The professional practitioners of development and well-paid warriors against poverty are not as wise and all knowing as they might think they are

They are no fools, and the professional practitioners of development and well-paid warriors against poverty are not as wise and all knowing as they might think they are

As I myself have experienced in the villages of Madhya Pradesh near Indore and wrote it here in this blog some time ago.

Here is a former IAS officer note back to his practice about in and out of his mind. In a way he become a Hayekain now!! Even more than that! Whether he knows or not?

Some excerpts from his piece in today’s Indian Express:

• A good deal of money was spent (maybe there was a World Bank loan!), houses were built in an urban row-house pattern, and these were handed over to the tribals with much fanfare by political bigwigs who got a nice photo-op, and maybe even some genuine satisfaction at having done something good for these ‘ ignorant, poor people’.
• Three months down the line, a team went to visit the place to see how the tribals had taken to the new life style. To its utter disbelief, the team found that the tribals still continued to live in their traditional thatch roof huts, and were using the newly built houses to keep their beloved livestock!
• Buffaloes, cows and goats were happily munching their feed off cement floors, and the air was redolent with the unmistakable smell of dung and droppings. The tribal people just could not sleep in those brick and mortar houses, or use the strange toilets, or cook in the confined kitchens, and so what better use of the new houses than to utilise them to keep their precious cattle? The project, obviously, was not a success
• …..development plans conceived and implemented without any real understanding of the people being ‘modernised’, and without any consultation with them.

ANECDOTE TWO: RURAL HOUSING IN EARTHQUAKE HIT GUJARAT, INDIA, CIRCA EARLY 2000’S.

• We found that the newly built villages had small but neat two room houses of brick and mortar, with mosaic floors, electricity, and even an attached toilet. To me, it seemed that these would be rejected by the villagers the same way the tribals of Betul had rejected the houses built for them.

• I asked myself, why this difference in attitude from that of the tribals of Betul, and realised that the main reason why there was no criticism or rejection by them of these new style houses was that the state government had, very wisely, followed a participative process, and had in fact left the planning of the new villages and houses largely to the NGOs and the end users, unlike in the case of Betul where all planning was done by outsiders who wanted to provide what they considered to be ‘good’ for the tribals to them.

• What is really relevant is that the lesson is the same now as it was forty years ago, which is that only development initiatives which are done in consultation with the beneficiaries shall succeed, and where they feel that they are participants in development and not just recipients of charity. They are no fools, and the professional practitioners of development and well-paid warriors against poverty are not as wise and all knowing as they might think they are.