Under Development: Stories of Children and NGOs in Delhi, India

Abstract

Stories of and by marginalised children in development programs circulate widely in contemporary mediascapes. Beyond these stories and images, which typically depict narratives of victimisation, or of agency against the odds, very little can be gleaned of these children’s lives or their relationship to the development programs they attend. This thesis, based on fieldwork among children who live in four slums in Delhi, India, explores the way children engaged with the programs of a media NGO (non-government organisation). The main focus of this organisation was the training of children in the production of certain kinds of developmental messages and methods of self-expression, and it is this focus that I examine in this thesis. Alongside my ethnographic observations of children’s participation in these NGO classes and campaigns, the ethnography is enriched with a careful reading of children’s performances, stories and drawings produced in the course of these classes. Rather than view such activities as instrumental or demonstrative of children’s participation in NGO schemes, I argue that our understanding of children’s lived experience of development can be ‘thickened’ through a reading of texts and performances that these children produce in NGO spaces. Such considerations allow for a much richer appreciation of the development discourse and the way it is deployed in the NGO space, by children and NGO workers. The children I worked with entered the NGO spaces already tagged as ‘underdeveloped’ slum children. It was expected that in the space of these NGO’s and ‘under’ the principles and theories of development, the children could improve their futures and those of their communities. While frequently performing or enacting this category of the 'underdeveloped child', the children also displayed a keen sense of the development discourse. As such, they were able to skilfully and instrumentally employ a range of positions, from innocent victims to conscious agents, to subvert, disrupt or co-opt the development categories that framed their lives. The kinds of performances and narratives children produced in NGO spaces that I discuss in this thesis cover a range of key issues such as hygiene, marriage and gender violence. They all point to a pragmatic, playful, opportunistic and ultimately personal approach to development. I have tried to represent this in this thesis both textually and visually, using images and photoessays to compliment my written material.