A Different Difference: Nationality, Class, and the Complexities of Localisation at an Indian NGO

At a non-governmental organisation in the Himalayan foothills, now run and funded by Indians, urban middle-class employees expected to fundamentally understand the organisation’s beneficiaries – the inhabitants of small rural villages – because they were all Indian. But the experience of growing up in different places and class positions created difficulties in mutual understanding between these groups. From distinct views on water purification to divergent familial expectations, Indians were surprised by how different they were from other Indians. These differences and the frustration they could breed made it difficult for the NGO to incorporate local views into project design, the very problem with foreign-led development that localisation was intended to fix. The unexpectedly difficult encounters at this organisation highlight the complexities of shifting power to locals. It was not simply that fellow Indians did not have mutual interests, but that middle-class urban Indians also assumed they should. Long held up as the national ‘standard’, middle class-urbanites expected all Indians to share their values and tended to react negatively when some did not. Ideas about who is ‘local’ must be complicated at national and international levels if the views of people in need of assistance are truly to be incorporated in project design and implementation.