Operational NGOs that establish instrumental relations with their constituencies allow development experts to proceed as if the demands of the people are already known and pre-defined—demands such as roads, electricity, literacy, mid-day meals, birth control for women, micro-credit, and poultry farming. Empowerment and participation are simulated by NGOs and their donor agencies even as their practices are increasingly removed from the meaning of these terms. As a result, grassroots organizations that do not function within the “operational NGO” formula of simply managing development projects in a technical and professional manner and instead politicize social and economic issues of livelihood security, health, water, and education are delegitimized as anti-national and anti-development. Dubbed “anti-globalization” movements by the popular media, these organizations are actually invested in making globalization work for the poor. Economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen eloquently argues that the work of political NGOs and other organizations forces us to reckon with questions of redistribution and equity within and between states that are largely ignored by current development policies. The one outstanding exception to this general negligence is the debt relief granted to highly indebted poor countries, a program that was itself made possible by an NGO campaign.

Another issue that has been neglected in the discussion of NGOs is the rise of religious conservatism in many developing countries. While the NGO sector in these countries represents a significant counter to the religious right, corporatized NGOs disconnected from the popular base are significantly constrained in their capacity to intervene in this emergent political crisis. To recover the value and ethics that underlie social and economic development, it is necessary to examine donor patronage of the NGO sector, the depoliticization of CBOs, and the ascendancy of religious and cultural nationalisms as interconnected processes.