'The Indian government has shut the door on NGOs'

This piece in the Guardian says that the government in India is trying to push out international NGOs with the specific aim of suppressing human rights abuses in the country.

This article feels tired.

It assumes that international NGOs are inherently altruistic and seek to serve people and those who are very vulnerable. Yet, it is well-known that international organisations serve donor interests and literally have to account for all their actions in rigourous monitoring and evaluation frameworks. So, it is naive to think that NGOs might not also push the donor perspective (see US or UK government or corporate foundation etc) on local people and culture.

Furthermore, the article doesn't dig deep enough into the real problem, which is equity and justice. Yes, we may need NGOs to counterbalance Government and provide an outlet for complaints and enforcement of justice and yes, we may need international ones that are based abroad on outside resources and so are not liable to be captured by local powerful elites but, the real question is who counterbalances the international NGO? Who handles the limits of power that international NGOs have on local communities? In the protection of people, how do we prevent capture by foreign elites? Why do we need international NGOs to protect local communities anyway? Where is the mechanism that helps them do that for themselves?

It would be 'nice' if NGOs were actually people-driven and people-funded but they are not.  People can be powerless, marginalised and poor and don't have the resources to have their own powerful NGO. An international donor isn't the only answer to this.

Further thinking:
- What are non-international NGOs in India already doing to address human rights abuses?
- What do Indian actors say is needed in human rights?
- What is the value of international solutions for the human rights issue in India? (Beyond simply... Foreigners do human rights better than Indians)
- What examples do we have of communities already protecting themselves from elite interest?

Marjorie Kelly on the Emergent Ownership Revolution

Do you need something more tangible to use when talking about social business?

Is the 'social purpose' argument a bit thin for you?

According to Marjorie Kelly in Towards Mission-Controlled Corporations: Extractive vs Generative Design there are 5 elements of a generative ownership-driven design framework for social businesses:

1. Membership – How can we have the right people forming part of the business? How can they contribute to the running of the business? What roles and authority can they have?
2. Purpose – What purpose can a business have beyond profit-making for shareholders? What problems might it solve? How is 'wealth', and value spread within the local community?
3. Governance – Who is the board? Who does the board answer to? 
4. Finance – Where does the money come from? Where does it go? How does it circulate through the business? How does it generate wealth and value?
5. Networks – How does the business get access to goods, services, information? How might the exchange be carried out? How might it be non-financial? How might it reach beyond typical boundaries e.g. geography?

What types of careers are there in international development?

Skills (What you can do!)

• All skills needed!!

Functions (What role you would play!)

You may have 1 or more of these skills!

• Fundraising - storytelling, strategy, communications, budgeting, networking, relationship building, research, project management
• Policy - research, communications, legal, institutional development, relationship building, politics
• Institutional development - research, governance, relationship building, politics
• Economic development - economic modelling, industrial development, market systems strategy, welfare 
• Social welfare - advocacy, social welfare subsidies, charity work, 
• Private sector development - business innovation, enterprise development, enabling environment, entrepreneurship, taxation and legal
• Marketing and retail - commerce, business management, sociology, psychology, policy and/or network development
• Operations - logistics, network management, project management, finance, and/or results measurement 
• HRM - sociology, psychology, training and development, and/or team building
• Finance - finance, strategy, M&E, project management, and/or legal
• Results measurement - finance, strategy, project management, and/or research

New Trends (Where you might position yourself!)

• Market-based development
• Socialist market systems
• Social welfare
• Ethical business
• Fintech
• Behaviourial sciences
• Systems change
• Resilience
• Conflict 
• Livestock
• Healthcare
• Climate and the natural environment
• Informal sector
• NGO organisational development
• Foundation funding

Things to Remember!

• Be different - If you have good ideas that seem too out-of-the-box for traditional work, this could be the right time to build a skills around it and offer that skill to the development space
• Look deeper than large institutions - If you want to learn on the job, develop tangible skills and be part of an impactful project, start at the field and work upwards
• Competences are important - teamwork, patience, time management, critical thinking, adaptability, focus and determination

RCTs in poverty reduction and development: why are some practitioners abandoning RCTs?

This blogpost about ethics in international development is about a randomised control trial (RCT) in Kenya. In the experiment, some households in Kenya were given unconditional cash transfers of either USD 404 or USD 1525. The researchers found, unsurprisingly, that the lucky ones were happier and that their unlucky neighbours were unhappy. The paper is aptly titled “Your Gain is my Pain”.

Most importantly, however, the blogger reflects on why this type of research is done at all: "Am I the only one to think that is not ethical dishing out large sums of money in small communities and observing how jealous and unhappy this makes the unlucky members of these tight knit communities?" 

For myself, as a development practitioner with a systems thinking perspective, RCTs can come across as having very limited usefulness and application. They can also be quite machine-based: they either choose to wilfully ignore human behaviour or they simply limit their interactions with other disciplines (psychology, sociology, anthropology) so that they can create more simple hypotheses. Thus, it is felt that the applicability of an RCT for complex problems (such as systemic poverty) is limited.

The RCT we have seen from Kenya seems to fall into that trap too. This RCT seems to need to test the notion that poor people in Kenya might not exhibit the same reactions and behaviours as other people. As if the nature of the human condition (in Africa) is under exploration. To me, this is strange and feels like the original hypotheses might have been drastically distilled and reduced down to overly simplified thoughts.

I wonder how the findings would actually be useful to policy and projects. Who might need proofs from an RCT that Kenyans are like any other human being? How could such research be useful for development planning at an economic or social level? Why is the notion that proving that desperation, jealously and unhappiness occurs among very poor people is valuable? I would also wonder what long-lasting impact this type of research would have on social relationships in the communities in the future.

Globally, there is a large community of development practitioner who feel that RCTs in poverty interventions are not ethical and not useful. From my conversations with them, they make the following points:

1. In many RCTs, an assumption is made that the the groups will not be communicating with each other. However, it is actually very difficult to have demarcated and clear boundaries for the treatment groups to be adequately isolated. People talk. Information can flow through multiple channels and through multiple mechanisms (face-to-face, mobile phone, internet, etc) across groups, geographies, social hierarchies, institutions, etc. 
2. In RCTs, people might be very desperate because of the psychological and social impact of poverty and crisis. In this case all the RCT does is exacerbate that desperation and exacerbate those behaviours that present themselves when people are in desperate situations. The results are therefore naturally biased and skewed and outlying when compared to any group at any point in time. This is not adequately recognised in RCTs and thus not at all reflected when RCTs attempt to influence policy and project applications.
3. Over time, the RCT can have a lasting negative impact. Those RCTs which test the type of reactions as the one featured here in Kenya - jealousy and unhappiness - can damage social relationships between individuals and groups even after the trial has ended. Real people are not as adept to switching off their pain and trauma (and any additional feelings of betrayal, anger, envy, frustration, etc.) as machines might be able to! 

The systems for welfare and safety net programmes

How are welfare and social safety net systems set up?

Broadly speaking and quite simply, welfare and benefits help people through poverty as well as respond and be resilient to unexpected external shocks, such as macroeconomic downturn and job loss, sickness and injury, and other disabilities. Welfare also helps people grow their financial and asset base and are used to supplement incomes that are considered below living wage. Welfare can also help pay for supplementary services to people overcome poverty, respond to shocks and/or grow their asset base, such as childcare or energy subsidies.

Conversely, tax systems are used to generate income in order to redistribute to welfare recipients. Tax can be applied to incomes (and conversely tax can be reduced on low incomes and personal allowance thresholds). Tax can be applied to goods and services deemed harmful to other people and the environment such as cigarettes. Tax incentives (or tax-free activities) can be applied to goods and services deemed beneficial to other people and the environment such as solar panels for household roofs.

Welfare budget - The welfare budget is formed through amount raised in taxes and more precisely, the proportion of tax income allocated to the welfare system. Who decides this proportion? How does this money get allocated? Does the amount reflect the needs of the benefit claimants within the system? According to Open Democracy: "Benefit levels in Britain reflect political decisions on the amount governments in Britain have been prepared to spend, not the total of claimants’ needs."

Welfare eligibility criteria - There are several different categories of eligibility criteria to be able to clam welfare, such as time in work, dependents, length of residency. There are also different categories of benefit types from job seeker support, to housing to sickness to occupational injury. The specific criteria will differ in different countries. Above all, claiming benefits is not an easy task for local claimants or those from elsewhere classified as migrants or immigrants. And certain welfare opportunities are not included in the benefits system because they are public goods (from clean air to access to a universal healthcare system that treats personal injury and illness especially those that are communicable, contigious and treatable) (BBC News)

Multi-territorial welfare system - Across integrated trade and economic zones (where integration includes policies and regulations as well as social networks, culture and learning), such as the European Union (EU), it was found that migrants from wealthier countries (like the UK) have the power to claim benefits from across the water, in other equally wealthy or even less wealthy countries. At times, the number of Britons claiming welfare in the EU can be larger than 'EU migrants to the UK claiming welfare in the UK' (IB Times and the Guardian)

Changes to the welfare system - Changes to the amount in the welfare system (taxation) and who gets them (welfare recipients) are brought about by those operating within the system itself. The Government may seem to have decision-making power but what analysis do they do to make decisions and who does the research? In some cases, the EU can put pressure on member states to make welfare system changes (Social Europe)

Factors that affect the ability of a welfare system to work

• A restriction in money inflows are more of a burden than the increase in the number of welfare recipients
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https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/charlotte-rachael-proudman/welfare-benefits-are-calculated-by-political-objective
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25134521
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/britons-claiming-benefits-across-eu-outnumber-immigrants-getting-welfare-uk-1484091
http://www.socialeurope.eu/2015/02/welfare-union/