The notion of ‘political society’ that Partha Chatterjee presents most prominently in his book The Politics of the Governed (2004) has been formulated, developed and reformulated in a series of articles and book chapters. Here, I reflect on the dichotomy that Chatterjee draws between associations of civil and political society by considering its applicability to the way in which village clubs and small local NGOs operate in the Indian state of West Bengal, the region from which Partha Chatterjee's own examples are drawn. I demonstrate the multiple ways in which these associations are affected by and involved in the mediations of ‘political society’. However, I also argue that they simultaneously comply with many of the legalistic norms of ‘civil society’. The coexistence of these two seemingly contrasting modes of operating calls into question the viability of the dichotomy drawn by Chatterjee. Following Corbridge, Williams, Srivastava and Véron I therefore argue that, ‘like all binary distinctions, [Chatterjee's distinction between political and civil society] is also overdrawn’ (Corbridge et al. 2005, 256) and ‘can more reasonably be thought of as a set of interlocking political practices that are arranged along a continuum’ (Corbridge et al. 2005, 214); they are not so much separate worlds as overlapping norms and strategies.

The chapter is based on interviews conducted with the leaders of 94 local NGOs and village clubs in two districts of West Bengal.