The Failure of Development Programmes In India

By Moin Qazi

17 September, 2015
Countercurrents.org

India’s development agenda ha admittedly been a story of a series of failures primarily on account of flawed planning and the snobbishness of so called development experts .For a common observer of the thousand of initiatives for development –whether be of villages or urban slums- most of them have failed because of lack of commitment of those responsible for the implementation and monitoring of these programmes .I have myself witnessed during my long engagement with the poor that development experts live in a planet of their own – in a total disconnect with the average citizen – dominated by summits, conclaves and conferences- each one considered an important saloon for designing some unique and path breaking solutions.. The same big names on podiums, with lofty aspirations and oversized ambitions preening and drooling the same set of figures, the same weary phrases reverberating the halls ,and the same denizens chewing on the same cud amidst the usual fanfare that marks such events as the latter – day emperors – presidents, prime ministers, plutocrats, puppets, dictators, heads of scientific bodies and development organizations and barons of finance parade in their pinstripe suits, labour in their ivory towers and ride in their personal jets as poor people continue to suffer the pangs of climate change.. The glitz of advertisements, posters, brochures, campaigns, publicity material and the fancy talks overflows with verbiage and rhetorical grandeur that give an impression that a mountain is going into labor. And what we get at the end is just a mouse. They exult in long winded commentaries, without savouring life itself they are like someone who stands on the bank of a river ,taking it as his ultimate destination ,while the poet plunges into deep waters , for isn’t for isn’t that the only way to taste the flavor of the water on midstream

We live in an age when noisy posturing too often substitutes for reasoned debate and brash opinion trumps hard fact. The thread of the argument often disappears in a blizzard of gee-whiz statistics, acronyms, and catch phrases in interviews with eminent folks of all kinds. Yet the words used to describe them-inclusive growth, environmental sustainability, poverty eradication- are rendered meaningless and over worn by overuse.

I saw villages that enjoyed a dramatic increase in crop yield and incomes after agricultural scientists advised farmers on watershed techniques – a fancy term for digging ditches so good soil is not washed away. While it will not solve India’s deep-rooted agriculture problems, better information can significantly boost food production and rural incomes.

Paper is substituted for action. Conferences are substituted for work. Perquisites are substituted for truly earned rewards — and there are no penalties for corruption, laziness and divisive rabble-rousing. Adept at diplomacy and wordplay,. they obscure the real concerns behind a fog of jargon and euphemism No wonder the villages distrust all these urbanised gentry who jeep themselves into the village, complete with polyester pants and thermos flasks of boiled water, exhorting them to produce fewer babies and more food at exploitive prices, for the benefit of their urban brethren. They deliver these messages to the village, and hastily jeep their way back to their urban environment. The Policy wonks and policy mandarins however keep barricading themselves against the political or journalistic assaults with their trained stall ring fencing them.

Much disservice has been done to the cause of rural development on account of this schizoid approach: alternating engagement and withdrawal. It is easy to dish out lectures on development finance; but it is an arduous experience to practice it. Any debate about the economic policy for the poor is usually tortuous, long wended and insular. There is a tendency to stay away from the common ground for common goals, for the development of a desperately poor people. More than anything it obscures issues. To cut through the fog, we have to lend our ear to the voice of the people who are the stakeholders.

Although there is so much discussion in public forums of involving the stakeholders for appropriate development of the society in which the poor live , poor people rarely get the opportunity to develop their own agenda and vision or set terms for the involvement of outsiders. The entire participatory paradigm illustrates that people are participating in plans and programs that we – outsiders – have designed. Not only is there little opportunity for them to articulate their ideas, there is also seldom an institutional space where their ingenuity and creativity in solving their own problems can be recognized, respected and rewarded. The situation of the proverbial cart having been placed before the horse.

We the so called rural development experts must have the humility to accept a fault with our approach when it is becomes convincingly clear that our logic behind a particular strategy for rural development was flawed. Rural clients, particularly poor women, are by and large passive participants in a programme, there are fever local staffs with whom you can test your ideas and any unreasonable risk in innovation or creativity can sometimes have serious consequences. Poor women live by the edge; they do not have financial surpluses to experiment with any new programme or innovation. They are good subject for donor funded research studies; innovative experiments by financial institutions should exercise great caution in introducing and marketing financial services or products for them. We must realize that the poor have already paid a great price for development projects .The best example is projects which have displaced tribes from their roots. What has been done cannot be undone. When conventional wisdom fails and its predictions turn out to be ridiculous and when hopes become cruel illusions, respectable people, do not, as a rule, hold up their hands and admit their mistakes. They cannot accept loss of face and the subsequent denudation of their privileged positions..

It is time we respect the wisdom of the villages .Panchayat Raj is just one of the ways of involving and empowering the grassroots to participate in the development agenda .The people are keen to climb their way out of the poverty tap .They don’t want handout ,they want handup.

Go to the people. Live with them.
Learn from them. Love them.
Start with what they know. Build with what they have.
But with the best leaders, when the work is done, t
he task accomplished, the people will say
"We have done this ourselves".

-Lao Tzu

Moin Qazi is a well known banker, author and Islamic researcher .He holds doctorates in Economics and English. He was Visiting Fellow at the University of Manchester. He has contributed articles to Indian and foreign publications including The Times of India, Statesman, Indian Express, The Hindu, Third World Features (Malaysia), SIDA Rapport (Sweden), Depth News (Philippines), Far Eastern Economic Review and Asiaweek (Hong Kong).He has authored several books on religion, rural finance, culture and handicrafts. He is also a recipient of UNESCO World Politics Essay Gold Medal and Rotary International’s Vocational Excellence Award. He is based in Nagpur and can be reached at [email protected]