ABSTRACT
This book has identified two broad trends in NGO work in India, which are in tension with each other. For southern India in particular, the economic success of the region, and the related drop in the headline measures of poverty, have resulted in international aid agencies withdrawing from the southern states, with their former work in rural development and poverty alleviation being largely taken over by both federal and state instrumentalities. These government agencies have less flexible approaches, and a broader development agenda for rural areas, than the sharper focus on poverty alleviation and empowerment that INGOs had. These domestic government agencies also tend to follow the purchaser-provider model of government contracting for service provision, whereby the NGO is more of an agent for government programmes than offering up its own programmes for their support as they did with INGOs. This change has naturally led to a narrowing of the control that these local NGOs hitherto had. As discussed in Chapter 3, this has led to difficulties for the NGOs in this study; they had to dismiss staff and look to different funding options as they managed a fairly rapid change.
