Neoliberal Governmentality and Social Policymaking in India: Implications for In/Formal Workers and Community Work

Introduction

We live in neoliberal times with its implication for policies and practices that present numerous demands and challenges for community practice. This article explains the process of neoliberalism that minimises state intervention in public services and in the domain of social welfare. By deploying the conceptual understanding of neoliberal governmentality, this article engages with two broad questions: (a) how have the policy changes and practices portrayed as caring and welfare of workers and facilitating ease of doing business accentuated the precariousness ¹ of informal workers? and (b) What has been the adverse impact of the enabled managerial approach to community intervention on community work with informal workers and other marginalised communities? The article examines how neoliberalism as contemporary governmental rationality has adverse consequences for the vulnerable communities and the prospects of working with them. The literature on neoliberal governmentality highlights how enterprise culture has been advanced in people’s work and lives and how self-surveillance established and ‘self-disciplining subject’ are produced (McCabe, 2009). The techniques of performance and community mobilisation (Dean, 1999; Rose & Miller, 2008) are utilised whereby the ‘precarious workers are managed as the active, productive and self-directed economic subjects of neoliberalism’ (Moisander et al., 2017, p. 3).

The shrinking role of the public sector, reducing government abilities to provide welfare for their citizens and withdrawal of public and social services for the marginalised community are some of the examples that demonstrate how the process of neoliberal globalisation has impacted public policy and community development in India (Sjöberg et al., 2014). On the one hand, the fruits of economic growth are enjoyed by a section of the middle class and the rich, the educated and privileged sections of the society who manage to accumulate an adequate wealth and income (Ahalya & Pal, 2017); on the other hand, neoliberalism ‘has produced a massive amount of economic inequality, insecurity, unemployment, and under-employment, casualization, informalization, greater labour exploitation and lax version of factory act implementation’ (Das, 2015, p. 718). These policies are making inroads in varied arenas by deploying several governmental mechanisms; the most sophisticated and nuanced one is neoliberal governmentality that is elucidated in the next section.

Theoretical Framework and Approach

With the embracement of neoliberal policies in the 1990s, the progressive community practice that took sides with the poor, vulnerable and marginalised faced severe challenges in India. Drawing upon select policies and practices, this article engages with the theoretical context of neoliberal governmentality and its implications for community work in India. The theoretical formulation of governmentality explicated by Michel Foucault guides us in investigating the process through which neoliberal governance shifts the onus on the individual for their welfare and well-being. It also helps us comprehend how even the withdrawal of the state from welfare has been presented in the name of care and welfare of the population. Governmentality invokes the idea and practice of managing, disciplining and regulating individuals, populations and social spaces. Through these practices, governmentality helps sustain and optimise the condition of life (Dean, 1999). The approach allows the government to exercise regulation on the community, not necessarily through coercion and discipline but through governmental techniques of persuasion and influence. The production of subjectivity by influencing economic, social and political life is heightened through neoliberal governmentality. The article locates community practice in this conundrum of neoliberal governmentality as it has direct implications for the constituency of community work. The first section of the article elaborates on the complicated relationship between neoliberalism, governmentality and welfare policies. The second section explains the governmentality vis-à-vis community practice by positioning the discussion through specific reference to informal sector workers. The third section brings forth the case that illustrates how policy changes vis-à-vis informal workers have been introduced through neoliberal governmentality. Through an analysis of the neoliberal policies and strategies of governmentality, the fourth section highlights the challenges and prospects for community engagements.

Neoliberalism, Governmentality and Welfare Policies: Uneasy Relation

Neoliberalism as the political–economic governance agenda advocates withdrawal of the state from market engagements and facilitation of privatisation, opening up business and trade, minimisation of regulations and endorsement of entrepreneurship. Over the decades, neoliberalism has impacted the nature, character and thrust on welfare provisioning for different sections of the society. It has its roots in liberalism that emphasised individual freedom, liberty and equality. These ideas became the foundational edifice for the democratic polity in Europe, America and most other postcolonial societies. The embedded value of freedom and liberty was later transformed into neoliberalism under which regime the primacy of the market was pushed for and widely agreed upon. Neoliberalism encourages market rules to govern societies with a premise that people’s well-being hinges on individual initiative within the framework that institutionalises free market, free trade and strengthens private property rights. In such a system, Harvey (2005) finds that the government’s specific function is to produce a conducive environment for the market and its operation, and then retreat. The process of ‘stepping back’ is accompanied by a corresponding method of invigorating the logic of private enterprise and individual initiative and responsibility. Neoliberalism facilitates this process through the competitive practices in varied spheres of social life that often complicates life and circumstances of the deprived and vulnerable communities. Mullaly (2007) explains that neoliberalism is fundamentally hostile to social welfare, and it can ensure only minimum, temporary and emergency government intervention. Stuart Hall (2011) considers it as ‘the construction of a new form of capitalist hegemony whose ambition, depth, degree of break with the past, variety of sites being colonized, impact on common sense [and] shift in the social architecture’. With extensive poverty and the wide-ranging practice of social exclusion in India, the rationality of competition and the market’s domination has adverse implications for the informal sector workers. There is enough evidence to suggest that the market mechanism has not been an equitable, inclusive and level-playing field for different vulnerable communities. We explain how welfare provisioning and social protection systems are either dismantled or diluted in India.

We are witnessing two parallel processes in India—the rolling-back of state from core welfare responsibilities in health, education, employment protection and other crucial areas, and the rolling-out or embedding of neoliberalism by advancing insurance-based social protection that construes citizens as a consumer of services. While the earlier ideals of liberal political and economic conception guided and facilitated the trajectory of the welfare state and institutionalised governmental responsibilities provided an emphasis on ‘social citizenship’, neoliberalism altered the relationship between the individual, the market and the state. Neoliberal governmentality in India is observed through parallel processes of the retreat of state intervention in the crucial arena of social security and protection, reduction in subsidy for basic necessity and simultaneous emergence of technologies for remaking postcolonial citizen—subjects into fully empowered (Sharma, 2011) and responsibilised (Burchell, 1996) neoliberal subjects. Under neoliberalism, the social structure of accumulation facilitated tax cuts for wealthy individuals, shifted social responsibilities away from government and favoured deregulation, weakened consumer and environmental protection, and lowered labour costs (Kotz, 2003). This ‘survival of the fittest’ approach to social functioning transformed welfare policy and led to severe trouble for the marginalised communities. The process of collective mobilisation for accessing essential services and ensuring rights and entitlements faced tremendous obstacles due to state and market nexus.

Neoliberal Governmentality and the Community Work

In the changing contours of the welfare mechanism stated above, a paternalistic understanding of individual responsibility is inculcated into the population through decentralised forms of governing that focus on the agency of individuals and the community to regulate themselves responsibly (Rose, 2000). In the neoliberal regime, the market and the state have made conscious and concerted attempts to co-opt non-governmental organisation (NGO) activities and community development projects to persuade the community to adapt to modified approaches to welfare and development. The community-based NGOs emphasise people-centred development that works through grassroots community connect. Ideas such as participation, self-help and cooperation are embedded in its practice. Corporate supported NGOs, though draw its inspiration from similar ideals of community work, it gives precedence to expert knowledge and tangible outcome rather than valuing bottom-up approach. Adaptation of neoliberal policy by the state has created ‘a hostile policy environment and left community work isolated and financially unsupported’ (Aimers & Walker, 2015, p. 2), particularly the one which is community-centred NGOs. Such an environment has minimised the scope for community organisations (COs) by supporting corporate NGOs and expanding the private organisation by undermining the work of community-based NGOs. Synchronising state welfare services and expanding the market in the form of ‘neo-liberalism has spread market laid principle and values into community development and has opened the door for the market in public service’ (Fraser, 2018, p. 438). In an age when neoliberal governmentality dominates the social policy discourse that compromises the welfare provisioning, collective mobilisation of the community turns out to be of considerable significance. Further, community practitioners endeavour to engage politically and not let the state ‘de-politicise’ the fundamental welfare concerns. The community practitioners are expected to remain alert to comprehend and respond to such direct or surreptitious neoliberal governmentality mechanisms.

The government-supported community services and the philosophies behind them are calculated to shape the behaviour of citizens in approved ways: ‘the responsibilization of citizens’ (Ilcan & Basok, 2004, p. 129). The idea of ‘responsibilisation’ and ‘nudging’ individuals has also become a new Indian policy thrust. One of the most prominent policy documents of India, The Economic Survey 2019, claims that flagship programmes such as Swachh Bharat Mission, Jan Dhan Yojana and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao ‘provide testimony to the potential for behavioural change in India’ and vigorously pursue the need to nudge people for the desired change. Such behavioural nudge, claims Fischer (2020, p. 381), ‘appeals to a conservative impulse that prefers disciplining poor people rather than redistributing wealth and power towards them’ and presents a form of neoliberal governmentality. Drawing from behavioural economics, ‘nudge’ policies ‘lie between laissez faire and incentives’ in the domain of public policy (Government of India, 2019, p. 30), and it aims at influencing the conduct of people. Such policy approaches push individual interest, self-surveillance, technological solutions and overall strategy of ‘conducting the conduct’ through NGOs and COs. Community-driven development projects show the tendency of ‘neoliberal governmentality’ that foregrounds newer forms of knowledge and practices of governmental techniques. A case in point is the increasing significance of Self-Help Group (SHG), representing a form of ‘government through community’ (Rose, 1999). SHGs work as a conduit between individuals and community and encourages self-government. This reflects governmentality that explains ‘neo-liberalism is a political rationality that tries to render the social domain economic and to link a reduction in (welfare) state services and security systems to the increasing call for “personal responsibility” and “self-care”’ (Lemke, 2001, p. 203 cited in Pyysiäinen et al., 2017, p. 216). The neoliberal shift towards responsibilisation of people for health, education and other social rights is visible through the weakening of welfare infrastructure and contractual arrangement of low-paid community connectors such as ASHA workers, Shiksha Mitra, and so on, instead of ensuring quality health and education services as rights and entitlement. Undermining the value of public good and whittling down social rights is justified by shifting responsibility and focusing on individuals. The approach depoliticises poverty and structural inequality and puts a premium on individual insurance and contractual low-paid social sector cadre on various tasks. Strategies of the state are essentially enabled by the idea of ‘responsibilisation’, which invokes ‘a form of subjectivity or self-hood – such as an ‘enterprising self’ (Rose, 1992 cited in Pyysiäinen et al., 2017). Another illustration can be drawn from the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), which focuses on community health in rural areas through awareness and intervention in the community. The focus of NRHM on individual responsibility influences individual to behave in a particular manner what Foucault refers to as ‘conducting the conduct’ which aims to guide individuals to behave or perform in a specific manner. The approach undermines crumbling health infrastructure, abysmal budgetary allocation and shrinking governmental responsibility and accountability on health; and put the onus on vulnerable and poor individuals. ² The shift of focus under neoliberal pressure expects individuals to become self-directed, ‘responsible, efficient, rational, and independent participants in the newly privatised realm of social services’ (Chaudhry, 2018, p. 1119). In this process, people get embroiled in complicated, means-tested, targeted and insurance-based service delivery systems; and structural causes of poverty and inequality are entirely undermined.

By doing so, the state ensures that the logic of individuality and particularism sets in. The examples echo the argument that ‘the state–community–civil society interface has been altered by the Indian state’s decision to connect itself with neoliberal global economic processes’. (Jha, 2016, p. 74). Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and a sudden proclamation of the national lockdown, migrant workers were rendered without work and experienced extreme precarity. To overcome the economic impact of coronavirus-induced lockdown on the poor, the Government of India announced assistance through transfers amounting to INR 312,350 million (USD 4,129 million) under Prime Minister’s Poor Relief Scheme (Ministry of Finance, 2020). The relief included small quantity of free food grains, meagre cash payment to women, poor senior citizens and the farmers. Though these disbursements are part of regular welfare dues to eligible groups and do not address the new catastrophic losses, such as that of incomes, leading to ongoing survival crises suffered by stranded and out-of-work migrant informal workers (Sengupta & Jha 2020, p. 162), our study shows that people largely perceived paltry relief as states’ largesse. The idea of welfare claims, and social citizenship rights are eroded from people’s psyche and expectations. The cash transfer given to inter-state migrants by some state governments, and cash support to workers registered under Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Boards illustrates how the minimal support was seen as compassion by the state rather than insufficient delivery of entitlements. One of the migrants who returned to his village shared, ‘Though pandemic is a natural calamity, the government has saved us. Prime Minister gave us monetary assistance of INR 500 ($ 7), subsidised cooking gas cylinder and food grains. Had the government not been kind, we would have died by starvation’. While minuscule relief entitlement was construed as the state’s benevolence, the misery was internalised as self-responsibility. When asked about the hardships that migrants had to bear, their return on foot, mismanagement of trains services, wage theft, and so on, one of them said, ‘we are to be blamed for what we face; there are corrupt people amidst us who are responsible for siphoning off what government provides; our elected representatives are corrupt, but we should be blamed as we only elect them. If we abide by the rule, things would be fine’.

To make our argument squarely through the recent developments in India, we are illustrating policies and practices that have implications for informal sector workers.

Unorganised Sector Workers and Encountering Neoliberal Governmentality

Post-colonial India relied on planned economic development. Massive resources were invested in industrialisation through public enterprises, focusing on steel, chemicals, heavy machines, locomotive and power generation. Though the policy helped build India’s capacity in many core areas, the economy remained largely stagnated. The fiscal situation became unmanageable and pushed the country towards the International Monetary Fund for financing that necessitated an overhaul in economic policies. The widespread changes in economic policies formally introduced in the 1990s have had a positive outcome for the Indian economy, but it also increased inequality and vulnerability for a large section of disadvantaged communities (Sengupta & Jha, 2020), more specifically for the informal sector workers. National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) 68^th Round data of 2011–2012 clearly shows that around 61 million of jobs that were created in India since liberalisation in 1991–1992, 92% were informal jobs. The overall percentage of workers in informal employment in India has been around 92% of total employed workers (ILO, 2017). The total number is an estimated 450 million informal workforces, with 5–10 million workers added every year. The noticeable characteristics of the informal sector are unregulated terms and conditions of employment, oral contract and small-scale operations. Besides, the hire and fire of workers at will, labour intensive work and absence of social security for workers are some of the defining characteristics of the informal sector. The nature and condition of work keep the informal sector workers in perpetual vulnerability and precarity. This precarity and absence of social protection for workers get heightened under the neoliberal governmentality.

Neoliberalism operates through intriguing but engaging vocabulary that influences public opinion; one of the recent ones is ‘ease of doing business’. Under the pretext of ‘ease of doing business’, several social security laws are being systematically weakened in many states in India. It is often justified in the name of ‘labour reform’ that is supposedly concerned for the care and welfare of the workers. This is precisely the language used by the labour minister ‘Keeping the social security and welfare aspects of workmen better and intact; we are working in the direction of bringing reforms in various labour laws with the objective of ease of doing business in new future’ (The Economic Times, 2018). However, a World Bank study titled ‘Ease of Doing Business’ found out that only around one-tenth of the surveyed business enterprises in India considered labour regulations as a serious stumbling block for doing business (World Bank Group, 2014). Yet, the ease of business turned out to be the rationale for facilitating various clearances, providing low interest rates for a business, informalisation of work processes by contracting out work and flexibilisation of labour markets through the change in labour laws and government’s supervisory practices. And in the name of ‘labour reform’, the ease is confirmed through amendments to the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970; the Factories Act, 1948; and the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. To reduce their liabilities, employers prefer to keep the number of permanent workers smaller who are protected through labour laws. The employers of these industries organise a range of work, particularly the more demanding, hazardous and arduous ones, to the contractors who prefer to engage casual workers. These contractors usually hire workers on daily wages. They are denied any social protection and social security, both in regular work and also in the event of accidents or other eventualities. One observes that numerous wage jobs in the organised sector have been subcontracted. With the commencement of Neoliberal policies in the 1990s, the share of contract labour has gone up from 13% in 1995–1996 to 36% in 2017–2018 in the organised manufacturing sector. Furthermore, to facilitate ‘ease of doing business’, the state and central governments had proposed series of labour reforms which hastily passed by parliament without adequate discussion and consultation and amidst widespread opposition. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and severe crisis for informal workers, the parliament passed the Code on Social Security Bill, 2020; Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code Bill, 2020 and Industrial Relations Code (IRC) Bill, 2020 within four hours. The government asserts that these Codes will enhance ease of compliance, minimise complexity and guarantee accountability. This decision has implications for millions of workers as it revokes about 44 central labour laws and almost 200 state-level laws. Through the IRC, the government has introduced conditionalities that restrict the rights of workers to strike. It has also brought in newer provisions for layoffs and retrenchment in industrial establishments. The enterprise having up to 300 workers can fire the workers or close their operation without the government’s prior approval. Earlier the threshold was 100 workers. The changes lead to greater flexibility for employers for hiring and firing workers. The heightened ceiling for mandatory standing orders ³ will compromise with employment conditions of the workers in smaller units having less than 300 workers. Besides, the IR Code mandates a 14-day notice period before a strike or lockout, which has a limited validity of 60 days. The employees can’t go for a strike during the pendency of proceedings before a tribunal. It also indicates that the workers can’t proceed on strike within 60 days, even after a tribunal’s conclusion. The stretching of the lawful time frame and associated conditionalities makes a legitimate strike nearly impossible. The process of facilitating management while curbing labour rights is evident through the power to fire workers without seeking government permission. Besides, the Code renders it simpler for employers to circumvent provisions for welfare and protection for the workers. Even provident fund contributions by employers and contractors are not safeguarded with panel provisions. Similarly, ‘for gratuity, the principal employer is not liable if the contractor fails to pay – since contractors are often marginal actors who struggle to survive, this might often be the case’ (Scroll, 2020). Any efforts to organise the community of informal workers through trade unions, loose associations and community-based interest groups get severely affected by these decisions. As a result, the workers internalise the prerequisite to maintain self-discipline and endure harsh working conditions.

The situation of the labourer in the informal sector that is precarious and insecure anyway has been accentuated by these ‘reforms’. In the name of ‘labour reform’, the recent legislative and policy changes minimise the labour costs and allow flexibility to employers to tweak their production activities and manage labour demand according to the market conditions. It puts excessive jurisdiction at the disposal of the employer and the State. While determining the minimum wage, bonus and overtime payments, the Code on Wages (2019) provided limited scope and space for employees or their unions to put across their suggestions and inputs. The CSS 2020 has merged legislation on social security and protection, the Employees’ Provident Fund, Employees’ State Insurance, gratuity, maternity benefits and other protective mechanisms, which will exclude heterogeneous employment and segments of the informal sector. Parallel to enacting the legislation, consent was secured by appealing to the beliefs and desires; and the conduct is governed through individuals and social organisations. The idea of ‘right conduct’ influence them to steer clear from ‘contentious’ issues of workers’ social security and protection. Risks are transferred from the employers to the workers through flexible and precarious work and insecure employment. Besides using the current COVID-19 pandemic situation, several state governments and employers’ organisations pushed for labour law amendments. Many of them sought the nationwide 72-hour workweek (12 hours a day × 6 days). It violates the existing norm of a 48-hour workweek that was institutionalised after decades of struggles and mobilisation. Another legislation, the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020, omits numerous economic activities, especially the agriculture sector that engages roughly 50% of the country’s working population. Besides, ‘small mines, hotels & eating places, machinery repairs, construction, brick kilns, power looms, fire-works, carpet manufacturing, and also those employed as informal workers in organized sectors, including new and emerging sectors such as IT and IT-enabled services, digital platforms, e-commerce, have also not found coverage under the Code’ (Scroll, 2020). Though these changes will have massive health, safety and well-being implications for the worker, the government has invoked the language of neoliberal governmentality that makes individuals responsible for their conduct against the welfarist approach of collective ethos.

Moreover, neoliberal governmentality ensures a smooth supply of ‘reserved army’ of inter-state migrant labour whose insecurity and vulnerability continues unabated. The spatial politics of uneven development ensures the continuation of specific geographies as developed and others as a backward region that, in turn, facilitate the destination and source of workers. From so-called backward areas, the migrants travel across the state searching for livelihood and getting into informal sector work in relatively developed states where they are treated as lesser citizens. These workers are bound to self-regulate themselves and are always prone to conduct their conduct imbibed through the implicit prescription of a hostile and insecure environment. Industries prefer these migrants as they can be paid less, work harder and for longer duration and have little scope for claims over rights and entitlements through collectivisation. In many situations, they cannot speak or comprehend the language/dialect of the place where they migrate. They are often exploited by employers, brokers, municipal officials, police and other agencies. The multiple susceptibilities make them precarious and are easily controlled and made replaceable. Influenced by these realities, they are forced to internalise the ideas of keeping themselves meek, staying away from the collectivisation process and avoiding making claims and demands on the employers and the state. It is a classic situation of neoliberal governmentality where they are continuously watching their conduct to avoid any confrontation and therefore being dispensed.

At one level, the informalisation of labour and its consequent implication for social security and social protection pushed more and more people into vulnerable conditions; on the other, the governmental rationality conveyed its policies as beneficial to the population. Such governmental rationality emphasises competitiveness, individual responsibility and adaptability. This seems to be the reason why Foucault explained the art of government through techniques of the practical act: ‘success or failure rather than legitimacy or illegitimacy, now become the criteria of governmental action’ (Foucault, 2008, p. 16). The discourse around individual readiness, taking informed decisions and being flexible to the dynamic situation are prescribed templates to fit neoliberal governmentality. Chatterjee (2018) finds this a marked change from the approach of liberal governmentality that was adopted by deploying the social-democratic tactics of providing welfare to the salaried middle class, unionised workers and sections of the rural population in India after independence. The three decades of this approach followed by internal emergency and the limits of it made Chatterjee emphasise that ‘welfare measures could not be effectively administered except by opening its terms to negotiation with the affected population groups’ (Chatterjee, 2018, p. 49) and hence the biological tactics and neoliberal governmentality gained ground with New Economic Policy in the 1990s.

Foucault defined governmentality as an intricate practice of power and authority ‘which has the population as its target, political economy as its major form of knowledge, and apparatuses of security as its essential technical instrument’ (2009, p. 107). The ‘conduct of conduct’ is a governmental approach to shape human conducts by calculated means. The recent ‘labour reform’ considers workers as various groups which can be classified by its empirically identified attributes and constituted as a target population. The workers could be rationally manipulated by deploying governmentality and can expedite neoliberal policies. Prescription, persuasion and negotiation are simultaneously attempted to gain consent. However, when power operates in a subtle and concealed manner, people might not comprehend how their conduct is being conducted or why, so the question of and reasoning for consent contracts. Governmentality works through calculation where thought becomes governmental that appeals to the idea of care and welfare. In particular, neoliberal governmentality emphasises self-conduct and people are persuaded to be responsive for their security and welfare. The approach relies on individual responsibility and advances decentralised forms of governing that emphasises the agency of individuals and the community to regulate themselves responsibly (Rose, 2000). The notion of ‘conduct of conduct’ informs us how government shapes the population’s behaviour in deliberate ways through multiple strategies and sites, both public and private. It conceives and expresses the governor-governed association in a nuanced manner, the specifics of which are explained in the context of community work in the next section.

Challenges and Prospects for Community Work

Numerous definitions of community practice broadly emphasise the community’s concerns about the organisation and institutions serving the community. Community work endeavours to engage with the community to find the appropriate solution for their common problem and work with them to find a solution. In India, community work primarily engages with the informal sector workers, slum residents and other vulnerable communities to attend to their concerns. At the heart of community work lays the attention with welfare provisions for the individuals, groups and community. The CO process works with communities that are excluded and affected. However, over the period, the process has become constrained because of the influence of neoliberal policy on state welfare. The exemplified misery and anguish of individuals and communities characterise the operationalisation of neoliberalism. While government favours privatisation and targeting as an approach, Harriss (2013, p. 567) emphasises ‘tension between the assertion of rights by or on behalf of citizens, and the language of “beneficiaries”, “clients” and “users” often preferred by the government’.

Premised on this understanding, many community organisers and social activists in India are working with informal workers to facilitate their claims over rights and entitlements that are restricted or compromised under the neoliberal influence. The welfare services in India are generally dispersed, minimalist and targeted with means-testing. In this backdrop of welfare policies, community work has evolved in a manner where the idea of justice, rights and responsibility informs the engagement. The complexity associated with the community’s access to social programmes highlights the necessity of structural work for ensuring people’s claim over social rights and entitlement. The structural poverty and inequality, differentiation based on caste, gender, religion and other identities are some of the stark experiences that necessitated structural analysis of society and polity. While responding to challenges posed under neoliberal governmentality, one acknowledges and appreciates that community work is essentially a political activity that continuously responds to social realities and challenges presented by the state and the market. The shrinking welfare and newer governance strategies expose the community to the nuances of governmentality and the processes through which it influences the conduct. Professional expertise persists as a core element of government in managing the population and a renewed effort is being brought into public discourse to bring community practice under the governmental system. This practice is in variance with an earlier approach of liberal governmentality that had scope for trade union and other community groups to engage with the population, employers and state in these processes.

Drawing on the conceptual framework of governmentality, we explore the trajectory of community practice that is critiqued as an instrument of governmentality. This agent reproduces dominant state discourses and, in its progressive form, pose a challenge to the prevailing agenda of the state and the market. Fraser (2018) has elaborated on ‘neoliberal community development’ premised on new managerial techniques with an essential feature of measuring performance. The same can be observed in the situation of governing informal workers and excluded communities. Furthermore, the neoliberal governmentality puts conditionalities for funding that has specific prescriptions along with strategies of self-regulation. Often, the practitioners who come from within the community have been undervalued on the pretext of skills, efficiency and suitability to new expectations. Instead, what is preferred and valued is specialised knowledge and technical skills that align with the expectation. The passage of the Foreign Contribution Regulation (Amendment) Act 2020 will make the development relief, and community support work by NGOs further complicated as its provisions create obstacles for collaboration with other organisations. The Act includes all salaries as administrative expenses, which means that the salaries of community and outreach workers and field-based grassroots staff who work with communities in villages, urban slums and other informal settlements, worksites and so on, will be counted as an administrative expense. Such expenses are capped to 20%, down from the 50% previously permitted. Besides, the sub-contracting of work to local and grassroots organisations are prohibited. The smaller grassroots organisations don’t get direct access to foreign funding, for which more prominent NGOs act as bridges. Unable to sub-grant, the reach of NGOs gets adversely affected. More often, the issues and concerns of informal workers were tackled through a sub-contracted grant to community-based smaller groups that get adversely affected by such decisions. Several advocacy and rights-based organisations have to undertake research, networking and capacity building where expenses are made on administrative aspects related to meetings, travel, surveys and related work. Given the fact that the organisations involved in human rights and social advocacy are the ones who demand ‘accountability from government and highlight the governance failures, this amendment makes it easy for the government to throttle civil society which challenges and asks uncomfortable questions’ (Behra, 2020). Besides, the language of performativity is mainstreamed that look at community work through scaling, outcome, output and other measurable terminologies. Through research in Scotland, Fraser (2018, p. 444) emphasised that ‘contracting out’ ‘were routinely described by practitioners in terms of ‘capacity building’, ‘co-production’, ‘new mixed economies of welfare’, ‘social capital’, ‘community capital’, ‘community empowerment’, ‘real public ownership’ and so forth’. Similar phrases and terms are deployed to render care and welfare as a governmental concern in India.

We elaborate on how the community work, though caught up with particular practice conduct, has shown potentialities to engage with structural inequality. Popular community mobilisation around demands for food security, forest rights, right to work, social accountability and other rights and entitlement concerns in India challenges the course of development influenced by corporate-led capitalism. It also demands decentralised employment led growth and people’s claim over natural resources. These grassroots mobilisation and collective action processes have been backed by critical understanding and analysis, a defining feature of CO. CO aims to build community power for the common good where the key objective is cultivating citizen leaders and strong, connected community-based organisations (Tattersall, 2015). This is achieved through generating power for the powerless: identifying and training new civil leaders, building lasting public relationships of self-interest between individuals and institutions within civil society, and by taking direct action that brings about change (Scott, 2013, p. 17). Historically, CO in India has taken sides with poor and deprived communities, and it ‘draws on development discourse, critical studies and is based on an analysis of society, state power and politics of resistance’ (Andharia, 2009, p. 289). In this form of practice, community work constitutes a dynamic and contested practice within the broader socio-economic and political context that includes consequences of neoliberal governmentality. While the neoliberal push through corporate social responsibilities and managerialism has been activated via select NGOs that have deployed numerous strategies for furthering the political project of neoliberalisation, another set of politically sensitive, progressive CBOs and Sangathan/activist groups have taken a solid and sustained pro-poor and pro-vulnerable approach. The corporate aligned community development gets activated for implementing economic policies in the community through select organisations. These organisations propagate insurance, highlight individualisation and responsibilisation and create an environment that is pro-corporate and pro-privatisation. Such discourse and environment ignore adverse repercussions for workers. Instead, it highlights that the change will ensure their care and protection. The idea of scaling-up, quantification, tangible impact and cost-cutting in the social sector that are driven by neoliberal governmentality is vehemently put into action. Crowther and Moir (2014, p. 24) emphasise that practitioners are disciplined by neoliberalism through its technical rationality that can result ‘in the contradictory situation in which practitioners become answerable to two masters, one representing the logic of the market, and the other, the values and ethics of the profession’. In fact, governmentality that influences ‘conduct of conduct’ is instrumental in ‘directing human behaviour’ (Foucault, 2009, p. 229) that has consequences for community work in contemporary times.

Conclusion

We have explained some recent modifications in policies that inform us how the state practices have lasting repercussions for informality and insecurity of workers and on the community work in India. These changes lead to heightened inequality and precariousness for the labouring poor. The compromise with worker protection laws and the facilitation of corporate interest is evidence of neoliberal influence. We have also noticed how governmentality as a practice of governance is deployed to bridge the disjunction between a tactic and the technique of government through the manoeuvring of the parliamentary majority and by influencing policy and practice discourse. In a deeply entrenched class and caste hierarchy, it is of paramount importance that community practitioners explore and comprehend the effect of neoliberal governmentality on the welfare of excluded communities. In the last three decades, there has been a gradual shift to push an idea of ‘entrepreneurial citizenship’ (Newman, 2014) in which access to essential services, such as drinking water, sanitation, access to toilets, is left to their entrepreneurial negotiation rather than a claim on municipal services. The endorsement for such an approach is actualised through social relations and institutions. It is observed that in the name of efficiency and austerity, the governmental strategies lead to retrenchment, the moratorium on new appointments and facilitating the policy of private and individualised approach rather than state responsibility of social protection.

Moreover, depoliticised forms of community development facilitated the ‘entry of neoliberal agendas, by allowing the state to either delegate its responsibilities to NGOs or use the processes of community development to co-opt people for agendas decided by the state–market nexus’ (Jha, 2016, p. 71). To work with marginalised communities, one needs to comprehend neoliberal governmentality as a strategic framework that operates through various policy structures whereby subjectivity is thrust upon and produced as a mode of conduct. We realise that governmentality assists us in comprehending the implications of neoliberalism in influencing politics and governance.

[It] helps us to extend the more familiar observations that: markets have displaced planning as ‘regulators of economic activity’; market principles have displaced government responsibilities for welfare; and economic competition and entrepreneurship have displaced self-discipline, passivity and dependence in relation to regulation as a basis for self-optimization. (Lewis, 2016, p. 74)

The technologies are deployed to make the workers and the vulnerable communities see themselves responsible for their providence and the context they are in and consider themselves accountable for outcomes in diverse domains of their lives and circumstances. The expectation from the state, the idea of citizen’s rights and entitlements are carefully transformed into individuals responsibilisation. The shifting of responsibility and emergence of innovative strategies of activation and responsibilisation conforms to a neoliberal approach that has implications for social security and protection. In the interest of workers and the community, the influence of corporate control and managerial practices need to be tackled. Alert, progressive and conscientious community activists and practitioners could expose the dominant discourse and prescription of neoliberal governmentality and unravel its implications for the community and society. They need to engage with the structural understanding of inequality and injustice. The way facts are presented, information is disseminated or kept secret and the way consent is manufactured through common sense needs to be problematised in different ways and different sites. ‘Rationalities’ or ‘programmes’ of government referred to as ‘technologies’ within the governmentality frame needed to be unpacked and realised so that the information and knowledge with the community can be shared.