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This article provides information about the Critical Appreciation of Civil Society Movement:
Though the NGOs begin with the philosophy of negation of governmental initiatives, they are guided by the economic and social policies of the government. In a system of structural dependency on the state, the NGOs without a committed manpower will provide only a limited space for the creation of alternatives.
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Many NGOs have even proved their inability to fulfill their commitment to the state. It was in 1996 that Central of Council for Advancement of Peoples Action and Rural Technology blacklisted around 150 NGOs for not fulfilling their commitment.
Though the process of proliferation of NGOs has been very sharp in recent years, their disappearance from the public scene has also been conspicuously marked. To whom are they accountable? To the state? To the people? In a scenario where the NGOs have been unable to either inculcate the culture of “change agents” or to form a new collective identity of marginalised groups at a substantive scale, it is very doubtful whether NGO activism will alone pave the way for the empowerment of marginalised groups.
However, notwithstanding all the criticisms and limitations, there is no denying of the fact that civil societies have been able to initiate a process of mobilisation at the grassroots. Historical evidence shows that such changes in the pre-existing power structure are possible only through sustained grassroots mobilisations, social movements, selfless interventions of civil societies (NGOs, people’s cooperatives and progressive institutions) and well- articulated alternative policy formulations and their execution with a political commitment for the redressal of power imbalances at the grassroots.
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After all, the marginalised people cannot stand in isolation on an unequal footing compared with the state. Collective mobilisation as a long-term political investment will pave the way for the empowerment of the marginalised. Hence there is a need to view civil society activism not with a vote of negation but constructive criticality.