Agents of Change: Framing the Core Paradox

The South Asian region is confronted with many interrelated challenges, including but not limited to poverty, inequality, conflict, environmental degradation, and human rights violations. Acknowledging the deficiency of an explicit regional accreditation, we define South Asia here as the eight members of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC): Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, that have been frequently accommodated into the regional specifications for United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports too. In response to the challenges mentioned, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have emerged as crucial actors in this region’s development realm. NGOs have implemented a range of services and interventions aimed at addressing these issues and providing support to marginalized and vulnerable communities. Looking from a politics-first perspective, NGOs operating in South Asia have contributed to a power asymmetry that impacts both the state and the beneficiaries in development. The distinctive nature of this phenomenon within the present development framework can be attributed to a combination of historical and cultural factors, setting it apart from NGO endeavors in other regions.