Left, NGO sector and the case of Nepal

Communist Party (UML) became closer to NGOs, the party also became more accepting of mainstream ideas and of a reformist approach to social change. The Maoists, on the other hand, had a conscious and relatively effective anti-NGO policy

‘The Maoists were successful in marginalising the NGO sector for a time. With the Maoists’ acceptance of the peace agreement and coming to power, this balance of forces has of course changed in favour of NGOs,’ Fezi Ismail tells Viewpoint. A PhD candidate at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London, Feyzi Ismail is active in left politics. She points out: ‘Maoists confronted the problem of NGOs, and attempted to address it; but when they came into the mainstream and decided that developing capitalism was the immediate need, they abandoned their anti-NGO policy.’ Read on:

The left by and large views NGOs as Trojan Horses of imperialism. How fair is this assessment?

Much of the revolutionary left has a nuanced position on the role of NGOs. It’s not that all NGOs in every case work in a deliberate way for the project of imperialism i.e. most NGOs are not established with this aim, and nor are most NGO workers necessarily pro-imperialist. But the left rightly views with suspicion the fact that NGOs obtain funding from the imperialist powers and then attempt to represent the poor and oppressed to those same powers; and yet neither NGOs nor the imperialist powers are in a position to address these problems because their interests lie in consolidating a system in which poverty and inequality are intrinsic components. With funding comes ideas, and most NGOs unwittingly accept the ideology and interests of those that fund them. Ultimately, there is no real solidarity with the poor, but rather a general sense of charity. Politics is taken out of the relationship between NGOs and beneficiaries, projectised, packaged and sold back to funders, who are often pleased to be seen to be doing something to address the problems of the poor. Rarely are problems considered from a historical perspective, and although many NGOs speak about rights, democracy etc. these cannot be provided by a foreign agency or organisation that is accountable to donors. People themselves must take them. But this would make NGOs redundant and challenge the order that the imperialist powers work hard to protect.

In Pakistan, the left has largely viewed NGOs as one of the reasons holding back progressive politics. You have been researching the Nepalese left. Nepal is home to one of the world’s largest NGO networks. How come NGOs could not hold back the left in Nepal?

The left has a long history in Nepal, and has been organising since the late 1940s. Throughout the panchayat dictatorship, it continued to organise, amongst workers, students, and in defence of left activists struggling for democracy. With the 1990 revolution and the influx of NGOs, sections of the left understood that not only would these organisations be unable to deliver for the poor, ethnic minorities etc. in a fundamental way, but could prove counterproductive to social change. The Maoists decided to engage in an armed struggle against the system to bring about fundamental change, and in the course of the struggle highlighted the role of NGOs. More importantly, the Maoists argued with other sections of the left who were willing to compromise with the monarchy, with India, and with bourgeois democracy, but they also concentrated on building a mass base, on which to sustain the struggle. They were a highly organised and relatively disciplined group that understood that the crisis in Nepal – the desperate poverty, dependency, inequality etc. – could not be addressed through a series of gradual reforms. So I would say it’s both the organic link to the mass of the population combined with a very deep crisis in Nepal that allowed the left to develop. This is not to say the NGOs have lacked influence in Nepal. They were strong in the early 1990s, and there have been many attempts to challenge the left; but the Maoists were successful in marginalising the NGO sector for a time. With the Maoists’ acceptance of the peace agreement and coming to power, this balance of forces has of course changed in favour of NGOs.

What is the attitude of the left (i.e. the major formations CPN-UML and UCPN-Maoist) towards NGOs in Nepal?

In the context of the fall of the Soviet Union and the weakening of communist parties the world over, the left in Nepal needed to reorient itself. In the early 1990s it became expedient for the UML to work with NGOs in the rural areas in Nepal, through various projects and programmes, in order to challenge the hegemony of the Nepali Congress but also to defend left activists and develop itself as a party. Predictably, as the UML became closer to NGOs, the party also became more accepting of mainstream ideas and of a reformist approach to social change. The Maoists, on the other hand, had a conscious and relatively effective anti-NGO policy in their base areas during the war, having seen the relative de-radicalisation of the UML as its links with NGOs were strengthened. The Maoists recognised NGOs as contradictory phenomena at best, but as integral to the system, and so they approached the question of NGOs in a more conscious way. They confronted the problem of NGOs, and attempted to address it; but when they came into the mainstream and decided that developing capitalism was the immediate need, they abandoned their anti-NGO policy. In the process, they are allowing the NGOs to reclaim the hegemony they once had and are neglecting the mass base they worked so hard to build.

What do you think happens when activism becomes a career? We have seen feminists, trade unionists and environmentalists making a career in the name of good causes. The same is true for certain organisations. Your comments.

I think it depends on the nature of the organisation. NGOs pay workers a salary that is well above the average wage in society; this often has the effect of making both the individual NGO worker and the organisation more conservative. Of course, the funding they get from government donors also places limits on their work and encourages NGO accountability towards these donors, rather than to those they seek to help. Clearly donors don’t fund activities that threaten their interests. Activists in revolutionary organisations, for example, don’t have these particular problems because they don’t get funding from governments or other donors that place limits on activity. They don’t earn such salaries, nor do they necessarily aim to develop a career, in the traditional sense, out of activism. For the best activists, the focus is the aim of the activism, not the career.

From my own experience I can claim that the NGOisation of trade unions, for instance in Pakistan, has brought problems like financial corruption, leaders’ priorities oriented towards donors and their refusal to engage in grassroots organisation. How do you view the NGOisation of the union movement?

Those problems also exist among trade unions in Nepal and the left parties have not really addressed them. The unions affiliated to the UML have failed to make breakthroughs. For several years the Maoists worked hard to organise workers within the Maoist-affiliated unions to fight for better wages, contracts and conditions. Many people joined the Maoist trade unions because they knew they would experience concrete benefits. But more recently the Maoists have been reluctant to organise. In various interviews with mainstream newspapers, Baburam Bhattarai, the current prime minister, said that workers and employers had common cause in developing industry and, as such, he suggested that workers shouldn’t engage in strike action because this would have a negative effect on productivity. This has only reinforced the conservatism of the trade unions, and is something akin to NGOisation.

Despite a lot of criticism of NGOs one may say that they have highlighted issues that the old left ignored: climate change, children’s rights, women’s rights and human rights more in general. Also, certain NGOs have done good work or have supported good causes. For instance, the campaign against Third World debt, or the role of Amnesty International in highlighting rights abuses in Turkey, which Noam Chomsky has praised. What do you say about such NGO contributions?

The problem with NGOs is that for every good project or programme, one can point to several others that are counterproductive to the fight for real social change. Amnesty International, for example, has supported the imperialist war in Afghanistan in the belief that the US and its allies are making progress on women’s rights; and while other NGOs have exposed the atrocities committed in the name of women’s rights in Afghanistan, they don’t challenge the fact that the US needs wars to maintain its position in the world economy. So while NGOs may be useful as allies, in a context where politics is polarised and they are forced to side with progressive forces against reaction, they cannot always be counted on. In Thailand the NGOs sided with the repression of the monarchy and the military; conversely, in Egypt last year, many of the NGOs came out against the Mubarak regime. The point is that NGOs won’t be the ones that initiate change, will often oppose attempts to push for change, and are rarely at the forefront of challenging the status quo.

Do you think NGOisation of activism is a big problem only in the South and not in the North?

The North has similar problems to the South in terms of the NGOisation of activism, not least because young people need jobs, and NGOs have the means to employ more people. Universities also teach courses that encourage young people to join NGOs, and NGOs are accepted in the mainstream because they will not challenge it, even though they can sound radical; as a result, many people are drawn towards NGOs. Over the last decade, the big anti-capitalist and anti-war movements, the World Social Forums, along with Occupy and the movements against austerity, have worked with NGOs and in some cases radicalised NGOs, and this has made NGOs more attractive. The Make Poverty History campaign in Britain, which was a coalition of NGOs that mobilised against the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005, is a case in point – it had mass appeal because it was united and broad. At the same time, the new movements have exposed the limits of NGOs, increased cynicism of NGOs and served to challenge NGO hegemony. Many people are increasingly suspicious of the links between NGOs and governments, and can see that the solutions NGOs propose are simply inadequate. That NGO interventions are limited has been obvious for a long time to the so-called beneficiaries of NGO projects in the South. The only way to challenge NGO hegemony – either in the North or South – is to build a strong left with clear class politics, that is open and dynamic, prepared to work with NGOs under the right conditions but has a mass base and the social weight to confront both immediate and deeper systemic problems. The enemy is not NGOs but the system that allows them to flourish.