Searching in the Rest

Like Hillary, I spent the summer of 2007 working with an organization that very much embodies Easterly's concepts of homegrown development and searching. The Society for Education and Welfare Action-Rural (SEWA-Rural) ["sewa" = "prayer" in Gujarati... pretty neat I think] is an NGO in the tribal region of southern Gujarat that has a wide array of programs that all revolve around socio-economic development. It was founded and is run by Indians who were educated in India & the States and then decided to return to rural India to search for solutions to the problems they viewed as most significant. Their main focus is on health care - they have a hospital and a really effective and well-known vision program where they go to the nearby Adivasi (= "tribal" or "original inhabitants") villages and offer cataract treatment (a widespread problem in the region) for minimal charge. They also have a "women's development project" that includes a sort of microfinance program that allows the women to make money off of making papad (a food), as well as bachaat/savings and credit program and other educational programs. Finally, the program I directly worked with was their tutorial program. If you want to know more about the organization, you can check their webpage out: http://www.sewarural.org/. [Keep in mind that there is only one computer with internet in the entire county - so the webpage is kinda outdated.]

Anyways, I had the opportunity to experience all of the programs and services that SEWA-Rural offers and to observe the effectiveness of the various parts of the organization. Unlike the United Way, SEWA-Rural is far from a well-oiled machine - in fact, the inefficiencies were VERY frustrating and really made it hard to get things done. This is not to say that the organization wasn't successful on any fronts - programs that had existed longer, received more oversight by the Board of Directors and received more funding had already had the chance to work out many of the kinks in the system. Other sections were not so fortunate.

Essentially, my experience at SEWA-Rural showed me that there are echoes of many of the flaws that Easterly points to with Planner organizations in Searcher organizations as well. Given its small size, the bureaucracy of the NGO was unbelievable! And even though the founders, directors and members of the organization were all locals, there was still a huge gap between the perspectives of those who were part of the organization and those who were being served by SEWA-Rural. A large part of this has to do with the caste system, and the fact that those being served by the NGO were either Adivasi (technically not a caste, but considered to be Scheduled Tribe by the Constitution) or of the lowest caste while those running the programs were of higher castes.

Thus, while I agree that development should not be forced from the top down but should be "grown" from the bottom up, I think Easterly does not address the fact that many homegrown organizations are very flawed as well. Moreover, as much as the IMF may suck, I believe that "Planner organizations" like the IMF, the World Bank, UNDP, etc have a very important role to play in the realm of development. Their inefficiencies aside, having an organiztaion that allows homegrown organizations to learn from the successes and failures of other comparable organizations is invaluable. It was very frustrating to see SEWA-Rural start from scratch on so many programs that have already been established by other "homegrown" organizations in other regions. Why start from the beginning if you begin from where others have left off and simply apply their lessons to the specific situation? Isn't that the basic tenet of progress? The IMF and World Bank may need significant reform - I don't think anyone would disagree. But I believe that they must play an important role in a system that will effectively combine the benefits of Planning with those of Searching in order to allow for development.