A New Marshall Plan
Personally, I think an aid economy is often counter-productive. Many NGOs are as inefficient as government organizations, and at a much higher cost. They also encourage a donor-driven economy based on reports rather than a people-driven one based on results. NGOs, including stuff like the UN, do a lot of good work and I don’t mean to take away from that. But I think the model may be a bit off. Maybe we don’t need foreign project coordinators making 10-20,000 per day. Maybe you could supplement a local government official’s salary that much per month and incentivize efficiency and decrease corruption. Maybe that money could be available for business loans, repaid to the government.
There’s an interesting article in Foreign Policy called a Marshall Plan for Africa. They say
The Marshall Plan was fundamentally different from the aid that Africa has received over the past four decades. The Marshall Plan made loans to European businesses, which repaid them to their local governments, which in turn used that revenue for commercial infrastructure — ports, roads, railways — to serve those same businesses. Aid to Africa has instead funded government and NGO development projects, without any involvement of the local business sector. The Marshall Plan worked. Aid to Africa has not. An African Marshall Plan is long, long overdue.
That sounds interesting to me. Rather than money that comes from the sky and goes mostly to administration, why not have money go into the system. Into peoples pockets here. Instead of bringing goods or food from abroad, buy it in Colombo or Vavuniya or Matara or wherever. Instead of hiring foreign project coordinators, keeping them in hotels and jeeping them outstation with translators, why not hire a local businessmen or someone already in the community.
Business
In Colombo I meet people with more money than they know what to do with. I see figures which are, honestly, mind-boggling and nobody blinks. However, outstation, people are actually doing stuff and running businesses for little to no money. Instead of coming up with projects from Colombo or Geneva or New York, why not just offer micro-credit to Sri Lankan people, or actual credit for Sri Lankan businesses.
There are many businessmen who just want to restart a grinding mill or something and they need like Rs. 200,000. Meanwhile NGOs are spending 2 million on a website or printing booklets. I’m not saying you don’t need websites or booklets, but on some projects the administrative cost may simply not be worth it. It might be more useful to make that money directly available to people in the community.
Government
The second part of FP’s Africa Marshall Plan talks about the money being repaid to the government. Now, there are people in government who work very hard for very little money. Like 6k even. Many people make less than their transport costs. So there is corruption. I mean, it’s wrong, but it’s also wrong if you work hard and you can’t do anything for your family. People that are talented in government service often get poached by NGOs for exorbitant salaries.
If NGOs could instead help government servants do their job and make ends meet that might make things a bit better. People are rewarded for corruption, but there isn’t as much incentive for doing right. Even NGO projects, being huge, have a lot of graft. People buy a lot of cars and equipment for temporary projects and the stuff disappears. The contracts are so big and bloated salaries so normal that a lot of stuff isn’t graft, but still shameful waste.
However, if you support loans to people and businesses and they’re repaying the government, then that might be sustainable. And I don’t mean just microfinance.
Take a look at the World Bank’s annual report, “Doing Business,” and you’ll realize that many African economies have never had a business market to fail — thanks to their governments’ dense, unnavigable regulations. “Doing Business” ranks countries according to how easy it is for citizens to start and run businesses — things such as registering a company, hiring and firing workers, getting credit, and so on. Poor countries in general and African ones in particular rank at the bottom of the list. The major reason is that their governments have never had an interest in fostering business because favor and aid for government and NGO projects comes so much easier. In essence, the market never failed because it never really existed.
The Marshall Plan in Europe came with conditions: Each country had to adopt policies that allowed its businesses to operate normally. It made the same offer to all of them, and those that refused got no aid. The offer went out to all Europe, but the Eastern bloc, under Soviet threat, declined. Some African countries will also decline. That means they don’t get the aid.
The aid economy sorta runs counter to having an actual one. As an example, one pet project is to plop down a bunch of computers in a village or city and run a free computer lab. However, very often there’s a guy in the community who scraped together some money to run a computer lab as a business. That guy goes out of business and the donor lab isn’t maintained and doesn’t really sustain or innovate or anything. If, instead, it was easier for the local guy to get loans and learn how to write business plans and stuff then that would create jobs plus computers.
Dignity
Also, I sometimes feel a bit humiliated by the aid economy. I mean, people drive $50,000 cars and put their kids through school based on our national poverty. I appreciate what they doing, but I’d rather see a local guy on a motorbike getting tuition for his kid. I wish some of the money and power would go towards strengthening the business environment and government rather than administration of immediate needs. Fishing rods you know. Someday, I hope that Sri Lanka is able to say ‘so long, and thanks for all the fish‘.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
This is highly dubious. Miss Travel is a travel/social networking site that connects ‘Generous’ and ‘Attractive’ travelers. To, like, travel together, I guess. It all seems a bit like arranged prostitution and trafficking. This is part of a broader online trend to connect rich men to younger, attractive women. Sites like 
Sri Lankan domestics never say anything, they just stop coming. My maid just stopped coming and when I finally pressed her she said I needed to get a washing machine. I was hoping to ride this one out, but I’ve run out of underwear and I have no choice. I finally caved and bought a washing machine, from 
Similar thoughts are expressed by C. Narayanasuwami, formerly of the Ceylon Civil Service and Retired Senior Professional of the Asian Development Bank, here – http://www.groundviews.org/2009/08/14/some-reflections-on-north-east-development-in-sri-lanka/
Absolutely spot on. The NGO economy is a beast that gobbles up scads and scads of cash. And it is infuriating to see the amount of money that just gets thrown around to maintain the representatives of these organizations (the cars, the lifestyle, the posh houses etc). When some dude craves a NGO job because of the perks and not for the good they can do, then there’s a problem. This is not to tar everyone with the same brush, because there are lots of people who do it because they care, and because they want to help–and they would be the first to point out the wastefulness in their organizations. But the system is deeply flawed. Working for a NGO should be a calling, a sacrifice, a commitment. Not a ticket to luxury.
Underdog, “Working for a NGO should be a calling, a sacrifice, a commitment. Not a ticket to luxury.” there are a number of issues.
A long time ago, charity was done for nothing, by the rich. They spent their time on good works that interested them. Now the rich have little time to spend on charity, so they set up foundations, institutions etc that do the work for them. Others who want to do good set up institutions and raise cash.
The question is, how does one administer an NGO?
If you want good results you need to get good people. There are very few people of ability who can afford to forego a career to spend time on charity. If you pay next to nothing then you will get absolute incompetents. Therefore, reasonable pay needs to be offered.
Also the people who work, are human. They also need some rest we cannot expect them to spend all their time purely on work.
There is a legitimate question that needs to be raised: how much of the money you donate reaches the people it is intended to receive? This question is being asked, by most donors and there is a certain level of accountability, at least in the better NGO’s.
For some details on this have a look at this:
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/publications/rs8.asp
http://www.nonprofitpanel.org/press/interim/index.html
From the point of view of the SL, for the greater part, the spending of the NGO staff make a positive contribution to the local economy. The cars are hired from local car-hire places, flats and offices are rented from local landlords, the nightclubs, hotels and bars that they patronise all benefit. Think of it as having a long-term tourist in the country.
The depressed state of the market for flats, offices and the car rental business is partly due to the absence of NGO’s.
There is a recurrent theme that most NGO’s are bad but a few are good, but almost all anyone talks about is the “bad” NGO’s. I would suggest that someone makes a list of “bad” NGO;s and then does some investigation as to what they pay their staff. The best way would be to go through the “careers” section on their websites and see what pay/benefits they offer .
If we can find some that pay well enough, who, knows, I may be interested in working for them? Perhaps even Indi would, given the dire state of Dialog’s finances.
There is also another question that could be posed? Should we hold political parties and the governments to the same standards as we hold charities?