While nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are recognized for the important role they play in development planning, particularly as sites for democratic change, little attention is given to how they prefigure the economic and social reorganization of everyday life and provide a venue for privatization and the liberalization of previously nationalized economies. This article examines the transformation of NGOs in Bangladesh since independence against the backdrop of struggles between NGOs and the conservative religious party, Jama'at-I-Islami. Highlighting the competing interests of the donor community and a heterogeneous cadre of development workers, the contradictory interests and outcomes of NGO activities are identified in the context of the neoliberal agenda of contemporary development assistance. As women mark the politics of both the Jama'at-I-Islami and the NGOs, they provide a crucial empirical referent for observing the transformation of civil society, or the space “between the state and its citizens,” in contemporary Bangladesh.
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References
1.
1. I. William Zartman, “Democracy and Islam: The Cultural Dialectic,”The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 524:185 (Nov. 1992).
2.
2. Ibid.
3.
3. These concepts mask a complex, uneven, and contradictory process but offer a perspective for discussing possible social responses to economic restructuring.
4.
See also Norman Uphoff, “Why NGOs Are Not a Third Sector,” in Beyond the Magic Bullet: NGO Performance and Accountability in the Post-Cold War World, ed. Michael Edwards and David Hulme (West Hartford, CT: Kumarain Press, 1996).
5.
5. Rajni Kothari, “NGOs, the State, and World Capitalism,”Economic and Political Weekly, 13 Dec. 1986, p. 2180.
6.
6. Niche marketing highlights a specialized characteristic of market relations, while social subsidies are part of a social welfare tradition. The latter does not usually include a call for economic reorganization or a critique of contemporary forms of accumulation.
7.
Rehman Sobhan , Bangladesh: Problems of Governance (Dhaka: University Press, 1993).
8.
8. This broad support base, a famine, and a cyclone in the early years of the Mujib government set the conditions for a nationalization strategy and eventually led to the down-fall of the regime. The absence of an entrenched elite able to assume responsibility for non-Bengali-owned firms made public sector industrial expansion a pragmatic alternative to the promotion of the private sector.
9.
9. Unfortunately, the processes by which these changes developed cannot be sufficiently elaborated here.
10.
For an alternative view of NGOs in local politics, see Syed M. Hashemi, “State, Politics and Civil Society in the Context of Donor Hegemony: Bangladesh at 25” (Paper delivered at the International Conference on Bangladesh at 25, Columbia University, New York City, 5-7 Dec. 1996).
11.
11. Atiur Rahman, Peasants and Classes: A Study in Differentiation in Bangladesh (London: Zed Press, 1986).
12.
12. Ibid., p. 209.
13.
13. Ibid., p. 211.
14.
14. Clearly, not all were losers, as many benefited from the removal of subsidies for fertilizer and other agricultural inputs. Among those benfiting was the growing urban middle class, whether its rise is understood as a consequence of investments in export production, such as the production of garments and fish, or the privatization of agricultural resources. It is also true, however, that significant numbers lost their economic and political clout with the decline in large-scale development programs, a decline most apparent among those unable to benefit from urban capital formation.
15.
Sobhan , Bangladesh.
16.
16. Sobhan, Bangladesh.
17.
17. The restructuring of the Bangladeshi economy has had broad social consequences. As Rehman Sobhan has emphasized, an emergent bourgeoisie and a constituency of rich farmers may have been its most direct beneficiaries, but many others also have benefited from the broad reach of development assistance. Yet, while many people have benefited from the development decades of the 1970s and 1980s, the consequences of this aid regime have had contradictory effects, expressed most clearly in the contemporary discourse on civil society.
18.
18. Rafiuddin Ahmed, “Redefining Muslim Identity in South Asia: The Transformation of the Jama'at-I-Islami,” in Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 667.
19.
Adnan , “Potentialities and Limits.”
20.
20. I use the term “NGO community” to refer to the growth and heterogeneity of private voluntary and nongovernmental organizations, being sure to distinguish between religiously affiliated NGOs that accept donor assistance and those that refuse it and between NGOs concerned with resource distribution and those that focus on conscienticization. Recognizing their heterogeneity is critical to appreciating how they organize and engage in negotiating electoral politics as well as how they constitute and shape the meaning of civil society.
21.
21. Shelley Feldman, “Contradictions of Gender Inequality: Urban Class Formation in Contemporary Bangladesh,” in Gender and Political Economy: Explorations of South Asian Systems, ed. Alice Clark (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992).
22.
22. This is not to suggest that group formation and group lending did not also emerge in this effort, but these often were premised on individual loans rather than on restructuring the production environment. Groups usually served as vehicles to ensure individual credit repayment rather than as collective forms of organizing production and exchange.
23.
23. F. R. Mahmood Hasan, “Journey into the Morning” (Paper delivered at the Asia Pacific Civil Society Forum, Seoul, 11-14 Aug. 1996).
24.
idem , “Contradictions of Gender Inequality.”
25.
25. Nirvikar Singh, “Governance and Reform in India”(Working Paper 356, University of Santa Cruz, Department of Economics, July 1996).
26.
Axel Hadenius and Fredrick Uggla, “Making Civil Society Work, Promoting Democratic Development: What Can States and Donors Do?”World Development, 24(10):1621-1639 (1966).
27.
27. This is best explained against the back-drop of once unquestioned solidarities. These are issues beyond the scope of this article; see Chris Hann, “The Nation-State, Religion, and Uncivil Society: Two Perspectives from the Periphery,”Daedalus, 125(2):27-45 (Spring 1997).
28.
28. Ibid., p. 28.
29.
29. Steven Sampson, “The Social Life of Projects: Importing Civil Society to Albania,” in Civil Society: Challenging Western Models, ed. Chris Hann and Elizabeth Dunn (London: Routledge, 1996).
30.
30. Kothari, “NGOs, the State, and World Capitalism,” p. 2180.
31.
31. Giovanni A. Cornia, Richard Jolly, and Frances Stewart, eds., Adjustment with a Human Face, vol. 1 (New York: UNICEF, Clarendon Press, 1987).
32.
Hadenius and Uggla, “Making Civil Society Work.”
33.
33. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971).
34.
34. Hadenius and Uggla, “Making Civil Society Work.”
35.
idem , “NGOs in Bangladesh” (Paper delivered at the International Conference on Bangladesh at 25, Columbia University, New York City, 5-7 Dec. 1996).
36.
36. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 12.
37.
37. This may help explain the lack of institutional sustainability once donor support is no longer available or when NGO personnel remove support from a particular program or activity.
38.
38. Sampson, “Social Life of Projects.”
39.
39. Syed M. Hashemi, “State, Politics and Civil Society in the Context of Donor Hegemony: Bangladesh at 25” (Paper delivered at the International Conference on Bangladesh at 25, Columbia University, New York City, 5-7 Dec. 1996).
40.
40. A number of NGOs have made this observation and focus their activities on consciousness-raising.
41.
41. Hashemi, “State, Politics and Civil Society.”
42.
42. Ibid.
43.
43. Judith Tendler, Turning Private Voluntary Organizations into Development Agencies, Program Evaluation Discussion Paper, no. 12 (Washington, DC: Agency for International Development, 1982).
44.
44. Cf. Kothari, “NGOs, the State, and World Capitalism.”
