Dhaka Friday December 16, 2011

Mainstreaming Resistance?

Sushmita S Preetha

As the generation born well after the establishment of an independent state, we accepted some truths as self-evident. Without ever having to fight for them, I, for one, took the grandiloquent ideals of democracy, equality and freedom for granted. Of course, as I grew older, I slowly realised that independence didn't always mean freedom; democracy didn't denote the will of the people and equality was often just an attractive catch-phrase used in development discourses. Disillusioned, but not yet disheartened, I sought to figure out what role we, as the symbolic future that soon will be present, should play in the shape of things to come.

My generation is often blamed for its unapologetic apathy, its unwillingness to take ownership of this country's problems and its contemptuous disregard for anything political. Perhaps the older and wiser generations wonder why they lost us along the way, why we don't embody the revolutionary zeal of the 1960s and the 1970s. Perhaps we, too, wonder what happened to that indomitable spirit of revolution that had made our parents and grandparents take up arms to fight for what they believed in.

Is the fault all ours, though? Or have the colours of revolution faded from everyone's lives?

As a 'degenerated youth of today', I find myself struggling to figure out a meaningful way to resist the violence and violations that surround us on a daily basis. Perhaps I am too cynical for my age, or too idealistic, but I feel disenchanted with our civil society (a large part of it, at least) and its attempts to provide technical, bureaucratic solutions to issues of poverty, injustice and oppression. Is this what resistance looks like, I ask myself time and again, as I bury my nose in detailed multi-year proposals for funding for microfinance or awareness-raising projects, and participate in workshops where development workers sit in air-conditioned conference rooms in expensive resorts and talk about "empowering" the "poor".

Lest anyone misunderstands my sentiments and accuses me of harbouring vindictiveness against NGOs, let me just say that I come from a family of unrelenting NGO activists. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a part of that illustrious circle of people -- the do-ers of our country who spearhead programmes on poverty alleviation, formal and non-formal education, health, family planning, agriculture, water supply and sanitation, human rights and advocacy, legal aid, women's empowerment and so on. I realise that Bangladesh's achievements in poverty reduction and human development over the last three decades would not have been possible without the pioneering approaches of its development NGOs. However, I'm wary of the rapid NGO-isation of our civil society and its implications for our country in this era of neoliberal globalisation.

Post-independent Bangladesh was built on the four pillars of nationalism, secularism, socialism and democracy, but internal division, external pressure, corruption and successive military regimes had the effect of diminishing the progressive ideologies of the state in successive years. Increasingly dissatisfied with the state, many left-leaning activists initiated the NGO movement as a way of furthering their political and social goals. However, their radical edge was soon replaced by a focus on policy assessments, project executions, and social services delivery. This shift reflected donor preferences for a less radical model of civil society and for more emphasis on service provision. During the late 1980s, donors began to fund NGOs on a large scale. By the 1980s, small scale credit was recognised as an important potential means of tackling economic oppression, empowering poor women, and channelling resources to poor rural 'target groups'. Many NGOs began to emphasise the delivery of services, particularly credit, and to reduce its focus on strategies of social and political mobilisation. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, they started to develop their managerial capacity, program design and organisation features that paved the way for their rapid growth. The process of expansion was facilitated by the simple, standardised nature of the product being offered. The microfinance model was widely accepted by the donors, who poured in money to expand the development sector of the country. This expansion continued apace through the mid 1990s.These NGOs argued that empowerment could come through equipping the poor with organisational and practical skills, supporting them with needed resources and instilling them with the confidence necessary for taking actions to improve both their social and economic lives. No longer interested in movement-oriented goals, structural analyses of power or class struggles, these NGOs began to promote an approach that treated the symptoms rather than the causes of poverty. Implicit in this development model is the assumption that the market is benevolent, and that providing the poor with access to the market means that they can successfully compete in it and find solutions to their livelihoods needs. The individual, under this paradigm, is "posited as both the problem and the solution to poverty," which, as Sangeeta Kamaat points out, is oddly reminiscent of the World Bank's own notion of empowerment. The World Bank's Participation Sourcebook states: "As the capacity of poor people is strengthened and their voices begin to be heard, they become 'clients' who are capable of demanding and paying for goods and services from government and private sector agencies. ... We reach the far end of the continuum when these clients ultimately become the owners and managers of their assets and activities."

But is that really our notion of development, whereby the citizen is reduced to the client and the market replaces the state as the distributor of social services? The new role of the state, under this paradigm, becomes the removal of any obstruction that may come in the way of market-led growth and development instead of the provision and equal allocation of social welfare. Consciously or otherwise, mainstream NGO discourses depoliticise the poor, by taking the focus away from the state's redistribution policies and/or global trade policies. What happens, then, to the idea of resistance when civil society itself loses its radical potential? What happens to the spirit of subversion when the 'progressives' can no longer critically analyse their own social and political locations? Of course, one must remember that the civil society is not a homogenous body. There are numerous civil society members who question the current state of world affairs and relentlessly work towards a more equitable economic and social order. Similarly, there are many NGOs that are critical of their positions vis-a-vis global capital, and that strive to maintain a "bottom-up" approach to development whereby the people themselves develop the collective strength to demand their rights and challenge injustice. But when all is said and done, what gives me hope is the thought that the people with the real revolutionary zeal -- labourers, workers, villagers, adivasis, marginalised communities -- do not really need us -- the civil society or privileged well-educated youngsters -- to lead the fight against injustice and oppression. That is not to say, however, that we fold our hands and wait for an upheaval, but that we think of ourselves as part of a collective struggle for a liberated and liberating Bangladesh.

The writer is Feature Writer, The Daily Star.

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