ABSTRACT
Narman has argued that for many years non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have been ‘something of a sacred cow’ in the development debate (1999: 168), among aid donor countries as much if not more than among ‘recipients’. In recent years, and especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a powerful neo-liberalist agenda, NGOs have often been seen as providing a bridge between capital and a poverty-focused development agenda. South Asia has been one of the richest areas of NGO experiment, and every country of South Asia has a tradition of NGO involvement in areas ranging from the environment to the meeting of basic health needs. From the outset relationships between NGOs and the formal sector were often distant, sometimes deliberately so. Narman has argued that in Sweden, where in the 1970s and 1980s NGOs were widely seen as a major channel for development, there has been an increasingly strong link between the government and NGO sectors, and a growing debate about the effectiveness of the role of NGOs in the development process (Narman 1999). Pushpa Pathak has argued in the context of her study of urban poverty reduction in India that ‘in India co-operation between governments and NGOs appears to be a necessary and effective strategy for economic empowerment of urban poor men and women’ (Pathak 1999: 261), although Main (1999) has suggested that Calcutta’s experience suggests that NGOs have ranged widely both in their focus and in the strength of their relationship with government.
