Question

Explain the role of civil society in the empowerment of the marginalized

Answer 1

In developing countries like India, civil societies like NGOs play a crucial role for the social development of the marginalised people. Again these groups of people have also developed a sense of expectations from the NGOs as the state-sponsored development initiatives have miserably failed to elevate their status in society, in the contemporary development discourse, the concept of empowerment of the marginalised has got a special focus and civil society initiatives have been given an emphasis.





As the role of civil society has acquired a special significance for the social development and the empowerment of the marginalised people, and it has developed a substantive relationship with them who are the marginalised people and how the developmental processes have contributed to their marginalisation in society.

Marginalisation in conventional parlance is a complex process of relegating specific group(s) of people to the lower or outer edge of society. It effectively pushes these groups of people to the margin of society economically, politically, culturally, and socially following the parameters of exclusion and inclusion.

Sociologically there are several important dimensions of marginalisation and one is to understand it in the larger context:

Dimensions of denials and deprivations:

The process of marginalisation economically denies a large section of society equal access to productive resources, avenues for the realisation of their productive human potential, and opportunities of their full capacity utilisation. These denials ultimately push these populations to the state of rampant poverty, human misery, devaluation of their work, low wage and wage discrimination, casualisation in the workforce, and livelihood insecurity

Thus they are provided with very limited space for upward occupational and social mobility, and are excluded from the range of economic opportunities and choices. Politically, this process of relegation denies these people equal access to the formal power structure and participation in the decision-making processes leading to their subordination to and dependence on the economically and politically dominant groups of society. Politically they emerge to be the underdogs, under represented and disempowered.

In the continuous process of this relegation, they emerge to be culturally excluded from the mainstream of society becoming “part society with part culture”, “outsider for within”, “alienated and disintegrated”. They eventually get a stigmatised cultural existence, an ascribed low social status and become the victims of cultural segregation. As a consequence of the economic, political and cultural deprivation, a vast chunk of the population of the country has emerged to be socially ignorant, illiterate, uneducated and dependent. Devoid of the basic necessities of life they are relegated to live on the margins of society with a subhuman existence