ABSTRACT

Following the third wave of global democratisation, civil society institutions came to be considered indispensable instruments for the survival and sustenance of democracy. Aid agencies and governments of the industrialised West viewed NGOs and civil society organisations as the ‘magic bullet’ that could positively address the different problems of the Third World. Following this, India experienced a rapid rise in the number of NGOs, making it the ‘unofficial NGO capital of the world’. Some estimates suggest that there are more than 2.5 million NGOs functioning in India today. Given this, the chapter questions the uncritical acceptance/promotion of civil society as a democratic force and argues that not all kinds of civil society institutions necessarily always promote democratic political change. Drawing on comparative case studies from India, this chapter shows that the politics of civil society could be multifaceted and could have contradictory consequences in relation to development and democratisation.