The Changing Local Rural Power Structure

Abstract

This article examines the growth of small local NGOs in Bangladesh which have received far less attention than their larger counterparts. It examines the formation of small NGOs, the strategies of survival they use within the local environment, and their relations with the changing local power structure. NGOs have become more embedded in the local power structure since the 1990s, although the local elite still show mixed attitudes towards NGOs programmes. Organisations emerged in separate decades can be identified with older NGOs depending on securing patrons and resources from the centre, while newer NGOs facing a lack of patrons at the centre have developed strategies to access resources locally. NGO politics in the local area is also associated with changes of political regimes at the national level, and the rise of factional NGO politics can be attributed to conflicts between the NGO elite at the national level. Changes in regime have created opportunities for smaller NGO in pursuing patrons and resources. However, the links between NGOs and the elite does not mean that NGOs do not contribute in important ways to development in rural Bangladesh. But it would be wrong to see their necessarily as part of an independent ‘force for good’ in rural areas and more accurate to see them as ‘embedded’ in local power and politics.