Over fifteen years ago I conducted an ethnography of NGO-led reforms in primary schools in Karnataka, India – the same region in which Arjun Shankar’s research for Brown Saviors and Their Others takes place. NGOs in India are often led by networks of dominant-caste, urban and diasporic Indian elites who claim to be working for marginalised caste communities. Yet, the dynamics of racism, casteism and capitalism that shape NGO interventions was left implicit rather than foregrounded in my research, just as these dynamics are too often made invisible in the policies and practices of NGOs themselves. As Shankar’s book brilliantly Read more