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What is it about nonprofits that inspires so many to passionately support their agendas and others to adamantly seek their control? In India, laws regulating the nonprofit sector were dramatically reformed between 2010–2020, reconfiguring relationships between corporations, nonprofits, and the government. Thousands of nonprofits, including powerful NGOs, lost their ability to receive foreign funding, and in 2015 dozens more were put on a state-sponsored watch list. While many assume that nonprofits are defined by the causes they champion, A Revolution of Rules demonstrates that the nonprofit form is shaped primarily through its regulation, in a dynamic process of democratic and political negotiation.
Erica Bornstein argues that the scrutiny of nonprofits in India must be understood in a wider, global context of political judicialization and regulatory reform. She examines how members of nonprofit organizations are the unsung heroes of democracy as they navigate a shrinking stage for rights-based work and struggle to protect civil society. The protagonists featured in this book include nonprofit workers, lawyers, accountants, philanthropists, and civil servants who conduct their work on the sidelines—at workshops, in modest offices, through report-writing and petitions. To understand nonprofits and their relationship to democracy in the world, Bornstein asserts, one must look to the deceptively unassuming sites of struggle over the nonprofit form and its regulation.
"Powerfully reframes the study of nonprofits, focusing not on the impact of their work but on the laws and rules that shape who they are and what they can and cannot do. In brilliantly analyzing the recent history of the legal regulation of NGOs and charitable purpose in India, this book speaks to an emergent global trend—the increasing surveillance of civil society groups and narrowing scope of political action—and is far-reaching in its implications. A must read for anyone interested in the NGO form, state power and governance, corporatized charity and welfare, judicialized activism, and democratic politics today." —Aradhana Sharma, Wesleyan University
"In Revolution of Rules, Bornstein... provides an institutional ethnography exploring how changes to government policies and regulations have (re)shaped India's nonprofit sector.... Recommended." —E. Bridger Wilson, Choice
"Bornstein is an original thinker and a keen observer.... This work is a valuable contribution to our understanding of Indian democracy and is highly relevant for anyone studying the global nonprofit sector, making it ideally suited for graduate studies in nonprofit management, public policy, and the anthropology of the state. Ultimately, Bornstein shows that the 'revolution' of the title is found in the persistent, daily efforts of those who ensure that civil society continues to shape itself, even under pressure." —Nandini Deo, The Developing Economies
"Bornstein's ethnographic approach is effective and rigorous, contributing to the debates and currents of nonprofit regulation, philanthropic protectionism and foreign funding restrictions, and democracy. India's regulation of the nonprofit sector unfolds in a first-person telling, having clear protagonists in a setting that is unique culturally, politically, and historically while undoubtedly having global relevance." —Susan Appe, Voluntas
Laws Governing Nonprofits in India
Acronyms
Introduction Nonprofits Make Worlds
1. Writing the Horizon Line
2. Charitable Purpose as Political, Regulatory Frame
3. Regulating Philanthropic Corridors
4. Navigating the Rules
5. The Power of Association
6. Reports as Mobilizing Technologies
7. The Responsibility to Act
Conclusion Becoming Legible
Notes
Bibliography
Index