ngo partnerships and the taming of the grassroots in rural india

NGO partnerships and the tamingof the grassroots in rural India

Dip Kapoor

Introduction

The number, size, density, and complexity of linkages among international NGOs have grown

dramatically in the last three decades (Keck and Sikkink 1998), particularly in relation to devel-

opment, women’s rights, human rights, environment, and peace (Boli and Thomas 1999). For

example, the Voluntary Action Network of India (VANI) suggests that international NGOs

(INGOs) are increasingly important in facilitating development and social change in the

country, claiming that their financial assistance almost doubled during the 1990s, amounting

to US$71.5 million by the end of the decade (VANI 2000:21). The east coast state of Orissa,

which is where our work is located, received 2 per cent of this total.

Given the meteoric rise of voluntary-sector-led development, the inter-organisational

relationships within the ‘voluntary development chain’ need to be scrutinised, especially in

relation to the supposed ability of NGOs to promote a culture of popular participation and pol-

itical activism. Critical self-reflection is essential if NGOs are to avoid perpetrating a ‘develop-

ment hegemony’ and what Kamat (2002) refers to as the ‘NGOization of the grassroots’. As a

group representing a modest but decade-long partnership which includes a Canadian INGO and

eight village-level NGOs working in partnership with Kondh Adivasis and Dalits (the down-

trodden, pejoratively referred to as ‘untouchables’) located in 500 villages in Orissa, we

suggest that the current transnational linkages between INGOs, national or state-level Indian

NGOs, and the associated local linkages are actually jeopardising the prospects for people’s

agency, activism, and capacity to assert themselves.

Drawing on discussions shared during a two-week retreat held in February 2003, where all the

members of the partnership gathered to discuss various issues pertaining to NGO–

community relationships and the question of promoting ‘people’s agency/assertion’ in Orissa,

this Viewpoint presents a critique of these inter-NGO relationships. Participants in the retreat

suggested that INGOs should consider fostering and building alternative and more democratic

institutional arrangements that will better serve the process of people’s agency and activism

for social justice. While one might argue for reforming the status quo, participants felt that

INGOs do not in fact seriously consider working directly with resource-poor but committed,

rooted, and ‘experienced’ village-level networks of NGOs and community-based organisations

(CBOs) that are being stifled or ‘tamed’ by the dominant institutional arrangements in the volun-

tary sector in Orissa. While they recognise occasional problems pertaining to village-level links

between NGOs and CBOs or people’s organisations (POs) (links that are not free from the abuses

of unequal power relations), the focus here is on the dominant links in the NGO chain.

210 ISSN 0961-4524 Print=ISSN 1364-9213 Online 020210-06 # 2005 Oxfam GB

DOI: 10.1080=09614520500041864 Routledge Publishing

Development in Practice, Volume 15, Number 2, April 2005

INGO–NGO linkages in India and Orissa

In India, international aid that is channelled through development INGOs is regulated by the

Foreign Contributions Regulation Act (1976). The Act allows the state to regulate the use of

foreign funding by the voluntary sector, requiring Indian NGOs to obtain a foreign contribution

(FC) number from the Home Ministry in order to qualify as legitimate recipients of such funds.

INGOs operating in India act as funding agencies that channel their support for various deve-

lopment projects through voluntary development NGOs possessing FC numbers. Development

projects that may be conceived, monitored, and evaluated by development INGOs are, then,

implemented by their Indian NGO partners. The preference in Orissa has been for INGOs like

Oxfam, CARE, Action Aid, Indo-German Social Service Society (IGSSS), Anderi-Hilfe, and

the Indo-Swiss Project, to prefer Indian NGO partners who work at the state and/or district levels.

While it is legally possible for INGOs to partner small village-level NGOs and/or work

directly with CBOs or POs that have FC numbers, this option does not appear to be taken

seriously. This is because INGOs tend to look for professional development agents with

maximum reach in terms of potential beneficiary villages, and ready-made organisational

capacity in the form of professional competence and the logistical support necessary for

matters relating to planning, reporting, and accountability. For instance, some INGOs stipulate

that a potential NGO partner must have established relationships with at least 800–1000

villages before being considered. The typical village-level NGO may be involved with anything

from10 to 200 villages. When INGOs ‘contract’ large Indian NGOs to implement projects,

these NGOs in turn subcontract the project work through the village-level NGOs and/or

CBOs (or individual members of these organisations). This relationship is often fraught

with problems ranging from petty corruption to outright domination, as ‘activist’ POs are dis-

abled, gutted, and tranquillised into a state of apathy and dependence on charity by the lure of

temporary free goods and services.

NGO linkages and the taming of the grassroots in rural Orissa

There are several problems characterising the linkages between INGOs and national or state-

level Indian NGOs. Some of the most prominent ones are discussed below.

Concentration of funds and the personal integrity of the leadership

There are very few (half a dozen or so) large Indian NGOs operating in Orissa. Consequently,

these NGOs are flush with funds from several INGOs. This is a tempting prospect for state-level

NGO leaders. Without getting into sordid details, it will suffice to quote Sanjit (or Bunker) Roy,

an exemplary voluntary development leader, who described some of his fellow NGO leaders as

‘power brokers who live entirely off foreign money with no independent source, who would like

to have the money for themselves and then dish some of it out to others as patronage, using

foreign money as a means to co-opt, control, discipline and dump’ (Dantwalla et al.

1998:175–176). This observation certainly applies to certain prominent NGO leaders in the

state of Orissa who have had dealings with the village-level NGOs in our partnership.

The tail wags the dog: projects chasing funds

National or state-level NGOs have been known to ‘cook up projects’ to justify funding

applications once they become aware of potential INGO support ‘on tap’. This can be

illustrated with a few brief examples of schemes to ‘spend funds’ that ‘beneficiaries’ in the

area of our partnership have been ‘force-fed’, despite having questioned the wisdom of such

‘interventions’. These include:

Development in Practice, Volume 15, Number 2, April 2005 211

NGO partnerships and the taming of the grassroots

. a programme to provide rural communities with Indian sweets during the frequent festive

occasions, while these same communities face chronic hunger and malnutrition that

remain unaddressed—not to mention the fact that the sweets were supplied by a business

operated by relatives of the NGO leadership;

. the establishment of creches or day-care centres for infants and toddlers (an idea with an

obvious appeal to Western donors) when it is well known that Adivasi mothers prefer to

take their small children along when they are working outside the home, as they continue

to breastfeed up to the age of four. When the creche idea failed to arouse any interest, the

facilities were converted into a non-formal education centre, thereby justifying a new

round of spending on a programme which is now also defunct because of its irrelevance (cur-

ricular, cultural, and linguistic);

. the distribution of mosquito nets doused with repellent to deal with malaria, when people had

already complained that their dwellings were so small that the nets obstructed air flow and

made it hard to breathe, not to mention the offensive smell of the repellent or the fact that

there was nowhere to attach the nets in the first place; and

. a heavily funded long-term AIDS awareness campaign in an area where there are no reported

cases of AIDS or talk of HIV, while deaths are frequently caused by water-borne diseases,

malnutrition-related ailments, and starvation/famine during certain periods (the area is in a

drought-prone zone)—to quote one villager (as reported by one of the NGO participants

in our retreat), ‘perhaps the lack of emphasis on hunger, food, and land related issues is

because hunger will limit sexual engagement and so stop the spread of AIDS!’ The response

of one officer from a large NGO was, ‘what to do, there is more money in AIDS these days!’

INGO ‘dependence’ on national or state-level Indian NGOs

Once an INGO becomes ‘entrenched’ in a state and the staff and leadership wish to avoid the

office being closed, relocated, etc., the INGO ironically (since it is the larger entity), seems to

become ‘dependent’ on the implementing NGOs for fundable project ideas and execution. As

mentioned already, given that there are only a few such large NGO players in the state of Orissa,

the INGO leadership is careful to court the leadership appropriately. As the intermediary with

an established record and capacity, and a history of completed projects for the same INGO, the

national or state-level NGO can take advantage of its position as ‘successful large-scale imple-

menter’. One way in which such power is exercised is through a ‘we have a pick of the lot atti-

tude’ or outright shows of defiance on the accountability front. When questioned about funding

allocations and tracking on a US$40,000 project, the leader of one such NGO simply replied

that he didn’t care to respond, as the total value of this project was equivalent to the bank

interest being generated from another account for a much larger INGO-funded project!

Links between national or state-level and village-level NGOs

There are several problems characterising the linkages between national or state-level Indian

NGOs and small NGOs operating at the village level. Some of these are discussed below.

The anatomy of dominance and control

On securing funds for various projects from different INGOs, national or state-level NGOs ‘sub-

contract’ village-level NGOs and/or their staff to implement project activities on the ground.

These small NGOs, which are normally located in or near village communities, are often run

by dedicated groups of five to ten voluntary staff or members who have established relationships

with surrounding village communities. Workers in these organisations are usually from the sur-

212 Development in Practice, Volume 15, Number 2, April 2005

Dip Kapoor

rounding communities themselves, i.e. they are Dalits and Adivasis, and work for their respect-

ive village-level NGOs out of a sense of purpose and dedication, largely motivated by their

close identification with the harsh circumstances faced by their peers.

Often without any funding support, these small groups build relationships and begin to work

with a small number of partner communities on people-financed projects and schemes (where

possible) and on government resource mobilisation or rights assertion initiatives that rely on

organisation and critical adult education. Playing an indispensable role as critical adult

educators, community change agents, organisers, strategists, liaison officers (most often in deal-

ings between local people and the state bureaucracy), and motivators who galvanise commu-

nities to act on their problems and the externally imposed conditions of hardship, these

fieldworkers are the voluntary development ‘foot soldiers’.

While some of them may have professional qualifications and/or experience gained through

formal study and/or work with large Indian NGOs or INGOs, others may have up to ten years’

schooling and a strong affiliation with the local community and lived understanding of the most

pressing issues. They get together to form these village-level NGOs because they are quite disillu-

sioned by large Indian NGO–INGO projects that are often geared around funds and donors and

have a ‘modernisation’ logic that places local people in the undignified and alienated position

of feeling ‘deficient’, ‘incapable’, and sometimes ‘irrelevant’ in relation to ‘project imperatives’.

The staff and workers of these local NGOs often end up having to take temporary contract

jobs with the INGO–NGO project in the area (e.g. to write letters on behalf of sponsored chil-

dren and their families to the donor/sponsoring family abroad), while trying to make time for

voluntary action through their own village-level NGOs. In fact, when the leader of a small

NGO is the only person capable of securing such temporary employment, s/he often feels com-

pelled to find ways to find some form of paid work for the other members of the organisation.

Consequently, when stomachs and savings are empty, these small NGOs ‘gladly’ sign up with

the larger Indian NGOs to help implement INGO-funded projects, regardless of the social rel-

evance (or not) of such projects.

Given the dependence of the small, village-level NGOs on the larger national or state-level

NGOs for their survival (or the survival of individual members/staff), several problems arise:

. the ‘development project’ is not questioned by the ‘people’s project’ as the small NGOs

succumb to ‘containment’ from above and simply resort to ‘playing the game’;

. the small NGOs begin to lose their credibility with the partner villages as they are not only

seen to be ineffectual in terms of working with the people and addressing their concerns but,

worse still, they are seen to be in cahoots with the ‘outsiders’;

. the loss of credibility de-motivates an otherwise committed group of social change agents, as

they begin to feel like useless cogs in a wheel that they are reluctantly helping to turn; and

. together, these influences mitigate against the possibility of a people-centred process as the

organisations closest to the people’s situation are marginalised from the process and become

spectators and reluctant participants in ‘development for the developers’. One ‘project

beneficiary’ of a large NGO-led sanitation project observed to the leader of a village-level

implementing NGO, ‘If they wish to build toilets for us, let them—but it will be difficult

for me to oblige because I can’t get enough to eat.’

Fiefdoms and territoriality

National or state-level NGOs, given their position of dominance in such links, eventually

develop ‘compliant areas’ or ‘fiefdoms’ with a ready-made base of village beneficiaries (and

CBOs/POs, where present) and village-level NGO implementers. When a village-level NGO

begins to challenge the dominance of the controlling NGO by questioning projects or getting



CBOs/POs or ‘beneficiaries’ openly to question the relevance or mismanagement of projects, it

risks the following possible responses:

. the large NGO may destabilise and disrupt the small NGO’s relationship with a given group

of partner villages and CBOs/POs by actively cultivating dissension and division (often

through the use of money and bribes to the CBO/PO leadership);

. the large NGO may withhold salaries to village-level NGO ‘contract’ workers (in some cases

by as much as five months);

. the small NGO may receive threats about never receiving any funding or employment in the

future, as the large NGO often controls the channels of funding in the operational area of the

village-level NGO;

. the large NGO may threaten to have the small NGO branded as engaging in ‘anti-national

activities’ because the large NGO usually has the ear of the local or state government and

law enforcement institutions (e.g. police); and

. the village-level NGO leadership and staff may be demeaned by being compelled to come

and ‘beg’ or ‘wait’ in the corridors for a week or more for their salaries.

Links between national or state-level NGOs and CBOs/POs

There are several problems characterising the linkages between national or state-level Indian

NGOs and CBOs or POs operating at the grassroots.

The subversion of subversion—stifling CBO/PO activism

In addition to working through small village-level NGOs, the national or state-level NGO also

works through CBOs/POs. While some grassroots organisations are merely encouraged as

base-level implementers and managers or monitors of externally conceived projects, others are

catalysed into various degrees of activism, from agitating for a school to more radical forms of

contestation, such as the struggle for cultural autonomy and social dignity (subordinate caste

group agitations) or control over natural resources intended for local use. However, even in the

latter case, when CBOs/POs get carried away by a ‘misplaced activist zeal’, they are often

‘curbed and chastised’ by the superior NGO ‘partner’, much as if they were recalcitrant children.

For instance, when a particular PO saw a phenomenal growth in membership, a process that

was initially supported by the large ‘partner’ NGO, the members and the leadership considered

applying for an FC number so that ‘the people’ could directly solicit support from INGOs for

community-defined projects and priorities. Concerned with this show of independence, the

large NGO manipulated, bribed, co-opted, and orchestrated dissent and succeeded in replacing

more activist leaders with those who would cooperate.

Given its activist reputation, the large NGO now promotes an activist front for this PO, all the

while using it as a ‘showcase’ of people’s activism for INGOs keen to fund such groups. It did

not take people very long to discover the truth and many have lost interest in using the PO as an

avenue for activism as they are now well aware of the intentions of the leadership and of the

controlling NGO. In the process, an active PO has been metamorphosed into a rubber stamp

for assisting the large NGO with its funding pursuits.

Such ‘puppet POs’ may also prove useful conduits for other funds (e.g. state or private funds

for the ever popular micro-enterprise schemes). Consequently, national or state-level NGOs go

to great lengths to maintain their ‘zones of control’ because, as one leader put it to an employee

of a subcontracted village-level NGO, ‘we have to maintain our investment—we can’t keep

opening new shops every day!’ For instance, one large NGO whose mandate includes addres-

sing the problem of ethnic division and violence along caste and tribal lines in Orissa has actu-

214 Development in Practice, Volume 15, Number 2, April 2005

Dip Kapoor

ally brokered deals with political groups that are actively and openly working towards the

demise of attempts to facilitate partnership and peaceful coexistence between these groups.

Concluding reflections

The primary purpose of this critical reflection has been to problematise the existing structure of

relationships in the voluntary development sector in Orissa in terms of its prospects for promot-

ing people’s agency and activism for social change. We feel that INGOs have failed to but

should seriously consider working with resource-poor but committed, rooted, and ‘experienced’

village-level networks of NGOs and CBOs/POs that are currently being stifled by the dominant

ways of working among voluntary-sector institutions in the state of Orissa.

INGOs should revisit the idea of working directly with the people and their organisations—or

with networks of local NGOs and CBOs/POs—many of which have managed to secure FC

numbers that would permit such partnerships. This argument is put forward with some trepidation,

however, as INGOs will also need to recognise ‘that many of the voluntary, nongovernmental and

non-party responses to the established order’ have been ‘incorporated into the NGO framework’

and in the process, have ‘gradually lost their militant and dissenting stance as well as their pursuit

of an alternative political process’ (Rajni Kothari in Dantwalla et al. 1998:186–187). INGO

engagement with such developments would simply entrench the status quo.

Building an active relationship with POs and other grassroots organisations will probably

mean that the leadership and staff of INGOs will have to ‘get into the trenches’, and will prob-

ably face resistance from large state- or district-level NGOs that view such a relationship as a

threat to their own operations. The INGO will thus come into direct contact with the kind of

vested interests that are often the very cause of problems faced by the marginalised and dispos-

sessed. However, if a commitment to the cause of such people is why INGOs entered the fray in

the first place, then such obstacles ought to be viewed as a welcome challenge and a possible

indicator that they might actually have become a part of the painful process of structural change

to democratise entrenched configurations of power; a process that derives hope and strength

from the possibility of collective struggle from below and not just policy advocacy and pro-

gramming from above.

References

Boli, John and George Thomas (1999) Constructing World Culture: International Nongovernmental

Organizations since 1875, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Dantwalla, M., Harsh Sethi, and Pravin Visaria (eds.) (1998) Social Change through Voluntary Action,

New Delhi: Sage.

Kamat, Sangeeta (2002) Development Hegemony: NGOs and the State in India, New Delhi: OUP.

Keck, Margaret and Kathryn Sikkink (1998) Activists beyond Borders, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University

Press.

VANI (2000) Voluntary Action Pulse: The Newsletter of Voluntary Action Network of India (September),

New Delhi: VANI.

The author

Dip Kapoor is assistant professor in international development education at McGill University, and works

as a volunteer International Project Officer for a Canadian NGO that has been working in partnership with

Adivasis in India for over a decade. Contact details: Department of Integrated Studies in Education,

Faculty of Education, McGill University, 3700 McTavish Street, Montreal, Quebec H3A 1Y2, Canada.

,[email protected].



ngo partnerships and the taming of the grassroots in rural india

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