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This article provides information about the Role of Civil Society (NGOs) in the Empowerment of Marginalised People, India !
In developing countries like India, civil societies like NGOs play a crucial role for the social development of the marginalised people. Again these groups of people have also developed a sense of expectations from the NGOs as the state-sponsored development initiatives have miserably failed to elevate their status in society, in the contemporary development discourse, the concept of empowerment of the marginalised has got a special focus and civil society initiatives have been given an emphasis.
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As the role of civil society has acquired a special significance for the social development and the empowerment of the marginalised people, and it has developed a substantive relationship with them who are the marginalised people and how the developmental processes have contributed to their marginalisation in society.
Marginalisation in conventional parlance is a complex process of relegating specific group(s) of people to the lower or outer edge of society. It effectively pushes these groups of people to the margin of society economically, politically, culturally, and socially following the parameters of exclusion and inclusion.
Sociologically there are several important dimensions of marginalisation and one is to understand it in the larger context:
Dimensions of denials and deprivations:
The process of marginalisation economically denies a large section of society equal access to productive resources, avenues for the realisation of their productive human potential, and opportunities of their full capacity utilisation. These denials ultimately push these populations to the state of rampant poverty, human misery, devaluation of their work, low wage and wage discrimination, casualisation in the workforce, and livelihood insecurity.
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Thus they are provided with very limited space for upward occupational and social mobility, and are excluded from the range of economic opportunities and choices. Politically, this process of relegation denies these people equal access to the formal power structure and participation in the decision-making processes leading to their subordination to and dependence on the economically and politically dominant groups of society. Politically they emerge to be the underdogs, under represented and disempowered.
In the continuous process of this relegation, they emerge to be culturally excluded from the mainstream of society becoming “part society with part culture”, “outsider for within”, “alienated and disintegrated”. They eventually get a stigmatised cultural existence, an ascribed low social status and become the victims of cultural segregation. As a consequence of the economic, political and cultural deprivation, a vast chunk of the population of the country has emerged to be socially ignorant, illiterate, uneducated and dependent. Devoid of the basic necessities of life they are relegated to live on the margins of society with a subhuman existence.
Artificial Structure of Hierarchy:
Indeed marginalisation is a man-made and socially constructed process which is permuted and continuously reproduced on the basis of on unequal relationship of dependency and domination. In this context, even the natural differentiation between men and women, linguistic or ethnic groups and so on are put in an order of hierarchy with the guiding principle of domination and subordination.
This process of creating hierarchy has arranged social groups in steep ordering of people, with a powerful few at the social and economic command deciding the mainstream of the society, polity and the economy. On the other hand, within the same arrangement the vast majority has remained powerless, occupying the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy and surviving at the periphery of the social order.
Bases of Legitimacy and Reproduction:
The process of marginalisation has also been historically embedded in a socio-cultural context. Significantly there are strong institutional, normative and ideological bases, steaming out of the primordial interpretation of the institutional and normative arrangements of caste, ethnicity, race, gender, patriarchy, religion and so on, to provide legitimacy to the processes of marginalisation.
Again, the ongoing processes of socialisation, education, politicisation, enculturation, etc:, contribute to their reproduction in society. Thus, over a period of time, the socially constructed marginalised categories tend to appear to be the empirical categories, viz., the low castes, tribes, women, blacks and so on.
Development Strategy and marginalisation:
The development strategies, which were implemented within the pre-existing structural arrangements of society, have not been able to bring an end to the deprivation of the marginalised groups, rather than have largely contributed to the social reproduction of marginalisation.
The Human Development Report 1990 highlighted ruthless, voiceless, jobless, futureless facts of development. Indeed the marginalised people have emerged to be the major victim of these processes of development. In every human society there are vulnerable sections of marginalised population who are deprived of socio-economic opportunities and choices for their minimum sustenance, and are victims of the artificial structure of hierarchy and social, cultural and political exclusion. In the Indian context, marginalised people are the rural poor, urban, slum- dwellers, manual workers in unorganised sectors, scheduled castes, tribes, women, and other such categories.
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An analysis of historical facts reveals that the preexisting arrangement of distribution of power is hierarchical in nature. This process of hierarchisation has arranged social groups in the steep ordering of people with a powerful “few” at the social and economic command, deciding the mainstream of the society, polity and the economy. On the other hand, within the same arrangement, the vast majority have remained powerless, occupying the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy and surviving at the periphery or the margin of the social order. Here power as an enabling provision has deprived the powerless of the chance to decide the course of their lives by themselves.