Aid

Abstract

Sometimes aid works, at other times it does not. This chapter parses that fork in the road into a series of more fundamental questions: Can aid work when it does not practice what it preaches? (Do as I say or do as I do?); Direct Budget Support (to host governments) or project aid (bypassing government, more localized) ? Grant or loan? And, does size matter? Technical assistance aid will continue to fail as long as it persists with the institution of dual salaries, which is called “economic apartheid” in some communities. The double standard, an income-inequality-of-opportunity, is the tip of a proverbial iceberg in aid practices. Research on its deleterious impacts on poverty levels has a symbolic resonance with aid’s “poverty industry” as a whole. Budget support and project aid are both flawed insofar as they may perpetuate inequality at an everyday organizational level, in the workplace. Decent work and decent work conditions are the foundations of any anti-poverty initiative, either in the public service or in the NGO sector. Pay-for-performance is less fundamental than a decent wage, both minimum and maximum, for international workers. Grants and loans each have their place, what differentiates whether they will work is whether the conditions of the grant or loan are just, equitable, and respectful of identity. Equity, justice, and identity are human factors key to poverty reduction. These factors matter all the more to people with less, than to people with more. In that sense size matters more for those in poverty than for those with wealth.

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it. George Sand (1804–1876).

Much of the seemingly incomprehensible behavior of subsistence dwellers (incomprehensible to a cultural outsider) is explained by a scale of values that ranks money a good deal lower than many other assets despite one’s poverty. Consequently a technological change that is perceived as threatening seriously those assets is seen as too risky to be accepted. Examples that come easily to mind are: (a) technologies which have timing constraints in conflict with customary practices such as festivals of various kinds; (b) technologies which move power from one person to another (e.g., the young or the women); (c) technologies that are in some way sacrilegious. Mansell (1987, p. 6).