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The state of India acknowledges the rights of children as a guiding national policy principle, but also outsources much rights implementation to private actors such as NGOs. This article asks what happens to the concept of ‘rights’ when their implementation is dependent on the voluntary sector. Based on ethnographic material from one NGO-dependent child rights programme, and with the conceptual framework of ‘vernacular rights cultures’, it finds that for ‘semi-governmental’ social workers, the concept of samāj sevā (social service or social work) was merged with the concept of rights to the extent that rights were conceived as things to be given and mediated by social workers, and not only claimed from the state. I argue that if we want human rights theory to reflect actual practice, we should undertake serious conceptional study of ethical discourses that mix with and influence the concept of rights on the ground.