Political Entrepreneurs or Development Agents: An NGO`s tale of resistance and acquiescence in Madhya Pradesh, India

Vasudha Chhotray and University of Manchester

No GPRG-WPS-024, Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics

Abstract: NGOs have been lauded both for being political entrepreneurs - facilitators of transformative politics - and also development agents - implementers of participatory development. However, not many believe that NGOs can successfully combine both these roles. This view arises from a larger cynicism of the development machinery that constantly strives to exclude `politics`. In India too, NGO-state relationships affirm that politically confontationist NGOs have frequently been oppressed. This article presents a case study of an NGO in a central Indian state that, over an entire decade, was able to combine development work regarded as legitmate by the state with practices resisting state action in development. It demonstrates that the `depoliticisation` of development is not always a successful state project with predictable consequences. Moreover, the NGO`s seemingly dual stance was itself unreal, as resistance and acquiescence were interwoven with one another in subtle ways. The article rejects familiar binaries deployed to study NGOs, i.e. of state-civil society or mainstream-alternative development, and focuses instead on key junctures in the NGO`s life history. It concludes that NGOs, operating within appropriate policital conditions can be both political entrepreneurs and development agents, and indeed, this synthesis holds the key to their power.

Date: 2005-07-01
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