By Moin Qazi
Moin Qazi is the author of Village Diary of a Heretic Banker. He has spent more than three decades in the development sector.
India spends more on programmes for the poor than most developing countries. However, it is not getting the expected dividends that significant public expenditure would seem to warrant, and the needs of important population groups still remain insufficiently addressed.
Finding the problem
India has ranked a lowly 131 among the 188 countries surveyed for human development in 2016, according to a UN report. The report puts India in the medium human development bracket, which includes nations like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan, Kenya, Myanmar, and Nepal.
A major flaw in India’s development paradigm is that the focus is more on physical resources and less on human resources. It seems to discount the human factor in all programmes. Behind the gleaming images of successful development revolutions are the untold sacrifices of the grassroots level staff who hold the fort as brave and heroic warriors. It is their incandescent honesty and unvarnished selfishness that translates the state policies into real ground action.
Unsung heroes
The honour and recognition that the society owes to these brave individuals for their crusade cannot be embodied in awards, promotions, and citations. The focus is most often on issues such as chronic poverty, empowerment of women and the disenfranchised, and a sustainable solution to economic instability. The lessons of all successful policies and programmes for achieving these objectives lie with the tenacious and committed officials and their families.
India should applaud and honour ordinary men and women, who have nobody to back them, yet work doggedly to keep projects rolling. Nobody can fathom the immense mental and physical suffering that they and their families undergo.
Risks undertaken
Outsiders, protected by position, passport, privileges, and police can be justified in goading others to risk their livelihoods, their families’ well-being, or their own lives.
Even more, for any outsider to encourage vulnerable poor people to take risks raises ethical questions. Especially when it is they, and not the outsider, who will pay the price of failure. A painstaking reflection is demanded of social interventions in hostile and harsh areas. New agricultural practices are being propagated with enticements of extravagant promises. By manipulating the choices of consumers at the low-income pyramid, they are being disempowered. The damage to the economy and ecology of these already fragile societies is now starkly visible.
Failing rural politics
The distance that has grown between the planners and the people in the rural matrix has plagued the development apparatus. Too much dependence on data and much less direct engagement with the poor has been the major cause of failure for most state-mandated development programmes.
One of the discouraging features of Indian democracy is the politicisation of rural society. The growing tendency of village groups to seek outside political support for a solution to local development issues has ruptured the traditional social structure. In the coming years, rural assignments for officials of government and banks are going to become hazardous on account of the growing politicisation of villages. The new roads and highways that provide a fast passage not just to towns but also to metros have demolished the concept of village republics.
In such a dispiriting scenario, committed development workers may feel that the system’ is too strong for them. Perhaps the best antidote to this despair is to study the examples and lives of those who have fought against the odds and succeeded.
Beating the odds
Social change flows from individual actions. Big simple solutions are tempting but full of risks. Slower and smaller steps also help in building up peoples adaptability to changes.
Several developmental successes have occurred in sub-optimal settings. They often happened under appalling conditions of weak governance, widespread corruption, minimal infrastructure, deep-rooted social divisions, and poorly functioning judicial system. In each case, creative individuals saw possibilities where others saw hopelessness. They imagined a way forward that took into account local realities and built on local strengths. They were willing to experiment, ignoring the sceptics who later became supporters.
There are managers who have shown personal courage and ingenuity in creating safe spaces in which they can pursue development work. Their reward is not an early promotion or early transfer. Their families stay in far away towns where the faculties for education and healthcare are at least satisfactory.
Unacknowledged workers
Berating or patronising rural folks is, both culturally and professionally, the most undesirable extension of any rural development executives personal trait. The inability to put oneself in the shoes of the poor and to keep on living the same way without concern does not work. Unfortunately, most aid personnel have cultivated this mindset and approach.
Much and warranted attention is paid to the lives of recipients of aid and benefits of social programmestheir household lives, saving habits, gender relations, and so on. It is held that a key to measuring the effectiveness of aid is contained in such details. Rarely, however, is the lens turned on the lives of development workers themselves. How workers moral beliefs interlink and conflict with their initial motivations, how they relate to aid beneficiaries, their local NGO peers and other staff are not given attention. The effect of transient lifestyles and insider language, and the security and family issues that come with choosing such a career is also unacknowledged. Peaceful coexistence with political agents remains an ongoing challenge.
Domination by the powerful
Senior bureaucrats are smart enough to leave little paper trails behind to provide clues to their motives. Junior officials are naive and are also under direct fire as they serve as the primary interface of the administration. The system gives no protection to the sincere and honest among them. There are some talented men and women who have renounced their ambrosia of official positions and pledged their lives for empowering the economically and socially disenfranchised.
Though much rural development is welcomed by the whole population and does not involve outsiders in personal risk, much also involves conflicts of interest where the weak are dominated and exploited by the powerful. Where that happens, many of the rural poor and those who work with and for them face abuse, discrimination, and danger. They are often threatened, some are assaulted, and some are even killed.
The path ahead
There is much innovation and even heroism and sacrifice by the staff of development agencies known only to project beneficiaries and other staff, which is not only left anonymous but undocumented. Even when programme results are reported, the names and actions of the individuals who made the process successful on the ground are seldom known.
A compelling message is that helping people is much harder than it looks. The practical idealists demonstrate passion, intellect, and gritty determination and are supported by heroic, skilful, and inspiring field staff. Pairing experts with ‘on the ground’ teams and field workers have yielded lasting solutions to tough social and economic problems.
Several of these programmes have been remarkably successful but have been difficult to scale up. Nevertheless, the seed has been sowed and some, if not all of them, will bloom and yield fruits. There is only a need to summon the political will.
Featured Image Source: Ian D. Keating on Visualhunt / CC BY