‘If you want to start a new project, then you pray that funders are on the same wavelength!’: interrogating Southern- based knowledge intermediaries and systems

With reference to the progressive measures in place to facilitate inclusion in locally owned, Southern-based knowledge societies, previous chapters have demonstrated that the New Delhi-based organisations under scrutiny in this study continue to engage in supply-led information-production and dissemination processes that are neither dialogic nor context sensitive. This chapter moves on to consider point 3 in Table 4.1, interrogating the assumptions of Northern donors and organisations like GDKS that Southern-based NGOs acting as intermediaries have the capacity to simultaneously create, through their geographical and therefore presumed discursive proximity, enabling spaces for the diverse voices and subaltern views and ideas of Southern stakeholders. A key focus is the extent to which these New Delhi-based organisations are able to promote the inclusion in particular of marginalised groups that may provide insights into an alternative (to) development (beyond donor and transnational development frameworks) as well as building effective Southern-focused/owned knowledge societies. This chapter proceeds as follows. It begins by considering how GDKS’ commitment to privileging Southern-based, local and/or indigenous knowledge is perceived by respondents in New Delhi. The analysis then moves on to highlight how the discursive marginality deriving from being located in the Global South informs the identity as well as the capacity of the organisations under scrutiny in this study. The analysis then considers the issues addressed by the New Delhi-based organisations, finding that in reality these represent a very narrow set of concerns that are themselves circumscribed by donor-framed, transnational and elite Indian feminist discourses, alongside continued oneway flows of information between these organisations and their marginalised and/or grassroots beneficiaries. The chapter concludes by considering the uneven and sporadic monitoring and evaluation practices of these organisations to interrogate how, despite the range of limitations identified in this study, information-production and dissemination practices continue to be highly valued.