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Seira
Tamang/Civilising civil society: Donors and democratic
space
The
concept of history of civil society is very long,
from Hegel to Marx, Gramsci, Adam Smith to de
Tocqueville. In Nepal the concept is derived from
the liberal tradition only because it has been
sieved through development like many of our other
concepts. Consequently concepts have been sanitised
and have limited utility - this is not a Nepal-specific
phenomenon but happens all over the world especially
given the unwillingness to interrogate the concept
is a world-wide phenomenon.
Two
main ways in which one can understand civil society
can be given here—liberal and Marxist. What
is civil society is generally agreed upon—it
is coordinated activity between the individual
and the household that goes beyond the confines
of the state. It is an arena of associational
culture and it implies a sense of collective action.
Broadly, it serves as a bridge between the realm
of society and state. The bridge can be built
from the society towards the state where society
imposes its norms upon the working of the state
or in the other direction from the state to the
society in which the state dominates. The liberal
ideas of civil society in the form of societal
norms being imposed on the state dominate in Nepal.
I will now interoggate the assumptions of this
liberal civil society and the manner in which
it functions in bikase Nepal.
Nepal’s
1990 revolution followed on the heels of the late
1980s revolution of east Europe in a period in
which foreign aid was channeled into the construction
of civil society. This followed the global belief
in the period—the third wave of democratisation
and belief of people power. It was believed democracy
could be institutionalised via the assistance
of external forces if domestic actors were lacking
or weak. Therefore strengthening NGO capacity
and civil society and political liberalisation
have been central to the new policy agenda of
multilateral and bilateral agencies. The economic
point of view reduces the role of the state, and
the NGOs and the private sector become ideal service
deliverers. From the political point of view civil
society organisations develop civic culture which
forms the bastion to combat non-democratic power
which threaten the state.
What
do civic groups need to do in order to maintain
democratic stability? Internally civic groups
inspire habits of cooperation, solidarity, public-spiritedness,
and trust. Externally, these networks aggregate
networks and articulate demand to ensure the government’s
accountability to citizens.
But
to be clarified is the fact that it is assumed
that NGOs are democratically structured internally,
which is an error. It is believed that in order
to work in civil society, you have to work for
democratic goals which is also an error. For example,
World Hindu Federation is part of civil society
but does not work towards democratic goals. Furthermore
it is not clear if more civil society means more
democracy. It has been argued that too much civil
society gave rise to Nazis. And most importantly
for the purposes of this paper what needs to be
made clear is that civic association kind of arguments
don’t take into account international influence
which impact the two key components of civic theorist
argument—horizontal ties and the norms of
reciprocity. There is no sense of culpability
of how foreign aid has led to and has ramifications
on how the present conflict in Nepal has emerged.
We need to think about how foreign aid has led
to the way we imagine civil society in terms of
the ramifications for reciprocity and trust.
In
Nepal, groups that have received aid are not more
likely to develop with accountability to citizens
or state, which is crucial. Neither are they more
likely to be more involved with other civic groups.
Instead, these groups are removed from the groups
they claim to represent. They are closer to western
funders than the population they represent. Few
are involved in activities concerned with civic-ness.
Studies in post-communist Russia have shown that
foreign aid does little to help groups’
abilities to instill habits of cooperativeness,
solidarity, public spiritedness and trust. A study
in Russia’s women’s movement has shown
foreign aid has fostered internal rivalry, jealousies
and overall divisiveness. There are clear parallels
in Nepal. In Nepal it is more important to get
funding than make an impact in the community.
Groups engage in cooperative and competitive behaviour
with other civic groups. There is an argument
that aid has given rise to a distinct civic elite.
There has been discussions that development reinforces
hierarchies, caste/ethnic and so on. It might
have more negative repercussions than that if
we think of civil society as democratic space
that needs forms of association and a clear flow
of information. English speaking Nepali elite
function as gatekeepers of information for donors,
who seek to fund because donors need to fund to
exist. If the elite are sieving information, are
making decisions for funders who not speak Nepali,
that is a huge problem in terms of the way information
flows in a democratic polity. How much information
is sieved by the new elite and the manner in which
consultants sign confidentiality statements and
donor funded reports are not always made publicly
available raises questions as to how donors are
actually impacting the sphere of civil society.
There is also the distance between civic associations
which are based in the rural areas and those based
in the centre because of language and easy access
to donor circles in the capital.
From
the donors’ side, donors need to fund and
thus there are cases where ethics take a backseat.
There is a moral dilemma in funding. Furthermore
US support is tied to geopolitics. Donors acquiesced
to the king’s move to remove the Deuba government
and install one of his choice. The rights of people
were dismissed.
In
conclusion, we in the state are as much responsible
for what the state does as we reproduce statist
ideas. Furthermore, civil society needs the state
to protect the rights. If INGOs and NGOs are given
more authority, it erodes the ability of the state
to protect our rights. And finally it is not at
all clear that civil society is the only way for
political participation. There are other ways
for people to be political. Civil society is not
the only democratic space available and we need
to look beyond it to look for democratic possibilities.
Questions
1. The general impression I got was civil society
means NGOs which in turn means funding. There
have been studies on NGOs, foreign aid, changing
nature of foreign aid. There is an impression
that foreign aid has been increasing all the time
but it hasn’t. There was an increase up
to 1989 but after that there was a decrease. There
has been no systematic study in this area. A lot
of funding has been going to NGOs but we don’t
have accounting. The overall funding that has
gone to the NGO sector is less than 10 per cent
of what has gone to the state. In this context
we need to define what we mean by the state. My
question is, what do you mean by state and what
do you make of the studies on civil society, NGOs
and foreign aid in Nepal?
2.
Can you please throw light on NGOs in contributing
to the erosion of democratic space as well as
legitimacy of state?
3.
I often think there is an over-emphasis on civil
society as a collective mode of participation
in the Nepali context to the exclusion of looking
at individual aspirations or political consciousness.
Could you please comment on that and how we might
actually go to the grassroots level to include
some of the existing forms of political participation.
There are such traditions in many communities.
How can these be integrated in the national level?
4.
My question relates to civic groups being contested
even at the lowest level. Why should that be a
problem? All groups are contested at the small
levels. Groups fighting for similar aims erode
each other’s confidence and steal each others
ideas. Academics do it, politicians do it. So
why should civic groups be singled out?
5.
Is there a possibility that we could conceive
of political parties as another form or manifestation
of civil society?
Answers
1. It is not my concern how much money these NGOs
get or the state gets. What I am saying is that
in the rhetoric of building civil society, opening
the sphere of democracy and discussion, the money
is not helping do that. This does not have the
emancipatory democratic potential that it claims
to have and we need to interrogate it more deeply.
Civil society is not only equal to NGOs, it is
more than that.
2.
There are two ways of looking at the second question.
One, the non-liberal idea of civil society. For
me, civil society is a bourgeois society. It’s
inherently exclusionary. Other forms of political
participation seems to me so much more important
in a country like Nepal where there is (a) no
clear distinction between society and state anyway.
So where does civil society fit anyway and (b)
whether democratic potentials can be found within
this very limited civil society which is bourgeois.
The second answer is it encourages in Nepal some
NGOs that have a global standing and cannot be
criticised. This is because of funding. For example
one NGO turned down a 50,000 sterling grant because
they are uncomfortable working with an INGO which
had earlier criticised it of unethical practices.
Will we get to that stage where NGOs are independent
of donors? They are already independent of the
state and the people. Where will this lead to
in terms of democratic political sphere?
3.
If ethnographic findings could be integrated we
may be able to get away with this obsession with
civil society and the key is to get blinkers off
civil society first.
4.
Political space and civil society building means
certain networks are necessary for civil society.
Network includes stabilisation of rights, includes
certain ideas of freedom of association, freedom
of speech and freedom of media. All of this encompass
what democratic sphere should be and is based
on a normative ideal. Because of this normative
ideal, claims of civil society implicitly ethical
– and therefore stand on a higher moral
ground than other ‘normal practices.’
5.
This is just an issue of definition. In my definition
– and a lot of political theory, political
parties are not part of civil society. They are
part of political society. But that is because
I come from a certain orientation. It’s
a definition thing.
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