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Editorial - Deborah Eade
Starting from where people are is basic precept that all but the most avowedly top-down development agency would espouse, and a vast population of expert consultants spend their lives travelling the length and breadth of the globe to appraise and evaluate projects, checking that the reality conforms in some measure to the rhetoric. The already bewildering array of methods and techniques for gathering information about and from the intended beneficiaries of development interventions is a growth industry, which shows no sign of entering into recession for some time to come. Much as they would deny it, the impression given by the endless generation of how-to manuals is that many development professionals do believe, deep down, that there is some universal technical fix waiting to be discovered, something that will deliver adequate participation and unambiguous impact. The continuing microfinance boom owes much to this underlying but, as Ross Mallick argues, misplaced faith in one size fits all remedies. Deb Johnson takes this a step further, and suggests that the fundamental problem is that outsiders, including development agencies, tend to define others according to sets of characteristics which they treat as though they were static: people living in poverty are then assumed to conform to certain patterns, and to share the same needs. While agencies clearly have to establish some basis of generalisation, to foreclose on dialogue can easily lead to mechanistic and self-defeating approaches. In the case of post-war Mozambique, Bart Pijnenburg and Isilda Nhantumbo found that even among organisations that sought to adopt a participatory approach, there were wide variations in interpretation and practice. Equally important, their well-intended efforts were often thwarted by local suspicion of their agenda, and by the lack of a culture of participatory development.
Stories abound of development that went wrong because the right people were not consulted, or because their views carried too little weight in the decision-making process. This has been especially true of large infrastructural projects, such as dams, or major urban programmes, such as slum-clearance or low-cost housing schemes. Even in industrialised democracies, public enquiries are often felt to be seriously flawed, or skewed towards certain interests; in countries without well developed systems of public scrutiny, and where societies are characterised by economic, ethnic, and other fissures, the problems are far worse. (1) Benjamin Asare, writing about the Tono Irrigation Scheme in Ghana, and Ryo Fujikura and Mikiyasu Nakayama, who conducted a post-hoc review of two power generation projects in Indonesia and Philippines, contribute further evidence to the literature on this subject.
Development models are even more likely than specific projects to be imported from outside, with only passing reference to local definitions, perceptions, or priorities. Nazneen Kanji writes tellingly about the socio-economic impact of recent market reforms on women in Tajikistan, highlighting the fact that although their material situation has worsened, women now have even less political voice than they did before. Elena Domatov, Elizabeth D Schulman, and Glenna H Graves paint a similar picture with regard to the worsening conditions of children and elderly people in present-day public institutions in Russia. They argue that the development frame or mind-set needs to be shifted, such that responsibility for social care can be rooted in re-invigorated communities and traditions rather than relegated to post-communist state structures that can no longer provide adequate services. Conversely, Visemith William Muffee suggests that modernisation along Western lines has both undermined traditional values among the people of the Cameroon Grasslands, and intensified their impoverishment by placing the available alternatives out of their financial reach.
Finally two papers focus on the organisational culture of the agencies that seek to promote development, since whatever the ideological paradigm within which they work, their strengths and flaws are likely to be reproduced all the way down the line. Patricia L Howard describes gender-mainstreaming efforts within two UN agencies, in which concrete steps were taken to build on the insights and inputs of technical staff, planners, and policy makers with no prior expertise in gender issues. Despite the significant progress achieved in each case, the real challenge is to maintain momentum in a way that ensures that the approach becomes self-sustaining and not dependent on constant facilitation. Mokbul Morshed Ahmad describes the diverse problems faced by fieldworkers in four Bangladeshi NGOs, and how these affect both their professional performance and opportunities for promotion, as well as their personal motivation and well-being. He argues that NGOs should pay more attention to the needs of staff who are working at the coalface, while donor agencies should recognise that the effectiveness of their aid may be compromised if those at the sharp end are demotivated and undervalued.
Notes
1 This point is amply illustrated by contributors to Development in Practice 11(3&4) guest edited by David Westendorff, soon to be published in the Development in Practice Readers series as Development and Cities. See http://www.oxfam.org.uk/publications.html for current details.
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