08-15-2005, 06:41 AM
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This is where the action lies :
Freedom from poverty (experts)
This Independence Day, deliver us from this tribe
BUNKER ROY
Posted online: Monday, August 15, 2005 at 0230 hours IST
The intellectual activists behind the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) who sit in New York are making sure the goals will remain unreachable. Over the last 34 years, having lived and worked with the rural poor earning less than a dollar a day in India, I have ceased to be surprised by the incredible ignorance, stupidity and hype thatâs generated to tackle extreme poverty. Ever so often, jobless politicians find themselves heading Commissions. There is no shortage of funds for travel and workshops preparing pointless recommendations and action plans no one reads or follows. But how many have actually involved the poor in the making of these action plans? Adviser to the UN secretary-general Jeffrey Sachs â with his promises of ending poverty â is just another one of the many getting his bit of temporary glory and he will fade away like Clare Short (remember her?) and her White Paper which promised the eradication of poverty by 2015.
Poverty is big business today. Thousands of jobs in the North depend on churning out sensational figures in glossy magazines highlighting how the poor will remain poor unless more funds are allocated. Never mind if these funds end up as $1,000 per day consultancies given to people who have never spent a night in a village. Not that these consultants have ever gone hungry in their lives, or drunk contaminated water, or walked 10 km to school, or trudged for two days for a canister of kerosene to light the stove. So when do we start educating them? Do they have the humility to listen or are they so arrogant that they know all the answers?
How do we start explaining to these insensitive âexpertsâ what it feels like to face fear, death, hunger, starvation, exploitation, discrimination, injustice every day of their lives? How do we convey the urgency, impotence and anger these glorified paper pushers can never feel? If we are to believe Jeff Sachs, the problem is money. So whatâs new? Governments in the South are not that stupid that they cannot see that poverty is increasing. So is corruption and waste running into millions of dollars and none of the international donors are even talking about their series of successful failures. Is Jeff Sachs, the evangelist, hob-nobbing with film stars, singers, presidents and prime ministers talking about that? Of course not. But why not? Because it is not sexy to talk about mistakes.
We have to look ahead. Learn from the past, think out of the box. Think about simple solutions (like mosquito nets). What about the other simple solutions people are already implementing and not waiting for their governments (too slow, too corrupt) or donors to act? Jeff Sachs has obviously not heard of them from his network of contacts because it is not mentioned in his Latest Report. So far, he has got it all wrong. What requires money is the top-down approach, the North-South percolation of ideas, methods, approaches, equipment and personnel. This has failed miserably. Instead of asking for more money that will inevitably be wasted away, he would do well to offer alternatives on how existing funds could be better spent. There is enough money for drinking water and sanitation if the experts listen to the low-cost, community-managed and community-owned solutions of the people. There is not enough money if they listen to the solutions offered by (un)qualified water engineers.
For the cost of one down-the-hole drilling rig installing one hand pump in one school (the stupid solution of the âqualifiedâ water engineer), it is possible to collect 15 million litres of rain water in over 100 schools and provide employment to 1,000 people for four months in the villages. Why is Jeff Sachs not pushing roof-top rain water harvesting in schools as a source of water for drinking and sanitation? Many reasons. First, because his high-powered team producing reports are not practical enough to hear about simple solutions like this. Small is not beautiful in their eyes.
Second, he does not want to look beyond the obvious and anger his friends who are water engineers and who are solely responsible for the colossal waste of money in the drinking water sector. Third, he wants to please everybody by keeping quiet on sensitive issues like corruption, wastage and incompetent management. He would much rather talk eloquently about the US being stingy and earn brownie points, than talk about transparency and accountability. He believes the problems faced in Africa was overcome 40 years ago in Asia. Totally false. He seems to be enamoured by Indiaâs impressive food production figures. But what about the 60 million tons of food rotting in government godowns eaten by rats while millions starved? The problem is distribution, not production.
Jeff Sachs reminds me of Einsteinâs definition of insanity: âEndlessly repeating the same process hoping for a different result.â The barriers to development in the poorest countries in Africa and Asia is in the mind, not only in the soils and rainfall. A change in mindset does not need money. Taking the poor into confidence and letting them implement their own schemes does not require more money. As a wise politician once remarked: people cannot be developed. They develop themselves. But first it requires the government and donors to act as facilitators and take a back seat. Patronage requires money; participation and partnership do not.
What Jeff Sachâs MDG approach to solutions fails to take into account is the incredible knowledge, indigenous skills and practical wisdom that traditional communities everywhere possess, which could be identified and applied today. It will require no extra money. The people have their own inexpensive solutions that would baffle the urban expert. Give them an opportunity and a chance to apply it for their own development.
If Jeff Sachs is serious about wanting to meet MDGs, he has to stop playing to the gallery. The answer is to demystify and decentralise right down to the community level. He has to list low-cost alternatives that have worked and stop listening to the paper-qualified experts who can only think of using him to raise more money and thus play into the hands of contractors, consultants, vested interests, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians.
The writer is the founder of Barefoot College, Tilonia
This is where the action lies :
Freedom from poverty (experts)
This Independence Day, deliver us from this tribe
BUNKER ROY
Posted online: Monday, August 15, 2005 at 0230 hours IST
The intellectual activists behind the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) who sit in New York are making sure the goals will remain unreachable. Over the last 34 years, having lived and worked with the rural poor earning less than a dollar a day in India, I have ceased to be surprised by the incredible ignorance, stupidity and hype thatâs generated to tackle extreme poverty. Ever so often, jobless politicians find themselves heading Commissions. There is no shortage of funds for travel and workshops preparing pointless recommendations and action plans no one reads or follows. But how many have actually involved the poor in the making of these action plans? Adviser to the UN secretary-general Jeffrey Sachs â with his promises of ending poverty â is just another one of the many getting his bit of temporary glory and he will fade away like Clare Short (remember her?) and her White Paper which promised the eradication of poverty by 2015.
Poverty is big business today. Thousands of jobs in the North depend on churning out sensational figures in glossy magazines highlighting how the poor will remain poor unless more funds are allocated. Never mind if these funds end up as $1,000 per day consultancies given to people who have never spent a night in a village. Not that these consultants have ever gone hungry in their lives, or drunk contaminated water, or walked 10 km to school, or trudged for two days for a canister of kerosene to light the stove. So when do we start educating them? Do they have the humility to listen or are they so arrogant that they know all the answers?
How do we start explaining to these insensitive âexpertsâ what it feels like to face fear, death, hunger, starvation, exploitation, discrimination, injustice every day of their lives? How do we convey the urgency, impotence and anger these glorified paper pushers can never feel? If we are to believe Jeff Sachs, the problem is money. So whatâs new? Governments in the South are not that stupid that they cannot see that poverty is increasing. So is corruption and waste running into millions of dollars and none of the international donors are even talking about their series of successful failures. Is Jeff Sachs, the evangelist, hob-nobbing with film stars, singers, presidents and prime ministers talking about that? Of course not. But why not? Because it is not sexy to talk about mistakes.
We have to look ahead. Learn from the past, think out of the box. Think about simple solutions (like mosquito nets). What about the other simple solutions people are already implementing and not waiting for their governments (too slow, too corrupt) or donors to act? Jeff Sachs has obviously not heard of them from his network of contacts because it is not mentioned in his Latest Report. So far, he has got it all wrong. What requires money is the top-down approach, the North-South percolation of ideas, methods, approaches, equipment and personnel. This has failed miserably. Instead of asking for more money that will inevitably be wasted away, he would do well to offer alternatives on how existing funds could be better spent. There is enough money for drinking water and sanitation if the experts listen to the low-cost, community-managed and community-owned solutions of the people. There is not enough money if they listen to the solutions offered by (un)qualified water engineers.
For the cost of one down-the-hole drilling rig installing one hand pump in one school (the stupid solution of the âqualifiedâ water engineer), it is possible to collect 15 million litres of rain water in over 100 schools and provide employment to 1,000 people for four months in the villages. Why is Jeff Sachs not pushing roof-top rain water harvesting in schools as a source of water for drinking and sanitation? Many reasons. First, because his high-powered team producing reports are not practical enough to hear about simple solutions like this. Small is not beautiful in their eyes.
Second, he does not want to look beyond the obvious and anger his friends who are water engineers and who are solely responsible for the colossal waste of money in the drinking water sector. Third, he wants to please everybody by keeping quiet on sensitive issues like corruption, wastage and incompetent management. He would much rather talk eloquently about the US being stingy and earn brownie points, than talk about transparency and accountability. He believes the problems faced in Africa was overcome 40 years ago in Asia. Totally false. He seems to be enamoured by Indiaâs impressive food production figures. But what about the 60 million tons of food rotting in government godowns eaten by rats while millions starved? The problem is distribution, not production.
Jeff Sachs reminds me of Einsteinâs definition of insanity: âEndlessly repeating the same process hoping for a different result.â The barriers to development in the poorest countries in Africa and Asia is in the mind, not only in the soils and rainfall. A change in mindset does not need money. Taking the poor into confidence and letting them implement their own schemes does not require more money. As a wise politician once remarked: people cannot be developed. They develop themselves. But first it requires the government and donors to act as facilitators and take a back seat. Patronage requires money; participation and partnership do not.
What Jeff Sachâs MDG approach to solutions fails to take into account is the incredible knowledge, indigenous skills and practical wisdom that traditional communities everywhere possess, which could be identified and applied today. It will require no extra money. The people have their own inexpensive solutions that would baffle the urban expert. Give them an opportunity and a chance to apply it for their own development.
If Jeff Sachs is serious about wanting to meet MDGs, he has to stop playing to the gallery. The answer is to demystify and decentralise right down to the community level. He has to list low-cost alternatives that have worked and stop listening to the paper-qualified experts who can only think of using him to raise more money and thus play into the hands of contractors, consultants, vested interests, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians.
The writer is the founder of Barefoot College, Tilonia