Global Development: Views from the Center

Your point is well taken. Infrastructure without human resource development and local community support is often wasted. In Cambodia there is a program that has built more than 300 schools in villages. (www.cambodiaschools.com) A portion of the money contributed by sponsoring donors goes to supplement teacher salaries and to provide extra teachers of English and computer skills. It has been remarkably effective. Infrastructure without human development or human development without infrastructure simply don't work.

You imply that the 'basic needs'projects of the 1970s went wrong because the capital investment was not enough to create a sustainable operating model: lack of maintenance, poorly trained operators, etc.

Have we learnt anything about how to do this in the last 30 years? Easterly (2006) suggests donors should stop trying to force others to be sustainable and provide sustainable funding for maintenance themselves. Has this been tried and if not, should it be?

A development agenda that focuses on health, education, and water without addressing growth and institutional reform is bound to fail. Sustainable provision of basic services requires a government that has the revenue to pay for essential operating costs, the implementation capacity to use the funds effectively, and the local accountability to make them do it. None of this can happen without economic growth, though, because real governments pay for services with tax revenues, and taxes come from private economic activity. Economic growth does not guarantee that services will be generated and delivered to the poor (not here, not there, not anywhere), but it is a necessary condition to such delivery. Using donor funds for maintenance and operations would be a mistake in the absence of complementary measures to raise revenues, improve government performance, reform civil service rules, and reduce corruption. An alternative strategy would be to program a set amount for key sectors, such as education, but limit expenditures on capital improvements based on government performance against fundamental reforms. Government leaders crave funding for capital improvements, not least because of their potential for graft and corruption, but also because they create yummy pork barrel opportunities. Aid should not give in to this craving to fund new schools and clinics if the old ones are not being run at even a basically adequate level. Better to use donor funds for maintenance, salaries, and operations, despite all the risks of doing so, and hold out capital funding as a reward for governments that meet essential O&M budget targets.

I can straightforward say that the development issues and problems of today are almost equally the same as in the 1970s in most rural areas where we could find majority of the poor people across different sectors. The basic needs remain to be addressed. However, we can also see much improvements in the ways governments managed their affairs with the strong advocacy on governance. What makes things harder to tackle in this generation pertains conflict, terrorisms, deteriorating environment, etc, seemed to grow faster than we are coping. While we need more dialogues, such should be made fast, accurate and "neat." Aids should be delivered in a speedy manner where it should be delivered. Let the rich go to the Pizza Hut corner and let the Pizza be delivered fast to the poor hungry people! Huh! How do we expect them to drive through the Pizza parlor if they could not even afford to crawl due to war, due to hunger, due to political strifes, due to corruption,etc... then global donor agencies impose those competitive index as the determining factor so they could avail the funds. Come to reflect on our growing contradictions.Let us stop renaming projects, changing titles which describe the same things rather what we need is to go back to the basic principles of what cooperation, integration,harmonization, democracy are all about and put them all to the curriculum for primary education level not to the agenda when executives are sent for training workshops.The executives, the leaders, the judges, lawmakers should have learned these principles early in life and not when they are having their post grads afterwards occupying posts with empty hearts, yes, full of brains, brains for cleverness than being wise, diligent and trustworthy. What is new, what is old? Nothing ---- but we need to take a fresh look on them, yes, with better lens [less fashionable but more practical and comfortable gears!]. Thanks Ruth for your strong argument regarding Evaluations.If done with honesty, then these will be the lighthouses for all of us sailing the wild seas!

Given the faddishness of donors and their general lack of historical sense, it is inevitable that we would have come full circle back to the 70's. Who knows, maybe next year infrastructure will be the flavor of the month and we can go back to the 50"s and 60's. Flower power and psychedelia, anyone?

Better impact evaluations will help, but something must be done to get donors to look seriously at the evidence. My hope is that everyone in this business gives up on the myth of the magic bullet. This is what drives the desperate shifting from one hot area to another. Too often the baby is thrown out with the bathwater-- even when there is some evidence of impact-- how else to explain the decline in donor support for interventions promoting ORS in the 1990's? IF we are to make real progress, we have to work across sectors, be flexible, be patient and pay careful attention to the evidence in each context.