Some reflections on
agenda of Development funding agencies
By Adrian Saldanha
Money first
The development expert who asserted that dispensing money has little
impact on poverty eradication was right. Money for poverty eradication
work according to him is not unimportant but social, cultural and
technical factors are of greater urgency. Foreign development funding
often fails to prepare local communities by not creating a strong
foundation on which to construct their own development.
Culture is key
The central foundation stone of self-development has to be the value
systems, the positive traditions and customs driving and
inspiring communities to be what they are, in other words, their
culture. I contend that Northern donors and their partner ngos
(non governmental organisations) in the South have generally failed to
place culture at the very heart of their work. I came across one ngo
which did see culture as key. To enable communities derive inspiration
(and the basic drive) from their own specific contexts it set up
separate structures for each social group (tribals, harijans, etc).
Having its own association each group could defend and foster its own
interests determined by its own unique reality, background and values.
To ensure all associations would strive for common emancipatory goals,
links at overall level were established. The strategy was unfortunately
not given a chance to prove its worth because disportionately
heavy emphasis was placed on economic activities while the associations
remained tied to the ngo for all major decisions. Unfortunately too
donors were unwilling to circumvent the ngo and fund the peoples'
associations directly.
communities are capable
Non government organisations are often reluctant to hand over the
project to the people; people, they say, are not capable to manage it
on their own. My experience has proved otherwise. Here are some
examples. In 1979 we funded a project for processing forest
produce in a tribal area of Maharashtra. 25 years later, long after our
funding ended, I came there to find a well-managed factory supplying a
variety of fruit juices, jams and pickles to various centres in the
country. The entire tribal community benefitted from the project
because it was managed and controlled by the community from the
start.
Members of communities responsible for their own development are not
empty of ideas, talents and initiative. '.local people have
capabilities of which outsiders have been largely, or totally,
unaware'. The values and preferences of poor local people typically
contrast with those of the better off, outsiders and professionals.
They need and want to take a long view. They can, locally, manage
greater complexity. Their values, preferences and critieria are
typically numerous, diverse and dynamic, and often differ from those
supposed for them by professionals.' (Robert Chambers).
I have met illiterate farmers who knew from experience as tenants of
landlords the input-output ratios of different crops planted on one
acre, they knew about soil erosion resulting from destruction of trees,
they knew about soil damage from chemicals. While they valued organic
inputs they wanted to use 'modern' methods, despite the risks. When
they became owners of small plots of land they wanted 'to make
money' as the landlords did. After 4-5 years their intention was to
introduce organic farming. Unable to write up proposals they relied on
ngos to approach donors, and donors placed their confidence in ngo
competence than in the knowledge and experience of target groups.
Communities too are capable of falling back on tradition and experience
when dealing with difficulties which arise. For instance, the problem
relating to care of the old, infirm and disabled in a new resettlement
project was solved when the community decided that weak members should
remain with their families. 'We will look after them as we used to do
in the old village'.
Local communities are shrewd and understand village power-plays." We
know the landlords want us to remain where we are" said a village
association leader to me once. " If we go away they will not have
anyone to work on their lands. And we work for them because we have
nothing else we can do. Even when they threaten and beat us we have
nowhere to go. A police complaint is of no use; we know the head of
police often goes to eat with landlords. We have on our own met and
talked with the Collector (district authority) about our problems many
times and he has promised to give us some land. When we get the land we
will leave this place no matter what the landlords say."
Every culture possesses its own
solutions
Aldo Ajello (called Monsieur Mozambique for ending the war there in
1992 as UN Reptresentative) was appointed EU Representative to Central
Africa. In a recently published book he criticises international
bureaucracies for disregarding local cultures in the matter of conflict
resolution. UN humanitarian and developmental personnel he says are
excellent people but do not have a clue as to the content and
priorities of peace-building operations. In Mozambique he wanted to
bring together a battery of psychoanalysts to propose reconciliation
strategies but he was wisely advised to keep Freud and Jung at home.
There exists a strong tradition of purification rituals in the country
whereby perpetrators of crimes are taken back into the community in the
course of a ceremony. "That made me realise that every
culture possesses its own solutions to conflict resolution..... .....
we intervene with big strategies and a common political line but we
don't understand the ground realities...." (Aldo Ajello, Cavalier
de la Paix, quelle politique Europeenne commune pour l'Afrique? -
www.grip.org).
Sadly enough the staff of developmental NGO donors display traits
similar to UN personnel. Products of their own culture, they often lack
the capacity to 'get under the skin' of those they purport to serve, or
perhaps even worse, do not wish to. One project officer used to boast
of her success in getting the partner to do what she proposed. The
stage of development reached by the project, the aspirations and needs
of the people, their local reality, were of less importance than the
requirements and priorities set by project officer or donor.
What local cultures as in the case of Mozambique can do for conflict
resolution they can also do in every field and sector of empowerment.
We read about an isolated indigenous community in Guatemala which right
from disruptive colonial times was selectively incorporating external
inputs into its pattern of life. That process which continues even
today despite the inroads of recent globalisation (or because of
it?) is guided by simple rational choices of the community; what they
produce is first of all for their own consumption, the surplus is for
the market, local and foreign. Production includes both food and cash
crops (coffee and cardamom).
Information and influences of all kinds - religious, scientific,
economic and political - threaten to engulf the community but the
people believe external inputs also bring new opportunities for growth.
We are told that several indigenous groups have developed contacts,
communication and alliances with like-minded communities in other parts
of the continent, with NGOs, with organisations such as the
International Labour Organisation ' ILO. They are connected with
coffee consumers in Europe and North America, Arabs who use
cardamom in their cuisine, with research and scientific institutions
& universities in the North. To foster and facilitate the dialogue
some community members have undergone higher learning and training in
the last 10 years.
The community as other similar groups pursuing their own path to
development comes up against obstacles in its attempts to balance the
external and the indigenous but the determination to succeed is strong
and the struggle goes on. It wants to determine the kind of assistance
it needs and wants to be left alone to pursue its aims but this is
obstructed by state machinery and others interfering in its autonomy.
(Creolization and Modernization at the Perifery, Hans Siebers, 1996)
*********************************************** (can be excluded)
I am reminded of a music cassette called Amazonica of which
Miguel Kertsman, born in Recife, is the Music Director. He writes
in the Introduction as follows: "I have long been facinated with
my native country's history and its cultural foundations. I clearly
remember playing the gonguê in a "Maracatu" school perfermance at
the age of 7 and feeling immediately drawn to those incredible rythms
and powerful sounds. Already at that age, I embraced the Brazilian
musical world and learned to love its great musical and folk
manifestations, in contrast to the Bach, Chopin, Brahms, Beethoven and
Mozart I heard and played at home. Brazil and Brazilian music have long
inspired countless creative minds and entertainment geniuses in all
corners of the world. Brazil's musical wealth reflects the formation of
its civilisation - Amerindians, Iberians, Dutch, Africans, along with
their various cultures, religions and mysticisms .... And it is the
wonderful music developed during colonial times in Brazil's
northeastern region, and the cultural wealth from the distant
sertöes, (remote semiarid regions of Brazil's northeastern
countryside), that form the basis of this recording : a musical journey
through time, from the early colonial 1500s and 1600s to the Brazialian
Baroque, the Empire and today."
The songs reflect daily life: lullabies and children's songs, a woman
washing laundry in a river bed, preparing a body for burial, a cattle-
ranger herding his cattle. One song retraces Brazil's origins, praising
in particular the "land of equality" where "all blood is the same color
and all rights are the same ...In the kingdom of God it is all one and
the same!".
Listening to music people over the centuries have made their own from
influences coming from different parts of the globe I ask myself :
Don't they have their own dreams too? Do they need to borrow or follow
the development dreams of donors in Washington, London or Bonn? The
songs reflect the soul of the people singing them. Is any development
endangering the loss of a peoples' soul not fatal to their survival as
a people?
**** *********************************************
We see another culturally-driven change effected by groups of so-
called untouchables in the Indian caste system. They decided to convert
to Buddhism in protest against their demeaning status as well as to
gain a new casteless position in society. Today the Dalits
(downtrodden) constitute a world-wide network fighting for equality and
justice. They and their sympathisers demanded the caste issue be
included in the agenda of the UN Conference on Racism held in Durban
end August 2001 but the Government of India at the time requested its
exclusion.
Prepare from very beginning
If the work done must endure it means the project must
concentrate on enabling people struggle on their own steam after the
project ends. How is this done? By making sure people become
independent of the ngo which started the project. This is more easily
said than done. No ngos want to become redundant. They often take the
paternalistic view people are not ready to assume responsibilities and
therefore project staff continue running the project for years on end
(don't donors prefer it this way for reasons of efficiency ?).
Preparing people to struggle on their own steam involves a
variety of factors, demands a clear understanding of the concepts of
empowerment and the courage to carry it through. It was a bold
policy adopted by one ngo to inform every community it began working
with that it would withdraw after 5 years to work elsewhere and
then they would have to manage on their own. I believe this is
the right direction to take. Donors should in fact set a time
limit for supporting different projects so that both ngos and local
communities are clear from the start what their respective
responsibilites are.
Right from the start project staff funded by donors must
encourage people to make their own decisions after pointing out to them
the implications of various choices. The decision should be left to the
people even if in the mind of the project staff the decision may be
erroneous.
The overall aim of the project is to enable people, the so called
target group, become the subjects not objects of development but the
target group is often not at all involved in the process of
fund-raising, and is kept in the dark about budgets and
activities sanctioned by the donor. Secrecy leads to confusion and
alienation. A project director once told me this incident. With project
funds he had started a revolving fund for production and consumption
loans and it was being implemented by his staff. To give people
experience of managing a fund themselves (which they had no difficulty
doing) a parallel fund was set up with people's own contributions.
Operating the fund themselves they began to look at it as their own in
contrast to the first one which was 'yours' (the ngo's). The leader
could not understand how people could make this distinction and why. Is
not all we are doing meant for them? he asked in bewilderment.
People's struggle is both individual and collective against all forces
dividing and marginalising them on the one hand and on the other hand
to build strong institutions or structures to protect and further their
interests. They need to use their capacities and experience to mobilise
resources. They need to struggle in unison and make the correct
choices for their own long term betterment. This can only happen when a
community lives by its values, vision and culture, as some tribal
communities still do. Uprooted poor in a city slum have also
demonstrated their ability to rise above divisive caste and religious
factors to form common bonds of human solidarity against
exclusion.
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