Globalization, social welfare and civil society in India

This paper seeks to analyze the effects of globalization on Indian civil society. Following a historical analysis, the paper argues that civil society during the colonial and early post-colonial period remained confined to the English educated upper-caste elites. The subaltern populations were excluded from its sphere because of the virtues of modernity and the paternalistic policies of the post-colonial state and ruling elites. The decline of the moderate state and the Congress system in the mid-1970s and the policies of globalization and the rolling-back of the welfare state in the mid-1980s transformed the state–society relationship and brought incongruous implications for civil society in India. The apparatus of the state became pluralized, and several non-governmental organizations and people's movements emerged to take up issues affecting the lives of poor and marginalized. The paper concludes that, although globalization has radicalized civil society activism and expanded its sphere over the past few years, in the process it has turned civil society into a site of increasing class war, widespread violence and growing unfreedom.