Archive for the 'Poverty' Category

Back when I first entered graduate school, I was passionate about having some kind of career in international development, so I could help end the absolute poverty that still exists in many parts of Africa and Asia. But as I progressed through my coursework and actually interacted with students who had previously worked for the World Bank, who had volunteered in the Peace Corps, or who had other sorts of work experience with international development, I began to realize that international development was a complicated, cliquish affair.

For my classes, I read endless graphically appealing reports put out by the World Bank and other development agencies. They used lofty language and feel-good terms like “country ownership,” “local participation,” and “accountability.” These agencies weren’t about exploiting the poor, as protestors claimed! But the reports also said poor countries need to do “x,” they need to do “y,” they need to do “z” … on and on. How could some developing country run by an undertrained, inexperienced, oftentimes corrupt, bureaucracy really manage to execute such a laundry list of reforms, all while harmoniously coordinating with an array of “stakeholders” — citizens, NGOs, donor agencies, local governments, etc.?

I came to the belief that ultimately, only the people themselves in a country can help themselves. Rich country donors can have a secondary, auxiliary role, but ultimately, the initiative and effort must come from the people themselves. Countries that have been pulling themselves out of poverty, such as China and India, have had some of the least outside help/interference.

Today, with all these new epiphanies, I think the idea that the United States could go into Iraq and bring about a stable democracy was a profoundly naive one. The world hasn’t been able to build stable democracies and eliminate absolute poverty in many developing countries. Billions of dollars have been thrown at Africa, and there is relatively little to show for it. It’s difficult enough to accomplish anything in a stable country. How can the United States pull it all off in a country full of insurgents and ethnic cleavages?

But I would like to be proven wrong. I want democracy to succeed in Iraq. I would rather be wrong and have a functioning Iraq than be right and have a deteriorating Iraq.

And while I’m currently disillusioned by the current state of affairs in the arena of international development, I’m not about to abandon my commitment to it. There are some powerful voices out there who are clearing the air and advocating for much-needed reform. One voice is that of Thomas Dichter, who wrote the aptly titled book Despite Good Intentions: Why Development Assistance to the Third World Has Failed. Another is that of William Easterly, who wrote The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill And So Little Good. (He also wrote a great op-ed for April 22’s Washington Post.)

The United States has undertaken a grand, utopian social engineering project in Iraq. It took the United States nearly 200 years from independence to get to a point where women could vote and the races had equal rights. The country had its own separatist movement and civil war in the 1860s. Descendents of Europeans decimated the Native Amerian populations in the United States’ own version of sectarian strife. The American experiment with democracy unfolded organically over centuries. Now the United States thinks it can orchestrate it all again with the wave of a magic wand in a distant country with a different historical trajectory.

Like I said earlier, I want to be proven wrong.

We’re all aware that in poor developing countries, fewer girls than boys attend school. International development “experts” have analyzed the problem to death and have produced heaps of books and reports that offer all sorts of explanations and solutions for the school-attendance gender gap. (Examples: Girls aren’t in school because the culture is patriarchal. The solution is to offer parents cash or food subsidies to keep their daughters in school.)

Sometimes in life, however, problems aren’t as complex as they might seem. I’ve recently come across two pieces of evidence that suggest that part of the gender gap in school attendance is simply a matter of feminine hygiene — or lack of it. With more maxi-pads and more toilets, more adolescent girls could be back in school.

Piece of Evidence #1 (Source: Thomas Friedman’s April 18, 2007, column)

Naisiae Tobiko, a 28-year-old Kenyan woman, noticed that when she was a child, girls from families poorer than hers often came to school, but as they grew older, they missed four days of school each month. Many even ended up dropping out because of missed school days. She asked them what was going on, and they said they could not attend school when they were menstruating because their families could not afford maxi-pads.

“How can I come to a place when I am bleeding?” asked the girls, some of whom were using rags or mud. 

Today, it’s Tobiko to the rescue. In partnership with the Girl Child Network and other NGOs, she distributes free menstrual products to girls. So far she’s reached 189,000 girls out of a target of 500,000. More maxi-pads equals more educated young women, which equals more informed moms, which equals healthier, happier children in the next generation.

Piece of Evidence #2 (Source: Page 378 of William Easterly’s hardcover book The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good and Nov. 29, 2004’s BusinessWeek article “The eBay Way“)

GlobalGiving is a “matchmaking” organization that pairs development projects with funders. In 2002, some teachers in Coimbatore, India, noticed that many girls were leaving school once they reached puberty. The teachers posted a project on GlobalGiving. The project ad was titled “New Toilet Block for School. $5,000.” Four U.S. donors, including a writer from New York City, funded the project. Three months later, the girls had their own toilet block. It turns out that girls had been dropping out en masse because lack of private toilets made them feel embarrassed when they were menstruating. Two years after the toilet block was constructed, 100 girls had stayed in school. GlobalGiving estimates that by 2012, 440 girls will have stayed through graduation — that’s $11.36 per girl to keep her in school.

Sometimes, it’s the small things that make all the difference.

If you ever took an economics class you probably learnt a lot about subsidies, tariffs and quotas and drew dorky supply-demand charts to show the theoretical impact of these on consumers, producers and the economy. But few of us were ever told stories about the actual effect of subsidies, tariffs and things like that, on real people.
Well, now may be a good time to find out.

I have been closely following the current debate in the U.S. Congress over government programs that have been assisting farmers in America for years. If you watch C-Span sometimes, then you probably have been too.

Here are some facts:

The U.S. government’s farm subsidy program (i.e. financial support to farmers in America) in effect deny millions of people in poor countries a chance to survive in the global economy. U.S. farm policies have been around since the Depression era when farmers really did need the help. But due to sheer government negligence in upgrading policies for changing times, as well as due to the power of some fierce agricultural lobbies, these subsidies have remained to this day.

So how do they affect people in poor countries?

When subsidies are given to U.S. farmers, they are able to produce more rice, sugar, cotton or wheat than they would normally be able to produce given the regular prices of inputs. As a result, over-production takes place, and the world prices of these commodities are artificially lowered (remember that as supply goes up, prices goes down!), which means that farmers in poor countries like Mali, Laos or Cambodia are not able to get a fair price for these same products when they are sold on the world market.

Quite obviously, the governments of these puny countries also don’t have the same-sized war chest as the U.S. government that would enable them to help their own farmers with subsidies. As a result, farmers in poor countries suffer, or even get priced out of the market.

The primary justification given by the U.S. government for providing support to farmers is that it is necessary to protect small-holder farming families which are unable to deal with the high costs of inputs, such as tractors, pesticides etc.

However, the facts show that subsidies overwhelmingly go to the largest farmers and agribusinesses in the United States. According to the Environmental Working Group, between 1995 and 2005, the largest 4 percent of farms garnered half of farm subsidy payments, while the largest 10 percent pulled in 73 percent.

Important note: these large farmers are also important contributors to the political campaigns of elected officials from farm states.

Although the domestic rice market in the United States is saturated, the U.S. government continues to subsidize rice that the U.S. sells in the world market. Rice producers are among the biggest beneficiaries of the U.S. farm program.

Meanwhile, rice is a staple in the diets of half the world, in countries like Cambodia, Bangladesh and other countries, and an important symbol of rural self-sufficiency and national identity. Subsidized rice provides a deathblow to farmers in Asia that don’t stand a chance against the mighty U.S. Treasury.

Also of note: As if these massive rice subsidies weren’t enough, recently the U.S. Patents and Trademark Office granted a Texas company a patent for basmati rice, which Indians been eating for hundreds of years. After a long and painful battle the patent was finally revoked.

There is also some hope of ending the subsidies. A few loud and diverse groups, under the banner of Alliance for Sensible Agricultural Policies (ASAP), including fiscal conservatives, anti-poverty activities and nutritionists, are fighting to get rid of the subsidies that distort the market once and for all. I hope they win.

Some years ago, the U.S. government started a hodge podge of initiatives to bring about democracy in the Muslim world. Several of these initiatives were collectively known as the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI).

MEPI’s objectives included reform of the education systems in Muslim countries in ways that would help produce democratic / progressive leaders and tolerant societies. But the programs have not been on a perfect track thus far.

In my opinion, the original idea of investing in progressive education systems in Muslim countries is not assailable. There are indeed schools in Muslim countries that teach the opposite of tolerance and subject kids to rote learning.

To its credit the MEPI programs have funded such things as girls’ education, helped provide books to schools that needed them, and started some vocational training programs. But many of the MEPI programs focus on such ethereal things as digital classrooms in relatively poor countries, or student exchange programs, while overlooking more thoughtful initiatives that could get to the heart of the issues: unfavorable economics, a.k.a. poverty, paltry government investment in schools with progressive curricula, or in schools in general.

Key problems with education systems in Muslim countries lie with the rarity of quality public education and the popularity of Saudi-funded Wahhabi madrassas in places like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

It is worrying that several thousand madrassas in these countries teach rigid and extremist brands of Islam to kids between 5 and 21. While madrassas may not always graduate terrorists, many do graduate pupils who empathize with acts of terror. In political and social arenas of Muslim countries too, there is a stark divergence of views of modernists and Islamists.

The education systems in Muslim countries, as well as the problems with them, are similar. Public schools tend to offer unmotivated instructors, disorganized curricula and poor educational materials. Private schools, modeled after colonial era institutions have slightly better standards, but cater mostly to moneyed classes. In the meantime, madrassas are a cheap or free alternative–most even offer free room and board–and the strict educational leadership of zealous clerics often gives the appearance of structure and organization.

U.S. efforts, instead of relying solely on book donations, wired classrooms and exchange programs should look for smarter ways to reform education. They could focus first on building trust and collaborating with reform-minded local citizens and educators to demand far-reaching curricular reforms that promote exploratory learning.

Also needed is big money to expand the availability of public education in remote, rural areas, combined with a push to get governments to commit more resources and funding to public education. There should be greater push for accountability so that no institution is allowed to operate without licenses, and minimum standards for teaching certification must be set for instructors.

Overarching efforts, though, should focus on addressing poverty in ways that don’t necessarily involve sweeping changes. For example, one great way to go could be to expand school lunch programs in existing public schools, e.g. check out the McGovern-Dole program.

For interested U.S. citizens, a campaign for McGovern Dole is in full swing and a vote is coming up soon in Congress.