Sidel, Mark; Zaman, Itfekhar, Philanthropy and Law in South Asia: Key Themes and Key Choices, 7 International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law 2 (2005)
Abstract
Philanthropy and Law in South Asia ' the project and the book ' provides an important window into the complex relationship between philanthropy and the state in five key countries of South Asia: Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. In South Asia, governments seek, sometimes actively and sometimes perfunctorily, to facilitate giving and the work of the nonprofit sector, for this 'third sector' does much that the state cannot or will not do. But governments also seek to control and manage philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, concerned about the sector's rise to national influence and political authority as an increasingly important factor in development and social change, often with political implications. Law is a crucial force for the state's control and facilitation of nonprofit and philanthropic activity, a key crucible for the complex relationship between national governments and nonprofit work. Commentators in and beyond South Asia have often portrayed law as the mechanism for control and management of philanthropy and the nonprofit sector in the subcontinent.1 And there is, of course, a rich literature on law in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.2 But among the many findings and features of our project is that law, and the legal regulation of philanthropy and the nonprofit sector in South Asia, fulfills a considerably more com-plex and contradictory role than perhaps earlier thought. A conflicting and fascinating picture emerges from these studies: law controls and manages; law also facilitates and encourages. Law restricts the space and autonomy of the nonprofit sector; and simultaneously law may provide legitimate means for nonprofit flexibility in organization, governance, accountability, and programmatic activities. The studies focus on the complex and even contradictory roles played by the law and the key choices that they imply for the countries of South Asia. This overview has two primary goals. We will briefly review some of the major findings of the research and writing so ably carried out by the scholars, lawyers, and activists who gathered as the project team for Philanthropy and Law in South Asia (PALISA). This will not be a review in great detail, for the fine country chapters in the volume itself do that job in far more detail and with far more contextual sensitivity than we can muster here. Instead, we will focus on discussing and analyzing some of the complex choices, even dilemmas, that the country chapters have brought to the surface and that the societies of South Asia face as their ruling states seek to use law both to control and to facilitate the increasing activities of the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors ' choices made considerably more complicated by a changing domestic and international environment.
