Bangladesh CSOs: of definitions and confusions

That there are so many definitions and ideas about what constitutes a civil society organization (CSO) is a good pointer that people think it exists robustly but most are not sure what it means. Amongst development workers and academics, there is some agreement about its linkage with NGOs and global ideas about what is a CSO but civil society itself in Bangladesh may not agree with that.
The increase in economic activities outside the official state parameters has also led to the rise in interest in CSOs. But the world of informal economic activities largely remains unknown to the rest including the formal cognoscenti. For example, we know much about microcredit functioning, but we don't know enough about informal credit networks and their role in rural -urban economic life.
Economic constructs within society are also delivering livelihood activities to many outside the official reality. Informal economies are also involved in both "legal "and "illegal" economics. While state agencies may occasionally act against them, both can be partners too, showing the growing fuzzing of boundaries and the inability of the state to be adequately formal exposing the limitations of the state. The state as the supreme body is not challenged but ignored by society in many cases.
This brings terms, "civil' and society "under scrutiny. The overlapping functions of various institutions and the comfortable co-existence of the legal and the illegal are important indicators of parallel existences , one more driven by social needs and the other by formal legal aspirations.
Few realities capture this real paradox than the migration economy. Not only do they exist in a semi-official manner but send their money through the hundi informal system which deals in billions of dollars and doesn't require the national economic machinery of the formal state.
Their population -- around 20-25 million -- is almost 1/3 of the total estimated labour force of 70 to 75 million, earn the best wages ever and are promoting their own CSOs not just economic but cultural and religious ones. That means about 100-125 million people don't need to build institutions of the state or NGOs.
The UN says, "A civil society organization is an organizational structure whose members serve the general interest through a democratic process and which plays the role of mediator between public authorities and citizens."
Another definition says, " Civil society is a nonpolitical sphere and individual made voluntary organization widely understood as the space outside the family, market, and state. It is associated with the welfare of the state on the ground of civic knowledge, civic education, and civic virtue."
Why CSOs are going to be non-political is not explained when it fulfills all the criteria of the same needs examination.
CSOs have always been involved in local politics, but not in elections. But politics and elections are not the same nor mutually exclusive when it comes to societal interest as CSOs.
Some NGOs in the 90s had claimed that they were CSOs by performing service delivery functions that had the best interest of society at heart outside the state. It makes them better claimants as "agents of change" providing a degree of legitimacy when in competition with the formal/official agencies claiming monopoly over social change dynamics. But that scenario itself has changed.
The establishment thinking puts NGOs and CSOs in one pot but before that, a more precise and functions based definition of what constitutes an NGO needs to be done. Given the role of the NGOs and their links with the Northern notion of what CSOs are, this is an urgent area of inquiry.
Another issue that emerges is the legitimizing of NGOs as the sole representative of CSOs which marginalizes other organizations that are organic to society, have existed from before colonialism and continue to be active particularly in the rural areas and urban slums. Currently, they are much better funded by local money. These CSOs include religion based-organisations who are now spreading from the rural to the urban zones.
At least three examples can be shown in support of the need for initiating new research activities on defining CSOs.
- The Expanded programme of Immunization (EPI) was the most successful public health sector programme which took off only when a partnership could be forged between the service delivery machinery-GO and NGO- and the village leadership. This was possible through the intervention of the health assistants and family welfare assistants, village level health workers --who were more familiar with the rural networks -- informal and organic CSOs- that led to what has been dubbed as the 'near miracle.
-BRAC's TUP or ultra-poor programme was also able to go top scale when the matbars lent their clout in protecting assets of the programme beneficiaries by forming Gram Daridro Bimochon Committees (GDBC). These units formed the most effective extreme poverty alleviation support from the civil society actors at the micro level.
- The third example was the community based response during the Covid which has been studied by BIGD showing that all over Bangladesh but particularly in the slums zones , communities and informal CSOs responded positively as critically as any other players, often better.
As the debate begins to pick up several issues need better understanding, clarification. The issues are:
a) What constitutes a CSO and its social location and roots?
b) Is it organic and sustainable over time like religious organizations and village based networks?
c) Does it operate with the consent of the state and expand state ideologies or is it more loyal to society as a CSO ?
New research is now critical as the earlier State-NGO-CSO equation has now receded to see the rise of the Society-CSO- State equation.

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