What makes good development programmes tick?
A decade or two ago, many in the development community acted with the best of intentions, but without the best of evidence.
If households lack clean water - help build wells; if people suffer ill health - give them health services; if the poor lack capital to start businesses, give them credit. But the reality is complicated.
Well, water can be contaminated, people don’t always use their local clinic, and savings or insurance may be better than credit. In theory, the poor themselves are in the best position to know what their communities need and to demand accountability from their governments.
Most development programmes for the poor have been designed on the assumption that the poor need charity and they cannot afford to pay for the services. This is erroneous and we have witnessed how dollops of free money have stifled their initiatives.
Several studies have revealed that the poor are keen to have access to proper healthcare, education, sanitation and housing. They are willing to pay for the services if they are genuinely useful and are available through hassle-free systems.
Today, the poor are investing their precious savings in private hospitals and private schools. They are also borrowing at heavy rates of interest from private microfinancers because bank loans, despite being cheaper, are mired in red tapism.
The poor are fed up with the bureaucratic procedures that consume their man-days and may not yield any benefits in the end. In fact, they are now wise enough to understand that loss of several man-days in chasing government departments for official largesse neutralises the net benefits.
There are critics who believe that the poor are so poor, so why you would make them pay for things? My experience over almost four decades, during which I connected closely with rural India, has taught me that for the rural poor, dignity is more important than anything else and that the poor already pay for things, so let’s find a way to provide them things they can afford and want.
What the poor insist is that development programmes must deliver what they actually need. This ethos underpins the new development paradigm. The mantra is: “Tell us what the poor want, don’t tell us what you think is good for them.”
There’s arrogance to the attitude that we’re going to come in and fix something for them. The only way for these programmes to really build trust is by starting from what peope really feel what changes their lives for the better.
Tackling poverty requires a fundamentally different approach: one that starts with the people themselves and encourages initiative, creativity and drive from below. This principle must be at the core of any programme aiming at transformation of their lives; it is only then that it can be lasting and meaningful.
If people can be given the support they need to make important decisions in their own communities, to build their own democracies in their own ways, they can do the rest themselves. In doing so, they will not only move their own communities out of poverty, they will also take the world with them. Change must come from within: communities must make their own decisions regarding their future.
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| Economic development and social change cannot be imposed from without. (Photo: India Today) |
Economic development and social change cannot be imposed from without. It must begin from within even though the initial nudges may have to come from outside. Lasting change comes about so slowly that you may not notice it until people resist being taken care of - they need to be given a chance to fulfil their own potential.
When we design solutions that recognise the poor as clients or customers and not as passive recipients of charity, we have a real chance to end poverty. Importing unworkable ideas, equipment and consultants destroys the capacity of communities to help themselves.
In his reflections on fieldwork, the doyen of Indian anthropologists, Professor MN Shrinivas, described successful ethnography as passing through several stages. An anthropologist is "once-born" when he goes initially to the fields, thrust from familiar surroundings into a world he has very little clue about.
He is "twice-born" when, on living for some time among his tribe, he is able to see things from their viewpoint. To those anthropologists, fortunate enough to experience it, this second birth is akin to the Buddhist urge of consciousness, for which years of study or mere linguistic facility do not prepare one.
All of a sudden, one sees everything from the native’s point of view, be it festivals, fertility rites or the fear of death. In short, we need development anthropologists.
The “bottom up” approach, which is being repeatedly emphasised in the development discourse, is about living and working with the poor, listening to them with humility to gain their confidence and trust. It cannot be bought and manipulated with money, or by grafting urban assumptions of development which in fact may destroy existing workable low-cost structures.
It is about respecting and implementing the ideas of the poor, encouraging them to use their skills and knowledge for their own development. It is about taking the backseat and providing the space for them to develop themselves.
Approaches to rural development that respect the inherent capabilities, intelligence and responsibility of rural people and systematically build on their experience have a reasonable chance of making significant advances in improving those people’s lives.
During the last several decades, Third World governments, backed by international aid organisations, have poured billions of dollars into cheap-credit programmes for the poor, particularly in the wake of the World Bank’s 1990 initiative to put poverty reduction at the head of its development priorities.
And yet those responsible for such transfers had, and in many cases continue to have, only the haziest of ideas of what they achieved, and how their intervention could be redesigned to improve matters.
Although imported programmes have the benefit of supplying "pre-tested" models, they are inherently risky because they may not take root in local culture when transplanted. Home-grown models have greater chances of success.
The hundreds of millions of households who constitute the rural poor are a potential source of great wealth and creativity who, under present institutional, cultural and policy conditions, must seek first and foremost their own survival. Their poverty deprives not only them but also the rest of us of the greater value they could produce if only they were empowered and equipped with the right tools.
The people who pioneered the world’s most successful development programmes recognised this potential and always sought to evoke it. They are the ones who enabled the poor to take the right step on the right ladder at the right time. The results have been miraculous.
If we see and analyse societies which have grown and prospered we will observe that several development successes have occurred in less than optimal settings. A lot of good programmes got their start when one individual looked at a familiar landscape in a fresh way.
In each case, creative individuals saw possibilities where others saw only hopelessness, and imagined a way forward that took into account local realities and built on local strengths. We increasingly have the tools. But we lack the necessary political will. If we have the courage to use them, the course of history will be truly different.
The Panchayati Raj is just one of the ways of involving and empowering the grassroots to participate in the development agenda. The poor don’t want handout, they want hand up.
As with any single strategy, this alone is not going to lift people out of poverty. But it’s simple, low-cost and resilient - and what’s most important is that development is truly in people’s own hands.
It is time we heed the wisdom of the great philosopher Lao Tzu:
“Go to the people. Live with them.
Learn from them. Love them.
Start with what they know. Build with what they have.
But with the best leaders, when the work is done,
The task accomplished, the people will say
"We have done this ourselves".