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This article provides information about Role of Civil Society in Empowering of the Marginalised in India !
As conventionally development initiatives were implemented through the pre-existing institutional arrangements of society, the marginalised people had very little or no participation in those developmental activities.
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Again, those initiatives were channelised through the pre-existing power structure. The systemic arrangements have not only legitimised the process of their subordination and deprivation in society through several means, but also contributed to the process of reproduction of this inequality and social construction of marginalisation.
Thus the process of marginalisation has remained historically imbedded, notwithstanding the state sponsored initiatives implemented for the upward mobility of the marginalised groups. As against this backdrop, there has been serious rethinking for the participation of the marginalised people in development.
As the welfare or emancipation approach of the state has failed to integrate the marginalised people in the development process, an alternative has emerged to evolve the strategy for empowerment of the marginalised people. It is essential to examine the recommendation of the World Development Summit, 1995 which talks about “people initiatives”, “people empowerment” and “strengthening capacities of the people”.
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Regarding the objectives of development, it specifically mentions that:
Empowering people, particularly women, to strengthen their capacities is the main objective of development and its principal resource. Empowerment requires the full participation of people in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of decisions determining the functioning and well-being of our societies. To ensure full participation of the people, it is pointed out that the state should provide “a stable legal framework” in accordance with the constitutions, laws and procedures consistent with international law and obligation; which promotes, along with other things, the encouragement of “partnership with free and representative organisations of civil society, strengthening of the abilities and opportunities of civil society and local communities to develop their own organisations, resources and activities.
It is in relation to the above that the World Development Report, 1997, emphasised the need on for effective role of the state for social and economic development, but in a new form. It writes: The state is central to economic and social development, not as a direct provider for growth but as a partner, catalyst and a facilitator…the world is changing, and with its our ideas about the state’s role in economic and social development.
In view of the collapse of the command and control economies, fiscal crises of the welfare states, explosion in humanitarian emergencies in several parts of the world, growing lack of confidence in governance among the marginalised groups, endemic corruption within the system, increase in poverty and various dramatic events, especially technological change in the world economy on the one hand and the growing discontent of the people, manifestation of grassroots mobilisation and increasing pressure of the civil society on the other, a redefinition of the state’s responsibilities has been evolved as a strategy of the solution of some of these problems.
According to the World Bank: This will include strategic selection of the collective actions that states will try to promote, coupled with greater efforts to take the burden off the state, by involving citizens and communities in the delivery of the collective goods for human welfare to be advanced, the state’s capacity – defined as the ability to undertake or promote collective actions efficiently, must be increased.
It is apparent that within the given perspectives of the “stable legal framework”, “strategic selection of collective action” by the state, possible partnership of the state with civil society and state-sponsored initiatives of civil society to have their own organisation, the following three important dimensions have emerged very clearly: (a) all initiatives for the empowerment of marginalized group should be in accordance with the prescribed rule of the land; (b) the state will selectively co-opt people’s initiatives as and when required; and (c) the non-government organisations (NGOs) would acquire a significant role to take the burden off the state for the empowerment of the marginalised.