The NGO Trap

The NGO Trap: Post 57th Annual DPI/NGO Conference Analysis
Publish Date : 9/10/2004 3:58:00 PM Source : By Ibrahim S. Malick
Annual NGO summit concludes at the United Nations in New York today. After one year, we get to see colorful clothes, hear different languages, and meet some very fascinating people from around the globe.

NGOs are here to share stories of success and failures. But, no one seems to question the fundamental concept of NGO and how it often plays the role of quasi bureaucracy un-intentionally legitimizing corrupt leaders, oppressive governments, and imperialist structure.
A majority of these volunteer organizations focus on very specific issues, such as child education, literacy development, rural healthcare, empowering women, affordable technologies for rural areas and so on. Diligent and disciplined in implementing their plans, they are excellent examples of volunteerism and personal sacrifice.
But, why do these great people shy away from probing too deeply into the issues? Why some are almost hostile to the idea of political analysis and real mass movements that could bring about radical social change? Even those who aim to be different and attempt to be more than specific-issue organizations but representative of a wider social movement, resist the type of social analysis that would be
required in bringing about real social change.
In circles of media activists and artists there is acute sensitivity towards emergent institutional powers. Activist groups and individuals on the edge (and the margins) of Media Related Creativity are vulnerable to new economic and political formations. As temporary, freelance workers, we are both inside and outside of the culture industry.
The critique of large size capitalist and state structures from the perspective of small groups has been well known since the Sixties. It would be easier to criticize Shell, GE, Halliburton, Wal-Mart and McDonalds, as the lines are clear: they are unfair. But now, the threat is coming from within, without clear frontlines. Nowadays, power can be located anywhere. For some it is the body, for others the media sphere, or transnational capital. The process of simultaneous fragmentation and centralization leaves us with a confusing picture. Does our critique need a clear object anyway, an artificial, imaginary focus?
Current technologies make it out of the question to be fully autonomous, particularly if you are working with computers. The rise of the Internet has only made us more dependent on hostile forces. With complexity and interdependency on the rise, one materialization of this landscape is the decentralized, networked, cost-effective office culture, the Non-Government Organization (NGO).
The first time I heard a critique of a NGO it was against Greenpeace. With my own eyes I had seen this organization become a megalomaniacal structure of bureaucratic do-gooders. They were one of the first to ‘professionalize’, leaving behind the more indirect and blurry tactics of the ecological movement, a charming universe of micro-initiatives, which to a ‘communications/managerial expert’ would seem lacking clear direction.
The Greenpeace set up a chain of branches, raised memberships, organized ‘campaigns’ and specialized in spectacular, advertising-like media interventions. The critique focused on high overhead costs, internal power struggles and the misuse of funds collected by masses of innocent, well-meaning middle class citizens. This process took place inside the ecological movement throughout the eighties, and soon this managerial ‘corporate’ approach would reach all ‘independent’ organizations dealing with arts, culture and politics.
When the labor and student unions were clamped down under the dictatorship of Gen. Zia ul Haq, numerous NGOs moved into Pakistan, created from this ‘corporate-style’ Western model. There it became really visible what the NGO was in essence all about: downsized government replacing bureaucracies, typical to the post-ideological times. "We no longer work for the Party, we work for the Organization" (activists turned NGO leaders frequently said). The autonomous movements of the 60s and 70s fell apart and their remains had turned into small NGOs themselves. These past and present political strategists tend not to focus on the organizational forms of the ‘struggle’. What counted was, and still does, the debate around the use of violence (against buildings, police, corporations). Central questions as to the ‘effectiveness’ at a symbolical and eventually political level remain.

With the Organization we are dealing with a specific kind of office management style, social code and media strategy imported from the United States and other Western countries, without questions as to its ideological premise. We are surrounded by the Organization. They want our submissions, faxes, letters, and want you to have meetings, gossips and agreements. Their way of dealing with the world seems so completely self-evident, according to their rules. This ‘naturalization’ makes it difficult to see its specific shape and program. I knew many labor and student union leaders in Pakistan who started to play office.

Let’s draw a line and make a difference between the two neighboring models, the ‘movement’ and the ‘corporation’. The NGO of course positions itself in-between those two concepts. The movement is unpredictable, diverse, without formal leadership, full of informal structures and unexpected side events.

Today, movements are even more fluid than in the past. They do not seem to last longer than some days or weeks. For an outsider, they look like a spasmodic uprisings, while underneath there are strong currents of cultural, media driven tribes, only noticeable to the connoisseur. Movements need to gather in space as physical collections of bodies otherwise they can’t exist. There are no virtual movements.

The corporate model is in essence alien to the non-profit world of the late cold war period. It seems to be a tragic option to turn your work into a business operation, and a sometimes fatal one. In times of ongoing government budget cuts in arts, culture and social services, starting your own company — so as not to rely on subsidies and grants — is constructed to appear an attractive and truly independent option. Most NGOs are run like businesses nowadays. Everyone takes seriously the standard glossy image (the dictatorship of design). Without a legal structure, a bank account, letterhead and an office address you are truly non-existent. This even counts for virtual operations on the internet. Turning your efforts into a corporation has some advantages, in terms of the possible redistribution of wealth, but it also produces envy, anger and resentment (for those who have to do it, and for those surrounding it), mainly because there is no acceptable alternative in sight. Friends turn into clients or employees. There is no radical critique on cultural companies, only jealousy, bad feelings and old friendships being destroyed. The price of switching to other scales and circles, and possible ‘success’ (and some very temporary and virtual influence) is high.

In most South Asian countries there is little to choose or contemplate about. The small scale alternative economy was not a real option, mainly because there was not enough cash circulating. Most initiatives were too small, too weak to immediately turn themselves into viable companies. Without being part of an oppositional or sub-cultural movement, the NGO style of dealing with the world appears to be the only one left.

In Pakistan, for example, some NGO volunteers may have engaged in heated debates when issues like nuclear weapons, ethnic violence or construction of dams were raised. In all those cases a lot of passions were raised, many people would stand up against these issues being brought up at all. "The organization is becoming political", they would say and "these issues are not within the mandate". "We need a lot more in-depth study before coming to a conclusion", they would argue.

But in other cases, there were almost no such major debates, no disagreements. There were groups that bemoaned the lack of participation in Pakistani elections, they were concerned about the lack of cleanliness in Pakistani cities, and were frustrated that more Pakistanis did not volunteer for "good causes". Yet, they were very perturbed by the idea of 'controversial social and political debates'. Why? How was it possible to mobilize so many people for a cause, yet avoid disagreement and debate? What does such an exercise mean? What would it lead to? Why didn't people feel that they needed any in-depth study in this case?

Our well meaning progressive activists turned NGO professionals need to be reminded that individuals by themselves do not shape events. Ideas, ideologies and social conditions do.