NGOs, CBOs, and the contested politics of community-driven development in urban informal settlements

ABSTRACT

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in an informal settlement in Dhaka, this article examines the relationships, contestations and negotiations of power and control between non-government organizations (NGO), community-based organizations (CBO) and local leaders in the context of community-driven development (CDD) interventions. Findings suggest a shift in informal settlement residents’ perceptions and attitudes toward NGOs and CDD interventions where the previously documented distrust and lack of interest has changed to a more general interest to participate largely to draw on the power and influence in the community that CBO membership offers. Moreover, findings demonstrate how contestations and negotiations of power and control play out at various stages of engagement between NGOs, CBOs, and local leaders. These findings have important implications for international development practice, particularly for CDD, as they can contribute to addressing some of the current criticisms of the approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Community-driven development
• community-based organization
• NGO
• informal settlement
• urban poverty

Acknowledgments

The author expresses gratitude to the residents of Korail as well as the NGO officials and other study participants in Dhaka, who generously contributed their time to participate in the research. The author is also thankful to the anonymous reviewers for the insightful comments on an earlier version of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Based in Bangladesh, BRAC is the world’s largest Southern NGO.

2. A prominent local NGO operating in Bangladesh’s urban informal settlements.

3. A large-scale urban poverty reduction project implemented by UNDP between 2008 and 2015. Many CBOs formed by the project were found to be still functioning during fieldwork in 2017.

4. Actual name of the organization changed for the sake of discretion.