Stories in development

'Instead of encouraging researchers to find out what matters to people, what their cares and concerns are, how they see their lives and what is happening in those lives that development can do something about, they seem to value only that which can be counted.

'There's nothing so real as a well-told story. Stories captivate, drawing the reader into a world in which they are totally entangled until the story releases them. The most powerful stories linger in the imagination, leaving something changed in their wake.'

Andrea Cornwall points out that it is not that development does not need numbers. 'Counting the number of people living with AIDS, the number of women dead or maimed because they were denied safe abortions or the number of people unable to access safe water can make policy makers pay attention to issues they might otherwise not make a priority.'

But, she said: 'It is time to speak back to the folly and the arrogance of those who try to reduce the complexities of life to proxies and metrics, and create with their numbers the emperor's new clothes.'

This is Andrea Cornwall, on the Story project

Central bankers can be funny too

YV Reddy is the former Governor and D Subbarao, the current Governor of the Reserve Bank of India


On YV Reddy's second book on the economic crisis

“publishing books on crisis is a minor growth industry.”

On what being a central bank governor means 

Mr. Subbarao said. “I go to some international meetings and the consensus is that if you are a good, virtuous God-fearing economist, you are born as a central banker in an emerging economy. If you are a wicked economist, you are condemned to manage a central bank in a developed economy.” 

On the relationship between the executive and the central bank... 

“There was once a common friend of Dr. Reddy’s and mine, sitting in his office when he was governor. Dr. Reddy’s phone rang and the friend could hear only one side of the conversation which went like this—Dr. Reddy kept saying ‘No, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no.’”

Mr. Subbarao continued: “At the end of the conversation, the common friend asked what was this about? Dr. Reddy said ‘The finance minister was asking me to do all these things and I would say no.’ The friend then asked what was this ‘yes’ about? And Dr. Reddy said ‘The finance minister asked me if I was able to hear him!’”

 Wait, is the central bank really independent?

“I say, ‘Yes. I have the permission of the government of India to say so,’” he said. 

From WSJ,

Against importing used underwear

Excerpts from a GNA report 

The Ghana Standards Board (GSB) would strictly enforce the ban on the importation, distribution and sale of used undergarments from February next year, Mr. Kofi Nagetey, Director of the Inspectorate Division of the Board, said on Monday.

...He said all consignments of used undergarments would be inspected by the GSB before release at the various ports and entry points.

“Any consignment of used goods found to contain any used undergarments would be confiscated and destroyed”, Mr. Nagetey said.

He said presently, the Board had mounted public education on the dangers of wearing used undergarments for importers and dealers particularly at Accra, Kumasi and Takoradi.

Mr. Nagetey said the board had intensified market surveillance and is also engaging with stakeholders especially the Association of Importers and dealers in used clothing to work together to bring to the barest minimum the importation and clearance of undergarments because of the health risks involved.

He said Legislative Instrument (LI) 1586 which was passed in 1994 bans the importation, clearance and sale of used undergarments.

...He said these prohibited goods are hidden among other used clothing like shirts, trousers and jackets in bales to make it difficult to detect them at the ports

h/t - Ryan 


For sound opinion, analysis and advice on a related topic, see Aid Thoughts and Blood and Milk

Is microfinance primarily a victim of political feuds?

It would seem so, if one were to believe a recent post by David Roodman highlighting the political intrigue fuelling the microfinance crisis in Andhra Pradesh. Roodman cites Amy Kazmin of FT

Some argue that the outcry against the microfinance sector is being deliberately fanned by Jagan Reddy, a disgruntled, out-of-power Congress party politician - and the son of the late chief minister Y.S. Reddy, who was killed in a helicopter crash while in office last year.

Reddy junior believed he deserved to inherit his father’s mantle and position. But New Delhi’s Congress-leadership - read Sonia Gandhi - did not share that view, and has supported the current chief minister K. Rosaiah.

So the theory goes that Reddy is out to do anything he can to embarrass the Congress party’s high command, including its golden boy, Rahul. Indeed, his newspapers and TV channels have whipped up public and political backlash against microfinance companies.

I understand how this makes for a fascinating story. But I am having trouble believing this. If targeting Rahul Gandhi was the point, rival (ruling) political parties in states like UP, Bihar or Orissa would have done this long back, on one issue or the other - if not microfinance, on mining or NREGA. One only has to scan a few newspapers to get a sense of how passionately these rival political parties hate Rahul Gandhi. And Rahul himself has been reported praising both SHGs as well as MFIs - the two warring factions in this microfinance mess. 


So why microfinance; and why Andhra? N.Srinivasan calls it a 'Crisis by Invitation' and he should know...

The earlier Guntur experience in the same state in 2006 apparently had vanished from corporate memory. The Kolar incidents last year brought up the problems of concentration of loan exposures and erosion of lending discipline induced by competition. The reaction of the sector to Kolar was to announce codes of conduct and some arbitrary limits on the number and amount of loans. The more fundamental problems in customer appraisal, pricing, recovery methods, transparency, and customer grievance handling were being taken up for resolution, but too slowly.

The AP government came up with district level task forces earlier this year to enquire complaints against MFIs and very clearly indicated its discomfort. The response from the MFIs was not substantial, either in terms of dialogue with the government, or reforming operations in the field.

The exponential growth and high concentration in AP was not accompanied by the required sensitivity in dealing with vulnerable people.

In a potentially volatile environment, MFIs have been slow or worse, unwilling to learn from experience and that shows! Any new industry, especially ones in the social sector runs the risk of facing stiff partisan opposition. What matters however, is how well one prepares for the crisis, protecting as many flanks as possible. There will always be opportunistic politicians and vested interests, but there are only a few instances where key protagonists face the risk of being locked out of their own turf. 


A recent example comes to mind - the IPL. Lalid Modi was booted out in the course of events that were triggered off by a mere tweet - a fall so swift and so far down that no one could have anticipated it, let alone Modi himself. No one in this story is clean, with everyone having their own shares in the pie. But what was clear was the brash arrogance of Modi that alienated him from his influential friends who initially egged him on, but always had the power to pull the plug on him at any time of their own choosing - which they did. Modi had left too many loose ends and is now paying the price. 


This comparison might be a bit stretched and there are layers of complexity exclusive to each. Surely, I am not painting the microfinance sector as roundly corrupt. MFI staff I met in West Bengal in 2007 used to say that they had to be very careful of local political workers, who were looking for the slightest chance to attack and discredit MFIs. I heard similar stories in Karnataka. So its not like MFIs were unaware what the potential risks were. Here is an industry that has such enterprising and visionary individuals, people who understood development as well as business. But as an industry, MFIs seem to have failed, this time at least. Why did they not plan better? Why did they not self-regulate more forcefully? Was it greed and arrogance, or were they plain naive? 

The rhetoric is right! Will we see any action?

India's foremost environmental activist happens to the Environment Minister of the country - Jairam Ramesh. Last week, he said - 

"The luxurious growth of large-size vehicles like SUVs is really a growth of concern... use of vehicles like SUVs and BMW in countries like India is criminal"  

In India, diesel is subsidised and costs a good deal lesser than petrol, primarily to reduce the cost of transport of essential goods and as a support to the farm sector.    

"We are subsidising diesel. We have reformed policy as far as petrol is concerned. We are yet to reform as far as the net effect of diesel subsidy is concerned," he said.

"And certainly put a penalty on the type of cars that you don't want to see on the roads which is diesel driven car, SUVs," the minister said. 

Given that the activist minister is taking on the rich and mighty, a powerful lobby and his own brethren, there is little chance of a radical overhaul. But we will see, not losing hope here... 

Ghana, you are not the only one

nor will you be the last, to come to this realisation - 

Madam Speaker, the five years exemption period granted to Companies engaged in the construction for letting or sale of residential premises under Section 11(6) of Act 592 was mainly to create affordable accommodation for the middle to low income earners. Unfortunately, the real estate developers focused on building for the high and upper class of the society while abandoning the original purpose. The government proposes to abolish the general five year tax exemption for real estate developers. 

From Ghana's 2011 budget 

Akula's story

...I bought a one-way plane ticket to Hyderabad and packed a single gym bag with clothes. I wanted to travel like Mahatma Gandhi—no unnecessary attachments, no excess of material goods. I had read about Gandhi’s experiences in South Africa as a young man, when he was first developing his ideas, and I wanted to experience that same kind of awakening

from Vikram Akula's autobiography. Fair show, from the man who recently said in an interview - 

“I’ve made a tonne of money,more than I ever thought I would make in my lifetime and my kid’s lifetime combined.”

“I own 3.4 per cent of the company as stock options, the company has a $2 billion market cap…so on paper I am worth about $8 million.”

“You want the pre-tax or the post-tax number? I’m comfortable saying it. I made a gross sale of about $12 million, so that’s $8.5 million post tax.” 

Finally, for some Bollywoodish gossip, see here 

Wanted: More Psychics in Development

Sign at a Psychic Booth in Covent Garden, London; Photo credit: Dean Karlan, my boss H/T - IPA Blog

Know your legislators

PRS Legislative Research recently completed five years. I think its a great source of information about Indian politics and our parliamentarians and a change from the usual media publicity that politicians get. For instance, check out The Seeds Bill that is up for consideration in the current session of Parliament.


From a recent PRS blog

Most of us don’t know that more than 80 percent of our MPs have college degrees.  Most of us don’t know that the average attendance rate in Parliament is close to 80 percent in the past year.  Most of us don’t know that Parliament has worked for more than 90 percent of the scheduled time in recent sessions, despite the undesirable disruptions in Parliament. There is a lot that is wrong with our politics, but we hope that some of these facts throw light about some lesser known aspects about our MPs.  

For many of us, politicians are the ultimate villains. Would it not be a lot easier to have an opinion about them if we knew better what they actually did? You can also check out the Lok Sabha website - messy, but informative...Also, if you are interested in learning more about elections and candidates, check out the National Election Watch.

From rural toilets to urban showers: questions of usage

Work this morning started with a surprise meeting with someone working on a water and sanitation initiative in the southern Ghana. My Gram Vikas days flashed in my memory as we discussed toilet jargon for a bit - twin-pit pour flush household latrines - and more about maintenance funds and financing schemes for further expansion. It was striking how similar different wat-san programs could be.

• Management issues
• Maintenance funds were being collected, but not utilised and in the first place, there wasn't good data on who pays and how regularly. The community mobilisers now wanted to use these funds as sources of capital for small loans to the community or to be used as collateral to leverage bigger bank loans.
• The community wat-san committees were not strong enough and one needed to rethink its composition and functions in order to improve its effectiveness. 
• Design issues
• Communities in the Ghana program didn't like communal toilets since those were far away from where the houses were and therefore, preferred individual household toilets. Now they have encountered problems of space for toilets and are considering communal toilets for a small group of houses
• Problems of waste disposal persist - what toilet designs work best? who will dispose the waste when the pit fills out etc  

There were a thousand more questions I would have loved to ask...some other time, probably. What was clear though was that there are numerous opportunities for these communities and programs to learn from each other, irrespective of how many miles apart they were. The essential questions of sustainable finance, participatory design and community ownership are ever so important and will remain so if new wat-san facilities were to improve the quality of lives of the users. Else, these will lie as unused (and often disgusting) symbols of an ill-conceived attempt to 'do good'.

In any case, my day ended with a successful attempt to convince my landlady that a bathtub in a bathroom that was about 3 ft*10 ft and already had a wash-basin and a commode - would not be a good idea even if the wash-basin were pushed out of the bathroom and the commode pushed further towards the door. For one, not many in this house are known to take luxurious baths and I reasoned that there would be much more value added if we just had a slightly more spacious shower.

Although I was only one of the two present users of the bathroom and had monopolised the user-feedback channel, I am sure I have done my house-mate some good. And by heeding my feedback - that of a mere tenant - my landlady might just have made a big improvement in my quality of life here in Accra.

Local-level accountability: lessons from Latin America

Expectations of gains from citizen participation in governments is a strong motivator for proponents of democratic decentralisation. These expectations need to be realistic, as experiences with local governments in various contexts have shown. One of the measures of local-level accountability is the level of corruption in local government. 


A 2009 NBER paper by Ferraz and Finan asks whether electoral accountability can reduce corruption in Brazil. They find that local government officials facing re-election are significantly less corrupt than those who are not, with the former witnessing corruption levels that are, on average, 27% lower than the latter.

Overall, the findings suggest that electoral rules that enhance political accountability play a crucial role in constraining politician’s corrupt behavior even in an institutional context where corruption is pervasive and elites dominate local politics. 

The importance of electoral accountability is also brought out in a recent paper by Merilee Grindle, which discusses local-level accountability in Mexico. In order to determine the chances of popular participation translating into accountable governments, Grindle suggests we ask the three following questions - 

1. Can citizens use the vote effectively to reward and punish the general or specific performance of local public officials and/or the parties they represent? 2. Can citizens generate response to their collective needs from local governments? 3. Can citizens be ensured of fair and equitable treatment from public agencies at local levels? 

In other words, to what extent do citizens have recourse to sanctions, benefits, and rights when local governments assume more responsibilities and political systems become more competitive? 

Grindle points out that the ability of communities to reward and sanction through elections; employ strategies to secure benefits from public institutions/officials; and to demand rights is dependent on their specific experiences of participation in governance over the years.


Of course, electoral accountability is not all that straightforward. Limits on terms of elected local government members is a constraint to people's power to sanction. Emergence of a perverse culture of patronage politics is another hindrance to effective electoral accountability. On the other hand, the potential gains from elections are also significant - 

...the increased importance of competitive elections in Mexico’s municipalities also provided opportunities for new leadership groups to reach public office, some of whom had strong commitments to introducing more participatory and responsive forms of governance.  As experience with more democratic local elections increases, it may well be that ideas about the right to good performance will become more prominent. Additionally, the accountability mechanisms introduced in a number of municipalities from the top down may become more institutionalized over time and thus provide more focus on good performance as an everyday expectation.

h/t - Eldis

What visiting Presidents do when in India

Asking for trouble

The story of a household survey that got in trouble

The survey in the state was done in Karimadom colony, an area having predominant Muslim population, on October 2 last. Questions such as `Do you like Osama Bin Laden' and `Do you wear burqa' were included in the survey which had sought answers to 98 queries. As some local people raised doubts about the survey by a five-member team, the police was informed and the team members were taken into custody

reports The Week. Not surprising really, considering the above. And of all places, in Kerala!

Tales of Shit

Where do you shit? In developing countries, the answer may determine whether you live or die. Around 2.6 billion people defecate in the open. The consequences are dire: shit carries disease and is a major killer. Recently, a radical new participatory approach called Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) has encouraged millions of people to look at, talk about and tackle the problems caused by open defecation. Communities analyse their hygiene habits and practices and mobilise to take collective action to totally sanitise their environments. Following its development and spread in Asia, CLTS is now being piloted in Africa, and this special issue of PLA Notes draws on this growing body of experience.

From the recent PLA 61

And as ever, the International Glossary of Shit continues to amuse - the list is over 3 pages. You can contribute here.

Defining governance

"...What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? And how do I get rid of you?”

From the World Bank Governance blog - the five questions 'governance' asks that goes beyond 'public sector management'

The development elite

The ongoing debate over professionals in development - a.k.a Kristof bashing - is a great one. The sector needs professionals, not amateurs. Fully agree. So are development professionals an elite corps? Here is J on 'elitism'

I mean, no one complains that neurosurgery is a terribly elitist field of practice. Or what about high-stakes contract law? Those fields are both dominated by a very small and, for lack of a better term, elite group of practitioners. And for very good reason, as I think most of us would agree. There are horrible consequences for even the smallest error while a patient is on the table. One misstep during the proceeding of a contract lawsuit can have far-reaching effects, beyond even the immediate issue of money.

He goes on to argue that development, similarly, is a specialised field that requires professional training and expertise. I agree. To extent that this argument is used to ward off untrained novices from a summer of development tourism, yes. 


However, it is important to emphasise that that's not where the story ends. Let's look at the examples of elite fields above. Is development a specialised field like medicine or law? No it is not; it is an entire organisation in itself. For the most part, it is exactly the same set of activities being organised/attempted in poor countries/communities that rich country/community citizens entrust their governments and/or the private sector to - health, education, jobs etc. Therefore, it is a field that could call upon the services of the surgeon or the lawyer...or the nuclear scientist, the engineer, the accountant, the journalist and the photographer, as need be. 


As a field professionals with diverse specialities need to come together, it is quite unlike, say, an operating table where medics run the show. If one did have to compare, development work should be compared to running a whole organisation and not just completing a specific task. Only then would its complexity and the implementation challenges be obvious.   


And just like doctors alone cannot improve public health in a community, it would be dangerous to assume that specialised knowledge would translate into development successes. I say this well aware that none of the bloggers I reference have actually made this claim. I think this is a point worth making nonetheless, if only, as a note of caution. Let the development elite march on...