Role of NGOs, SHGs, civil society

Story hook

It is April 1972 in Ahmedabad's old quarter. Ela Bhatt, a 39-year-old lawyer working with the Textile Labour Association (TLA, founded by Gandhi 1920), watches rag-pickers, head-loaders, vegetable vendors + bidi rollers — women excluded from labour law because they are "self-employed" — assemble for a meeting. Out of that meeting will be born the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) — a trade union of poor, mostly informal- sector women workers. SEWA's central insight: organising in groups gives bargaining power, access to credit + collective self-respect.

Fast-forward to 1992. NABARD launches the SHG-Bank Linkage Programme with 500 SHG pilots — based partly on the SEWA model + Andhra Pradesh's DWCRA experience. By 2024, India has the world's largest microfinance + self-help network: ~134 lakh SHGs with ~16 crore women members under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) alone — comparable in size to the populations of mid-sized countries.

Fast-forward to December 2022. The Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) registration of Centre for Policy Research, Oxfam India + Centre for Equity Studies is cancelled in a wave of regulatory action that has, by some counts, ended FCRA approval for 20,000+ NGOs since 2014. This wave coincides with debates on civil-society autonomy, foreign funding + "advocacy vs charity" distinctions.

This is the landscape of Indian civil society — vast + heterogeneous, anchored in pre-Independence reform traditions (Brahmo Samaj, Servants of India Society), grown explosively through SHG + NGO models in the 1990s-2010s, now under tighter regulatory scrutiny. This file maps it.

Why this matters for UPSC

Mains GS-I + GS-II — asked 2014 "How does the present social reservation policy of India contribute to the building of a society which is castelessness?"; 2017 "The role of individual MPs (Members of Parliament) has diminished over the years"; 2020 "How have the recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission of India enabled the states to improve their fiscal position?"; 2023 "What are the main features of Vulnerability + Disaster Risk-Reduction (DRR) since 2005?" GS-II has asked directly on the role of civil society in 2017 + indirectly multiple times.

Prelims tests: NRLM founding year (1999 → renamed 2011), SHG- Bank Linkage 1992, NABARD's role, FCRA 2010 + amendments 2020, SHG MUDRA linkage.

Interview: NGO regulation balance, FCRA debates, SHGs as women empowerment, public-private partnerships, civil society in democracy.