After having worked for over three decades, mainly with international NGOs (INGOs) within India and elsewhere, and feeling disillusioned with the international aid architecture, I decided to return to India to establish Humanitarian Aid International (HAI), together with a few other like minded people. HAI aims to evolve on an Indian value system, resourced by Indians, including people of Indian origin, to work across India while also trying to complement the government’s efforts on South-South cooperation. The realisation came soon about how difficult it is for Indian NGOs to access even Indian funding as Indian fundraising space is largely controlled and accessed by country offices of INGOs, registered in India and calling themselves an Indian organisation. That compelled me to wonder: Are we in a new phase of colonialism?
Modern-day colonialism
Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy defines colonialism as a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another [1] . This definition is so true even now. One aspect of this colonisation is that Indian NGOs rely on intermediary INGOs to access not only international funding, but also the funding domestically available. This financial control also gives leverage to INGOs to dictate policies and use local NGOs as cheap implementors by transferring risks.
In a modern sense, colonialism is a general description of the state of subjection – political, economic, intellectual – of a non-European society as a result of the process of colonial organisation. Colonialism deprives a society of its freedom and its earth and, above all, it leaves its people intellectually and morally disoriented [2]. Does the North-led aid architecture not reflect that? I believe it does, and that the process of ‘localisation’ itself is quite exploitative.
This blog is part of CDA’s From Where I Stand series, designed to listen to people most affected by aid as they explore and amplify their leadership experiences, stories, and lessons for the aid sector.
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