Examination of witnesses (Questions 160-165)
DEPARTMENT FOR
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
4 JUNE 2007
Q160 Mr Mitchell: What is the position
on land reform? We all know the story of the Kulaks of Russia
and the increase of production and that of the expropriation of
the white Kulaks in Zimbabwe, which has led to a disastrous fall
in production. One hears reports about big commercial agriculture
driving out small peasant agriculture in large parts of Africa
to supply goods such as flowers for the European market. How do
you interact with that? Do you have to cope with the consequences
of the commercialisation of agriculture and try to offset it,
do you want to sustain peasant agriculture, or do you roll with
the punches?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Our fundamental
mission is to eradicate poverty, so it rather depends what sort
of land reform you are talking about. If land reform is clearly
going to impoverish people, we would not be in favour of it.
Q161 Mr Mitchell: You cannot say
that until it is done.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: One has
to take a view in different contexts. For example, in some places
land reform has been extremely successful in dealing with poverty—South
Korea and Japan are good examples. In India, a good example would
be the Punjab and bad example would be West Bengal. There are
a number of different cases and we would have to do an analysis,
in each case when a Government put forward a proposal, of what
it would do in terms of rural poverty. In the Zimbabwe case, we
said up front that the proposal would impoverish the rural poor.
Q162 Mr Mitchell: So you tackle the
poverty, really, whether it is a consequence of land reform or
of not having it?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Yes, that
is right. Everything comes back to that.
Dave Fish: We have two good examples
in Africa at the moment of tackling land reform for poor people.
One is in Rwanda and one is in Mozambique, both with a strong
push from the Government to produce land laws that protect the
interest of the poorest, so the issue is something that we are
very interested in.
Q163 Chairman: Just one last question,
slightly on that point, on channelling more of our taxpayers'
money through the Governments of developing countries, I presume
you agree with this statement, in paragraph 2.19, on page 17 of
the Report: "In our survey of country offices, only half
of those country teams using budget support reported they were
satisfied with government spending in rural areas or its broad
geographical focus." That is pretty damning, is it not? I
presume that you accept it?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: I accept
that, but I also accept that an even lower proportion would have
been satisfied 10 years ago. In other words, what we have been
doing is trying to improve Governments' focus on rural areas.
We have got to that stage, but it is still not good enough.
Q164 Chairman: When I was in the
Congo in September, I was very struck by the desperate nature
of Government efficiency—or complete lack of it—and
impressed by the actions of much smaller charities, such as War
Child, which were channelling all their money not through the
Government, but directly into very small sustainable projects.
I am worried, because I rather thought that that was an increasing
focus of our activities.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: One has
to separate a few things. On DRC, I would agree with you. In DRC,
the fundamental task for DFID would be to try to get the state
to show some semblance of being able to run anything and to use
direct assistance much more; but in Mozambique, Tanzania and Vietnam,
the state does function.
Q165 Chairman: All right, a fair
answer. Thank you very much. This has been an interesting hearing,
but we are worried that there is perhaps either an insufficient
emphasis on prioritising the rural poor—either by multilateral
agencies or by DFID—or insufficient use made of research.
Sir Suma, unless you can convince us otherwise, our Report may
well reflect that point of view.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We will
send you the notes that you asked for.
Chairman: Thank you very much, gentlemen.
| 
