assumptions underlying the regional planning …pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/pnaaj523.pdf · occasional...
TRANSCRIPT
OCCASIONAL PAPER NO 2
APRIL 1981
ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING THE REGIONAL PLANNING AND
AREA DEVELOPMENT PROJECT--A CRITICAL APPRAISAL
0 REGIONAL PLANNING AND AREA DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
gt AMuhC INTERNATIONAL STUDIES AND PROGRAMS
OCCASIONAL PAPER NO 2 APRIL 1981
ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING THE REGIONAL PLANNING AND
AREA DEVELOPMENT PROJECT--A CRITICAL APPRAiSAL
Kusuu Nair
Prepared for the United States Agency for International
Development tinder Contract No AIDDSAN-C-0D60
The views presented herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those
of he PrLect
Regional Planning and Arla Development Project 905 University Avenue Madison Wisconsin 53706 Telephone 608263-5242 Cable OVERWIS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I INTRODUCTION 1
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID 3
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR 5
B COST S
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT 10
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT 12
a_
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES 21
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
A ACCESS 29
B RESPONSE 30
VII PROJECTS AND POLITICS 32
VIII TH2 UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 34
IX RECOMMENDATIONS 37
REMARKS CONCERNING SAVAGE OF NORTH AMERICA Pamphlet by Benjamin Franklin ca 1784
Franklin wrote
At the treaty of Lancaster in Pennsylvania anno 1744between the Government of Virginia and the Six Nations the commissioners from Virainia acquainted the Indians by a speech that- there was at Williamsburg a collegewith a fund for educating indian youth and that if the chiefs of the Six Nations w7ould send down half a dozen of their sons to that college the government would take care that they be 2ell provided for and instructed in all the learning of the white people
The Indiars spokesman r~pliei
We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taugat in those colleges and that the maintenance of our young men while with you would be very expensive to you We are convinced therefore that you mean to do us good by your proposal and we thank you heartily
But you who are wise Tst know that different nations have different conceptions of things and you will not th22refore take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not be the same with ours We have had some experience of it several o f our youro people Lere formerly brought up at the colleges o the northern nrov-nces they were instructed in all ycur sci ces but when they came back to us they were bad runners ignornt of every means of living in the woods unablo to bear either cold or hucger knew neither how to bu-ild a cabiniaOul take a deer nor kill an enemy spoke our I _-nr ZZa nm rk ianguace imper ectily were therefore neither fit for hunters warriors nor counsellors they were totally good for nothing
We are however not less obligated by your kind offer though we decline accerting it and to show our grateful sense of it if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons we wil take care of their education instruct them in all we know and make men of them
INTRODUCTIONI
This is only an issues paper based on limited research conducted in a very short time Hopefully it will raise some pertinent questions and issues that organizers of the project and perhaps AID may wish to investigate further in greater depth The limited objective of this paper is to appraise the validity and operational feasibility of some of the basic assumptions underlying the regional planning and area developshyment approach in relation to the stated goals of the project and the Congressional mandate for aid enacted in the 1973 Foreign Assistance Act and subsequent amendments
The appraisal is based mainly upon Congressional hearings and legislashytion relating to the 1973 Act the RPADP contrat anJ other available documents of AID an6 State-of-the-Art and Country Papers published byRPADP The lat- are cited mainly to discuss particular issues in
concrete situations and not to evaluate the quality of the research proshygram of the project The paper does not analyze abstract concepts and theories of regional development or review the literature on the subject Nor does it attempt to evaluate any of the field programs initiated by the project
I had hoped to conduct in-depth interviews with AID agencies and officials involved in the formulation of the project Unfortunately that was not possible due to lack of time I did however talk with several staff members and the two project directors in Madison
-3-
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID
In the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives and the Congress undertook a major redirection of the US bilateral development assistance program
The main purpose of that redirection was to make the program more directly responsive to the most pervas-ve problems of poor people in the less developed countries1
EXCERPTS FROM THE LEGISLATION (as of January 1977)
Section 102 Statement o2 Policy
1 New Directions in Development AID (Washington US Government Printing Office 1977) p iii
-4shy
(b)(5) United States bilateral developrent assistance should give the highest priorlty to undertakings submitted by host governments which directiv improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their capacity to participate in the developshyment of their countries
(c) Assistance under this chapter should be used not simply for the purpose of transferring financial resources to developshying countries but to help countries solve development problems in accordance with a strategy that aims to increase substanshytially the participation f the poor Accordingly greatest emphasis shall be placed on countries and activities which effectively involve the poor in development by expanding their access to the econoniy through services and institutions at the local level 2
2 Ibid pp 12
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
OCCASIONAL PAPER NO 2 APRIL 1981
ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING THE REGIONAL PLANNING AND
AREA DEVELOPMENT PROJECT--A CRITICAL APPRAiSAL
Kusuu Nair
Prepared for the United States Agency for International
Development tinder Contract No AIDDSAN-C-0D60
The views presented herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those
of he PrLect
Regional Planning and Arla Development Project 905 University Avenue Madison Wisconsin 53706 Telephone 608263-5242 Cable OVERWIS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I INTRODUCTION 1
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID 3
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR 5
B COST S
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT 10
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT 12
a_
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES 21
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
A ACCESS 29
B RESPONSE 30
VII PROJECTS AND POLITICS 32
VIII TH2 UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 34
IX RECOMMENDATIONS 37
REMARKS CONCERNING SAVAGE OF NORTH AMERICA Pamphlet by Benjamin Franklin ca 1784
Franklin wrote
At the treaty of Lancaster in Pennsylvania anno 1744between the Government of Virginia and the Six Nations the commissioners from Virainia acquainted the Indians by a speech that- there was at Williamsburg a collegewith a fund for educating indian youth and that if the chiefs of the Six Nations w7ould send down half a dozen of their sons to that college the government would take care that they be 2ell provided for and instructed in all the learning of the white people
The Indiars spokesman r~pliei
We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taugat in those colleges and that the maintenance of our young men while with you would be very expensive to you We are convinced therefore that you mean to do us good by your proposal and we thank you heartily
But you who are wise Tst know that different nations have different conceptions of things and you will not th22refore take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not be the same with ours We have had some experience of it several o f our youro people Lere formerly brought up at the colleges o the northern nrov-nces they were instructed in all ycur sci ces but when they came back to us they were bad runners ignornt of every means of living in the woods unablo to bear either cold or hucger knew neither how to bu-ild a cabiniaOul take a deer nor kill an enemy spoke our I _-nr ZZa nm rk ianguace imper ectily were therefore neither fit for hunters warriors nor counsellors they were totally good for nothing
We are however not less obligated by your kind offer though we decline accerting it and to show our grateful sense of it if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons we wil take care of their education instruct them in all we know and make men of them
INTRODUCTIONI
This is only an issues paper based on limited research conducted in a very short time Hopefully it will raise some pertinent questions and issues that organizers of the project and perhaps AID may wish to investigate further in greater depth The limited objective of this paper is to appraise the validity and operational feasibility of some of the basic assumptions underlying the regional planning and area developshyment approach in relation to the stated goals of the project and the Congressional mandate for aid enacted in the 1973 Foreign Assistance Act and subsequent amendments
The appraisal is based mainly upon Congressional hearings and legislashytion relating to the 1973 Act the RPADP contrat anJ other available documents of AID an6 State-of-the-Art and Country Papers published byRPADP The lat- are cited mainly to discuss particular issues in
concrete situations and not to evaluate the quality of the research proshygram of the project The paper does not analyze abstract concepts and theories of regional development or review the literature on the subject Nor does it attempt to evaluate any of the field programs initiated by the project
I had hoped to conduct in-depth interviews with AID agencies and officials involved in the formulation of the project Unfortunately that was not possible due to lack of time I did however talk with several staff members and the two project directors in Madison
-3-
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID
In the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives and the Congress undertook a major redirection of the US bilateral development assistance program
The main purpose of that redirection was to make the program more directly responsive to the most pervas-ve problems of poor people in the less developed countries1
EXCERPTS FROM THE LEGISLATION (as of January 1977)
Section 102 Statement o2 Policy
1 New Directions in Development AID (Washington US Government Printing Office 1977) p iii
-4shy
(b)(5) United States bilateral developrent assistance should give the highest priorlty to undertakings submitted by host governments which directiv improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their capacity to participate in the developshyment of their countries
(c) Assistance under this chapter should be used not simply for the purpose of transferring financial resources to developshying countries but to help countries solve development problems in accordance with a strategy that aims to increase substanshytially the participation f the poor Accordingly greatest emphasis shall be placed on countries and activities which effectively involve the poor in development by expanding their access to the econoniy through services and institutions at the local level 2
2 Ibid pp 12
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I INTRODUCTION 1
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID 3
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR 5
B COST S
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT 10
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT 12
a_
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES 21
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
A ACCESS 29
B RESPONSE 30
VII PROJECTS AND POLITICS 32
VIII TH2 UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 34
IX RECOMMENDATIONS 37
REMARKS CONCERNING SAVAGE OF NORTH AMERICA Pamphlet by Benjamin Franklin ca 1784
Franklin wrote
At the treaty of Lancaster in Pennsylvania anno 1744between the Government of Virginia and the Six Nations the commissioners from Virainia acquainted the Indians by a speech that- there was at Williamsburg a collegewith a fund for educating indian youth and that if the chiefs of the Six Nations w7ould send down half a dozen of their sons to that college the government would take care that they be 2ell provided for and instructed in all the learning of the white people
The Indiars spokesman r~pliei
We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taugat in those colleges and that the maintenance of our young men while with you would be very expensive to you We are convinced therefore that you mean to do us good by your proposal and we thank you heartily
But you who are wise Tst know that different nations have different conceptions of things and you will not th22refore take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not be the same with ours We have had some experience of it several o f our youro people Lere formerly brought up at the colleges o the northern nrov-nces they were instructed in all ycur sci ces but when they came back to us they were bad runners ignornt of every means of living in the woods unablo to bear either cold or hucger knew neither how to bu-ild a cabiniaOul take a deer nor kill an enemy spoke our I _-nr ZZa nm rk ianguace imper ectily were therefore neither fit for hunters warriors nor counsellors they were totally good for nothing
We are however not less obligated by your kind offer though we decline accerting it and to show our grateful sense of it if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons we wil take care of their education instruct them in all we know and make men of them
INTRODUCTIONI
This is only an issues paper based on limited research conducted in a very short time Hopefully it will raise some pertinent questions and issues that organizers of the project and perhaps AID may wish to investigate further in greater depth The limited objective of this paper is to appraise the validity and operational feasibility of some of the basic assumptions underlying the regional planning and area developshyment approach in relation to the stated goals of the project and the Congressional mandate for aid enacted in the 1973 Foreign Assistance Act and subsequent amendments
The appraisal is based mainly upon Congressional hearings and legislashytion relating to the 1973 Act the RPADP contrat anJ other available documents of AID an6 State-of-the-Art and Country Papers published byRPADP The lat- are cited mainly to discuss particular issues in
concrete situations and not to evaluate the quality of the research proshygram of the project The paper does not analyze abstract concepts and theories of regional development or review the literature on the subject Nor does it attempt to evaluate any of the field programs initiated by the project
I had hoped to conduct in-depth interviews with AID agencies and officials involved in the formulation of the project Unfortunately that was not possible due to lack of time I did however talk with several staff members and the two project directors in Madison
-3-
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID
In the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives and the Congress undertook a major redirection of the US bilateral development assistance program
The main purpose of that redirection was to make the program more directly responsive to the most pervas-ve problems of poor people in the less developed countries1
EXCERPTS FROM THE LEGISLATION (as of January 1977)
Section 102 Statement o2 Policy
1 New Directions in Development AID (Washington US Government Printing Office 1977) p iii
-4shy
(b)(5) United States bilateral developrent assistance should give the highest priorlty to undertakings submitted by host governments which directiv improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their capacity to participate in the developshyment of their countries
(c) Assistance under this chapter should be used not simply for the purpose of transferring financial resources to developshying countries but to help countries solve development problems in accordance with a strategy that aims to increase substanshytially the participation f the poor Accordingly greatest emphasis shall be placed on countries and activities which effectively involve the poor in development by expanding their access to the econoniy through services and institutions at the local level 2
2 Ibid pp 12
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES 21
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
A ACCESS 29
B RESPONSE 30
VII PROJECTS AND POLITICS 32
VIII TH2 UNIVERSITY SYSTEM 34
IX RECOMMENDATIONS 37
REMARKS CONCERNING SAVAGE OF NORTH AMERICA Pamphlet by Benjamin Franklin ca 1784
Franklin wrote
At the treaty of Lancaster in Pennsylvania anno 1744between the Government of Virginia and the Six Nations the commissioners from Virainia acquainted the Indians by a speech that- there was at Williamsburg a collegewith a fund for educating indian youth and that if the chiefs of the Six Nations w7ould send down half a dozen of their sons to that college the government would take care that they be 2ell provided for and instructed in all the learning of the white people
The Indiars spokesman r~pliei
We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taugat in those colleges and that the maintenance of our young men while with you would be very expensive to you We are convinced therefore that you mean to do us good by your proposal and we thank you heartily
But you who are wise Tst know that different nations have different conceptions of things and you will not th22refore take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not be the same with ours We have had some experience of it several o f our youro people Lere formerly brought up at the colleges o the northern nrov-nces they were instructed in all ycur sci ces but when they came back to us they were bad runners ignornt of every means of living in the woods unablo to bear either cold or hucger knew neither how to bu-ild a cabiniaOul take a deer nor kill an enemy spoke our I _-nr ZZa nm rk ianguace imper ectily were therefore neither fit for hunters warriors nor counsellors they were totally good for nothing
We are however not less obligated by your kind offer though we decline accerting it and to show our grateful sense of it if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons we wil take care of their education instruct them in all we know and make men of them
INTRODUCTIONI
This is only an issues paper based on limited research conducted in a very short time Hopefully it will raise some pertinent questions and issues that organizers of the project and perhaps AID may wish to investigate further in greater depth The limited objective of this paper is to appraise the validity and operational feasibility of some of the basic assumptions underlying the regional planning and area developshyment approach in relation to the stated goals of the project and the Congressional mandate for aid enacted in the 1973 Foreign Assistance Act and subsequent amendments
The appraisal is based mainly upon Congressional hearings and legislashytion relating to the 1973 Act the RPADP contrat anJ other available documents of AID an6 State-of-the-Art and Country Papers published byRPADP The lat- are cited mainly to discuss particular issues in
concrete situations and not to evaluate the quality of the research proshygram of the project The paper does not analyze abstract concepts and theories of regional development or review the literature on the subject Nor does it attempt to evaluate any of the field programs initiated by the project
I had hoped to conduct in-depth interviews with AID agencies and officials involved in the formulation of the project Unfortunately that was not possible due to lack of time I did however talk with several staff members and the two project directors in Madison
-3-
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID
In the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives and the Congress undertook a major redirection of the US bilateral development assistance program
The main purpose of that redirection was to make the program more directly responsive to the most pervas-ve problems of poor people in the less developed countries1
EXCERPTS FROM THE LEGISLATION (as of January 1977)
Section 102 Statement o2 Policy
1 New Directions in Development AID (Washington US Government Printing Office 1977) p iii
-4shy
(b)(5) United States bilateral developrent assistance should give the highest priorlty to undertakings submitted by host governments which directiv improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their capacity to participate in the developshyment of their countries
(c) Assistance under this chapter should be used not simply for the purpose of transferring financial resources to developshying countries but to help countries solve development problems in accordance with a strategy that aims to increase substanshytially the participation f the poor Accordingly greatest emphasis shall be placed on countries and activities which effectively involve the poor in development by expanding their access to the econoniy through services and institutions at the local level 2
2 Ibid pp 12
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
REMARKS CONCERNING SAVAGE OF NORTH AMERICA Pamphlet by Benjamin Franklin ca 1784
Franklin wrote
At the treaty of Lancaster in Pennsylvania anno 1744between the Government of Virginia and the Six Nations the commissioners from Virainia acquainted the Indians by a speech that- there was at Williamsburg a collegewith a fund for educating indian youth and that if the chiefs of the Six Nations w7ould send down half a dozen of their sons to that college the government would take care that they be 2ell provided for and instructed in all the learning of the white people
The Indiars spokesman r~pliei
We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taugat in those colleges and that the maintenance of our young men while with you would be very expensive to you We are convinced therefore that you mean to do us good by your proposal and we thank you heartily
But you who are wise Tst know that different nations have different conceptions of things and you will not th22refore take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not be the same with ours We have had some experience of it several o f our youro people Lere formerly brought up at the colleges o the northern nrov-nces they were instructed in all ycur sci ces but when they came back to us they were bad runners ignornt of every means of living in the woods unablo to bear either cold or hucger knew neither how to bu-ild a cabiniaOul take a deer nor kill an enemy spoke our I _-nr ZZa nm rk ianguace imper ectily were therefore neither fit for hunters warriors nor counsellors they were totally good for nothing
We are however not less obligated by your kind offer though we decline accerting it and to show our grateful sense of it if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons we wil take care of their education instruct them in all we know and make men of them
INTRODUCTIONI
This is only an issues paper based on limited research conducted in a very short time Hopefully it will raise some pertinent questions and issues that organizers of the project and perhaps AID may wish to investigate further in greater depth The limited objective of this paper is to appraise the validity and operational feasibility of some of the basic assumptions underlying the regional planning and area developshyment approach in relation to the stated goals of the project and the Congressional mandate for aid enacted in the 1973 Foreign Assistance Act and subsequent amendments
The appraisal is based mainly upon Congressional hearings and legislashytion relating to the 1973 Act the RPADP contrat anJ other available documents of AID an6 State-of-the-Art and Country Papers published byRPADP The lat- are cited mainly to discuss particular issues in
concrete situations and not to evaluate the quality of the research proshygram of the project The paper does not analyze abstract concepts and theories of regional development or review the literature on the subject Nor does it attempt to evaluate any of the field programs initiated by the project
I had hoped to conduct in-depth interviews with AID agencies and officials involved in the formulation of the project Unfortunately that was not possible due to lack of time I did however talk with several staff members and the two project directors in Madison
-3-
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID
In the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives and the Congress undertook a major redirection of the US bilateral development assistance program
The main purpose of that redirection was to make the program more directly responsive to the most pervas-ve problems of poor people in the less developed countries1
EXCERPTS FROM THE LEGISLATION (as of January 1977)
Section 102 Statement o2 Policy
1 New Directions in Development AID (Washington US Government Printing Office 1977) p iii
-4shy
(b)(5) United States bilateral developrent assistance should give the highest priorlty to undertakings submitted by host governments which directiv improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their capacity to participate in the developshyment of their countries
(c) Assistance under this chapter should be used not simply for the purpose of transferring financial resources to developshying countries but to help countries solve development problems in accordance with a strategy that aims to increase substanshytially the participation f the poor Accordingly greatest emphasis shall be placed on countries and activities which effectively involve the poor in development by expanding their access to the econoniy through services and institutions at the local level 2
2 Ibid pp 12
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
The Indiars spokesman r~pliei
We know that you highly esteem the kind of learning taugat in those colleges and that the maintenance of our young men while with you would be very expensive to you We are convinced therefore that you mean to do us good by your proposal and we thank you heartily
But you who are wise Tst know that different nations have different conceptions of things and you will not th22refore take it amiss if our ideas of this kind of education happen not be the same with ours We have had some experience of it several o f our youro people Lere formerly brought up at the colleges o the northern nrov-nces they were instructed in all ycur sci ces but when they came back to us they were bad runners ignornt of every means of living in the woods unablo to bear either cold or hucger knew neither how to bu-ild a cabiniaOul take a deer nor kill an enemy spoke our I _-nr ZZa nm rk ianguace imper ectily were therefore neither fit for hunters warriors nor counsellors they were totally good for nothing
We are however not less obligated by your kind offer though we decline accerting it and to show our grateful sense of it if the gentlemen of Virginia will send us a dozen of their sons we wil take care of their education instruct them in all we know and make men of them
INTRODUCTIONI
This is only an issues paper based on limited research conducted in a very short time Hopefully it will raise some pertinent questions and issues that organizers of the project and perhaps AID may wish to investigate further in greater depth The limited objective of this paper is to appraise the validity and operational feasibility of some of the basic assumptions underlying the regional planning and area developshyment approach in relation to the stated goals of the project and the Congressional mandate for aid enacted in the 1973 Foreign Assistance Act and subsequent amendments
The appraisal is based mainly upon Congressional hearings and legislashytion relating to the 1973 Act the RPADP contrat anJ other available documents of AID an6 State-of-the-Art and Country Papers published byRPADP The lat- are cited mainly to discuss particular issues in
concrete situations and not to evaluate the quality of the research proshygram of the project The paper does not analyze abstract concepts and theories of regional development or review the literature on the subject Nor does it attempt to evaluate any of the field programs initiated by the project
I had hoped to conduct in-depth interviews with AID agencies and officials involved in the formulation of the project Unfortunately that was not possible due to lack of time I did however talk with several staff members and the two project directors in Madison
-3-
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID
In the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives and the Congress undertook a major redirection of the US bilateral development assistance program
The main purpose of that redirection was to make the program more directly responsive to the most pervas-ve problems of poor people in the less developed countries1
EXCERPTS FROM THE LEGISLATION (as of January 1977)
Section 102 Statement o2 Policy
1 New Directions in Development AID (Washington US Government Printing Office 1977) p iii
-4shy
(b)(5) United States bilateral developrent assistance should give the highest priorlty to undertakings submitted by host governments which directiv improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their capacity to participate in the developshyment of their countries
(c) Assistance under this chapter should be used not simply for the purpose of transferring financial resources to developshying countries but to help countries solve development problems in accordance with a strategy that aims to increase substanshytially the participation f the poor Accordingly greatest emphasis shall be placed on countries and activities which effectively involve the poor in development by expanding their access to the econoniy through services and institutions at the local level 2
2 Ibid pp 12
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
INTRODUCTIONI
This is only an issues paper based on limited research conducted in a very short time Hopefully it will raise some pertinent questions and issues that organizers of the project and perhaps AID may wish to investigate further in greater depth The limited objective of this paper is to appraise the validity and operational feasibility of some of the basic assumptions underlying the regional planning and area developshyment approach in relation to the stated goals of the project and the Congressional mandate for aid enacted in the 1973 Foreign Assistance Act and subsequent amendments
The appraisal is based mainly upon Congressional hearings and legislashytion relating to the 1973 Act the RPADP contrat anJ other available documents of AID an6 State-of-the-Art and Country Papers published byRPADP The lat- are cited mainly to discuss particular issues in
concrete situations and not to evaluate the quality of the research proshygram of the project The paper does not analyze abstract concepts and theories of regional development or review the literature on the subject Nor does it attempt to evaluate any of the field programs initiated by the project
I had hoped to conduct in-depth interviews with AID agencies and officials involved in the formulation of the project Unfortunately that was not possible due to lack of time I did however talk with several staff members and the two project directors in Madison
-3-
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID
In the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives and the Congress undertook a major redirection of the US bilateral development assistance program
The main purpose of that redirection was to make the program more directly responsive to the most pervas-ve problems of poor people in the less developed countries1
EXCERPTS FROM THE LEGISLATION (as of January 1977)
Section 102 Statement o2 Policy
1 New Directions in Development AID (Washington US Government Printing Office 1977) p iii
-4shy
(b)(5) United States bilateral developrent assistance should give the highest priorlty to undertakings submitted by host governments which directiv improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their capacity to participate in the developshyment of their countries
(c) Assistance under this chapter should be used not simply for the purpose of transferring financial resources to developshying countries but to help countries solve development problems in accordance with a strategy that aims to increase substanshytially the participation f the poor Accordingly greatest emphasis shall be placed on countries and activities which effectively involve the poor in development by expanding their access to the econoniy through services and institutions at the local level 2
2 Ibid pp 12
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
concrete situations and not to evaluate the quality of the research proshygram of the project The paper does not analyze abstract concepts and theories of regional development or review the literature on the subject Nor does it attempt to evaluate any of the field programs initiated by the project
I had hoped to conduct in-depth interviews with AID agencies and officials involved in the formulation of the project Unfortunately that was not possible due to lack of time I did however talk with several staff members and the two project directors in Madison
-3-
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID
In the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives and the Congress undertook a major redirection of the US bilateral development assistance program
The main purpose of that redirection was to make the program more directly responsive to the most pervas-ve problems of poor people in the less developed countries1
EXCERPTS FROM THE LEGISLATION (as of January 1977)
Section 102 Statement o2 Policy
1 New Directions in Development AID (Washington US Government Printing Office 1977) p iii
-4shy
(b)(5) United States bilateral developrent assistance should give the highest priorlty to undertakings submitted by host governments which directiv improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their capacity to participate in the developshyment of their countries
(c) Assistance under this chapter should be used not simply for the purpose of transferring financial resources to developshying countries but to help countries solve development problems in accordance with a strategy that aims to increase substanshytially the participation f the poor Accordingly greatest emphasis shall be placed on countries and activities which effectively involve the poor in development by expanding their access to the econoniy through services and institutions at the local level 2
2 Ibid pp 12
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-3-
II NEW DIRECTIONS IN DEVELOPMENT AID
In the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives and the Congress undertook a major redirection of the US bilateral development assistance program
The main purpose of that redirection was to make the program more directly responsive to the most pervas-ve problems of poor people in the less developed countries1
EXCERPTS FROM THE LEGISLATION (as of January 1977)
Section 102 Statement o2 Policy
1 New Directions in Development AID (Washington US Government Printing Office 1977) p iii
-4shy
(b)(5) United States bilateral developrent assistance should give the highest priorlty to undertakings submitted by host governments which directiv improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their capacity to participate in the developshyment of their countries
(c) Assistance under this chapter should be used not simply for the purpose of transferring financial resources to developshying countries but to help countries solve development problems in accordance with a strategy that aims to increase substanshytially the participation f the poor Accordingly greatest emphasis shall be placed on countries and activities which effectively involve the poor in development by expanding their access to the econoniy through services and institutions at the local level 2
2 Ibid pp 12
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-4shy
(b)(5) United States bilateral developrent assistance should give the highest priorlty to undertakings submitted by host governments which directiv improve the lives of the poorest of their people and their capacity to participate in the developshyment of their countries
(c) Assistance under this chapter should be used not simply for the purpose of transferring financial resources to developshying countries but to help countries solve development problems in accordance with a strategy that aims to increase substanshytially the participation f the poor Accordingly greatest emphasis shall be placed on countries and activities which effectively involve the poor in development by expanding their access to the econoniy through services and institutions at the local level 2
2 Ibid pp 12
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-5-
III AIDS INTERPRETATION OF THE MANDATE
How did AID perceive aod interpret the Congressional mandate of 1973 with special regard to the following issues
(1) identity and location of the proposed beiteficiaries of the new policy
(2) the cost and feasibility of involving participation of the poor through regional approach to development
A IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR
The Agency for International Development is surprisingly vague and conshyfused about both the identity and location of the poor in low income countries
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-6-
In his statement before the Subccrinittee on Foreign Operations of the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 13 1975 for example John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID asserted that only when small farmers and larncless laborers have access to improved services and stronger institutions 3 In other words he placed landless workers in the same category as small farmers
Similarly in AIDs Report to the Committee on International Relations on Implementation of Legislative Reforms dated July 22 1975 terms such as the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority and small farmers are used frequently as if they were interchangeable to define a single homogeneous group of people with similar goals needs and problems that could be resolved by the same strategy of development and systemic change
The confusion persists in AIDs Policy Paper on Agricultural Development (May 1977) It too refers to the poor poorest of the poor the poor majority low income farmers and small farmers and landless laborers as if they constitute a single group Women also are specified as a distinct but undifferentiated target category among the deprived
AID uses three benchmarks to define the poor These are
(1) daily diet of less than 2160 to 2670 calories (2) various health indicators such as life expectancy
infant mortality birth rate and access to broadly defined health services
(3) per capita income below $150 per year (1969 prices)
The last indicator of per capita income alone places 91 percent of the total population of India (1964-65) in the category of the poor majority4
Whereas it should be impossible to miss such a largc-target it is imporshytant to point out that the definition would include in India and in most developing countries medium small and subsistencemarginal cultivators landowners tenants and sharecroppers and landless agricultural wage workers--at least six distinct socio-economic groups with different needs aspirations and access to resources opportunities and developshyment decision-making processes at the local districtstateprovince and national levels Their responses behavior and capacity to particshyipate in decentralize Kanning programs and institutions will vary accordingly and oft--inific ci even if there are no other complishycating distinctions of ric color -aste and creed
Thus in Tanzania small landowners have joined forces with large landshyowners and the local elite to obstruct or neutralize programs designed
3 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance (Washington US Government Printing Office 1975) p 45
4 Ibid pp 6374
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-7shy
to increase their participation in development planning and to realshylocate resources for development to poorer groups because as Michael Lofchie correctly observes As a petty property-holding class the poorer peasantry has social aspirations indistinguishable from those of the larger farmers Ujaama the rural collectivization program is in jeopardy because it has failed to appeal precisely to the group it is intended to serve--the poorer peasantry
5
The confusion about identity is further compounded by confusion about the location of the poor within countries and regions For exampleAIDs Request for Technical Proposal (RFP-DSAN-50116) of July 27 1978 states that
a market strategy (encouraging as it does individual exploitation of resources) together with population pressure have frequently turned a growth strategy into a model for increased poverty as small farmers are forced into marginal lands soil fertility is destroyed by inshycreasing commercial farming and traditional relationships of man to his environment are destroyed 6
Hence the special concern with problems of arid regions and other more vulnerable ecosystems
The implication is clear that small farmers (and the poor majority) are concentrated on marginal lands which in turn provides the rationale for area planning and development strategy
In many countries however the assumption may not be true In Indiafor example which incidentally has the largest concentration of the worlds rural poor barring small pockets in which tribal communities live in geographically segregated settlements the great majority of the mainstream poor are dispersed throughout the country in mixed villageswithin a larger population composed of several income categoriesFurthermore the majority of them are concentrated in the rich irrigated tracts rather than in the marginalarid farming areas
Thus rice is the major staple grown in India The acreage under rice in three major rice producing States is as follows
Madhya Pradesh 4553000 hectares
Andhra Pradesh 3895000 hectares
Tamilnadu 2564000 hectares
In 1975-76
5 See Michael Lofchie Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics vol 8 no 3 (April 1976) pp 479-499
6 PFP-DSAN-50116 1978 p 9
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-8-
The proportion of rice acreage under irrigation in each State (1975-76)
however is as follows
Andhra Pradesh 945
Tamilnadu 928
Madhya Pradesh 134
In terms of other socio-economic and physical infrastructure Madhya
Pradesh is the least developed among the three States The largest in
area it has a larger proportion of its total population and work force
in agriculture and lower yields of rice per hectare Consequently during
1974-75 to 1976-77 with 96 percent of the total (national) area under
paddy Andbra Pradesh produced 131 percent of the total (national) rice
output with 62 percent of the rice acreage Tamilnadu produced 105
percent of the crop and with 118 percent of the acreage Madhya Pradesh
produced only 7 percent of the total rice output
In terms of agricultural workers moreove- according to the 1971 census whereas Andhra Pradesh had 5795000 landowning cultivators it also had
6829000 landless laborers Tamilnadu had 4608000 landowning farmers
and 4490C00 landless agricultural workers but Madhya Pradesh had 8085000 landowning farmers and only 4062000 landless workers Both
the percentage and numbers of landless--the poor majority--are signifshy
icantly higher in the two more developed and prosperous States In the
Fifth Five Year Plan (1974-79) therefore there were more special proshygrams for the small and marginal farmers and the rural poor in Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu including districts like Thanjavur that grow three crops of irrigated high yielding varieties of paddy in a year than in Madhya Pradesh7 Under AID guidelines and the assumption that most small
farmers and the rural poor are concentrated in backward or less developed areas however Madhya Pradesh would be the clear choice for improving
the lives of the poorest through area planning and development
B COST
I am not aware of any precise estimates having been made of the cost of implementing the new participatory strategy of development to improve the
lives of the poor majority in the developing nations
In its report on Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance however the Agency for International Development warns that
barring extraordinary technical advances the human and capital resources
currently available in the developing countries including those supplied
by aid donors cannot do the job even given ideal policies and more
equitable distribution of goods and services to the poor According to
7 Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Ed (New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978) pp 164244106108207
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-9shy
the report though it is not possible to make a precise estimatethe price tag for each year would most likely be a multiple of the LDCs present gross national product and the aid donors share well beyond the realm of possibility8
8 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 68
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
IV IDENTITY AND LOCATION OF THE POOR IN THE PROJECT
The confusionL regarding the identity and location of target groups pershysists at the University of Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Developshyment Project 1vel
The proposal for Area Development to AID in response to RFP-DSAN-50116 does not discuss the problem presumably because of the expressed belief that successful formulation of regional development policies and proshygrams in a given country to a large extent depends on how well specificprojects are conceived and designed The focus therefore is almost exclusively on theory concepts definitions and methodological problemsand processes of research cvaluation data management and integrated decision making prograr-ing and investment iiarea development It concedes that area development strategies through creation of market areas and town complexes with adequate physical infrastructure and social
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-11shy
and other services may not ensure that the rural poor receive their due share in the benefits The proposed solution that investment analysis and financial planning must therefore be viewed as integral elements of the regional planning process however is not very illuminating 9 How or which alternative approaches to financing capital and long-run mainshytenance and operating costs will or can achieve a desirable distribushytion of costs and benefits is not specified
Obviously mere integration of physical -nd economic elements into a comprehensive planning process for regional development (assuming it is operationaliy feasible) will not guarantee access or delivery of approshypriable benefits and services--as distinct from public facilities such as roads or restrooms--to the poor within a region In fact often even free amenities such as feeding programs designed for the poor and under malnourished children fail to reach the target group or the majority In India for example they were administered through balwadi centers in the rural areas for preschool children in the age group of three to six
There was no restriction on admission to the centers and no fee was charged In every village the majority of the population was poor Yet according to a nationwide evaluation of the program about 75 percent of the children in the age group of three to six were not attending the balwadis Those who did came mainly from relatively better off families in the villeges Very few children from the families of small cultivators plus agricultural and other labourers attended balwadis Consequently the children who received the supplementary foods did not really need them while the children in maximum need of1 0 some assistance did not get any benefit of the scheme
Description of the process of regional development planning in The Sketch Plan Concept by Hoffman and Jakobson also is as it claims to be purely conceptual and abstract It identifies infrastructure planning and developshyment natural resource management and market development as the projects initial goals objectives and activities Operationally it tries to show how these activities can be drawn together through the planning process and focused on a specific regions development (Emphasis added) But how these activities will benefit exclusively mainly or directly the
9 A Proposal for Area Development pp 242527
10 Gunvant M Desai and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluation Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Indian Institute of Management (Ahmedabad 1971) p 129
11 Michael Hoffman and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Frameshywork May 1979 pp 214 Jakobson has revised the Sketch Plan concept twice since the publication of this first draft The changes do not however invalshyidate any of the observations made in the text
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-12shy
poorest segments of the population within the region is not specified According to the authors both plan and process of the sketch plan can be made specific only in the field in the context of a given institushytional environment I will therefore analyze the application of the concept in one of the Country Reports Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportinity Framework1 2 This was only a preshyfeasibility study nevertheless is focus approach and premises underline the relevance of the above issues and questions
A NORTHEAST RAINFED AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
The report reiterates the projec s central assumption that to ensure a desirable distribution pattern of productivity and income gains according to target glroups an area development strategy and methodology are indispensable
It is further stated that the methodology for area development is aimed at identifying target group populations and at promoting an integrated provision of agricultural and other services toward maximizing the net beneficial impact on the target groups It also points out that where new production technology creates a new optimal income and productivity level that technology may have different benefits for different farmers depending on farm size etc 1 4
Yet the report makes no analysis of land and income distribution within the nortneast region of Thailand All comparisons of rates of growth per capita income crop produition and productivity are between the various regionsprovinces of Thailand and nationally Within the northshyeast region itself it is noted that there are very significant spatial differences in both the per capita income levels and in their rates of growth 15 But there is no data or analysis of those differences Terms such as farmers poor farmers squatters rural poorlarge and small farmers tenants landless small holders and near subsistence farmers are frequently used But the categories are not defined or specified in quantitative or socio-economic terms
We are told however that farmers who are in a position to take advantage of any substantial gap between their actual yield and potential yields are farmers who have low risk paddy land or have the economic resources to accept high levelF of production risk These are not in general the poorer farmers of the Northeast1 6 That would indicate that not all farmers in the region are poor Different groups would therefore have differential access to resources opportunities and benefits of any areashybased project or development Table 2 ives the percentage of farmers
12 RTADP Consulting Report No 2 October 1979
13 Ibid p 42
14 Ibid pp 614
15 Ibid 12
16 Ibid p 10
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-13shy
growing cassava andor kenaf in four Northeast Provinces But there is no breakdown by incomesize of the farmers cultivating the cash crops
Area-specific relationship between agricultural research and growth of agricultural income and productivity is justified and rightly so But again unless the research is target-specific as well it may not meet the on-farm needs and resource capability of the poorermarginal or small farmers within the area to adopt the new techniques In its techshynological recommendations however the report treats the Northeastern Farmers generally as a homogeneous group--different only fron farmers in other regions of the country Recommendations for cropping systems are based on commodities and not on farm size or scale economies of land and labor as for instance in the case of livestock Tl-i priority items listed for research and field testing are strictly tezhnical
In dealing with institutional organizational and administlative aspects also the focus is on understanding the relationships between technology institutions and organized behavior The prime concern is with identishyfication of programs and institutional devices to execute projects including the design of office space since sharing common facilities will provide an environment likely to furter coordinated problem-solving
approaches 17
In principle it is true of course that an area based approach is an opportunity framework within which the keys to income and productivity
1 8 growth can be tailored for the benefit of and rapid adoption by farmersIn practice however the report does not provide the keys for tailoring growth for the benefit of farmers with diverse esource endowments and more specifically for the target group--tie poor or poorest segments of the rural population in the northeast region
This brings us to the second aspect of the problem--location of the poor and the causal relationship between poverty and area
Presumably the Northeast was considered for a regional development project because it is the largest most populous and the poorest in the country and that despite rapid economic growth over the past two decades per capita income growth rate and paddy yields remain lower in the Northeast than in the other three regions ostensibly because of uncertain weather conditions lack of irrigation education roads and other services Examination of the available data however does not support most of these assumptions
Thus the table on tenurial status (Table 1) gives the percentage of farm households renting land in the four regions and nationally Assuming that tenants are generally the small marginal and therefore the poor farmers their greatest concentration is not in the Northeast but in the more prosperous aid developed Central Plain Region Only 868 percent of the agricultural households rent land in the Northeast compared to 4131 percent in the Central Region In addition to having the highest proporshy
17 Ibid p 52
18 Ibid p 57
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-14shy
tion of pure and part tenant farmers the latter is also the only part of the country to have around 15 percent of the households which are engagedin ag7iculture but which neither own nor rent land Their proportion moreover has been increasing in recent years in the Centrel Plain area-shy
1 9 the rice bowl of Thailand
With regard to income according to a World Bank assessment of the pastand present situations of typical agricultural households in ten subregions of the country in both the Mid-Northeast and Lower Northeast regions which excludes only the four provinces of Udon Thani Nong Khai Sakhon Nakf on and Nakhon Phanom in the Upper Northeast net farm income of typical farm nouseholds was higher (in 1976) than in the Upper and Lower South In terms of change in real income since 1962 the percentage of increase was significantly higher in all three subregions of the Northeast than in the South So too the contribution of yield to the change Yet throughout the South the majority of the households cultivate both rice and rubber the principal cash crop In additica the area is wellbetter
2 0 served with education and health services
With regard to land of the four regions the largest proportion of the farmers in the Northeast--89 percent--own their land And only 41 percent of the holdings in the Northeast are under 59 rai--leFs than in any other region in Thailand The average holding in the Northeast is about 35 rai and over 50 percent of the holdings are between 15 and 45 rai Clearlythenland or size of holdings is not a constraint In fact much of the land is not planted in a normal year Furthermore although rice marketshying in the private sector is relatively efficient about half the farm households in the region grow nothing but rice and they grow it primarily for subsistence not sale 2 1
Curiously the preponderance of paddy cultivation--a major export crop--is regarded as the main cause of poverty and marginalization of the farmers in the Northeast Hence after much technoagronomic analysis of climate soils water resources plant genetics and pathology the report concludes that any strategy for sustained income and productivity growth must address the problem of reducing the area which the farmer feels he must devote to rice to meet his family subsistence requirements to allocate at least some of his upper paddy land to upland crops 22 The farmers themselves are regarded as victims of the regions backwardness Because
19 Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study East Asia and Pacific Regional Office The World Bank (Washington DC 1980) pp 4849
20 Ibid pp 3942435152
21 Ibid pp 34354064
22 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 39
The value of rice exports in 1977 was 13449 millions of baht--more than of any other commodity including rubber and tin (Source Bank of Thailand)
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-15shy
of it they bave not yet been able to participate in the diversification
process and still grow mainly rice under rainfed conditions in much the same way as did their fathers in a basically subsistence environment lacking the requirements for commercial agriculture
23
Yet the key problem may not be the subsistence environment of the region but the subsistence attitude of the rice farmers toward crop production in general and rice in particular facilitated by easy access to new land 2 4 It has allowed them to maintain their sLatdard of living despite accelerated population growth In other words they may not want to produce for the market For obviously the subsistence environment and lack of infrastructure have not prevented cntrepreneurs and squatters from cultivating cash crops in spite of market uncertainties and the fact that many of them do not have legal title to the land and access to the services that go with it As stated in the report the rapid supply response of the Northeastern farmer and the private sector to the export opportunities for cassava are deserving of great respect
2 5
If attitude rather than environment is the key factor however more will be needed than providing the near-subsistence farmer access to new technology inputs and markets to change his cropping pattern and6 practices Moreover if risk reducing rice cropping techniques are perfected and if they have the effect of substantially increasing the level of optimal production for some areas in the Northeast arnd if thereby the gap between the optimal and actual levels of production will have been widened for some farmers who will then presumably increase proshyduction by using chemical fertilizers and other modern inputs the income disparities within the region will inevitably become greater between areas and between farmers large and small rich and poor to the detrishyment of the poor 2 6 (Emphasis added)
Furthermore there appears to be little or no correlation between rice productivity and even education access to services inputs and research infrastructure and proximity to markets For example the Central Region is better served by all the economic and social services Its farmers are on the average better educated and operate in a commercial environment Yet rice yields in the area have increased primarily as a result of acreage expansion due to dry season cropping and the use of high yielding varieties made possible by irrigation At 278 kg per rai however the yield of paddy in the Central Region in 1975 was not significantly higher than in the Northeast--213 kg per rai And it was actually lower than in the Northern Region--354 kg per rai Only about 35 percent of the farmers in the ricebowl double cropped moreover although well over 60 percent of
2 7 the cultivated land was subject to some degree of water control
23 World Bank Country Study op cit pp ii 40 64
24 For examples of subsistence attitudes toward production see authors Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
25 RPADP Report No 2 op cit p 41
26 Ibid p 11
27 World Bank Country Study op cit pp 48 61 228 229
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-16-
On the other hand like the Northeast the Northern Region also is poorly served by roads services and other infrastructure The literacy rate is among the lowest in the country and so too the average size of holdings It is much smaller than in the Northeast The North also has the largest number of small holdings of under 59 rai--147 perccnt compared to 41 percent in the Northeast Yet the great majority (as against a small minority) of the farmers in The Lower North who used to cultivate onlypaddy until 1960 have diversified and now grow maize arid some mungbeans after the maize in addition to rice It has now become one of the majormaize producing areas in the country In the lowland irrigated rice areas in the Upper North moreover farmers produce about 21 tons per hectare for home consumption compared to 167 tons per hectare produced by comshymercial farmers for the market in the Central Plains (1973-75)28
The North and Northeast share exactly the same traditional low productive technology scarcity of roads and poor access to commercial inputs and urban markets Three quarters of the countrys households living in absolute poverty are concentrated in the rural areas of the regionstwo most of them farmers growing rice under rainfed cunditions The terrain for paddy cultivation is more favorable generally in the Northeast than in the North where more than 50 percent of the land is mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture
Yet in 1976 the typical farmer with access to some irrigation in the Upper North earned a total net farm income of 12230 baht on an averageholding of 65 rai compared to 10830 baht earned by farmers in the Mid-Northeast where agricultural diversification has been significant with over half the farmers growing upland cash crops like cassava on an averageholding of 25 rai Again farmers in the Upper North with no access to irrigation earned a total net income of 8850 baht on an average holiingof 12 rai compared to 8530 baht obtained by typical households in the Upper Northeast subregion with holdings of 25 rai More significantly the contribution of area to change in real income since 1962 was nil in the rainfed areas of the Upper North and 45 percent in the irrigated tracts compared to 11 percent in the Upper Northeast and 77 percent in the Mid-Northeast For the two regions as a whole the average gross farm cash income of agricultural households was higher (in 1970) in every size cateshygory in the North
(Baht)
Size of Farm (rai)
Less 6--49 15--299 30--599 60+ Average than 59
Northeast 1220 1040 1710 2770 440 2120
North 1290 2190 4050 6300 13540 4203
Source Ministry of Agriculture Division of Agricultural Economics
18 Ibid pp 44454673
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-17-
The average yield of paddy in the Northern region in 1976 was 377 kg per
rai compared to 197 kg per rai in the Northeast But the area planted to paddy had increased from 15419000 rai in the Northeast in 1959 to 23735000 rai in 1976 and from 7050000 rai to only 10546000 rai in the North in the same period Furthermore even in the Mid-Northeast where well over half the farmers now grow upland cashcommercial crops the typical farmer still grows enough rice for self-consumptionsubsisshytence and indeed will continue to forego other employment and income opportunities in order to plant and harvest this rice crop Only with subsistence assured is the farmer prepared to enter the nonrice cash
economy29
Therein perhaps lies the clue to the interregional differences in cropshyping patterns and rice productivity Farmers in the Northeast could meet their growing subsistence needs by increasing the area by clearing new land Farmers in the Central region could expand the area through irrigation The scope for expansion by either means is seve-ely limited in the Northern region Consequently even the small and subsistence farmers in the North have been compelled to produce more per unit of land even in the absence of a commercial environment or technological
breakthrough
The historical absence of pressure on arable land due to easy access to often highly tertile virgin forest land in Thailand is in fact probably the single most important explanation for the gross underutilization of the soil and the inordinately low (stagnant) yields of rice and other major crops traditionally and in the 1960s and early 1970s--a period of unprecedented rapid economic change--in the entire country incladshying the Northeast It has permitted the increase of the area under cultivation by nearly 4 percent a year in this period And there still remain an estimated 26 million hectares of land under forest suitable for agricultural use Because of it crop diversification and cultivashytion of upland cash crops--the major source of economic growth since 1960--has been in addition to rather tian at the expense of rice And in spite of a sharp increase in population growth from 19 percent in 1937-47 to 3 percent in 1960-70 intensity of land use remains extremely low much of it not being cultivated in a normal year (Table 1) So too crop productivity particularly of rice It is among the lowest in East and Southeast Asia In 1975-77 a decade after the introduction of the high-yielding varieties of seeds and chemical fertilizers the average per hectare yield of paddy in Thailand was 178 tons compared to 269 in Indonesia 251 in Malaysia 182 in the Philippines 213 in Vietnam
596 in the Republic of Korea and 353 in the Peoples Republic of China 3 0 The need for more food for more people was met as in the preshyceding hundred years primarily through expansion of the rice acreage--at over 2 percent a year
29 Ibid pp 37394272229230
30 Source International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics 1978
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-18-
Table 1 Intensity of Land Use 1975
Region Area of Holdings Area Planted Planted as S(000 ha) of Holdings
Northeast 9357 5197 55
North 5282 3577 67
Central 4698 3800 80
South 2683 2051 76
Total 22020 14624 66
Source MOAC Land Development Department and Department of Agricultural Extension
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
V PARTICIPATION COST AND RESPONSE
Unless they have decisive inputs into the decision making there is a strong possibility that the project will not address their needs ard bring them real beneflts3 1
Assumptions with regard tr response participation and cost of involving the poor in the development and productive processes through an inteshygrated area approach have even less validity in real life than those relating to identity and location of the target groups To illustrate I will again analyze one RPADP report in some detail Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implicashytions for United SLates Aid Policy
31 AID Agricultural Development Policy Paper (mimeo) Draft No 4 PPCPDA Washington DC May 1977 p 16
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-20-
The document is concerned with problems of decentralization and particishy
pation in the Sudan Tanzania and Kenya with a view to increasing access
of the rural poor to production resources It summarizes USAIDs concept
of participation to mean among other things that
1 The economic benefits of projects are shared by the poor
in such a way as to narrow the growing gap in income
between the richest and poorest groups in society
2 Development decisions are made in consultation with
intended beneficiaries or at least with their acceptshy
ance and support
3 Development activities serve as a learning experience
for beneficiaries so that they can increase their technical
skills expand their capacity to organize for common purposes and gain ar-ess to resources needed for self-sustained development
4 The poor make some contribution of effort and resources to
the activities from which they are likely to benefit through such things as personal savings contribution of labor or participation in local planning and implementashy
tion committees
5 The active participation by women ard their contribution to development is considered in the design and organization of
3 2 development projects
The report also affirms that administrative decentralization and area development planning are crucial for the successful implementation of programs and projects aimed at reaching the poorin developing nations
The claim is clearly an act of faith rather than fact since the results of decentralization policy in many developing countries have been disshyappointing and even the means of eliciting and ensuring citizen partishycipation and of obtaining the support and cooperation of local elites for decentralization remain unresolved problems in nearly all countries that have attempted it
34
Moreover the fallacy of identifying target groups spatially persists In the list of advantages claimed for functional and areal decentralizashy
tion for example it is stated that regional or local decentralization allows officials to tailor rural development plans and other national development programs to the needs of heterogeneous areas within a single
32 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 p 5
33 Ibid p 93
34 Ibid pp 1011
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-21shy
country Which is true On the other hand the claim that allowing greater representation for various geographically based political religious tribal and ethnic interest groups in development decision making leads to greater equity in the allocation of government resources and investments among geographical areas and population groups is questionable3 5 It would be true if and only if the population in each area was entirely homogeneous in terms of socio-cultural economic and political power and status Otherwise the area maywill benefit but not necessarily the target groups within the area
The report lists eighteen prerequisites or concomitants to successful implementation of decentralized planning and administration It admits that the levels of adequacy r measures of effectiveness expressed or implied in each of those conditions cannot be universally determined or prescribed 3 6 Overlooked however is the elementary fact that if a country did have or had even the capacity to creatc all or most of the conditions in adequate measure it would not be undershydeveloped Besides how does a government persuade its citizens to love its officials and cooperate with them in implementing policies that may impinge on traditional values beliefs and rights as stipulated in the twelfth condition
Finally the prime obstacle to decentralization in a developing country is not necessarily ambiguity of design of policies and procedures--a concern which appears to cominate the thinking of most of the senior project staff Nor is it always weakness in political commitment-shycountries like Tanzania did not have to decentralize urless they wanted to The overriding obstacles to successful decentralization in a poor country are acute shortages of trained personnel physical infrashystructure and financial resources and the nature of the political proshycess in any country developed or underdeveloped The most perfect design and organization of decentralization policies and procedures cannot alter or neutralize the societal structure and exercise of power patronage or privilege in the three African nations any more than it can in the United Sates of America
3 7
A MANPOWER INFRASTRUCTURE RESOURCES
1 Manpower
In all three East African countries according to the report there is an acute shortage of skilled manpower professionals and technicians needed to carry out development programs In
35 Ibid pp 7 8
36 Ibid pp 56-58
37 For examples of how well-intentioned technical and federal poverty programs get derailed in the United States see YJ Lowi et al Poliscide (New York MacMillan amp Co 1976) and JL Pressman and Wildavsky Implementation (Berkeley University of California Press)
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-22-
Kenya failure of provinces to initiate bottom-up development
and achieve better integration of the central ministries field
activities is blamed on shortage of trained man ower So also 38
the failure of the ujaama program in Tanzania In all three
countries the governments are also accused of claiming availshy
able technical and managerial personnel for national ministries
and public corporations leaving local administrative units 3 9
chronically short of managerial talent
But then can any government be expected to produce or create
large numbers of skilled technical and managerial personnel
practically overnight In Tanzania for example training
facilities were created but there was a chronic shortage of trainers to staff the training facilities Is there any procedure or process by which schools without teachers can
produce scholars
As long as the shortages persist moreover can these governshy
ments bp expected or advised not to assign the available qualishy
fied administrators to national ministries and public corporashy
tions in preference to local administrative units The altershy
native would be to shaze and disperse scarce talent in equal
measure between regions districts villages and the center
That would however only further weaken the planning and adminshy
istrative capacity of national governments without materially
improving the local administration As it is according to a World Bank team the pressure on the small number of skilled
technicians and managerial personnel in Tanzania has become so
great as a result of decentralization that it will be a long time before the various key positions can be filled by proshy
fessionals 4 0 In the Sudan the staff of the Ministry of
Cooperation has been spread so thin that its impact at the
village level is negligible in terms of meaningful support and
extension services41
Furthermore can a policy for integrated rural development be
implemented with any prospect of success without centralized
and comprehensive planning and efficient delivery of organizashytional functional and technical inputs and services by the
national government And can it be done without the requisite
numbers of adequately trained people If not it raises a
fundamental question Should a complete decentralization of
administration even be considered until after a country
has acquired an adequate pool of skilled manpower--a process
that must inevitably take much time and investment
38 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 37 52-53
39 Ibid p 77
40 Ibid p 77
41 US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper (Kartoum USAIDSudan 1973) p 83
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-23shy
2 Infrastructure
Lack of physical infrastructure--roads transportation facilishyties and communication networks--in the rural areas is probably as or even more acute in the three East African countries than the shortage of trained personnel
According to the report inadequate infrastructure makes coorshydination among decentralized decision-making units nearlyimpossible and effective interaction between the central governshyment and local administrations extremely difficult Moreoverit creates enormous difficulties for local administrators in mobilizing resources supervising field personnel distributingservices and disseminating information 4 2 It imposes severe physical obstacles to widespread participation in local decishysion making
3 Resources
But again what would be the cost of simultaneously creating the requisite infrasLructure and training the required personnel to administer the program And how will it be paid for Clearlyjust these two very concrete (as opposed to qualitative and attitudinal) prerequisites would make decentralized developmentplanning and implementation as a means of achieving economic growth and social equity highly capital intensive and well beyond the means of any poor country To adopt it would be the equivalent of importing capital intensive techniques for agriculshytural production that neither the state nor the peasants can afford Like technology institutional and administrative arrangements also must conform and be appropriate to the factor and resource endowments of the country
The report does not calculate the cost of decentralization in the three African countries But it recognizes that they are all in serious financial difficulties becoming increasingly dependent on foreign aid to fund regional and local projects It concedes that forms of taxation that can be imposed on subsistence econoshymies are extremely limited In fact the central government of the Sudan is accused of having increased the amounts of local taxes in Southern Darfur Province in 1976 to levels beyond the provinces capacity 43
According to the re-ort itself the financial limitations on local administration raise serious questions about the signifishycance of decentralization and that these shortages in resources at the local level are aggravated by national difficulties Yet the same governments are faulted for jeopardizing bottom-up
42 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit p 83
43 Ibid p 82
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-24shy
development by failing to provide adequate legal powers to local adMinistrative units to collect and allocate revenues within local jurisdiction and for not giving them a sufficient share of national revenues
Well how could they As it is in 1978-79 the foreign assistshyance component accounted for nearly 70 percent of the developshyment budget of Tanzania The deficit in the national budget for the same year was more than $705 million As Michael Lofchie contends the ujaama program has placed the Tanzanian governshyment in virtual receivership to its foreign donors4 4
In the Sudan the balance-of-payments deficit had mounted tshyabout half a billion dollars by 1979 with rrears on foreign debt approximating one billion dollars
Even Kenya with the most stable and capitalistic economy in East Africa will require an estimated $400 million a year in foreign financing to support its development activities through the early
4 51980s
The report does not examine the very basic question whether USAID and other international donors can be expected to provide the necessary resources for training the needed personnel in technishycal and managerial skill and for creating the requisite physishycal and spatial infrastructure in these three countries to make decentralization work Its recommendation that USAID should proshyvide grants rather than loans cannot have an important impact unless the amount of the grants approximates the need and the shortfall in domestic revenues
The report also appears to ignore the fact that AID no longer supports major infrastructure projects In the two years followshying the passage of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1973 for example in Africa where basic infrastructure is most needed according to AIDs report to the Committee on International Relations requests from Malawi Botswana Swaziland and Lesotho among others for financing the construction of even roads were turned down because they were incoistent with the new directions outside our priority areas 6
44 See USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Tanzania pp 28 35
45 RPADP Paper No 1 opcit pp 80 81 Also see USAID Country Development Strategy Statement FY 1981 Sudan Iashington USAID 1979) p 18 and USAID Country Development Strategy Statement Kenya 1980-84 (Washington USAID 1970) pp 14-16
46 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance opcit pp 4 41
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-25-
It is obvious therefore that Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania cannot hope to receive the requisite technical and financial assistance in the foreseeable future In which case and if the success of decentralization dependsespecially in the early stages upon the strength and competence of the central adminshyistration to support field agencies and to help create greater administrative c icity at lower levels of government as well as an adequate irilrastructure would it not be somewhat preshymature to propose endorse or even encourage decentralization in these countries--like putting the cart before the horse4 7
At the risk of repetition in the absence of roads and personnel how can credit be delivered to hundreds of thousands of farmers dispersed in small isolated hamlets with the provision of techshynical assistance in improved agricultural methods improved seeds fertilizers irrigation and so on Since in all three countries moreover the supportive institutions at the local level especially those concerned with agricultural production are weak or nonexistent how could nonexisting institutions be linked vertically and horizontally to provide a hierarchy of nonexisting services to improve delivery over nonexisting channels of communication and transportation Linkages has become a buzz word in recent years But how can there by linkshyages and complementaries between nonexisting entities with nothing to link them
A sober assessment undiluted by wishful dogma or ideology of the current level of development of human and physical resources and infrastructure in Kenya the Sudan and Tanzania in other words can only lead to the conclusion that not only will the strategy for administrative decentralization not work but that it will be a costly failure The experiment cannot be expected to succeed regardless of how committed national lezders may be to the transfer of planning decision making and management authority to field agencies of lower levels of government
The Political Process
Obviously no external agency can overtly intervene in the politishycal system of another country But as with considerations of manpower infrastructure and financial resources in advocating the feasibility of a strategy to a government it must take into account the political process and the power structure within which the strategy would be implemented More importantly expectashytions of what is feasible must be realistic
Thus all three governments of East Africa have emphasized the importance of decentralized development planning and implementashytion as a means of building political stability and achieving economic growth with social equity The commitment of at least two of the national leaders Presidents Nyerere and Nimeiry stems
47 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 72
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-26shy
from socialist ideology rather than mere pragmatism as in the case of Kenya and must therefore be accepted as deep and genuine
Nevertheless would it be politically realistic to expect nascent largely unstable and authoritarian regimes with acute economic problems to invite or accept the participation and managementby organizations that are outside the direct control of the censhytral government or the dominant political party--as laid down in the list of prerequisites to success Does it happen in developed countries including the western democracies
Again it is noted with obvious disapproval that after the Local Administration Act went into effect in the Sudan the traditional leaders merely took on new roles within the local councils traditional tribal religious and family leaders continued to play important roles in vital administrative matters So too in Kenya and Tanzania Consequently
traditional leaders and elites--tribal chiefs sheikhs and Imams in the Sudan and tribal heads village notables progressive farmers large landshyowners and traders in Tanzania and Kenya--have easily been able to oppose or undermine decentralizashytion policies and to maintain control over local decision making48
But then given the political realities it would surely be extremely naive to expect it not to have happened How could it possibly have been different
Governments committed to grass-roots democracy are told that they must first get underneath the local elite and political figures National leaders are expected to overcome the resistshyance to or obtain the cooperation of local elites and tradishytional tribal and religious leaders to decentralized planning and administration that would permit the poorest segments of the rural population to express their needs and demands and to press their claims for scarce national and local resources Yet how does a government any government anywhere get undershyneath the elite without either removing them from the local scene altogether (as Japan did after the Meiji Restoration) or stripping them of the symbols and source of their power and status in the local community Neither course is usually feasible without risking serious conflict and disruption
The report however suggests that USAID is in a position to advise governments in East Africa on how to elicit the cooperashytion of traditional leaders and elites not by destroying their influence but by coopting them and changing their roles--to perform such innocuous activities as settling land and tribal
48 Ibid pp 28 65
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-27shy
disputes and mobilizing local resources for self-help projects But if they are allowed to retain their traditional influence authority and leadership to perform public service how can they be prevented from using those same powers for personal gain and advancing the interest of their own paicicular class or tribe rather than that of the poor unless the two coincide or the central government has the power and capacity to enforce the fairness doctrine Why should they be content to perform only innocuous activities
lr there is a known formula for the peaceful transformation of the role of local elites and traditional leaders without disshyturbing the social systems in East Africa as the report implies perhaps USAID should try it out first in some of the city governshyments of the United States I am not aware of elites in any country at any time in history surrendering or divesting themshyselves of their power and privileges voluntarily without being forced to do so by internal pressures and threat of revolution or external domination History )f labor and womens rights movements in western democracies like Britain and the United States and the more recent struggles in Iran Nicaragua and El Salvador are a few examples In the aLsence of pressure on the other hand even relatively mild redistributive measures are not implemented In India for instance according to the Task For z on Agrarian Relations constituted by the Planning Commissiin in February 1972 an important reason for the great hiatus between policy pronouncements and actual execution between precept and practice in the domain of land reform was the fact that it was essentially a gift from a benign governshyment
Except in a few scattered and localized pockets practically all over the country the poor peasants and agricultural workers are passive unorganized and inarticulate In our view a certain degree of politicization of the poor peasantry on militant lines is a prerequisite for any successful legisshylative-administrtive action for conferring rights and privshyileges on them
The same lack of political realism applies to the observation cited in the report that it took nearly a decade for Nyereres concepts of ujaama formulated in the late 1950s and early 1960s to be incorporatedgto national policy and yet another decade to be implemented
A reminder here would perhaps not be out of order merely to correct the time horizon of international agencies and intelshylectuals involved in technical assistance in the Third World Thus in a modern nation constitutionally committed to the belief that all men are created equal since 1776 and after a civil war
49 Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations mimeo (New Delhi
Planning Commission 1973)pp 7 8 25
50 RPADP Occasional Paper No 1 opcit p 61
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-28shy
ninety years later (1861-65) to free the slaves it took another hundred years for the first omnibus civil rights legislation to be enacted in 1964 In 1981 however the traditional racial attitudes prejudices and discriminatory behavior are still pervasive among largo sections of the population throughout the country
Is there any reason why traditional values attitudes and intershypersonal relationships of people in the developing countries should be more prone to change than they are in developed counshytries
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-29-
VI ACCESS AND RESPONSE
Finally I would like briefly to reemphasize two important areas of neglect in the theory and application of regional planning and area development--access and response
A ACCESS
All planning has a regional dimension But in any society in which distribution of wealth and power is skewed it can be assumed that access to new income-increasing opportunities and technical and social serviceswill be skewed in corresponding measure Mere decentralizashytion of the planning and development process on a regional basis will not alter the local power structure and interclasscastetribal relashytionships--make them more egalitarian and equitable On the contrary
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-30shy
it would provide the privileged minority and elites additional opportushynities to legally reinforce the legitimacy of informal and custom-based righcs and status in the community through control and domination of the new secular participatory institutions such as village councils credit societies and cooperatives created to implement decentralization The poor most likely will continue to be excluded deliberately or by default from decision making and participation in local governments And any significant changes in production technology in the region could make their condition worse than before as happened in the green revolution areas in the 1970s
In other words unless the rural population is almost entirely homogenous a decentralized and participatory approach to planning and development on an area basis will not ensure the participation of the poor or provide equal access to and direct delivery of social and technical services to
the target groups The benefits oi economic growth would still have to filter down and through the Lpper layers o society
B RESPONSE
With regard to the question of response of the poor it is virtually written off as a non-problem by AID and in the project reports on the basis of three main assumptions These are
1 If the concepts and organizational procedures of decentralized planning and administration are correct
2 If the institutional and economic constraints stemming from mistaken policies relating to prices and public investment are corrected
3 If the attitudes elitist behavior and deportment (including dress) of bureaucrats and change agents which make them adversaries rather than trusted friends could be changed
the poor small and subsistence peasants would surge forward to grasp
the opportunity to participate and contribute their mite toward their own betterment and the development of the region The possibility or evidence to the contrary that they may not thus respond or wish to participate even in the absence of the above (and other) constraints is largely ignored 51 It is because economic behavior is defined in terms of the narrow neo-classical theory of rationality as intershypreted by Schultz Ruttan and Hayami with specific reference to the allocative and production behavior of farmers and peasants alike everywhere
51 See Gunnar Myrdal Asian Drama (New York Pantheon 1968) and the
authors three books Blossoms in the Dust The Lonely Furrow (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press 1969) and In Defense of the Irrational Peasant (Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979) passim
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-31-
This is not an appropriate occasion for a debate on economic theory I will however point out that the neo-classical Lheory is currently the dominant one but nevertheless only one of many and that its proshyfessed knowledge of human rationality is at best a very distant approxishymation of reality As stated by Bateson part of the problem lies in the fact that we neither understand how the poor survive nor how their
5 2 needs might be effect-rely met To put it bluntly without meaning to be irreverant the truth is that less is known to science about human behavior than about the mating habits of the snail
A further explanation for the conspicuous neglect of behavioral dimenshysions in this project lies in the fact that as with most technical assistance programs it is locked into an ideology committed to a given set of relatively imprecise premises concepts and theories of regional planning according to which the key variables for economic development are a balanced spatial structure of large cities small towns and villages and appropriate infrastructure It automatically renders the human factor except at the planning and bureaucratic levels irrelevant All that is required is demographic data--numbers location concentration ethnicity and mig-tion patterns of a people 5 3
The theory ignores the fact that in agriculture especially traditional agriculture production attitudes and allocative decisions of individual farm households play a far more critical role than capital technology infrastructure or proximity to an urban settlement Tt makes the parameters paradigms and uncertainties of regional planning for rural areas significantly and substantively different from those encountered in planning for metropolitan or industrial areal development--areas in which traditionally regional planners have been most active and useful
52 William M Bateson Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area
Development Approaches RPADP Discussion Paper May 1980 p 21
53 Hoffman and Jakobson The Sketch Plan opcit p 28
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-32-
Vl PROJECTS AND POLITICS
The issuen and problems highlighted in this paper however are not unique to the Regional Planning and Area Development project They are pertinent to most technical assistance programs and have affected their effectiveness in differing measures The fact that generallythey have been ignored can be explained in part at least by the processby which AID policies are formulated and farmed out for implementation
Thus barring short-term disaster-type aid to victims of hurricanes and etrthquakes in all bilateral technical assistance programs politics-shydomestic and international--plays a key role in determining the amount of aid given to whom and for what purpose Consequently the quantityand designation of US aid often change with bewildering frequency So too the goals sectors and sections of the population for which the funds must be utilized by the recipient countries
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-33-
The most recent and abrupt reversal of an enthusiastic advocacy and support for production first policies in the 1960s for example was due to a growing fear that the green revolution would turn red in many Third World countries because of the increasing income disparities and poverty resulting from that strategy Accordingly the main motivashytion for enacting the legislative reforms in the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973 was the discovery and belief that the development of the worlds poor is ultimately of fun-amental importance to the well-being and perhaps even the surviv-l of the people of the United States and of the world And so a new perspective on the nature of development was born Simply put that new perspective supports abandonment of the trickle-down theory of development and adoption of a participation
strategy in its place holding that such a switch makes economic as well 54
as social and political sense
By the very nature of the political process goal-setters in the US
Congress cannot be expected to fully comprehend the implications and
problems of implementing a policy and achieving the desired goals A
mandate is simply handed out regardless of the difficulties the Agency
for International Development must face in suddenly turning
its program in a radically new direction to put the reforms
into practice in several dozen widely varying countries around
the world while at the same time responding to a variety of
executive branch and congressional pressures which may cut
across the new direction in which the Congress has enjoined5 the Agency to move
Passage of the 1973 bill in effect left AID with a new mandate which
raised a host of fundamental and substantive policy issues of impleshy
mentation Even two years later in a statement to the Committee on
International Relations John E Murphy Deputy Administrator AID
confessed that
determining the precise applications of general development
approaches in specific cases remains despite all our efforts
and those of thousands of practitioners and scholars alike a very murky difficult uncertain complex and intractable
business While AID has long experience and a great deal of expertise we must admit that given the nature of this business we simply dont have many of the answers as yet The
Congress should be prepared for false starts changes and failures56
Nevertheless Mr Murphy dutifully reaffirmed the agencys enthusiastic
support and commitment to the goals of the new legislation and developshy
mpnt strategy
54 Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance
opcit p 80
55 Ibid p 83
56 Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 (USGovernment Printing Office Washington 1975 )pp 51 57 62
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-34-
VIII THE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
American universities competing for AID projects (and funds) are caughtin a similar if not worse bind as the Agency for International Developshyment Inevitably their effectiveness also is reduced because of the frequent shifts in policies organization and direction of foreign assistance programs 57
57 Building Institutions to Serve Agriculture A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Research Project published by Comshymittee on Institutional Cooperation(LaFayette Indiana Purdue University) p 46 Also see Campbell et al Reflections on Title XII The Case of Sociologyin the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program in The Rural Sociologist vol 1 no 1 January 1981
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-35-
Along with the project contract moreover they receive not only the policy mandate but a prefabricated set of postulates and assumptions to question which would mcan a certain loss of the contract a choice which most universities are reluctant to make The end result is an implicit conspiracy of silence on many critical issues between AID and the contracting universities
Besides and contrary to general belief universities are not organizedacademically or administratively to engage in problem-solving activishyties For example it is virtually impossible to bring togethermultiple disciplines for a sustained effort on any significant issue or problem as distinct from assembling a team of experts for a limited purpose and time At the highest level academia is a closed systemin which like planets the learned subject specialists rotate perpetshyually on their respective discipiinary axes in a fixed orbit with no formal interaction with other social or technical sciences Naturallythey produce only fragments of scientific-technical knowledge And as pointed cut by Daryl Hobbs producing fragmentary knowledge is of course fundamental to the norms of a scientific division of labor and development of a discipline
To be effective or useful from an applied standpoint however the relevant fragments need to be integrated But unlike corporate structures and bureaucratic planning agencies of government explicitly comiiitted to the integration of knowledge for the production of productsandor policies and programs--universities as producers of knowledge are
58 not In implementing a development project therefore complex intershylocking problems--social economic technical and political--which canshynot be spliced in real life on disciplinary lines have to be nevertheshyless translated and contrived to fit the conceptual mold and methodology of a single discipline
Furthermore and again contrary to the general notion American univershysities including the land-grant institutions have very little experishyence in dealing with problems of rural poverty
Thus between 1951 and 1975 thirty-seven US universities worked in forty-three countries under eighty-eight rural development contracts with USAID But approximately seventy percent of those contracts involved relationships with degree-granting institutions in the developingcountries including some with Ministries of Agriculture in the areas of technical training research and extension In recent years however more emphasis has been placed on specific problem-solving efforts and because of their role in the development and diffusion of new knowledgeabout agricultural technology allegedly accounting for about half of the five-fold increase in US agricultural production since 1870 land-grant universities have been favored for such programs
Historically however production and policy research at land-grant universities has largely ignored the rural poor The major benefishyciaries of the university research and extension systems have never been the majority of small farmers share-croppers or agricultural
58 Daryl J Hobbs Rural Development Intentions and Consequences in Rural Sociology Spring 1980 no 1 vol 45 pp 19 22
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-36shy
laborers but the few large commercidl enterprises in every region and type of farming For the uninformed perhaps a few facts would be in order
Land-grant colleges were created by Congress in 1862 and 1890 by two separate Morrill Acts while the state agricultural experiment stations were created in 1887 by the Hatch Act Extension services came into being in 1914 as a result of the Smith-Lever Act
In 1967 however Orville L Freeman Secretary of Agriculture testishyfied to the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty as follows
The subject today is poverty in rural America where oneshythird of America lives and one-half of our poverty exists let me cite a few of the statistics just for the record
- Almost one in every two rural families has a cash income of under $3000 a year
- Nearly half of the substandard housing is found in rural areas
- In an age of two-bath suburban homes one-fourth of all rural nonfarm families are without running water
- Rural adults lag almost 2 years behind urban adults in years of school completed and rural children receive one-third less medical attention than urban children59
In 1970 over half (565 percent) of the farmers grossed less than $5000 a year and only 78 percent of the total farm sales in the country (compared to 63 percent taken by 126 percent of the farmers in the large farm category) Besides there were another 35 million hired farmworkers As a group they earned an average of $1083 a year for doing farm work making them among the very poorest of Americas employed poor Yet in the fiscal year 1969 of a total of nearly 6000 scientific man-years spent on doing research at all the experishyment stations in the fifty states according to USAIDs research classishyfications only 289 man-years were devoted specifically to peopleshyoriented research--less than 5 percent of the total research effort60
Not surprisingly therefore despite the pioneering role of land-grant universities in agricultural research and education their stock of knowledge and expertise in solving problems of rural poverty is still very sparse and fragmentary
59 Rural Poverty Hearings Before the National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Washington DC September 1967 p 2
60 Jim Highto-er and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complexand Jim Hightow - Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty in Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Ed by Rodefeld Flora Voth Fujimoto Converse (St Louis The CV Mosby Co 1978) pp 261 273
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-37-
IX RECOMMENDATIONS
What then is the answer Can policy planning design and implementshyation of bilateral technical assistance programs be made more effective and if so how
Obviously neither the Agency for International Development nor the universities can hope to change radically or manipulate the political process and factors that influence the formulation of policies in Washington and their implementation in the developing countries Nol can universities be expected to alter materially their administrative and academic structutes In the case of the latter however much waste and frustration could be avoided if a macro study is first made to assess whether under the prevailing societal structure and distribution of wealth and political power in the country under consideration for
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-38shy
assistance a particular type of project for example of administrative decentralization could be expected realistically to work and achieve the intended goals of participation of the poor in development and public decision making If not the minimal policy or structural reforms and the magnitude of foreign aid that would be necessary for the program to succeed should be stated and spelled out unequivocally Unless the government is willing to make the necessary reforms and the needed funds can be made available the project should not be recommended for that country If however and for whatever reason AID decided to go ahead wich the project there would at least be no cause for later surprises or mortification on the part of the donor or the recipient country
Similarly since assumptions rather than facts generally determine the validity of at least fifty percent of the prognoses and projections of any strategy even in industrialized countries where data is not a problem it would be useful if a rigorous and independent analysis of the concepts premises and assumptions underlying a development program is made by AID and the contracting university before it is adopted Specifshyically it would be helpful if some state-of-the-art work were to be made part of the Project Paper preparation task It would not necessarily proshyvide new and better answers to old problems but it would discourage unshyrealistic expectations and experiments
Also once the project is on the ground it would be useful to institute an ongoing testing of the assumptions as distinct from evaluation of only the substantive and quantitative achievements Finally there should be much greater emphasis on intra- and inter-disciplinary teaching and research on the theory methodology and problems of development at the universities it would benefit both the faculty and the growing numbers of foreign students sent to the United States by governments of Third World countries for training in development-related disciplines Many of them occupy key positions of responsibility in a very short time after graduation If they could be taught to take a more holistic intershydisciplinary approach in the application of knowledge the gain for their countries could be far greater and more durable with less intellectual dependency than several million dollars spent on a technical assistance project
At present these students are required to fit into the traditional organization of departments and courses dedicated to the mastery of theory and methodology of a particular discipline subdiscipline or specializashytion Mot of the knowledge they acquire is irrelevant to the environshyment and problems of their home countries It is not surprising then if upon completion of their training a great many of the students return ill-equipped--often mistrained for their future careers good technicians at best--and in the words of the Indians spokesman cited earlier totally good for nothing61
61 In Remarks Concerning Savage of North America op cit
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
BIBLIOGRAPHY
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-40-
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agency for International Development Agricultural Development Policy Paper Draft No 4 (mimeo) Washington DC PPCPDA May 1977
Bateson William M Some Theoretical Underpinnings for Area Development Approaches Regional Planning and Area Development Project Discussion Paper Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Campbell Rex R et al Reflection on Title XII The Case of Sociology in the Small-Ruminants Collaborative Research Support Program The Rural Sociologist 11 (January 1981) 2-10
Committ2e on Institutional Cooperation Building Institutions to Serve Agrishyculttre A Summary Report of the CICAID Rural Development Reshysearch Project Lafayette Indiana Purdue University (no date given)
Desai Gunvant M and VR Gaikwad Applied Nutrition Programme--An Evaluashytion Study Centre for Management in Agriculture Ahmedabad Indian Institute of Management 1971
East Asia and Pacific Regional Office Thailand--Toward a Development Strategy of Full Participation A World Bank Country Study Washington DC The World Bank 1980
Franklin Benjamin Remarks Concerning Savage of North America Ca 1784
Government of India Indian Agriculture in Brief Seventeenth Edition New Delhi Directorate of Economics and Statistics 1978
Hightower Jim Agribusiness and Agrigovernment Power Profits and Poverty Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et aleds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hightower Jim and Susan DeMarco The Land Grant College Complex Change in Rural America Causes Consequences and Alternatives Rodefeld et al eds St Louis The CV Mosby Company 1978
Hobbs Daryl J Rural Development Intentions and Consequences Rural Sociology 145 (Spring 1980) 19 22
Hoffman Michael and Leo Jakobson The Sketch Plan A Conceptual Framework Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1979
International Rice Research Institute Rice Statistics Manila Philippines 1978
Jakobson Lz and Ved PrakashA Proposal for Area Development Submitted to the Agency for International Development US Department of State Madison Wisconsin September 1978
Lofchie Michael Agrarian Socialism in the Third World The Tanzanian Case Comparative Politics 83 (April 1976) 479-499
Lowi YL et al Poliscide New York MacMillan amp Company 1976
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975
-41-
Myrdal Gunnar Asian Drama New York Pantheon Press 1968
Nair Kusum Blossoms in the Dust The Human Element in Indian Development Midway Reprint Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum In Defense of the Irrational Peasant Chicago University of Chicago Press 1979
Nair Kusum The Lonely Furrow Ann Arbor Michigan University of Michigan Press 1969
National Advisory Commission on Rural Poverty Rural Poverty Hearings Washington DC September 1967
Pressman JL and Aaron Wildavsky Implementation Berkeley University of California Press (no date given)
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Administrative Decentralization and Area Development Planning in East Africa Implications for United States AID Policy Occasional Paper No 1 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project May 1980
Regional Planning and Area Development Project Northeast Rainfed Agricultural Development Project--An Opportunity Framework Consulting Report No 2 Madison Wisconsin Regional Planning and Area Development Project October 1979
Report of the Task Force on Agrarian Relations (mimeo) New Delhi Planning Commission Government of India 1973
US Agency for International Development Blue Nile Rural Development Project Paper Khartoum US AIDSudan 1978
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Kenya 1980-84 Washington DC USAID 1970
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Sudan FY 1981 Washington DC USAID 1979
US Agency for International Development Country Development Strategy Stateshyment Tanzania Washington DC USAID 1979
US Congress House of Representatives Hearings and Markup of the Committee on International Relations Ninety-fourth Congress First Session July 1975 Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government Implementation of New Directions in Development Assistance Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Government Printing Office 1975
US Government New Directions in Development Aid Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations Washington DC US Governshyment Printing Office 1975