Catalysts but Not Magicians: Role of NGOs in the Tribal Development

Abstract

The territories inhabited by the tribal communities of India often attract a wide variety of external agents and agencies for variety of reasons. One very important segment of such agencies often cites development and transformation of tribal communities as the prime objective. The “official” category is the agency of planned change, and its responsibility is to work in accordance with the profile of the job or institution. Besides this, there is another important category, “social worker,” whose presence is voluntary, at least in theory. The dominant section of the later is popular as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). In recent years, efforts are made to bring together the activities of government and NGOs to maximize the benefit to tribal communities and to speed up the process of social and economic transformation. The idea of government organization and nongovernmental organization (GO-NGO) partnership gained momentum. The results of these partnerships proved positive when compared with the programs implemented by the government organization alone. Several NGOs are successful because they train local youth as resource persons according to the needs of development initiatives. However, it is not necessary that every development activity implemented by them would be successful. In this context, the article examines the role of NGOs in the process of tribal development by analyzing their activities and the results.