Issues  -   Cooperation    -  How?

Issue 6 - Do cooperation for development action really benefits the target populations?
How far they impact on the wider social settings? 

Playlist on Youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5E3FB62DBB77362C

See the Manual Chapter:  Aid effectiveness: Evaluating the impact of aid

Issue dealt in the    Episode 2 - MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education  

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• What is your perception of the efficacy of "aid" coming from another country and another culture? 
• Did your life changed in any way as a consequence of the aid offered by others? 
• Do you think local communities have a say in how this aid is used? 
• How can these communities count more in development choices and how can they utilize better the present opportunities?

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Testimonials Catherine Ray is the Spokesperson  for Europe Aid, of the European Union.  She was interviewed by Vrinda Dar and Stefano De Santis in June 2011 in Brussels, Belgium. EU Trasparency, accountability end effectiveness of EU funded projects Focusing EU Development area on fewer areas with potential higher impact see full interview:  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4C458E4D9E56B478

 

Testimonials A.K. Shiva Kumar    The right to education The “right to education”. When the constitution was made in 1950, the argument was made that education is not a fundamental right. Because the government then said that we do not have the financial resources to ensure that. So they said, give us 10 years. 1960 came, 1970, 1980, 1990… the same argument “we do not have the financial resources. And at the same time you were seeing that India was becoming a top rate country for higher education (IITs, IIMs). But the neglect of basic education in schooling was unforgivable. An it took civil society years of pushing till it was made a fundamental right in 2003. Only starting in 2010 the government has made the financial allocation.  This is the fundamental question: where does India get the financial resources to ensure that all children get quality education, that every Indian has access to health? And what is the answer you give? There are two ways of looking at it. One is to ask the question “can India afford these high level investments in basic health and education?” But a more fundamental way of putting this question today is “can India afford not to invest in basic health, basic education, basic nutrition and these essentials in life. But fundamentally what is behind the question. It is not a question of money, it is a question of political priorities. Is the political commitment there to say that this is the priority for this country? That the sustenance of economic growth, that the desire of India to become a prominent player in the world tomorrow will depend on how well we address these basic deprivation in the lives of millions of Indians.   If ask students, what is the biggest problem, they will tell you population. And I’m amazed that people think that population is India’s biggest problem because there is such good news on the population side. That is absolutely wrong. Look at China, it has a population of 1.2 billion people and in terms of these basics in life, whether it is health, education, nutrition, water, sanitation, housing, they are much superior to us and they achieved it when their level of income was as low as India’s is. It is m It is not about growth rate, it is not with population size. It has to do with the fact that India has not recognized that its strength are its people and that unless you look after people you will continue to experience the problems that we are. Take care of people and population will take care of itself see full interview:  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF5005627AE37A91A

Testimonials Danièle Smadja is the EU Ambassador to India. She was interviewed in Delhi on the 12th May 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis  The effectiveness of aid then comes from the capacity of the donor country to contribute to the national policies and strategies and to make sure that whatever we are contributing to has a chance of success. Then only we can bring an added value by filling the financial gap (even if on a small scale), bring expertise, experience and policies we use in Europe. You are with the WHAT and i'm with the HOW... and until you don't know WHAT there is no way i can help you on HOW to do it. Why should an EU citizen fund the education of the poor children in India? How would this benefit her?   I think that supporting the education of a child is a wonderful objective, a wonderful approach to defend human rights; because education is a fundamental right of every child. The second element is that the money has been worth spending for in 2003 there were 25 million children out of school in India. Thanks to the program of the Government of India and the EU in 2009 there were only 8 million children out of school. The third element is that when a child is educated, when a teenage is going to college and when out with a degree a student is getting a job; i don't think we should think in terms of competitors. We should think in terms of wealth, in terms of world economic growth. The more children are coming to the labour market with a degree, with skills... then you make the world economy run. Today there is so much interdependence between countries; it is important that there is economic growth in India and china for when our countries are lagging behind, and when they are in the middle of a crises it is then important that other countries are the locomotive of the economic growth. Whenever you give money to somebody you have less for you; but you may have less now... but it will bring you more tomorrow. And your child who is going to school in Europe, tomorrow might need the growth that an Indian child is going to produce. see full interview:   http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAD2368FBDC1A2719

 

 

Testimonials Jean Drèze  Is a development economist teaching and working in India. He was interviewed in Allahabad, India on the 23rd February 2011 Differentiate between the Means and Ends of Development Q: the general perspective is: let us spend some money for the people…excluded by the profits, let spend some money for the poor people. But, in order to spend some money for the poor people we must make money. And is the free market which makes the money. If we take too many resources out of this free market, which produce the money we will also not have the money to deal to the poor people. This are general perspective. When I found that in the Human Development Report, and that is what I’m interested also, this kind of cultural contest, which you are also in that…you explain better a part of it, things are looked differently. The social indicators, the human indicators are not seeing something as the money being giving to the poor people, but there are something like, it is seeing as social resources, human resources that feed into the growth on all the sectors. Is not money taken out from the virtual economy and given to those which are out of it. That should means money invested in human social environmental resources which (feed in) to that feed back, in to the condition that make development possible. Am I right? Now, this thing seems to me a bit clear, academically, but I found it extremely difficult to believe to the general perception of the public. How to go about it? How can I try to, not only to convey the message which it is strong, that we need to look at the poor, but the more we look at social justice, the more we look at good social environment, the more we create resources for the good economic development. A: it is important….the ends in the means. Growth is a means, is not an end in itself or thought sometimes there is the tendency to start to treat it as an ends in itself. And people and the human development is the ends, even though there is a tendency, as you said, sometimes to treating it also as a mean, rather than as ends. Now it is true that human resources can also be a means and…we learned a lot of useful things in development economics about the importance of human resources for growth, and not just for growth for development in generally, and in particular about the role of education, whether you talk of growth, whether you talk of improvement of health or public participation in democracy, for all these things education is very important, so these human resources have an important instrumental role. But I think, what is more important than that is to think of them as ends of development and to think of them as wellbeing of people and also as rights of people. You know, in India we have very clear road map, in the form of the Constitution, which is very progressive in many aspects and clarifies, without any doubt, that every citizen has basic rights to education, to health, even to employment, to living with dignity, and we have to, I think, keeping view these are as the ends of development. That is not to deny that growth can be important, and you pointed out that growth generates (?)also can be used, in particular trough welfare functioning public services, to improve people’s health, education and nutrition and so on. So growth can be important, but it is a means and the ultimate objective is people wellbeing and people’s rights, as (spelt) out in this case, I would say, to a large extent in the Constitution. I would also say growth, as I said, it is an important means, but it can also be quite problematic, particularly in environment’s consequences, I think it has to be looked out. In India this is now a very big issue, because the past 10/20 years have been extremely destructive, in terms of environmental consequences. Very rapid growth of inequality and creation of life style (for humanity) of the population, which I think are becoming increasing difficult to replicate for everyone else, without further pressure on the environment and all the public resources. So, you know, there are a lot of questions that have to be addressed, without denying that growth can be an important instrument for transforming the life of people. So I think these priority have to be clear and there is a very serious confusion, at this time, about the growth being an important thing in itself, and you know, if you ask why is the Indian elite so obsessed with growth, why, as you said, it is becoming a kind of overriding object in itself and there is the tendency to view anything that stand in the way of growth as an irritation that has to be done away (within) something or the other, whether is the environment, whether is equity or anything. I think the obsession with growth is not so much this believe in the trickle down, what you has describe as the idea that people will follow. It is not so much the trickle down theory, part of the trickle down theory, but I think it is also a last (four) power in the world and for becoming a big power on the world stage. And I think that is where growth become very important in the mind set of the Indian…and rightly so, if you really aspire to become a so called civil power on the world stage, than obviously you will have to become a much richer Country and it will take a lot of economic growth.   see full interview: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL46EDF7CD88112E51

 

 

Testimonials Julian Parr,  Regional Manager, South East Asia for Oxfam GB. 7 - Do you know of any bad practices in developmental activities?    Where agencies often make a mistake is when they do targeted intervention. So they decide that on the issue of HIV aids we will target female sex workers on the root of transmission. You have given people knowledge now but what do you do with that knowledge and information. So unless you provide them with softer skills, the negotiation skills, you can't tell your clients or your husband to put condoms... you have achieved nothing. I think inclusive development, the most effective development is one you work across all the sectors of society to make change. This is where development agencies get it wrong. It is around working out what information is relevant in order to make change. The second area is around quality. There is no point in putting 500 wells if 300 of them are salinated, or they are in the wrong area or women cannot access them...you have achieved nothing! So one paper it looks like you have done something but if you don't go back and you don't measure quality and you only measure quantity, you can make some really bad mistakes. 8 - Behavioural change in people    You can impart knowledge to people, that is relatively easier. The real thought challenge is behavioural change and you see this consistently. People know that it makes sense to wear a safety belt and not to drink and drive and yet you go out in the street of new Delhi and you see people completely drunk wearing no seat belts. So it is actually getting people responsible for their action and translating knowledge into behaviour and practice.  There is no magic formula for this, but the formula is very crude here. Knowledge lasts roughly as long as a campaign, so if I run an advertising campaign for six month people will remember it for six months. The trick is to run it for longer and decide number slots. The problem is that electronic media is hugely expensive and governments and agencies can't always afford it... the challenge is about managing financial resources and dissemination of information. 12 - What factors make a developmental project successful?   The challenge is to get from a pilot scale to a large scale, to be able to roll that out and replicate, and that is where development fails and breaks down. The better practices I have seen is where you integrate a main stream development practice with government or bringing in private sector and looking at multi-sector partnerships. In this way you can look at greater sustainability, greater applicability and more scale and these are the three things with agencies like mine struggles with. The real challenge is to get the learning we do through pilot projects to a bigger scale... and that requires political will. Integration with mainstreaming with government policies is terribly important. For far too long  civil society has not looked to work with the government.. its critiqued it, it has tend to undermine it by providing services that government would be providing but we have now seen a change in this. see full interview: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF143F55954667298

 

 

Testimonials Nirj Deva is the Vice President Development Committee EU Parliament. He was interviewed by Stefano De Santis on 12th July 2011 in Brussels, Belgium The rationality of EU Development Cooperation Policy Development assistance feeds back into the opportunity of donor countries economy see full interview:

 

 

 

Testimonials Fabio Melloni is the Director of the Italian Develepment Cooperation in Lebanon.   He was interviewed in Lebanon in November 2010 Metodologia tipica che caretterizza la cooperazione internazionale Superare problemi, costruire dialogo   Quali sono le soddisfazioni e le sfide del tuo lavoro see full interview  (in Italian): http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CF6FE1FB663E520

 

 

 

 

Testimonials Montek Singh Ahluwalia is the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Government of India. He was interviewed in Delhi on the second week of April 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis There is an opinion that most of the Government's fund which are allocated don't reach at the grassroots level, why do you think it is so?   No scheme is perfect, it is impossible to have a scheme which has zero leakage. When you say that they don't reach at the bottom do you mean that the leakage is 100... absolutely not! Leakage are high, even as high as 30%, but 70% is reaching at people. The other reason people think that the schemes are not having the effect that the effect that were expected, is that the challenges are very complex one... you can have very good schemes but you don't deliver the result. (Gives example of education) and says that Pratham brings out a report every year and saw that 37% percent of children in class 5 cannot read a text for class 2. Now if you say that therefore the benefits are not reaching the target population, in a sense you are right. But what can the government do? It sets up schools, it higher teachers... we say that you need to have more parent-teacher involvement, you must have local communities enforcing accountability, teachers must be made to teach. These are things that are not just done by governments, these are things done by social pressure, social awareness, social mobilization and it would not surprise me that it takes time.  It is not true that nothing is happening, lots is happening! see full interview:   http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL073E7C62882137D9

 

 

Testimonials Zulfiquar Haider is the National Programme Coordinator for the Planning Commission (GoI) - UN, Joint Programme on Convergence. He was interviewed in Delhi on the 13th of April 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis An other example of Bad Practice    Speaks about the problem which arises when the Governments starts implementing NGO success process on a large scale without proper planning. The self-help group concept came from the NGO world. But at one point the government took over the idea to will promote it. What happens is that when the state decides to implement something which is facilitation oriented and a process driven approach... is that government system and structures are not organized to reward intensive process oriented approach. Measurements of performance is based largely on numbers game.  In one of our project in Madhya Pradesh the principal secretary of the concerned department felt "you are doing only 3000 self-help groups in 3 years". The government has 3000 supervisors with 15 Day-care centers each. So each supervisor will set-up a self-help group and the next year each supervisor will train the 15 day-care workers and you will have 10s of thousands of self help groups created in a year.  We saw disaster coming! These are intensive relational process where you have to build trust with communities, you need to know them, become an insider.  He goes on to give an example of successful government stories on this also, but then the principle changed from the numbers game to merit. see full interview:  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL77195325F4994608

 

 

 

Testimonials P. Krishna is the Rector of the Krishnamurti Foundation India, Varanasi. He was interviewed in Delhi on the 24th of March 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis Education for the MDGs Making a Difference to the Poorest in the World Role of Educators in achieving Universal Primary Education see full interview: :http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL19CD1F8E78885101

 

 

 

Testimonials Anurag Behar is the Co-CEO of the Azim Premji Foundation and the Chief Sustainability Officer of WIPRO . He was interviewed in Bangalore, India on the first week of March 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6KiPUIenS4 Azim Premji Foundation is working with the public schooling system in India, 1.5 million schools, to try and improve the quality of education. And the reason they feel the need of that is that while India has a large public system, the quality outcomes is far from desirable, it is actually where poor. So the foundation is focused on improving that kind of education and it works with the government. They are setting up an university which will conduct research and offer graduate programs in various specialization of education: curriculum development , education management, pedagogy of language. We have large field programs where we work with government schools in teacher training, workbook preparation, curriculum reforms, and examination changes. Why did they choose this? You will see causes you want to contribute to: issues of livelihood, public health, infrastructure, etc, he says. Anything that you see is a worthy cause. The reality is that we cannot do everything; we gotta choose something. And when we were making a choice we said “if you look at all these worthy causes, what kind of a cause, what kind of an area probably has the greatest multiplier effect. And we realized that education has the greatest multiplier effect. And it’s the same old story. If you give a fish to somebody you feed her for one day, but if you teach somebody to fish, then you have taken care of her for all her life. Therefore in our minds, if we can do a good job of education in this country, that will enable development in every prospective, whether it’ll be health, whether it’ll be livelihood, whether it’ll be governance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6KiPUIenS4 see full interview:  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL172C9F96542248DD

 

 

Testimonials Rajesh Kumar Jha is the Sr. Programme Officer for the Centre for World Solidarity. He was interviewed on the 2nd of April 2010 by Fausto Aarya De Santis   What is it that motivates you to work in the social sector?    I'm a geologist by profession but i landed up in this profession by default. What makes me really happy and satisfied when because of me i see people stand up on their own feet and become more aware of their right... a satisfaction which maybe if i was in a 'normal' job would not have got. see full interview:  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL105B469E86BA0BCD

 

 

 

Marc Maes

James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist, has argued that foreign aid causes harm to the recipient nations, specifically because aid is distributed by local politicians, finances the creation of corrupt government bureaucracies, and hollows out the local economy.

In an interview in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, Shikwati uses the example of food aid delivered to Kenya in the form of a shipment of corn from America. Portions of the corn may be diverted by corrupt politicians to their own tribes, or sold on the black market at prices that undercut local food producers. Similarly, Kenyan recipients of donated Western clothing will not buy clothing from local tailors, putting the tailors out of business.

Aid effectiveness refers to the degree to which development aid works, and is a subject of significant disagreement. Dissident economists such as Peter Bauer and Milton Friedman argued in the 1960s that aid is ineffective. Many econometric studies in recent years have supported the view that development aid has no effect on the speed with which countries develop. Negative side effects of aid can include an unbalanced appreciation of the recipient's currency (known as Dutch Disease), increasing corruption, and adverse political effects such as postponements of necessary economic and democratic reforms.

There is also a lot of debate about which form development aid should take in order to be effective. It has been argued that a lot of government-to-government aid was ineffective because it was merely a way to support strategically important leaders. A good example of this is the former dictator of Zaire, Mobuto Sese Seko, who lost support from the west after the cold war had ended. Mobuto, at the time of his death, had a sufficient personal fortune (particularly in Swiss banks) to pay off the entire external debt of Zaire.

Another major point of criticism has been that western countries often project their own needs and solutions onto other societies and cultures. As a result of this criticism, western help in some cases has become more 'endogenous', which means that needs as well as solutions are being devised in accordance with local cultures.

It has also been argued that help based on direct donation creates dependency and corruption, and has an adverse effect on local production. As a result, a shift has taken place towards aid based on activation of local assets and stimulation measures such as microcredit.

Aid has also been ineffective in young recipient countries in which ethnic tensions are strong: sometimes ethnic conflicts have prevented efficient delivery of aid.

In some cases, western surpluses that resulted from faulty agriculture- or other policies have been dumped in poor countries, thus wiping out local production and increasing dependency.

In several instances, loans that were considered as irretrievable (for instance because funds had been embezzled by a dictator who has already died or disappeared), have been written off by donor countries, who subsequently booked this as development aid.

In many cases western governments placed orders with western companies as a form of subsidizing them, and then later shipped these goods to poor countries who often had no use for them. These projects are sometimes called 'white elephants'.

A common criticism in recent years is that rich countries have put so many conditions on aid that it has reduced aid effectiveness. In the example of tied aid, donor countries often require the recipient to purchase goods and services from the donor, even if these are cheaper elsewhere. Other conditions include opening up the country to foreign investment, even if it might not be ready to do so.[4]

An excerpt from Dr.Thomas Dichter's recently published book Despite Good Intentions: Why Development Assistance to the Third World Has Failed reads, "This industry has become one in which the benefits of what is spent are increasingly in inverse proportion to the amount spent - a case of more gets you less. As donors are attracted on the basis of appeals emphasizing "product," results, and accountability…the tendency to engage in project-based, direct-action development becomes inevitable. Because funding for development is increasingly finite, this situation is very much as zero-sum game. What gets lost in the shuffle is the far more challenging long-term process of development."

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Abhijit Banerjee and Ruimin He have undertaken a rigorous study  (PDF) of the relatively few independent evaluations of aid program successes and failures. They suggest the following interventions are usually highly effective forms of aid in normal circumstances:

·        subsidies given directly to families to be spent of children's education and health

·        education vouchers for school uniforms & textbooks

·        teaching selected illiterate adults to read and write

·        deworming drugs and vitamin/nutritional supplements

·        vaccination and HIV/AIDS prevention programs

·        indoor sprays against malaria, anti-mosquito bed netting

·        suitable fertilizers

·        clean water supplies

Aid is seldom given from motives of pure altruism, for instance it is often given as a means of supporting an ally in international politics; it may also be given with the intention of influencing the political process in the receiving nation. Whether one considers such aid bad may depend on whether one agrees with the agenda being pursued by the donor nation in a particular case. During the conflict between communism and capitalism in the twentieth century, the champions of those ideologies, the Soviet Union and the United States, each used aid to influence the internal politics of other nations, and to support their weaker allies. Perhaps the most notable example was the Marshall Plan by which the United States, largely successfully, sought to pull European nations toward capitalism and away from communism. Aid to underdeveloped countries has sometimes been criticised as being more in the interest of the donor than the recipient, or even a form of neocolonialism.[1] Asante lists some specific motives a donor may have for giving aid: defense support, market expansion, foreign investment, missionary enterprise, cultural extension.[2] In recent decades, aid by organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank has been criticised by some as being primarily a tool used to open new areas up to global capitalists, and being only secondarily, if at all, concerned with the wellbeing of the people in the recipient countries. This is a controversial subject.

Besides criticism of motive, aid may be criticised simply on the ground that it was not effective: ie., it did not do what it was intended to do or help the people it was intended to help. This is essentially an economic criticism of aid. The two types of criticism are not entirely separate: critics of the ideology behind a piece of aid are likely to see it as ineffective; and indeed, ineffectiveness must imply some flaws in the ideology.

Many criticize U.S. Aid in particular for the policy conditionalities that often accompany it. Emergency funds from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, for instance, are linked to a wide range of free-market policy prescriptions that some argue interfere in a country's sovereignty. Policy prescriptions from outsiders can do more harm as they might not fit the local environment. The IMF is a good at helping countries over a short problematic financial period, but for poor countries with long lasting issues it does more harm. If the IMF only gave adjustment loans to countries that can repay it, instead of lending repetitively even if conditions are not met or forgiving debts it would keep its credibility. (from the book "The white man's burden" by William Easterly)

In an episode of 20/20 Stossel showed flaws in the distribution of the foreign aid, and the governments of countries receiving aid.

·        Food given as aid often ended up on markets being sold privately

·        The government receiving aid often had secret bank accounts in which it hid foreign aid money for private purposes

·         Good practices: stories of people working for improving the communication and cooperation climate amongst peoples and Nations

·       Learning by mistakes. Do you know of any international cooperation project that failed to achieve its objectives? What went wrong? Did we get a lesson from this experience?