Day 2 of Placement - Part 1
Today's discussion with Augustine was regarding the history of development work in India. We discussed that development work here began mainly with different religious organisations. When social work arose in India, it drew mainly from American ideas and teachings of social work practice. This American influence was also connected with the rise of the NGOs in development work in India. India has had a socialist approach to government, in contrast to capitalist USA, so the concept of NGOs can be viewed as privatising welfare and humanitarian assistance rather than retaining social welfare as a societal concern.
We also had a good discussion about the pros and cons of religion-based charitable work: that it does aim to do good work, but that the idea of 'good' can become a bit corrupted depending on the religious belief in question; that charity does not necessarily improve people's situations but can keep people in dependence; and that religious charitable assistance can come with strings attached, such as having to convert, or to attend worships etc.
We spoke about the pros and cons of 'big business' charities (e.g. Oxfam or World Vision): that they can have enormous fund-raising power, a lot of intellectual knowledge at their disposal, and can have big political power as well; but they may use a lot of their funds on administrative and marketing costs, the knowledge may lack relevance to the field and may not translate into effective action, and even with the power and money they may be too large and bureaucratic to be flexible and responsive enough to be truly effective on the ground. They can also come in with their own targets and outcome measurements, without proper appraisal of the situation and analysis of their second-order effects (e.g. if there are food shortages and a large NGO comes in and buys up a huge amount of rice and flour to distribute to starving people, then the prices of these foods will increase due to the demand and even more people may lose their access to sufficient food).
We also learned a bit about the Indian systems of Panchayats, which are locally based committee or councils with responsibility for development works. These system were advocated by Mahatma Gandhi, who wanted India to have decentralised rule in the form of these localised councils. While these councils do have knowledge of local issues and are elected by local people, the downsides are that they may also have vested interests in only supporting certain types of projects, and may end up perpetuating disadvantage rather than reducing it.
We also had a good discussion about the pros and cons of religion-based charitable work: that it does aim to do good work, but that the idea of 'good' can become a bit corrupted depending on the religious belief in question; that charity does not necessarily improve people's situations but can keep people in dependence; and that religious charitable assistance can come with strings attached, such as having to convert, or to attend worships etc.
We spoke about the pros and cons of 'big business' charities (e.g. Oxfam or World Vision): that they can have enormous fund-raising power, a lot of intellectual knowledge at their disposal, and can have big political power as well; but they may use a lot of their funds on administrative and marketing costs, the knowledge may lack relevance to the field and may not translate into effective action, and even with the power and money they may be too large and bureaucratic to be flexible and responsive enough to be truly effective on the ground. They can also come in with their own targets and outcome measurements, without proper appraisal of the situation and analysis of their second-order effects (e.g. if there are food shortages and a large NGO comes in and buys up a huge amount of rice and flour to distribute to starving people, then the prices of these foods will increase due to the demand and even more people may lose their access to sufficient food).
We also learned a bit about the Indian systems of Panchayats, which are locally based committee or councils with responsibility for development works. These system were advocated by Mahatma Gandhi, who wanted India to have decentralised rule in the form of these localised councils. While these councils do have knowledge of local issues and are elected by local people, the downsides are that they may also have vested interests in only supporting certain types of projects, and may end up perpetuating disadvantage rather than reducing it.
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