Political space for the civil society: The work of two community-based organizations in Kolkata

Abstract

West Bengal was a pioneer in democratic decentralization in India, but the dominance of one political party and its hierarchical institutional structure have thwarted the scope for effective bottom-up planning in its principal city, Kolkata. Nevertheless, new local organizations have undertaken the task of creating space—social and metaphoric—for the underprivileged. The paper looks beyond normative expectations and analyzes two actually existing civil society organizations to see what civil society actually does or does not do for different people who inhabit the sphere. It demonstrates how one organization—the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC)—succeeded in empowering its target community, whereas another organization—Unnayan—after initial success, failed to sustain itself. Unnayan was an NGO, the leadership of which came from western-educated elites with its grassroots workers being mostly ex-radical naxalites. As Unnayan chose to address issues that related to housing, infrastructure, land tenure, etc. that was part of an already politicized public agenda, it failed to find the needed political space for it to make any significant impact in Kolkata's planning. The paper observes that partisan political class have primarily tried to address issues relating to the mainstream conservative Bengali society and have not wanted to be associated with stigmatized people such as prostitutes. The author draws from the comparison of the workings of both DMSC and Unnayan to argue that the marginalization of the sex workers has prevented them from being incorporated into the mainstream politics, although this has also provided DMSC with the much needed political space for successful collective social action to improve their lives without being co-opted by any political party.