ABSTRACT
The state arrived as a force of modernisation in Kashipur in the late 1970s. It was a national project, inaugurating a new phase of rural development. The Gandhians occupied the centre stage of voluntarism in India. They were always searching for alternative politics outside the mechanical party politics. Education was perceived as the “most effective factor” to break out the vicious cycle of poverty, which the government had failed to deliver even after spending enormous resources. Agragamee’s experience helps the reader to understand the logics of micro-politics and governmentality. NGOs such as Agragamee tried to address the crisis of social reproduction and confronted the immediate power structures. From the early 1980s, the growth of professional NGOs has been phenomenal. As NGOs became part of the institutional logic of neoliberal governmentality, their capacity to represent the people and articulate social antagonisms declined. NGOs had emerged with the promise of being an alternative structure of popular and informal authority.
