes in the political life of the nation:
[1] the rolling back of the state from many areas of social welfare
[2] state partnership with civil society, market and other transnational organizations resulted in
pluralization of the state apparatus
o World Bank claimed NGOs would ‘give “voice” to the poor; promote public sector
transparency and accountability; encourage public-private co-operation and
participatory approaches; generate social capital at the community level; and help to
rein in the influence and reach of central state institutions’
encouraged member governments to work with NGOs
approved World Bank projects in Third World countries involving NGOs in
1997
o promotion of NGOs by the World Bank and other donor agencies was, most
importantly, related to the neo-liberal agenda of reducing the role of the state in
the economy and society
the World Bank’s neo-liberal conditions for aid, India agreed to promote the
(apolitical) NGO sector while limiting the forms of ‘oppositional [read,
politicized] civil society’ as a part of the global agenda of good governance
through the rhetoric of participation and empowerment, NGOs promoted neo-
liberal values such as self-help and entrepreneurship; they also, through
various development projects, disciplined the members of the community and
facilitated their incorporation into the market
drew attention away from broader political concerns such as the need to
address poverty by changing ‘underlying social and economic structures’
Seva Mandir and ‘Constructive Developmentalism’: adopting an apolitical service delivery
approach, leading to a culture of ‘organized dependency’ at the grass-roots level
2. David Lewis, 'On the difficulty of "civil society": reflections on NGOs, state and
democracy in Bangladesh', in Contributions to Indian Sociology 38-3: 300-322
(2004).
Concept of ‘civil society’ = debated topic
Much of it has been generated by the international aid agencies and their ‘good governance’ policy
agenda of the 1990s, and is concerned primarily with the increasingly high-profile community of local
and national development non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Also, local meanings derived from:
independence struggle
local traditions of urban and rural voluntarism
organization of religious life
‘Civil society’ in Bangladesh = best understood as both a ‘system’ and an ‘idea’, consisting of
both ‘old’ and ‘new’ civil society traditions, resisting tendencies to privilege only one (external,
policy-focused) definition of the term.
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