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24 PoLAR 92 (2001)
Politics of the Poor - NGOs and Grass-Roots Political Mobilization in Bangladesh

handle is hein.journals/polar24 and id is 96 raw text is: Lamia Karim Rice University Politics of the Poor? NGOs and Grass-roots Political Mobilization in Bangladesh Given the corrupting influences of the traditional political process in South Asia, Indian political writer Rajni Kothari has proposed doing politics without alignment to any political party. Kothari describes this as the non-party political process (NPPP) and as an attempt to open alternative political spaces outside the usual arenas of party and government though not outside the state and as part of a search of new instruments of political action when vacuums in the political space are emerging (Kothari 1984:219). Kothari offers a constructive space for imagining collective action for social change. His work resonates with the new political processes actually emerging in the work of non-governmental organizations, the NGOs. But although this process opens new possibilities for change, it is beset by its own problems and contradictions, which I will identify in this paper.' In Bangladesh, the social mobilization NGO (Proshika Human Development Forum)2 has occupied the rhetoric of non-party-politics and undertaken the organization of the poor (households that live below the Bangladeshi poverty level and own .5 acres of land or less fall into the category of poor) into a grassroots political mobilization both at the local and national levels. In the 1990s, Proshika, under the auspices of the largest NGO umbrella organ- ization in Bangladesh, the Association of Development Agencies in Bangladesh (ADAB),3 organized public demonstrations of its members for the distribution of government land and for a pro-poor budget, successfully sponsored NGO women members in village level elections, and increased the participation of poor women in public rallies. Two decades ago, left parties in Bangladesh would organize such rallies and advocate land reform. At the turn of the twenty- first century, such events are organized by indigenous NGOs that are funded by Western donors.4 This takeover of oppositional political processes by the NGOs in the 1990s coincides with certain global processes and studying it offers some insights into these emergent global trends and into their effects at the local level. First, this occupation of the political sphere by the NGOs coincides with the call for a global civil society advocated by the United Nations, The World Bank, and other international governing bodies. A fundamental premise of this new global governance is that third-world governments are corrupt, inefficient, and incapable of delivering many of the needed social and economic development services to their citizens. From this premise follows the suggestion that many of the functions traditionally reserved for the state should be taken over by the NGOs, which are considered to be better able to provide services to the poor (United Nations 1999:94). Another important aspect of this grassroots social mobilization is the targeting of poor women as subjects for social and political empow- erment by NGOs. This policy focus on third-world women coincides with the post-Beijing globalization of the idea that women's issues are human rights issues (Dorsey 1997:343). Occurring as they-do in the post-Cold War era, these changes insert a new actor, the indigenous NGO with transnational links, alongside the more traditional left oppositional parties, into the political sphere. On the ground, this development marks a shift in oppositional politics from a Copyright © 2001, American Anthropological Association Page 92 [POLAR: Vol. 24, No. I

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