Abstract
AbstractWhen recipients of humanitarian aid deployed their own calculus in determining the uses of the aid, nongovernmental (NGOs) and state officials read these actions as evidence of moral deficiency. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the aftermath of the tsunami of 2004 in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu's Nagapattinam District, this article examines such actions in terms of the contradictions they illuminated and argues for an analytical strategy that foregrounds the politics of receiving and demanding aid. Reading fisher actions criticized by NGO or state officials as implicit critiques of the aims or claims of either, this article foregrounds a reading of humanitarian “gifts” as strategic and political maneuvering. Recipients rejected both the depoliticizing allure of NGO developmentalism and the state's unwillingness to link legality with rights. In one case study, fishers instead put a gift to use in ways that suited their most pressing concerns: sustaining their coastal life and the artisanal economy. The article also problematizes the divergent tendencies of a politics of rights and a hierarchically organized politics of caste identity. For the second case study, this article critically examines how fishers struggling with shoddy NGO housing turned their political ire against a far weaker community of Dalits. [NGO, humanitarianism, neoliberalization, India, gift]
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