With the “third-wave” of global democratization, many communist and authoritarian regimes were forced by civil society groups to make the transition to democratic forms of governance. Following this, civil society institutions came to be considered not only as indispensable instruments for the survival and sustenance of democracy, but also as the ‘hitherto missing key’ to be acquired by developing countries in order to attain a Western form of political development. 

 Aid agencies and governments of the industrialized West promoted nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other civil society organizations as the ‘magic bullet’ that could positively address the various problems of the developing world. This view of civil society as a democratic force was further strengthened by the publication of Making Democracy Work. The norm of reciprocity and the interrelated networks of trust, cooperation, and civic engagement or, in other words, the robustness of associational life (popularly referred to as social capital) influence the performance of development and democracy. Two other factors the centralizing tendencies of the state and the failure of the state to fulfill the basic necessities of people intensified civil society activism in South Asia. 

 Civil society emerged as a powerful third sector outside the formal sphere of politics (state) and economy (market) and played an active role in promoting development and democracy. According to some estimates, India today has more than 2.5 million NGOs and is considered the unofficial ‘NGO capital of the world.’ Given such dominance of NGOs, some scholars have argued that civil society in South Asia has been ‘NGOized’; while other scholars have argued that the NGOs have acted as agents of neoliberalism and have depoliticized the development discourse in South Asia. 

 This is visible clearly in cases of microcredit and self-help groups. While such groups justify their activities through the language of empowerment, some scholars have shown that they use various manipulative strategies to recover loan installments from women. Several case studies also show the dark side of social capital and defy the arguments put forward by Putnam and his colleagues. In South Asia, it must be stressed that civil society is inherently pluralistic in nature; it includes both civil and uncivil elements within its domain, which may contribute either positively or negatively toward economic development, democracy, and political change.