I’ve heard it said that India will soon be ranked as a middle income country, the implication being that it will no longer be eligible for certain types of development assistance. While the people governing the country seem to have embraced the notion of “accentuate the positive”, I’ve begun to notice that part of the problem may be that those of Indian origin abroad don't really know basic facts about the country and the poverty process.

Earlier this year I attended a talk given by Lloyds-TSB’s in-house foundation for good causes. The talk focused on the work of a small education programme in rural Uttar Pradesh state, in northern India, headed up by a Mr. Mukat Singh, consisting of a high school and higher education vocational college. The programme is being supported by a small UK charity, Asian Foundation for Philanthropy (AFP), which Lloyds-TSB’s foundation in turn supports.

The audience appeared to be almost entirely young British Asian finance professionals, in their twenties, who were almost entirely women. After a pretty typical introduction we got, what I soon realised was for many in the audience, a pretty atypical introduction to development issues in India from Mr. Singh, not what you’ll get from an Oxfam or a Save the Children website. Because it became clear from the comments and questions from the audience, that while most people understand what poverty looks like, they don’t understand how poverty works.

My impression is often that poverty is thought of in terms of not having enough resources or things. The idea that poverty is only about “things” and money is encouraged by discussions on UK child poverty for example, where charities, perhaps inadvertently, contribute to the view, with which the government assists, that without X-number of million pounds to transfer to low income families, the government won’t be able to eradicate child poverty by its designated target year. On a global scale, Bono, Geldof, the economist Jeffrey Sachs and some of the large western NGOs perpetuate this idea by their call for massive increases in aid. They seem to suggest you can buy your way out of poverty.

After the talk, in which Mr. Singh gave the bleak reality of the majority of people in India and the system that supports it, came the questions and comments. One in particular made clear the gulf in knowledge on poverty, in this case, poverty and development in northern India. It also serves to highlight the damaging public debate on development in the west. Someone said, in hopeful reaction to hearing how Mr. Singh and his wife had literally made something out of nothing in what was just another unpromising village, that the government must have taken great interest in what had been achieved – that they had found the formula that had eluded all others. It is true they had found the formula, but it wasn’t one that could elude anyone willing to search for it.

However, the government in Uttar Pradesh does not care about achievements such as Mr. Singh’s, that there are now competent teachers who actually teach during class time instead of doing actual teaching after hours for an additional fee, that the school actually has infrastructure that functions, that older girls need not fear sexual assault, the curriculum is actually worth learning in the first place and answers are not given during exams. It’s worth repeating….the government does not care about such things. Mr. Singh had trouble articulating this, probably because he realised how alien it sounds.

What would get the attention of the Uttar Pradesh government would be a programme aimed directly at a government school, say, by angry parents, to replace the incompetent teachers who on average are absent around 30-60% of the time, (who are protected by legislation that makes them immune from dismissal), and to generally make a school run like a school. The teachers’ union and the government would work together to neutralise the threat. The government might also take notice, among other things, because money already available in the budget that was being stolen by officials would have to go instead on its intended purpose. The tragedy is that the states in India most in need are the most corrupt, and hence are the least likely to benefit from the kind of assistance Bono et al support.

And this is what is lethal about the western development debate: those directly involved on the ground, the Mr. Singhs, are consistently scathing about the Indian government’s behaviour, whether central or state or local and about the large scale western aid programmes and their officials. He says they are prescriptive and rigid, when they need instead to be flexible and reflective. They are not embedded in the community.

But it’s not just the grassroots that get ignored, recently, the Indian High Commission in London did not allow the business guru Arindam Chaudhuri to speak at its premises because he is similarly critical. It’s not surprising then that Indian magazines have cover stories like “Why we hate politicians”, (a March 2007 edition of Outlook). Which brings the story to its conclusion; Perhaps if poverty in India and elsewhere were better understood by the public, governments would be under greater pressure to act, and to take interest in the Mr. Singhs of the world. I got the feeling that evening that some South Asian parents were not getting the facts across to their children. I guess I found that surprising. But that knowledge gap is important, fixing that is a crucial step in making poverty history.

Risto F. Harma

(Sometimes spelled Härmä) has worked in northern India and Nigeria on education provision and child labour. Anyone wishing to explore issues above can start with the Public Report on Basic Education in India, Anuradha De et al, Oxford University Press (1999). ristoharma@yahoo.com