How ironic that the People’s War Group, which has itself been banned by the Andhra Pradesh government, should now ban NGOs working in what it considers its own guerrilla zones’. As Nietzsche once said, if you stare long enough at the abyss, the abyss will stare back at you. NGOs in East Godavari and Visakhapatnam districts of Andhra have been asked by the PWG to quit the area on the grounds that they were addressing subsidiary’ issues like education, health, savings and environmental protection, and using foreign funds to do this, thus serving as agents of imperialism.’ The parallels to ULFA’s abduction of NGO activist, Sanjoy Ghose, are unmistakable.
Arguably, by working within the system’ and making small gains, NGOs erode the mass base that more radical organisations like PWG lay claim too. They are able to perform mainly because they do not represent any real threat to existing power structures and because they allow the state to display a benevolent face. Villagers, according to the PWG, are unableto see this limitation and are fooled into thinking that incremental improvement might be the way forward. At the same time it is not clear how one calculates what a real threat’ to the state might be, and whether by conducting armed struggle in small pockets, the PWG itself is such a threat or alternative.
No doubt, the happy coincidence of donor emphasis on civil society’ and the shrinking role of the post-liberalisation state has led to a massive proliferation of NGOs. However, the problems with NGOs have not gone unremarked they are not accountable unlike, at least in theory, state agencies; individual NGOs can never replace the sweep of the state; they serve as an excuse for the state to abdicate its own responsibility etc.
In many cases, NGOs are no different from state organisations in terms of their internal structure, are as hierarchical and undemocratic, and merely deliver services instead of enabling people to demand their rights. Often, they fail to address critical issues, focusing insteadon the changing priorities of their funders.
But surely it is for the villagers – and not for any organisation, however radical it may be to decide what their priorities are. The people whom PWG seeks to represent must have the chance to debate tactics, to decide whether they are strong enough to reap the intermediate benefits NGOs might offer while simultaneously continuing a long-term struggle. Equally, it should be up to the people’ to decide which party they want to support – and not up to the dominant ML organisation to ask other ML parties to leave its guerrilla zone, as the PWG has done. One can have political unity among the left without waiting for some mystical ideological unity to emerge. A policy of making sure the right line’ wins at the expense of everything else is perhaps the most undemocratic policy of all.
It is true that the AP Civil Liberties Committee has suffered state repression merely because the act of highlighting state violations against the PWG is equated by the state as being sympathetic to the latter’s cause. If even such independent organisations find it hard to survive, how could the PWG, even if it wished to, undertake activities which promote education and health? Any such effort, even by a front organisation, would conceivably face obstacles from the state. Where is the room, in the face of fake encounters, for open democratic debate? Perhaps then, the time has come to reconsider what such a group’s strategy should be in the face of the strength of the state.
If the PWG cannot itself carry out particular activities because of its underground status, surely it cannot deny the villagers some of these essentials. And certainly, in the central Indian Dandakaranya’ tribal belt Koraput, Paderu, Bastar, Gadchiroli etc., education, health, degrading environments and access to land are the main problems. If the PWG is really serious about creating a “liberated zone” in the Eastern Ghats, why doesn’t it struggle against merchants who make massive profits by cheating tribals? Unless any organisation can persuade the people through debate or through their positive actions, that they have something to offer, no amount of banning by one side or the other will have the desired effect.
The writer is a reader in sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhiof Acirc;not;Utacirc;euro;ordm;4Acirc;frac14;Ttacirc;euro;ordm; of its cultural heritage remains unutilised and not updated. Under the impact of socialism-secularism, modern educators have accepted their status as half-hearted conductors of state policies and asked for little say in setting syllabi or the appointments of peers. They have succumbed to trade unionism, entrenching leaders as brokers between them and legislators who control educational funding. Whereas Indian monarchs absorbed immigrant scholars from far-off regions, the modern politician nurtures the “sons-of-the-soil” culture to stifling levels of parochialism, killing cross-country intellectual dialogue for over a generation. Academic life today revolves around an anglophone elite transmitting to regional capitals and mufassil towns decade-old ideas of Euro-American origin. Recently, with the fever of ethnic exotica raging wide, Indian Anglophones have found a market for packaging district debris for global consumption. The local basks in the glamour of global attention, frog-leaping national perusal.The nation is beginning to forget its own parts and, thus, its past, present and self. How long can the regional whether as exotic and mysterious or as backward, underprivileged, tribal, or just subaltern, waiting for carriers of the white man’s burden merit global attention? Can it revitalise itself through the global without the traditional and national consciousness? In times when few think beyond market reforms, it is difficult to assert that rejuvenation is a matter of self-reliance, of inner strength, of using the nation’s cultural age as accumulated wisdom, rather than being overawed by chimeras such as information technology, space exploration or genetic cloning which are only instruments and not the force of life. The vatavriksha may not rise to a hundred feet like the redwood pine, but it keeps its inner strength and expanse undiminished by sending its branches to its roots. It provides for birds and animals a family space on the earth on which it rests.The writer is a professor at Delhi University
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