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NGOs, the State and World Capitalism
This article, published in the 13 December 1986 issue of EPW, critiques a bill that would have set up a national council of voluntary agencies to regulate and establish a code of conduct for NGOs. Given that the role of NGOs remains debated even now, this article sheds light on how NGOs could be depolicised and distanced from those engaged in struggles against the government and their vested interests.
Abstract of the article: What is new in the current renewed emphasis on the role of the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the development process is the emerging view in global corporate sectors, shared in large measure by Rajiv Gandhi's government, according to which a freshly conceived private sector, including the NGOs, provide the new frontier of a dynamic technological integration of the world economy. This is to be achieved through a wide diffusion of liberalised, privatised efforts that is then drawn towards a single market for which the vast hinterlands are opened up, new (including intermediate) technologies are introduced in them and a high rate of economic surplus is generated for the metropolitan regions and the export market, all this done efficiently, cost-effectively through cheap labour and raw materials, and in the framework of a competitive ethos which the principle of the market provides and which the state cannot.
