Ghana's towering new Presidential palace

The Vice-President of Ghana announced today that the NDC government intended to move into the Jubilee House.

The Jubilee House (the new President's residence) is a pretty impressive sight in Accra. I have heard lots of times over about how the current President, Atta Mills had refused to move in to the new "Presidential Palace", mainly because the opposition parties had long been campaigning that the construction was a complete wastage of resources when the country faced so many other pressing problems. After NDC won the elections in Dec 2008, it obviously became a sticky issue - how could they move into the palace after the campaign they had run. So they didn't move in and instead chose to work from the Castle in Osu. In the meantime, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which burnt down last October, started functioning from the Jubilee House


There are a few contradictory figures that did the rounds for a while - but it seems the actual figure is about a $100 mn. Government of India had provided the funding through a soft loan of $60m with a 50 per cent grant element to initiate the project. The cost escalation is likely to have been a huge bonanza for the Indian contractor (surely, not an unexpected one), since the original estimate was merely $37 mn.On the whole, I am yet to see revised estimates of what the project actually cost and this lack of transparency doesn't speak well for both India and Ghana.

More recently, there was a news report that the Indian government was pushing Atta Mills to move into the Jubilee House. Surely, what India feels about the matter should not matter to Ghana. If they have unresolved issues around the financing of the construction, they should take their time before moving in.

PS - So, first, India offered funds for a Presidential palace that one is not sure was required; second, this was tied aid where only Indian contractors could be used.  Hopefully I can learn more about India's foreign aid in general which given the Indian government's posturing, looks likely to increase in the coming years. 

Enhancing state capacity in post-conflict scenarios

Chris Blattman has a great post giving pointers to donors engaging with weakened states. He calls them 'fragile states' though and I wonder whether some of those fragile states might be failing or failed states even. But of course, that's an endless debate - of semantics and otherwise.

In sum, fully agree that investing in state capacity should be a priority for donors. And weak states attempting to take control of their territories and people should be given the chance to establish themselves. There is of course no doubt that it is not only donors that can make a difference.

However, from the advice that Chris has for donors, I have a few questions pertaining to post-conflict states –

1. Before deciding to strengthen the hand of the state – how does the international community determine if the current regime adequately represents the local population? Moreover, the international community is not homogeneous – each government/agency will have their own interests to protect/advance. And if the current regime doesn’t represent the majority, isn’t there a risk that strengthening law and order systems or implementing CDD might cause more harm than good?
2. Countries like India have an entrenched bureaucracy capable of resisting changing political winds to a large extent. In a post-conflict situation, that’s not quite the typical scenario? Of course, to argue either that the bureaucracy has to be strengthened first or the political rulers might be a circular argument
3. What about core infrastructure? Roads, public transport, banking etc? Are there good strategies to develop these capacities in a post-conflict state?

Satan is the best person to govern Ghana

says this column in the GhanaWeb

Some will say as bad as Atta Mills is, Satan will be worse. My question is, does Atta Mills have the dedication of Satan? The answer is, there is no dedication from this dirty government which in its short time in power has managed to turn the clock back on civil rights, development prospects, and the future prospects of Ghana. Satan may be evil but, he is a dedicated and disciplined entity. He pursues the vulnerable with unflinching dedication and, does everything within his power to get them on his side. Is Atta Mills that dedicated? If so, why has he abandoned some of the projects of the NPP and replaced them with nothing?

The quality of journalism in Ghana is, to put it mildly, disappointing. This is unfortunate and surprising, considering the quality of human resources I see around me. Newspapers are openly (and highly) partisan, often churning out (hilarious) propagandist material.

Googlies on an uneven pitch

Lalit Modi was a hero. Till yesterday. Actually, much more than just a hero - Modi's flamboyance was apparently lending some extra shine to the Shining India. Today, Modi is a crook. Actually, more than just a crook - an intransigent corrupt megalomaniac.  

I have no sympathies for Lalit Modi. I share every bit of the Indian middle-class prejudice against him. But Modi was never on his own. He merely reflected the general attitude of the BCCI in recent years. Today, BCCI President, Shashank Manohar tried to convince us through this press conference that the BCCI is only an innocent bystander and cannot be help responsible for Lalit Modi's actions. Deft placement and clinical footwork on display -

• "I don’t think the autonomy of the BCCI is threatened because allegations and counter allegations are made" - yes, because the BCCI is a non-political, non-partisan charitable body
• "Basically I don’t understand what is the concept of professionalising an institution. Everyone here (BCCI) works as honorary members and don’t charge anything" - I can totally believe the first sentence. We need to send him to a b-school. Now! And the rest, less said the better...
• "...most of the contracts which are entered into have been entered into without the consent of the GC or they’ve been brought to the GC after the contract was signed" and "There is no question of failure on the part of the GC because a professional set-up was appointed" and "if the funds are coming from Mauritius or Virgin Islands, I do not have any machinery to find out where the funds are coming from" - right! and hence, when even the IPL Governing Council is not responsible for this mess, how can you even wonder if the BCCI should be docked for the scandal?
• About Kochi's sweat equity - "we’re not concerned if they give sweat equity to someone or not. That’s their problem; they can give hundred percent as sweat equity" - please no! let Shashi Tharoor at least R.I.P. 
• On Patel (Minister for Civil Aviation) and Pawar (Minister for Agriculture) - "Those allegations, to the best of my knowledge, are incorrect", just after having said "I don’t think there’s any political pressure and I can assure you that as far as I’m concerned, there’s no political pressure which can influence my decisions" -totally credible. I trust him. After all, "a public organisation functions on trust because each and every person can’t go and check every aspect or each and every document". Oh sorry, the privately held club, BCCI is in fact, a public organisation. And political heavyweights and their near and dear ones holding top jobs obviously doesn't imply any politicisation.

In the middle of all this - someone won IPL 3; the T20 World Cup starts in a week...and the show goes on.

Rating the Raters

All that Paul Krugman says in the NYT is this -

It was a system that looked dignified and respectable on the surface. Yet it produced huge conflicts of interest. Issuers of debt — which increasingly meant Wall Street firms selling securities they created by slicing and dicing claims on things like subprime mortgages — could choose among several rating agencies. So they could direct their business to whichever agency was most likely to give a favorable verdict, and threaten to pull business from an agency that tried too hard to do its job.

Right now, it looks quite like the relationship between the film industry and the media which reviews movies every Friday, often amidst allegations that reviewers have been paid off by powerful film producers to give them favourable reviews. But even for something as trivial as that, I never watch a movie without reading at least three different movie critics. I usually watch them anyway - but that doesn't take away from the fact that I value getting at least three different perspectives on the same product.

Clearly, a free market system for rating agencies to compete in was bound to fail and inflict heavy collateral damage. Ideally, rating agencies should not be making money from the very agencies (whose products) they are supposed to rate, much like say, advertisers, lawyers or consultants - only that a rating job expects a competent and impartial judgment. Not sure then, why Krugman shies away from advocating specific reforms - he merely says that we need 'a fundamental change in the rater's incentives'. What he does say, but only at the very end is this (once again, stating the obvious) -

It’s comforting to pretend that the financial crisis was caused by nothing more than honest errors. But it wasn’t; it was, in large part, the result of a corrupt system. And the rating agencies were a big part of that corruption.

Now, even if the raters were being paid by their clients, we should have had systems in place for them to disclose their financial statements to regulators and the general public. Was there no such system in place in the US? Or did everyone just take it for granted that rating agencies would do an impartial and thorough job. Everyone - not just the general public, but also financial institutions that made lending decisions based on these ratings! Krugman calls it corruption. I think there is corruption as well as utter incompetence - of the kind that just cannot be excused as 'honest errors'.

I have always been curious about microfinance rating. I once asked a friend who works in one of the leading commercial banks in India, about the extent to which they relied on microfinance rating agencies' ratings when making lending decisions. His bank is among the top five lenders to the microfinance industry in the country and he handled a heavy and growing portfolio. He laughed and said - "about 5%". Part of the reason could have been that at that time,the microfinance rating industry, although steadily growing, was still a nascent entity and lenders had to watch out, even when they were scrambling for clients. As microfinance institutions start transforming into large financial corporations, float IPOs and are rated by standard credit rating agencies, I hope the mistakes of the big banks are not repeated.

Elections in the UK and the debate over aid

A clear sign that I am reading too many blogs written by British nationals - at least 2-3 pieces each day on the sparring between the three contenders (see, I am that updated). Of course, I mostly read development blogs and the concern predictably has been about the visibility development issues get in the manifestos - what they say; what they don't; and what they ought to be asked. Here is Duncan Green, writing a post-script after the televised debate on foreign policy

"Update, 22 April: international development, poverty, hunger etc got not a single mention last night. Foreign Policy, it seems, is about war and Europe"

There is first, the question of what matters more for international development itself. I personally find it much easier to support the view that there are bigger issues that fall in the realm of international relations (trade, technology transfer, climate negotiations, financial regulation, diaspora funding for terrorist/separatist activities etc) that would have to be addressed if developed countries want to make a difference to the standard of living in poor countries.

If the aspiring PMs choose to duel on wars, nukes and social security - there is nothing I find wrong with these concerns (although I couldn't quite figure how pensions became a foreign policy issue). Politically, this probably reflects what they think British voters care about. In any case, I cannot imagine any candidate expecting to win by announcing that they will double international development assistance even as they ignore calls for increasing public expenditure from their domestic electorate. And this in no way means that British citizens don't care about poverty and hunger - only that these concerns are not uppermost on their minds when they go out to vote. And rightly so, I think... 

Blue Skies

Owen Barder draws attention to the plight of an exporter from Ethiopia hit by the ash-cloud over Europe.

One such enterprise in Ghana is Blue Skies - a business that delivers fresh-cut fruits from the farm to shelves in British supermarkets within 48 hours. Blue Skies was forced to temporarily close its factories due to the disruption of flights to Europe.

Blue Skies has the best bottled fruit juice in town...by far! They account for 1% of Ghana's total exports and 30% of its pineapple exports. It also employs over 1000 workers in Ghana. Here's hoping they weather this crisis out...

The myth of microfinance: who is freaking out? II

Oh oh. Are the practitioners now worried? I had earlier thought they wouldn't bother much as long as times are good and profits are booked. But today, I came across (via IFMR's India Development Blog and Microfinance Focus) an official reaction from the big guns - ACCION International, FINCA, Grameen Foundation, Opportunity International, Unitus and Women’s World Banking

I am almost dumb-struck by this 4-page statement. I would be among the first to agree that practitioners could have insights beyond what researchers can capture (whether armed with RCTs or not). But I would also insist that practitioners championing their programmes have a high degree of self-awareness and show a positive intent to critically discuss their work. Academics have done rather creditably in this regard. JPAL and IPA researchers have themselves come out to explain what their studies really meant and put their findings in context, acknowledging the tremendous innovation that micro-finance represents.

But this statement by the group of apex microfinance agencies is a shame. This is why -

1. While talking of loans and savings and insurance - I wish the quantum of funds that go into savings and insurance was represented by the amount of print space these services get on Page 1 of the document -  the article is just a blind cheerleader. There are no negatives, no risks, no defects in their perfect big (and fast-growing) world. This is really disturbing.
2. The article criticises the research for using small sample sizes and short time-frames. While the researchers themselves acknowledge the point about the time-frame, I don't think they will take too kindly to being lectured about sample sizes in RCTs.
3. This one is classic - in this article, the authors completely play into the hands of their critics by arbitrarily citing six random cases (Delia, Roqia, Zeinab, Lucas, Kanti and Vesna) to illustrate success - revealing exactly why we need to be skeptical of their tall claims in the first place. Wasted - Page 2
4. They describe seven ways in which financial inclusion matters to households across the developing world - note, financial inclusion - this now takes the debate beyond micro-finance and its methods to campaigning for financial inclusion, which no one disputes. And in themselves, the points made in that section do nothing to explain why micro-finance is the best way to achieve financial inclusion. So that is Page 3 wasted.

Thankfully, the article doesn't go down the road of hailing empowerment and freedom as the ultimate goals of micro-finance. But on every other count, this is a rather sorry defence.

Trouble for DFID?

GBP 720,000 is the sum that was lost "over the past five years as a result of "fraud, corruption and abuse" by governments in the developing world or NGOs using British funds"

DfID has refused to release a detailed list of the projects and countries where fraud has been uncovered, saying that to do so would jeopardise the UK's relationship with foreign governments and risk further abuse by detailing the nature of the offence. And it has also refused to give details of exactly how much money has been misused

I can understand that funds are often lost to corruption, fraud, abuse (and also in swanky conferences, business class travel, electric-fenced housing etc). The reported amounts don't seem too large either. But the secrecy? I don't know. Aren't we all calling for better data? and more transparency in aid? Aid Thoughts (a little provocative, as always) is calling for donors to show some aggression. Who is listening?

Its hotting up now...

By end of the day on 8th April, we have covered 27%

Donate here to the IDS Walkers now!

In pursuit of a modest 999 m, I set off with my friends on the 9th of June from Brighton. We hope to be back by the 14th. I can't wait!!!

NREGA II and PRIs

NREGA II has been on the cards for a while now. This ET article has some details. However, I am not totally sure what this implies -

A secretariat will be set up within the ministry to guide the transformation and states would also be brought on board. Professionals from the open market will help with the scheme, which will have a block-level plan headed by a programme officer.

Planning Commission member Mihir Shah adds - 

“We are looking at dividing each block (90 villages) into three clusters of 30 villages each,”

I am scouting around for details, hoping that this doesn't imply that the primacy of the three-tier Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) system is at risk. Even in states where local governance has taken root, Village Panchayats are seldom strong, and the Block and District Panchayats are even weaker. Part of the reason is a blurry mandate and their subordination to the parallel state bureaucracy that has not been dismantled (and still tends to dictate terms to PRIs, rather than enabling them). Creation of new clusters and establishing a Programme Officer position, if not done in sync with the existing system, will further weaken the PRIs.

What is important obviously, is to strike the right balance. I am not a PRI-romantic blindly advocating Panchayats as the solution to all of India's development issues. However, the solution is clearly not to abandon Panchayats or create conflicting parallel structures. Panchayats, especially at the lowest levels need to enhance professional capacity. In fact, what might be even more important is for Panchayats to regain the rightful decision-making space when it comes to planning and executing development projects and administering the use of funds at its disposal. My research in Kerala clearly showed that there is only so much a Panchayat can achieve with a weak Secretary (the administrative head of a Village Panchayat), who cannot even control his/her own technical bureaucratic staff (engineers, doctors, teachers etc). The Panchayats need a competent Chief Executive, whose authority is not under threat from the other public officials at their respective levels.

To be successful, NREGA II needs strong technical inputs. It therefore makes sense that the Planning Commission is talking about bringing in technical expertise into the system. Hopefully, this will be done in a way that the PRIs are strengthened - not only to implement the NREGA better, but the myriad other projects and schemes that are being and will continue to be thrown at them every year...

Policy reforms in the public sector

Chris Blattman blogs about the RCT on police reforms in Rajasthan, India. While Chris reports the essential  summary of findings from the study (from a presentation by Esther Duflo at Yale) - these are the two points I found most interesting:

1. The authors acknowledge that the most remarkable aspect of this study was the willingness of the authorities to subject themselves to experimental reform and evaluation. 
2. The authors touch briefly on the problem of reforms being accepted and supported by the top brass of the police, while the police-men lower down the hierarchy weakened the reforms, sometimes by systematically sabotaging the interventions being tested for the study. 

Put together, these points reinforce the implementation problem with public sector reforms. Lipsky's street-level bureaucrat is an amazing creature. Lipsky's 1971 essay (Street-level Bureaucracy and the analysis of Urban Reform) starts with this passage -

In American cities today, policemen, teachers, and welfare workers are under siege. Their critics variously charge them with being insensitive, unprepared to work with ghetto residents, incompetent, resistant to change, and racist. These accusations, directed toward individuals, are transferred to the bureaucracies in which they work.

The above passage could easily apply (with contextual modifications) to the popular perceptions of the police force in most parts of India.

Here is part of a summary of Lipsky's 1980 publication titled Street-level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services:

...in the end policy implementation comes down to the people who actually implement it. They are the 'street-level bureaucrats', and they exercise a large amount of influence over how public policy is actually carried out.

He discusses several pressures that determine the way in which street-level bureaucrats implement policies. These include the problem of limited resources, the continuous negotiation that is necessary in order to make it seem like one is meeting targets, and the relations with (nonvoluntary) clients. Some of the patterns of practice that street-level bureaucrats adopt in order to cope with these pressures are different ways of rationing the services, and ways of 'processing' clients in a manageable manner.

Lipsky's street-level bureaucrat is everywhere - in the form of a village health worker, land records and/or revenue officer, school teacher etc. She/he is under pressure not just from those above him in the hierarchy, but also from the clients on the ground. As the police reforms experiments themselves show - unless we get the incentives right, not just for those higher up, but also for the grass-root implementers, effective policy reform may well be impossible. 

On the ground, with the people...

The NGO I was working with in India organised communities to tell elected representatives from the region - 'if you don't stand by us when we construct our water supply system, don't come to us when you need our votes'. It was on one hand, a remarkably simple pressure mechanism that often worked. However, did that slogan overshadow all the other needs that the communities had, but which were not framed and presented to their elected representatives in this aggressive manner, aided by the NGO? It is difficult to say. But in organising the community to bring into play, a simple democratic principle, succeeded in prodding better development politics in the region.

Then again, by leading a water programme, was the NGO letting the state (which was supposed to have installed the infrastructure in the first place) off the hook? By that standard, any NGO intervention that improves access and/or quality of delivery of basic services makes the task of the state easier. The state clearly had the resources and the mandate. But in spite of this, when the state is inactive and indifferent, one of the basic aims of aid is to get non-state actors in motion, to at least alleviate to some extent, the problems communities living there face; all with the objective that the state will be spurred/shamed/forced to break its slumber.

But if politicians could get re-elected just by devoting a part of their constituency development funds and government schemes to a couple of wells, toilets and taps, would that create perverse incentives for the state to ignore problems of poverty and unemployment? And often, it is not as if the state is in deep slumber. It is in fact, very active. There is politics at work, of interests who require status-quo be maintained. There is probably no way to deal with this other than engaging directly with the powers at play.

Should the NGO focus on organising the community to take on the state, in the process, ignoring a group of marginalised poor who don't seem to show much enthusiasm. What is more important - intra-community power dynamics or that between the community and the state and/or other communities? What about issues of gender and social discrimination in society? Or long-term environmental sustainability issues? What about the mining contract that was just given out in the neighbouring district, that will pollute the air and water in this community forever?

I am now going around in circles. But that is how it often is - on the ground, with the people...

Back to the classroom

Mick Moore and Sue Unsworth have this piece on openDemocracy. They start with 

With more than 50 years of experience to draw on, it is dispiriting that so much current debate about international development is still narrowly focused on the effectiveness of aid...

and go on to explain how the 'development community' needs to move from talking about politics to actually working on the politics of development. Particularly interesting is the following analogy -

One of the first things aspiring artists are taught is to close off their pre-existing knowledge of the objects they are trying to draw. They know that a chair has a back and a seat of roughly equal proportions, and four legs of identical length. But this knowledge is distinctly unhelpful in trying to capture a three-dimensional image of a chair in a two-dimensional medium, and to deal with the challenges of perspective and foreshortening. Instead, they are instructed to look at what is in front of their eyes, to forget their mental model of a chair, and to draw exactly what they see.

Further -

Instead of viewing development challenges through the lens of OECD experience, the IDS research explores in an open-minded way the complex political processes of bargaining between public and private actors, and interaction between formal and informal institutions through which common interests can be identified and elements of public authority and public goods can be created.

And finally, the authors come up with a set of questions to shape donor strategies, moving away from the measuring a developing country's performance against conventional standards set by OECD models:

• What is shaping the interests of political elites?
• What is shaping relations between politicians and investors, and might they have common interests in supporting productive investment? 
• What might stimulate and sustain collective action by social groups to demand better services? 
• What informal local institutions are at work, and how are they shaping development outcomes? 
• Where does government revenue come from, and how is that shaping its relations with citizens?

As for me, I felt like I was back at IDS, in either the next MA Governance lecture, or a hike through the South Downs towards Telescombe.

Seriously though, accepting the challenge the article throws at me is a daunting prospect. It is not just a call to do what we are doing better. It is a call to step back and re-examine our underlying assumptions regarding development. It asks of us to dig deep, attempting to see beyond just the surface and appreciate the significance of the layers that unravel.

But I am just an insignificant player in the global aid industry...or am I? (May be, I need to become an academic)

Accountability through outcomes budget

Accountability Initiative (AI), in its blog raises concerns over the no-show that India's outcome budgets have been for the last five years. This is yet another instance where the gap between promise and performance refuses to be bridged. In the first place, I do find it surprising. India has seen vigorous civil society action in the last few years - whether for the enforcement of newly enacted legislation such as the NREGA and RTI, or in bringing justice to crime victims languishing in the courts. Our then Finance Minister, P Chidambaram launched the concept of the outcomes budget and as the AI blog points out, the launch was marked by impressive intent.

Tracking outcomes is a challenge even for the best of organisations with the most sophisticated M&E systems. Even for corporates, the moment the reporting requirements go beyond profit margins and EPS to the so-called double/triple bottom-lines, facts and figures become vague. NGOs also mostly report on coverage (whether infrastructure or trainings) and say little about impact and when they do, the analysis is weak and anecdotal. To be fair, reporting on outcomes is difficult (agreeing on standards, methods of measurement), sometimes impractical (expecting outcomes in a year is often unrealistic) and in general, requires substantial additional capacity and resources.

It is probably not surprising therefore that even though the outcome budget was unveiled five years ago, there has there been little civil society action in getting it implemented, at least not in the manner as seen in the case of NREGA/RTI. A few RTI petitions would be a good way to start...