Although economic inequality is the main issue, resistance around the world is most frequently being directed at the ethnic Other rather than the pinnacles of corporate power and the global military-industrial complex. This certainly helps unbridled corporate expansion without the constraints of ecological, social, or ethical criteria. In Sri Lanka, the preoccupation with ethnicity, cultural identity, and the war has diverted attention from the massive environmental, social, and cultural destruction associated with contemporary globalization. It helps locate causes of social crises within the local population and in so-called primordial consciousness rather than in external sources and material circumstances. Likewise the solution offered which is frequently fragmentation of local political entities can be an effective tool of divide and conquer.
Fragmentation weakens local resistance against the forces of global economic concentration.
It is in this context that local skepticism towards the hundreds of international NGOs and foreign-funded local NGOs in a country like Sri Lanka needs to be understood. Although NGOs can be important in safeguarding the rights of oppressed groups, they are not always impartial saviors providing the middle ground between the extremes. Most NGOs are not in a position to challenge the economic fundamentalism of corporate expansion or develop alternative models of development. Indeed, local people without literacy in English and other means of access to the outside world such as electronic media may be suspicious of attempts to change their thinking, seeing that as a neo-colonialist attempt to destroy their culture, especially when those attempts are led by Christian NGOs working in a predominantly Buddhist and then a Hindu country. This may be particularly so when there are attempts to introduce a new national identity at the expense of fundamental socio-economic changes.