What ‘Aid’ should be about

 

Whatever the demands of interested parties, the first and most fundamental demand of the largest number of people in the poor world is food - more food, better quality food, regular access to food.

 

We may like to think that ‘they’ need better health and we must deliver more vaccines. Better health can be ensured through better fundamental hygiene education (like the barefoot doctors’ networks in China, after the end of the civil war.

 

They moved from village to village to tell people to wash their hands regularly, drink clean water, not to sleep in the same space as animals, and other such basic hygiene). Poor villagers don’t need special biscuits for toddlers; they need to be able to grow a variety of foods that they are no longer able to grow due to changes in their physical environments. Nor do they need better education at tertiary level; their doctors, dentists, nurses are here – in our countries.

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A shift from ‘aid’ (temporary funding) to ‘development’; agriculture centred on improvements on local food systems, with the appropriate level of education to achieve greater productivity in all related fields. These must cover making better tools, storing water, building canals and water ponds, seed nurseries and multiplications centres, reforestation, developing organic compost centres, vermiculture, small animal husbandry, etc.

 

To achieve better productivity in the face of changing physical environment requires more sustained efforts. This is where the outsider can help the local farmer.

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Agricultural improvements demand clarity of the use of land; farmers need to be protected from expulsion from lands they have worked and on which they have lived for centuries. Exploitation of farmers has existed in our parts of the world for millennia; farmers were possessions who were bought and sold and expropriated as goods and chattels.

 

We must not allow this to be repeated in the poor world.

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Agricultural improvements also demand more investment in rural facilities, such rural roads and bridges, storage facilities, generating local energy through wind and water, not through photovoltaic cells – that have to be imported.

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We don’t advocate cutting compassion. But we demand renewal—restructuring aid into development built by, with, and for communities in need.

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‘Aid success’ demands far more specific metrics than ‘quantities delivered’. Development demands a much longer history of changes, in people’s lives, in educational standards in rural schools and villages, in decreasing rural exodus. None of these can be achieved in 5-10 years.

 

They need long-term commitment by the donor, on the ground, working with local leaders, local communities, local farmers.

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