ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the changes that have happened to Indian NGOs in the early 2000s in more detail, using the examples from a group of mostly small local NGOs from Kamataka in southern India. Karnataka was chosen as it has a relatively benign social and political environment for NGOs to undertake their work. In the 1980s and 1990s when these NGOs were established, the benign environment provided them with more choices in the approaches they could take in their work and constrained them less than if they were working in other parts of India. Karnataka has also experienced rapid economic and social change over the 1990s and 2000s, which has provided both opportunities and challenges for NGOs. In what seems to be a paradox, since the mid 2000s the economic and social changes are now having a more negative effect on NGO capacity, in that they have given the government the resources to provide both more funding to NGOs. This funding, however, has conditions attached to it that both nairow and restrict the choices NGOs previously enjoyed when they were largely funded from abroad. This change will be examined in some detail in this chapter.
