A third issue relating to the role of NGOs, namely, the precise definition of their role in the larger set of 'development' roles, also continued to simmer on a back burner. Not too long ago, governments had begun to solicit the support of NGOs in development activities. Since then NGOs have come a long way from delivering to disparaging to designing to determining interventions.

The year 2000 also saw our governments turning to NGOs for all sorts of help. In the capital, for instance, in January, the government gave up trying to improve the running of government-run homes for beggars and juveniles and decided to hand over their management to NGOs. [93] Then it decided to let NGOs operate from government-run schools and also asked corporates to chip in with an awareness campaign through 'both audio-visual and print media' to help with the constitutional commitment to universalizing primary education. [94] (Somehow, in this spirit of informal bhagidari, it did not think of asking corporate-owned private schools to share infrastructure with ill-equipped government schools in the spirit of the formal land lease conditions they had signed). In March, with no immediate possibilities for augmenting water supply in sight, the government roped in an NGO to create awareness (through RWAs and, of course, with support of government engineers) on water conservation and rain water harvesting. [95] In May, 'in a radical departure from the existing practice', Delhi police even asked NGOs (seven, to begin with, including one started by a senior police officer) to help them in the investigation of rape cases. [96] In June, an NGO 'conceptualized' Sheila Dikshit's bhagidari workshop for RWAs. In August, states were asked to utilize the services of NGOs to ensure inclusion of disability data in the census. [97] In September, Delhi Health Minister A.K. Walia at an NGO-organized 'Perfect Health Mela' (in which the Delhi government put up more than thirty stalls) 'encouraged NGOs to enter into the arena of health awareness'. [98] (In June, about seventy NGOs had already participated in Walia's 'Family Health Awareness Fortnight' for slum dwellers.)

It does appear that NGOs have become quite indispensable for the government as it goes about delivering, especially to the underprivileged, services it is mandated to deliver. Why, there are even agencies of government that deal with people only through NGOs. [99]

Of course, NGOs were do-gooding even without being asked to by the government. An NGO was going to build a centre in South Delhi for mentally handicapped children with Japanese funds and another, likewise, was going to provide basic education as well as vocational training to poor children in West Delhi. [100] One was going to set up 'the city's first pay-and-stay old age home for middle class senior citizens'. [101] Several new and old NGOs, singly or jointly, with or without school children and celebrities, were planting trees and saying 'no' to polybags. [102] And many, many NGOs had added to their collection of 'issues' (or had started it with) the artistically twirled red ribbon (indicating support for AIDS awareness) that was attracting perhaps the biggest bags of funding ever.

And, of course, NGO doings were not limited to delivering services. (In any case, as any NGO 'activist' knows, service delivery is actually about social justice and empowerment.) NGOs were also blowing the whistle on government inaction (such as through previously mentioned PIL seeking removal of industries, slums and litter, etc) and action (such as through protests against relocation of industries and slums, revival of a waste incinerator, etc). [103]

On the pro-active front they were doing research to see what the government was unable to see. Being action oriented, NGO research priorities lie to some extent in areas where funding for further work is available. This is perfectly fine, provided it does not end up in selective reporting to improve funding prospects. This, for instance, is what was widely alleged about Sahyog's research and, indeed, appears to be not uncommon in research on possibilities connected with the very funded and very mysterious HIV virus. Just before Sahyog reported its research on AIDS possibilities in hill communities, a Delhi NGO reported its research on AIDS possibilities in the Wazirpur industrial area. [104] The emphasis was on 'possible impact of the HIV/AIDS patients in the workplace in terms of labour wages and cost, employment security and discrimination, etc'. Actually, in Wazirpur, the study found no impacts of HIV/AIDS for the simple reason that it did not find any HIV/AIDS. But, undeterred, it went ahead to study the 'possible impact' of possible HIV/AIDS. The 'survey findings' were, in good measure, by way of unsubstantiated gossip on who thought who was having sex with whom and how often. These opinions were 'reported' in anecdotal Sahyog-style, projecting Wazirpur as a dirty little, naughty little place. The report was discussed at a Round Table meeting attended by representatives of trade unions, the ILO, academicians, women's groups and other NGOs. Leading national dailies reported on it with headlines like 'Wazirpur industrial area on the brink of an AIDS disaster', 'A crisis waiting to happen' and 'National policy on HIV demanded'. Of course, in the absence of any usable empirical data in the 'study', the Round Table could hardly have come to any informed conclusions. Participants concluded what was needed (as always for every thing) was to have a national policy, to call on the chief minister, to organize community meetings, to prepare campaign material, etc. As an 'immediate' strategy they felt it would be a good idea for employers to freely distribute condoms with salaries.

Of course, NGO research is not limited to such work. In mid-2000 there was a path-breaking study in which volunteers from several NGOs came together under the aegis of an international NGO to spend several nights counting and interviewing the homeless in Delhi. Around the same time a forum of eight organizations was taking a critical look at the Master Plan for Delhi that was officially due for revision.

Based on their experiences with service delivery and their criticism of government and their research, NGOs were also engaging (besides in serious seminaring) in designing comprehensive interventions. In January, Sheila Dikshit launched 'a unique project which aimed to develop, test and demonstrate a new approach to urban development and improve quality of life in slums by involving people's participation' in Delhi. The project, Promoting Linkages for Urban Sustainable Development (PLUS), was initiated by an international NGO (with Indian expertise mainly in rural interventions), involved a group of Delhi NGOs and hoped to cover thousands of slum clusters in the city over the next five years. [105] Naturally, it started in a few 'pilot' slums. In April, a Town Enrichment Action Movement (TEAM) Project - a joint initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the British High Commission and an NGO - was launched in Gurgaon. The synergy purportedly happened since Haryana has 'a large number of children out of schools' and 'female literacy as low as 41 percent' and since 'getting children out of work and into schools, with a special focus on the girl child, is a high priority for UNDP'. The project hoped to create 'necessary momentum' for enrollment of all children into schools, as well as addressing 'issues such as provision of a platform for local NGOs and industry to join hands'. [106] Naturally, it started with one slum.

In the coup in this category, in June, the forum of eight organizations, with their fresh insight into master planning, convened a convention inaugurated by Sheila Dikshit and concluded it by giving themselves the mandate to prepare a 'people's Master Plan'. By November, this forum (by now comprising forty organizations) had already got some sort of a draft and had forwarded some suggestions to the DDA. [107] In March 2001, this forum co-convened with the MCD's Slum Wing another meeting between NGOs, slum residents, politicians and the advisor dealing with slums in the Planning Commission. At the end of a day of acrimonious blame trading and anger venting it was decided that the Planning Commission would consult the forum convenor before finalizing the Commission's report on slums. [108] Also by March 2001 the NGO that had studied the homeless in Delhi had drafted, on the request of the government, national schemes for the homeless and had also been invited to contribute in this matter to the Tenth Plan document being prepared by the Planning Commission. [109]

The Planning Commission, incidentally, was made the 'nodal agency' for NGOs in March 2000. [110] Obviously NGOs were flying high.

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Let us take pause in this account of the ascent of civil society in general and NGOs in particular to reflect on how this came about. After all, opportunities to engage in citywide interventions or a piece of action in the Planning Commission don't normally come knocking on the doors of even the most committed activists or brilliant professionals in billion-strong India. But they do come knocking on the doors of certain sections of civil society in a process driven not just or necessarily by commitment or capacity but by 'civil politics' involving, much like electoral politics between elections, some mobilizing at the bottom and a lot of manoeuvring at the top.

Most big league NGOs also have big time clout. The chief minister launching a citywide slum project to be implemented by NGOs that were till then working in non-slum interventions or were even non-existent without so much as spelling out how this connected to the government agencies duly mandated for taking care of slums in the capital is just one example. Besides, at launches of their interventions and inaugurations of their seminars, NGOs flex political muscle by 'honouring' politicians and bureaucrats for working for the people. (In June 2000, for instance, the Rotary Club of Bangalore conferred a Paul Harris Fellowship on the chief minister of Karnataka in recognition of his 'service to the State'.) [111] Lately there has also been a trend of NGOs bringing their 'community' to meets where politicians and bureaucrats sit on the other side of the table on the dais, almost as if NGOs were liaison agencies between the people and their governments.

This subtle politicization of civil society is matched by the NGO-ization of government. Government increasingly turning to NGOs for all sorts of things is just the manifestation of this. Individual politicians and even political parties have been floating NGOs. (In October, for instance, it was reported that the RSS had set up an NGO to avail government funding.) [112] And the 'movement' of bureaucrats - who know best the 'intricacies involved in actually getting access to funding' - from the government sector to the non-government sector is reminiscent of the movement in the 1980s of technology graduates to postgraduate management courses for enhanced career prospects. [113] (Two of Delhi's best known NGOs, for instance, are 'owned' by senior police officials. Both were involved in the survey of the homeless in which, incidentally, police brutality featured as the most widely reported problem.) [114]

When politicians and bureaucrats play favourites on awarding tenders or buying arms, they are condemned for being corrupt. But when they play favourites with NGOs or other civil society bhagidars they are applauded. The Tehelka expose using hidden cameras to show who takes money in defence deals shook the nation in March 2001. But so many pictures openly taken and splashed in newspapers showing bureaucrats, politicians, donors, NGOs and the private sector sharing in odd and changing alliances, so many platforms to discuss the plight of the poor have never stirred us. This is only because in such circumstances money does not directly change hands, and 'social work' is pious and by global reckoning civil society is very fashionable. But all this is still about playing favourites and civil politics, therefore, has serious implications for the ethics of governance, more so since civil politicians are not tied down by strings of accountability that still connect electoral politics, howsoever murky, to the people.

Ascendancy of civil society has also had a more direct impact on quality of urban development. Old-fashioned urban (or any) development recognizes three broad, equally important roles - planning, implementation and monitoring. While it expects all development actors to synergize based on their inherent strengths, they are expected to contribute primarily to particular areas.

Planning is best led by trained professionals because they have the requisite expertise and the objectivity needed to keep longer term objectives and wider perspectives in focus. Implementation is best led by agencies of government because they have greater wherewithal as well as, theoretically, greater accountability. Monitoring is best led by grassroots organizations because they have greater grip on ground reality to see if intended benefits are accruing or if adjustments in planning or implementation are needed. Of course everyone is expected to work together. Planning must take into account implementation constraints and monitoring feedback. Implementation must take into account explicit as well as implicit intentions of plans as well as areas where implementation has to be shared - not so that government can abdicate responsibility but because grassroots organizations are better suited to certain tasks. Monitoring and evaluation must provide timely and constructive support to implementation and feedback for planning.

In Contemporary Urban Development the lines separating these roles have become blurred. Professionals (being, except in individual cases, least political) are becoming increasingly marginalized in planning. Government agencies (being government agencies) are surviving but becoming increasingly willful in implementation. Civil society (being currently most fashionable) is usurping other roles without having the inherent strengths needed and at the cost of the monitoring role that it is most suited to.

As an example of loss in planning quality consider the national schemes for the homeless which were being drafted by NGOs in March 2001. These included schemes for temporary community shelters, crisis centres, drug de-addiction, etc, but not housing (though the campaign was called 'Aashray Adhikar Abhiyan' or Housing Rights Campaign). These 'priorities' for national schemes were based on the findings of research in Delhi. That housing was not a priority for the homeless was a very significant finding which would have sounded a loud alarm to any professional researcher. If the homeless do not want housing, we are overestimating housing shortages. If they do and are not mentioning it, we need to understand why. In this case one did not have to look beyond research design for the reason for the missing response. The survey had elicited priorities through a single unprompted question on problems faced at sleeping places (which returned responses like police brutality), although useful information on such matters requires many direct and indirect questions. Also only 690 persons had been interviewed out of 52,765 that the study had counted and these were entirely randomly selected. This, by any standard, was a rather inadequate sample. The very well meaning researchers (volunteers who actually spent whole nights on the survey) were obviously very moved by the very visible distress of the homeless. But a heart that melts at the sight of the problem is not quite a substitute for a head that can come up with real solutions. Meanwhile, schemes that speak of 'shelters' and 'half-way homes' to meet the immediate needs of the homeless carry the real danger of diverting attention from the urgency of providing proper housing for them. And schemes that highlight drug addiction among the homeless carry the danger of erroneously connecting homelessness and drug abuse in the minds of others.

As an example of loss of quality in implementation consider any 'citywide' scheme by any NGO. These tend to supplant rather than supplement less glamorous government efforts. What is worse is these NGO initiatives themselves seldom move beyond 'pilot' phases.

As an example of neglect of monitoring responsibilities consider the forum of forty organizations working on a people's Master Plan for Delhi. Their presentations at their 'meeting' in March 2001 as also the leaflet they circulated in V.P. Singh's rally on 27 February suggested they were not opposed to the provisions of the Master Plan, only to the fact that these had not been implemented. [115] It was not really clear why they wanted to make an alternative Master Plan when they found the Plan prepared by planners not too bad after all. More importantly, it was not clear why they had not used their insight into the pro-people provisions of the Plan in order to get those implemented rather than stake a claim to prepare another plan. Why had they not demanded at any point since 1990, when the revised Plan had come into force and the matter of relocation of industries was already being heard by the supreme court, that its provisions for non-conforming and new industries be implemented? Why had they not pointed to its low-income housing provisions all over the city while protesting distant relocation in Narela? Why had they not objected to the orders for removal of hawkers before implementation of Plan provisions for settling them? Did none of the forty organizations represent small industries, slums and hawkers? Then whom did they represent and what mandate did they have to prepare a 'people's Plan' when they were not interested in implementation of the statutory Plan for the people? Would they monitor their -and only their - Plan?

NGOs seem to have decided (rather unilaterally, one might add) that they - and they alone -will decide and invent and re-invent the wheel as often as they please. Professionals and government agencies are equally to blame for this as they have not taken their roles seriously enough to defend them. Government agencies, of course, are notoriously manned and wo-manned by those unwilling or unable to do more than that required by their job descriptions. The failure of the professional community - especially professional bodies which seem to have become politics-ridden forums for 'collective action for individual good rather than individual action for collective good' - to protest the marginalization of professions in the emergent development scenario is more unforgivable. [116]

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The foregoing is not to say that all NGOs, corporates, RWAs, etc, are wicked, but only to make the point that with no clarity on roles, we are looking development anarchy in the face. It is hardly surprising that even after years of greater civil society participation, reality has not changed very much for the urban poor. Systemically, 'non' government and government no longer seem as different as they were made out to be. Ratios of good to bad, efficient to inefficient, committed to corrupt are more or less similar in both. As are circumstances -including well-appointed offices and assorted freebies and the not uncommon absence of substantive grassroots understanding of problems or any real vision for solutions.

To say time and again that the politician-builder nexus or the donor-bureaucrat nexus or any other nexus is subverting an otherwise fine 'system' is an inaccurate over-simplification. What seems to be the case is that there is no 'system' any more and all the wicked nexuses are only manipulating anarchy. In cities, a central motif in such manipulation is the subversion of planned development (meant to benefit all) in the service of vested interests. And an inevitable consequence is the slumming of our cities.

93. 'Dikshit wakes up to home truths: NGOs to manage govt-run homes', Times of India, 4 January 2000.
94. 'Education policy: NGOs, corporates in govt's good books', Times of India, 13 January 2000.
95. 'Engineers will teach people to save water', Times of India, 9 March 2000; 'NGO to address potable water problem in Capital', Hindustan Times, 9 March 2000.
96. 'Police to seek NGO help in tackling rape cases', Times of India, 31 May 2000.
97. 'Census: States urged to utilise NGOs' services', Hindu