Dr.

RAM MANOHAR LOHIYA NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

2019-20

Final Project
of
Civil Society and Public Grievances
on
Role of Civil Society in Indian Democracy

SUBMITTED BY: UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF:

Prakhar Agarwal Dr. Rajneesh Kumar Yadav
Enrollment No: 160101107 Assistant Professor
Section ‘B’ Dr. RMLNLU
B.A. LL.B. (Hons.)
Semester - VIII
 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents 2
Acknowledgement 3
Certificate 4
Introduction 5
Civil Society 6
Civil Society in India 8
Role of Civil Society in Indian Democracy and Conclusion 10
Bibliography 15

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 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I have taken efforts in this project. However, it would not have been possible without the kind
support and help of many individuals and organizations. I would like to extend my sincere thanks
to all of them.

I am highly indebted to Dr. Rajneesh Kumar Yadav for his guidance and constant supervision as
well as for providing necessary information regarding the project & also for his support in
completing the project.

I would like to express my gratitude towards my parents & members of ‘Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia
National Law University’ for their kind cooperation and encouragement which helped me in
completion of this project.

My thanks and appreciation also goes to my colleagues in developing the project and people who
have willingly helped me out with their abilities.

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 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow 

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the project entitled, Role of Civil Society in Indian Democracy submitted
by Prakhar Agarwal in complete fulfillment of the requirements for the project in
B.A.LL.B.(Hons.) at the Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University is an authentic
work carried out by him under my supervision and guidance.

To the best of my knowledge, the matter embodied in the project is original and due care has
been taken by him for its completion.

Dr. Rajneesh Kumar Yadav

(Assistant Professor, Dr. RMLNLU)

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 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow 

INTRODUCTION

The civil society being different from the state implies an arena in which people can realize their
self interest, develop their personality and learn the value of group action by depending on others
for their welfare. Civil society prepares the people to participate in state functioning and thus, it
provides a solid base of citizenship. Civil society can be described as something private as
contrasted to the state and as something public when contrasted to the family.

Though it is an aspect of the modern state and is subject to its control, yet it is autonomous and
voluntarily organised. Charles Taylor characterised it as a commercial society that includes both
economic associations as well as the domain of non-economic voluntary associations.

Gellner observed that “civil society is that set of diverse nongovernmental institutions which is
strong enough to counterbalance the state and, while not preventing the state from fulfilling its
role of keeper of the peace and arbitrator between major interests, can nevertheless prevent it
from dominating atomizing the rest of society”.

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 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow 

CIVIL SOCIETY

Contractualist philosopher Thomas Hobbes though had not used the term “civil society”, yet he
referred to the area where the individual can freely lead his life without creating any obstruction
for the sovereign power. John Lock referred to it as a state where men enter to form a
government which can protect them against the uncertainties of the state of nature. For Hegel,
civil society is a voluntarily organised body that is intermediate between the state and the family.

People here live with their self-interest and personal choice and with minimum constraints.
Though traditionally civil society and state were treated synonymously, Hegel separated these
terms for the first time. Civil society has been described as a primary source for the civic virtues
required to maintain a stable polity. Though it is a source of community and solidarity and also a
sphere of social homogeneity and identity, yet it is also a sphere of plurality, diversity and
conflict.

The values of civil society are those of political participation and state accountability. Thus, it
provides the necessary basis for participation in formal political institutions. The institutions of
civil society are associational. It advocates pluralism and is opposed to totalitarianism. When a
state becomes an authoritarian political institution, its authority is to be challenged by the civil
society.

Within the civil society, individuals enjoy enforceable rights of free expression, freedom to form
associations, formulation of opinions and freedom to dissent. Civil society is a vital
pre-condition for the existence of democracy. For this reason, authoritarian states attempt to stifle
civil society.

The existence of civil society does not mean that it always challenges the state authority. Thomas
Paine argued that the power of the state must be restricted in favour of civil society as
individuals are having a natural propensity for society which existed before the formation of the

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states.

Civil society is not a political society. Despite the dissolution of the government, the civil society
continues to satisfy the interest of the individuals. Antonio Gramsci interpreted the civil society
in terms of the political and cultural hegemony where a social group exercises control over the
whole of the society as the ethical content of the state.

Though the existence of civil society is essential, yet is not a sufficient pre-condition for the
existence of democracy. Gramsci suggested how a hegemony civil society can support the state
in controlling social practices. The accountability of the state can be ensured only when the civil
society is self-conscious, vibrant and active. An inactive civil society- leads to unresponsive
states. Thus, the relationship between the state and the civil society is a mutual one based on the
principle of reciprocity.

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 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow 

CIVIL SOCIETY IN INDIA

India is a civilized country with rich cultural heritage. With the advent of the Britishers, western
values entered this society. There was a conflict between the modernity and age-old traditional
values. While some blindly followed the modern life of the west, revivalists like Dayananda and
Vivekananda wanted to reform the Hindu tradition making it suitable for the modern period.

Western values of liberalism, individualism, and constitutionalism made its inroad to Indian
society by which it became politically conscious and vigilant. British imperial rule economically
ruined India and weakened the rising Indian nationalism with the policy of ‘divide and rule.’ The
germ of communalism entered into the society finding its naked expression in post-independent
India. After independence, the new ruling class wanted to make India prosperous at par with
other developed nations of the world.

People want to protect their interest through group engagements and interactions in
post-independent India. Indian civil society becomes more effective with the civic virtues and
also acquires the capability to organize itself independent of state authority. Individual rights and
liberties are safeguarded; a number of autonomous associations are created within the state.

The harmonious co-existence of both the state and the civil society safeguards the interest of
both the government and the citizens. The democratic nature of the Indian civil society is
reflected in the formation of a democratic state along with the implementation of a democratic
constitution.

There is an occasional rise of conflict between the civil society and the state as the demands and
expectations of the society are not fulfilled. Occasionally, the state also ignores the interests of
the majority and intervenes into the sphere of civil society. As a welfare state, India is expected
to ensure social justice along with economic growth. A number of schemes are adopted for the
eradication of poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, malnutrition etc. With the expansion of state

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functions, too much bureaucratization becomes the order of the system with its ugly faces of
corruption, red tapism etc. Indian civil society raises its voice against such development.

More and more importance is given to decentralisation of power, people’s participation in the
process of administration and to ensure transparency in administration with the right to
information. However, regional disparity in economic development and persistent neglect of
certain genuine grievances lead to the emergence of secessionism. Rise of terrorism,
criminalisation of politics, communalism, casteism are other threats to Indian civil society.

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 Dr. Ram Manohar Lohiya National Law University, Lucknow 

ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY IN INDIAN DEMOCRACY AND CONCLUSION

Civil society is the set of civic rights, including primarily everyone’s right to participate in Public
life. These rights provide the compass which helps us to steer the right course between the
system of state with all its competences of power, and the corporate cartel of organizations and
institutions which in some circumstances can be equally dangerous to freedom.

Civil society must also have foundation in a mature democracy and a mature political culture. It
can be built only if there is widespread determination on the part of society to demand respect
for, and observance of, individual rights, and popular will to hold accountable anyone or any
institution, which violates them.

India is the largest democracy in the world. But without its lively NGO scene, many ills in
society would continue unchallenged. Civil society derives its strength from the Gandhian
tradition of volunteerism, but today, it expresses itself in many different forms of activism.

Though the term NGO became popular in India only in the 1980s, the voluntary sector has an
older tradition. Since independence from the British in 1947, the voluntary sector has a lot of
respect in the minds of people – first, because the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi was an
active participant; and second because India has always had the tradition of honouring those who
have made some sacrifice to help others.

In independent India, the initial role played by the voluntary organizations started by Gandhi and
his disciples was to fill in the gaps left by the government in the development process. The
volunteers organized handloom weavers in villages to form cooperatives through which they
could market their products directly in the cities, and thus get a better price. Similar cooperatives
were later set up in areas like marketing of dairy products and fish. In almost all these cases, the
volunteers helped in other areas of development – running literacy classes for adults at night, for
example.

In the 1980s, however, the groups who were now known as NGOs became more specialized and
the voluntary movement was, in a way, fragmented into three major groups. There were those

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considered the traditional development NGOs, who went into a village or a group of villages and
ran literacy programmes. There are many examples of voluntary organizations of this kind
running very successfully in India for the last five decades. Perhaps the most celebrated example
would be the treatment centre for leprosy patients run by Baba Amte in central India.

The second group of NGOs were those who researched a particular subject in depth, and then
lobbied with the government or with industry or petitioned the courts for improvements in the
lives of the citizens, as far as that particular subject was concerned. A well-known example of an
NGO of this type is the Centre for Science and Environment. It was a CSE who picked up ;that
sample of well water and then submitted the results of the chemical analysis to a court because
the organization had not been able to get the factory to change its polluting practices in any other
way.

In the third group were those volunteers who saw themselves more as activists than other NGOs
did. Of course, all NGOs undertook a certain amount of activism to get their points across – they
petitioned the bureaucrats, they alerted the media whenever they found something wrong and so
on. But this third group of NGOs saw activism as their primary means of reaching their goals,
because they did not believe they could get the authorities to move in any other way.

Perhaps the best-known example of an NGO in this category is the Narmada Bachao Andolan
(Save Narmada Campaign), an organization that opposed the construction of a series of large
dams in a large river valley of central India. The members of this NGO believe that large dams
worsen water scarcity for the majority of the people in the long run rather than solve the
problem, and they oppose the displacement it entails upstream of the dam. Most NBA members
went to jail a number of times as a result. Right now, some of them – including celebrated
novelist Arundhati Roy – face the prospect of being jailed again, because they criticized the
Supreme Court of India when the court’s decision on dam construction did not go in their favour.

There is no strict boundary between these three groups of NGOs – in fact, Baba Amte is now an
important member of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. And whatever be the category a particular

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NGO falls into, all of them play an important role in modern India – they hold the politicians
accountable to the people.

India is a representative rather than a participatory democracy. Once the elections are over, the
politicians who run the federal and state governments do not really need to go back to the
electorate for every major decision – there is no tradition of referendums in India, as there is in
Switzerland or Denmark. So, in the five years between one election and another, the NGOs and
parts of the media, to some extent – are often the only means available to the citizens to voice
their opinions on any decision taken by a government. In a large developing country like India,
there are numerous gaps left by the government in the development process – sometimes by
intention, sometimes due to lack of funds, sometimes due to lack of awareness. These are the
gaps that many NGOs try to fill in modern India. Some of them may work in areas that the
government does not want to get into – like fighting discrimination on the basis of caste. Most
Indian politicians do not really want to upset the existing caste hierarchy in his or her
constituency, because the politician is dependent for votes on the dominant castes of that
particular constituency. In the process, laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of caste are
often ignored unless there is an NGO working in the area that is willing to take up the cause of
those being discriminated against. Then there are many NGOs who work in areas where the
government effort proves inadequate. Two well-known examples are the areas of education and
healthcare. In the areas of education, there are often not enough government-run schools,
especially in rural regions. Or there may be schools without adequate facilities, because a
particular state government does not have the necessary money.

There are many situations where the government runs a co-educational school, but the girls do
not go there because their conservative parents (the overwhelming majority) refuse to send their
daughters where they may meet boys. Then there are many cases where the government runs a
largely-empty school, because most of the boys and girls are out working during school hours.

NGOs have played an important role in all these cases – running special classes at night for
children whose parents send them out to work. Running special classes for girls and so on.
Governments have been supportive of such initiatives by NGOs, and the only problem is that

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there are not enough NGOs to educate all the uneducated people in India. The mammoth NGO
called Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad is largely credited for the hundred percent literacy in that
state in the south-western corner of India.

In the area of healthcare, too, NGOs play a stellar role in modern India – by supplementing the
government effort to provide healthcare to citizens, and by raising awareness in society about
issues like child and maternal malnutrition, which is perhaps more important than adding a few
more clinics. Again, in modern India it is the NGOs who have battled social evils in the area of
healthcare, like the neglect of the girl child, which can sometimes take the extreme form of
female foeticide or infanticide. It is largely through the lobbying by NGOs through the media
that many state governments have now passed laws banning sexdetermination tests of foetuses,
as such tests were often leading to the abortion of female foetuses.

In the last 20 years or so, a very large number of NGOs in India have been active in the area of
environmental protection. They have been in the forefront of reforestation campaigns, they have
lobbied against deforestation or overuse of pesticides in agriculture, and they have taken
polluting industries to task. In this sustained campaign, the NGOs have often been helped by the
judiciary whenever the government of the day has proved unresponsive. For this, NGOs in India
have almost developed into a fine art device called public interest litigation, by which any citizen
can petition a court to intervene where (s) he feels it is in the public interest for the court to
intervene.

Another fielding which certain Indian NGOs have been active, especially in urban areas, is in
trying to turn the right to shelter into a reality. This is an area where constructive work and
activism have intermingled most often, as NGOs such as YUVA and SPARC in cities like
Mumbai (Bombay) repeatedly oppose the demolition of hutments even as they try to improve the
quality of life in the sprawling slum clusters.

The struggle by NGOs to make governments more accountable to citizens is an ongoing struggle
in India. For years now, NGOs have been lobbying for the right to information to become a legal
right, and it now appears that the federal Parliament may soon pass a bill to this effect.

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The ‘80s were the heydays of activist journalism in India. NGOs became the media’s key allies
in exposing injustice and clear violations of rules. Today, human rights reportage has to fight for
column space with a myriad other a myriad other issues and NGOs have to speak louder to be
heard by the public but their under a cloud because of alleged misappropriation of public funds.
The jet-set life-style of some NGO there is a new category of NGOs ``airport NGOs”- who flit
for one international airport to another, hopping from one cause to another, all in the name of the
poor and grassroots activism.

Democracy is founded on a self-reflective choice and on institutional arrangements which secure

the equal sharing of political, economic and social power. These are just necessary conditions for
democracy. The sufficient condition so that democracy will not degenerate into some kind of
“demago-cracy”, where the demos is manipulated by a new breed of professional politicians, is
crucially determined by the citizens’ level of democratic consciousness.

Non-democratic systems of government limit and restrict people’s political choices. In a

dictatorship, a single person makes the decisions that affect the whole country without any of the
citizens having their say.

Under military rule, the army rules the country and the citizens have no choice but to accept it.
Fascism means that one person, a “strong man” solves all the problems of a country on his own,
as long as he receives loyalty and unquestioning obedience.

Democracy is the one type of government that cannot exist without the approval and input of the
people. This is because its main characteristic is choice – without active political choices being
made by the citizens living in a democracy, a democracy does not really exist.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

● James G. McGann and Richard Sabatini, Global Think Tank; Policy Network and
Governance, 2011.

● Terrell Carver and Jen Bartelson (ed.) Globality, Democracy and Civil Society, 2011.

● David Armstrong and Debora Spini (ed.) Civil Society and International Governance,
2011.

● Mark Jenson, Civil Society in Liberal Democracy, 2011.

● Don Eberly, In the Name of Civil Society, Lancaster, 2008.

● Mathew Lindley, Civil Society and Aid Effectiveness – Case Book, AG-CS, 2008.

● Aisha Sultanat, Does Civil Society Matter? New Delhi, 2003.

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