Honesty

The scariest factor about the planner attitude from a personal standpoint is the following: what may seem to be an honest reflection of what planners might think will come from their plans is never an adequate illustration of the future reality. Utopianism hurts in this way. Regardless of whatever factors go into a planner’s mentality—the future is never known and projections of prosperity are not only vain, they are uneducated and disheartening in the end. What purpose could optimism serve? Perhaps it is best understood as a personal motivation factor, or a way to move certain groups toward their goals in sync with one another. Positive thinking and declarative sentences should not mix when there is monetary and the uncertain follow-through of individual responsibility involved. How dare someone declare a statement about the future well being of other persons—human beings—when the declaration may as well be sarcastic in light of its inability to accurately predict the future or rationally make a claim with any probable certainty. Utopianism might as well be equated with a weather forecast which measures changes in weather (temperature change overnight perhaps) as positive indications of future prosperity. It’s getting cold tonight and then warmer again in the morning! Change has enveloped our lives with positive chance of future success, happiness, and all other great things unimaginable now but realistic certainties in the future years. (Ridiculous).

Wish I Were Still In Baja...

Countries that comprise what Easterly calls the Rest have consistently pushed to change their positions in the international economic order, while industrialized countries have attempted to preserve the status quo. Easterly explains the Rostovian take-off model of economic growth, which argues that economic modernization occurs in five basic stages of varying length - traditional society, preconditions for take-off, take-off, drive to maturity, and high mass consumption. Reminiscent of comparative advantage theses, Rostow’s model of economic growth assumes that economic growth must be led, at least initially, by only a few sectors. Rostow’s model is a descendant of the liberal school of economics, emphasizing the efficiency of free trade. It denies the dependency theory argument that countries reliant on trading raw materials may become unable to diversify their economies into manufacturing sectors. The basic assumption is that countries understand modernization in the way Rostow describes modernization, namely that society ascends to materialistic norms of growth. The linearity of the model neglects to consider possible transgressions based on the culture or political structure of a society. Unlike other theorists, Rostow fails to understand intra- and inter-country dynamics, dynamics which are critical in Easterly’s examination.

Easterly is decisively opposed to the way in which the West has framed the issue of foreign aid. The racist, colonial motivated terminology of the pre-WWII era was replaced by an equally objectionable “paternalistic and coercive strain” which assumes that because those in the developed world have incidentally found themselves in a society of peace and prosperity that they can plan other societies’ ascent to a comparable position. The West still ascribes to a fantasy which presumes that the “west can change complex societies with very different histories and cultures into some image of itself.” These modern versions of the White Man’s Burden makes questions like “how should we approach population growth in the third world?” seem paternalistic and intrusive. Easterly cites the success efforts of The Gang of Four (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan) to participate in markets without “significant Western assistance as a share of their income.”

The rules of the game have been skewed in strong disfavor to the developing world. Between 1974 and 1984, developing countries maintained an interest in promoting the principles of the New International Economic Order—which replaced the Bretton Woods system of international political economy—and began to see the impediments of population growth on the process of development. Even evolution away from the Bretton Woods system did little to enhance the bargaining power of developing countries. As William Easterly comments, “the needs of the poor don’t get met because the poor have little money or political power with which to make their needs known and they cannot hold anyone accountable to meet those needs.” While poor countries chose to participate in the international institutional regime, the current international economic order leaves them with few viable alternatives. Most developing countries lack the economic or political bargaining power to effectively negotiate for greater access to rich countries’ markets without unfavorable quotas, tariffs, duties, and export credits. Nor can they adequately protect their own emerging markets from the corporations and banks of the affluent countries. Furthermore, the political power in the developing world is unevenly distributed. The international order depends on diplomatic recognition of the governing in a country, regardless of whether the party holds majority political support. The dilemma becomes one of upholding international institutions or holding people to rules that are disadvantageous to them when they did not agree to the rules in the first place. A tyrant’s success in subjecting a population is rewarded within the current system.

In 2000, world leaders developed eight goals for development, including: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary-school enrollment, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development. Easterly suggests that the Millennium Development Goals are the next sweeping, utopian Plan. He recommends that aid agencies focus on feasible, accountable projects: “aid agencies could do more on these problems if they were not diverting their energies to utopian Plans and were accountable for tasks such as getting food, roads, water, sanitation, and medicines to the poor.” While he claims that “aid agencies cannot end world poverty,” he does say that “they can do many useful things to meet the desperate needs of the poor and give them new opportunities.” He seems to suggest that a more focused, task-specific approach to development is needed.

In 2004, the Copenhagen Consensus, in line with much of Easterly’s analysis of the dynamic of Planners and Searchers in the foreign aid realm, set priorities among a series of proposals for confronting the global challenges of malnutrition and hunger, communicable diseases, governance and corruption, education, conflicts, sanitation and water, financial instability, subsidies and trade barriers, climate change, and population/migration by considering the economic costs and benefits of each. Certainly one can argue the faults of a cost-benefit system of analysis, but the Copenhagen Consensus gave “weight both to the institutional preconditions for success and to the demands of ethical and humanitarian urgency.” Each of these challenges has particular relevance to population growth. Of the highest priority were new measures to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, policies to address hunger and malnutrition, and policies promoting trade liberalization.

Searching for a Free Market before Freedom

So what is the solution to the development problem? Like many people, I too, am searching for this answer while international aid organizations are planning their attack to the problem. Like Easterly, I am a strong proponent for the bottom-up mentality, putting the aid in the pockets of the poor and helping them to make social choices which will then create a free market which leads to bigger and better things that would be impossible to create using a top-down mechanism. That said, it is important for aid agencies and corporations to search for the market that can get the poor on their feet. Yes, they will need a financial boost. Yes they will need resources of the West. But, getting this financial boost and resources to the poor through corrupt governments and thick bureaucracies is only asking for failure.

I think it is interesting to compare Sen's Development as Freedom with Easterly's The White Man's Burden because Sen's arguments are very philosophical and political in nature, while Easterly brings up the third subject, economics, when addressing the issue of development. While Sen talks a lot about the importance of freedom in development, Easterly talks about the importance of free markets in development (which has freedom components of course). Does freedom have to exist for free markets to work though? I think Easterly addresses this with his discussions on corrupt governments and bureaucracy stating that non-free governments makes it more difficult for aid agencies to do their jobs and help the poor in a developing country. If international aid organizations or corporations could bypass the developing country's government completely then such free market economies could be stimulated by outside organizations. Corporations operating in these developing countries, do, to an extent, help bring money to the country, but also bring associated problems as well, so allowing the inflow of corporations, though having a free market mentality, may not be the best idea. Although Sen does point out some bottom-up mechanisms for promoting freedom which will then lead to poverty reduction (i.e. empowering women), he does not talk about the economic power that the poor need to lift themselves out of poverty.

Would a combination of Sen and Easterly's arguments work? Perhaps...if the developing countries had an open door policy to the West to come in and change their government, culture, market system, etc. If that happens, there will just be a lot of new democracies in the world. However, this just won't happen. What, then, should come first to address the poverty issue and what would be easier to attain? Freedom for all people or a free market for all people? Both will be difficult to attain, but a bottom-up approach would be establishing a free market to which cultural norms can adapt as the market gets stronger and people become better off. Once people start practicing freedom with their market abilities, other freedoms will hopefully follow suit and it will be seen that a free market works best in a free world (democracy!). Overall, both are important to poverty reduction and if a developing country allows for both freedoms and free markets to exist in their country, only good things will happen.

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.

Searchers and Planners: McCain and Obama

First, a quick statement: I was a big fan of The White Man's Burden.  This is not the first time I read the book, so rather than comment on a passage, an argument, etc., I thought I would apply it by identifying McCain and Obama as Searchers or Planners.

Easterly's argument is simple: economic intervention is bad, has always been bad and will always be bad (I'm over generalizing a bit, but not by much).  Markets, he argues, will help the poor to a greater degree than foreign aid or the IMF and the World Bank ever could.  His argument provides data and historical analysis to drive home his point.

Assuming that his argument is correct, we should hope that our governments should be more laissez-faire (Searcher style) than regulated and taxed (Planner style).  So what are McCain and Obama?  Searchers or Planners?

Obama is a Planner.  He promises to double foreign aid as President and as a Senator, he introduced a Global Tax Proposal which would commit the US to giving away $845 Billion in aid by 2013.  Obama is a quintessential Planner.

McCain is not a perfect Searcher, though he is certainly more of a Searcher than Obama.  McCain voted to cap our foreign aid at $12.7 Billion (admittedly, I'm not sure if this makes him a Searcher or a Planner).  McCain took a very Searcher approach at a CGI event in New York, stating, "Aid is not the whole answer.  We need to promote growth and opportunities, especially for women, where they do not currently exist.  Too often, trade restrictions - combined with costly agricultural subsidies for the special interests - choke off the opportunities for poor farmers and workers abroad to help themselves."

Summer of Searching

This summer I do believe I was in an organization of searchers (not gonna capitalize it like Easterly does cause I find it annoying). One of the main reasons that I like this book is because it is all about getting to the point of helping people, not of setting lofty goals that no one is ever accountable for when they, inevitably, fail. So since this book is about changing lives and making a difference for people all over, I am going to talk about domestic searching and my experience this summer.

The United Way of Lake County is in most respects like other United Ways. We raise a bunch of money and give it to charities who have applied for grants and proven that they are making a difference in our community. Where we branch off is the fact that in finding out about these different organizations we learn a lot about the community we are serving. We use this information to create our own programs that are geared toward filling some of the gaps in service. The reason that this is important is because it works. All the theoretical mumbo jumbo doesn't matters less to me now because I've seen success and the process that good programs go through in order to be effective both in the community and with the limited funding they are given.

The main initiative for UWLC is called Success by Six. One of the greatest needs in our community surrounds the education of children in the poorer areas. These children are the ones who tend to get left behind by an early age and in order to get kids in school and keep them there we focused on early education and preparation for school. After sponsoring a study to find out what particular areas needed to be improved in the local kindergarteners we targeted these issues with several programs that get parents involved in education. These programs are specifically taylored to the community and help parents be their children's first teachers and begin to teach them the basics (alphabet, numbers, their name, colors, shapes, etc.) so that they are more prepared for kindergarten. The more prepared the children are the less likely they are to fall behind. We have increased the kindergarten readiness of our community by large percentages and now are moving on to supplement our programs and expand into the upper grades to keep this drive to learn and improve going.

Searching really does work and I applaud anyone who takes the initiative to do something for others and solve simple problems so that everyone can enjoy a better life. I was honored to be a member of the organization and I hope that all similar groups make that much of an effort and produce real change in a truly effective piece-meal fashion.

PS Didn't want to get into the hard numbers or anything, but if anyone is interested, doubtful but cool, I have several reports I can send you!