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THE GROWING ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANISATIONS IN CONTEMPORARY INDIA: A CASE STUDY OF THE MAZDOOR KISAN SHAKTI SANGATHAN

    2 Author(s):  SATENDER , SHIV RAM SINGH

Vol -  7, Issue- 3 ,         Page(s) : 128 - 141  (2016 ) DOI : https://doi.org/10.32804/IRJMSH

Abstract

The concept of civil society in India, even as an attempt to establish civility which gained public attention in the 1980s, was essentially seen as the opposite of despotism. Since then, it seems that it is not the ‘State’ but the ‘Society’ that has emerged as the driving wheel of the political history of India. Why has this shift occurred in the late 1980s in Indian political scenario? As M. P. Singh has put it “the tragedy of the Indian state is that it has become over-loaded even before it has started to provide welfare to its citizens and it has lapsed into ungoverned ability even before it ever started to govern properly. This was further deteriorated by the then political elites; those who were the victims of their own misunderstanding, not only of the Indian tradition but also of independent India’s model of development.”1 These scenarios will be unpacked in a section to follow. Let us for the time being note that for over two decades now, there has been a deluge of writings on various civil society initiatives in India. My general contention is that we can identify the growth of civil society in the Indian context, by looking at the various modes of social movements/non-party political formations, processes/grassroots - movements/mass based organizations as social-action groups. Let me at this point provide two definitions of civil society, which will help us mainly to substantiate the wider arguments of this paper.

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