Voluntary Action in India: Role, Trends and Challenges

The paper discusses the role of modern voluntary organizations. The analytical categories of developmental, mobilization and political roles have been formulated to understand the impact of voluntary organizations on government, people and politics. The paper argues that voluntarism has brought about many innovations in doing development and working for equality and justice but its overall impact in either improving the physical quality of life or achieve justice and equality for the weak and the oppressed is insignificant. VOs have not been able to transcend their micro and local concerns. At one level VOs’ role is essentially political insofar as it wants to bring about social transformation by redistributing power, status and wealth; at other level VOs have always turned away from dealing with mainstream power politics. Their micro level work in spite of its laudable achievements have reached a dead and in terms of social transformation. That is why distortions and decay have crept into the work of voluntary organizations in the last few years. It is suggested that if voluntary organizations want to bring about social transformation and avoid stagnation they must take on the task of changing and reforming political institutions, political processes and political behavior.