This would have been more interesting and effective if Desai had actually cited some examples and named some names.
[WS:] Most of such anti-NGO speak is not really about details and specific examples. It is an anti-intellectualist reaction against growing institutionalization and professionalization of social movements (see for example Zald & McCarthy, _Social Movements in Organizational Society_). The "old guard" of activists, who were making up in enthusiasm and ardor what they were lacking in education and professional skills, grow resentful of the "new guard" of activists who are usually better educated, more professional and more politically savvy.
This is pretty much a global phenomenon, and not a new one. I recall that there was a lot of talk about it in Eastern Europe when the "old guard" (dubbed "the partisans" in Poland as a somewhat disparaging reference to their WW2 credentials) was replaced in the 1960s by a new cadre of engineers and intellectuals "mass-produced" by the socialist education system. Back then, public sentiments were mostly that "the old guards" were basically to retire, write memoirs, and make room for the "new guard." Milan Kundera's novel _The Joke_ provides an excellent account of this process, sprinkled with a superb bitter-sweet sense of humor. One way of looking at the Cultural Revolution in China is the "old guards" fighting back.
What complicates the picture a little bit in countries like the US, is a group of vocal self-styled radical intellectuals (Trotskyites, Proyectites, etc.) who use this "change of guards" as an opportunity to settle their scores with the "liberal intellectual mainstream" from which they feel shunned. As a result, we see paper pushers trying to look more "worker-like" than wage workers (more catholic than the pope) and fiercely embracing the "old guard" anti-intellectualism as a "radical" alternative to the "elite liberalism" of the professional class.
I recall reading a satirical short story (the title escapes me at this time) back in the old country about a college-educated woman who was attracted to the "working class ethos" and started dating a blue-collar guy. Their relationship went quickly south when she expected to find an arrogant, unpolished brute (a "true" blue collar worker in her mind), whereas his aspirations were to polish his manners and acquire "high culture."
I think this pretty much sums up the attitudes of self-styled campus radicals toward NGOs. As "the masses" get education and professional skills, they leave "the streets" and form NGOs. Campus radicals resent that because it is not sexy and exotic enough vis a vis their expectations.
Wojtek