Global Development: Views from the Center

I hope we are at the end of an era of irrational exhuberance about aid. As so often happens the enthusiasm for aid over the past few years represents the pendulum swinging back too far. Yes, more aid is needed, but that doesn't mean that big pushes will work or that buying red ipods will save the world. How the aid is delivered is more important than how much is delivered. Aid flows have to stop being pushed in a top-down fashion. In spite of the good talk about country ownership, vertical programs are setting country agendas.

Ordinary people and especially religious and political leaders(??) are unable to sustain enthusiam for things of conscience. They all sink back into their old ways. The ordinary people have so many things going on in their lives that things of conscience slip silently on to the backburner. While politicians seem to be able to be swayed by whats good for the economy and what can I give to my constituents in order that my comfortable life and sense of power and ego can continue. Religious leaders are sadly more interested in the wearing of impressive regalia to impress their flock, although the person they hold as their reason for existence never ever wore such finery.
The world is in need of a spiritual awakening and
I dont mean the going incessantly to a Church or a Mosque or a Synagogue or a Temple or Whatever. I mean proper devotion to combatting the injustices which abound in our world. The great spiritual leaders of our past moved amongst the people and told the people how they should live their lives and how they should interact with others.
Remember the little man in the loincloth his name was M K Gandhi and he was given the title Mahatma (great soul)
The Aid the poor people need is employment which can give them a dignity so that they can afford to let their children get an education. Hand outs of money by people or governments which in the short term only gives the giver a one off stay of
conscience, it is not permanent.
Help to people suffering from 4th and 5th and 6th world conditions needs to be in the form of EMPLOYMENT and from that will come dignity both to the Receiver and the Giver. M K Gandhi called it Swadeshi which means UPLIFT of the POOR.

Sincerely

Garvin Brown
Mahatma Gandhi Awareness
garvin@onthenet.com.au

I think part of the answer to the question you raised is there in your post. 'The years 2001-2005 were marked by the reaction to 9/11'. All those initiatives you mentioned were, at least partly, a reaction to the securitisation of unstable areas of the world. So what we are witnessing is not an ebb and flow of humanitarian interest really. It's an ebb and flow of security interests. Just like back in the Cold War aid wasn't only about humanitarian interests (not at all). Over at http://statefailure.blogspot.com I'm regularly writing about 'negative spill-over effects' - a key to my conceptualisation of state failure. One of the most brutal such spillovers one can think of is obviously a jet airliner crashing into a skyscraper in a metropolis piloted by a bunch of people trained in some 'stan far away. So as a result of terrorism the problem of weak states became strongly securitised - see e.g. the oft-cited volume by Rotberg et al., 'State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror' - the title speaks volumes, doesn't it? Now, migration, the drugs trade as well as potential global epidemics are also securitised in connection with weak states. However, nothing captures public attention as much as the chance of a terror attack. What happened over the years 2001-2005 was that the world got used to terrorism in areas far from the centre, as well as, to a degree, even to relatively small and rather infrequent attacks in the centre of the world economy (e.g. in Western Europe). So interest has waned, and with it the aid enthusiasm has waned as well. Many people have also realised that aid in general will not as directly reduce the threat of terror attacks as aid enthusiasts tended to suggest after 9-11. That's my take. What do you say?