Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 99)
TUESDAY 1 DECEMBER 2009
PROFESSOR GEOF
WOOD AND
DR MARTIN
GREELEY
Q80 Hugh Bayley: DFID has a civil
service training programme which I presume is there in the belief
that if you have a professionally trained, capable civil service
you help to deal with some of these problems of corruption. Is
the theory right and how effective is the training in meeting
the goal?
Professor Wood: If I can take
this because I evaluated this programme with one of the DFID output
purpose reviews two years ago, in December 2007. I think you are
referring to what is called the MATT2 programme, Management at
the Top, and this is a programme which is trying to create a critical
mass of committed, like-minded senior civil servants at joint
secretary and above, particularly identifying those who are likely
to rather rapidly move into strong positions. When I was leading
this review that meant I did have quite a bit of contact both
with the cohorts as well as with the Establishments Division and
the reforms that they are trying to take there. On paper, I think
there are lots of positives in this programme. I have been trying
to say to DFID and Dhaka that they should not under-estimate the
significance of this programme for all their other projects in
Bangladesh because, in the end, if you are trying to have projects
in relation to the Bangladesh government the reality of that is
that you need to have a senior cadre of civil servants on your
side sharing the same vocabulary, the same ideas and attempting
to see them through. Yes, I was quite impressed with some of this
cohort and very impressed with the training. I did have some criticisms
because I felt that they were having a cohort of training in Bangladesh
and then rather rapidly wanting them to do the same thing as has
always been done in the past, and has always failed, which is
then send them abroad. Sending them abroad is, frankly, a kind
of treat for the civil servants, and their patrons in the Establishments
Division resisted my attempts—and my attempts were quite
strong in the final briefing—to withdraw that part of the
programme in order to divert that funding into the building up
of capacity in Bangladesh, whether it is the Institute of Government
Studies in BRAC or whether it is the Public Administration Institute
in Dhaka University, or whatever, in order to build the capacity
in Bangladesh to take them through and maintain this critical
mass and a kind of esprit de corps within it. I can only see that
as a good move but I am not sure about the patronage/sending them
abroad aspect of it.
Dr Greeley: Just to add that the
problem even when you have well-trained high-calibre civil servants
is that there is wholesale change at the top within the civil
service establishment when there is a change in government and
political friends are appointed from within the establishment,
so it is very frustrating for DFID and other supporters of civil
service strengthening.
Q81 Hugh Bayley: You both lead me
into my next question. Governance is a very important context
for development in that better governance tends to produce better
development. You can look at Ghana versus the DRC if you like
in Africa, which I know better, but, generally speaking, there
has been a reluctance from DFID to plunge into dealing with governance
deficits within the political establishment, within the Parliament
or within political party structures. The Foreign Office does
a bit of this but DFID not very much and yet in Bangladesh it
is absolutely clear to me that unless you improve the standards
in public life in the political parties and in the Parliament
you will still have one of your two hands tied behind your back.
DFID is putting £5 million or £6 million, quite a large
sum of money, into developing the parliamentary and political
structures. Do you think this is wise? Is it likely to pay dividends?
What role do you think the Westminster Parliament and parties
could play in supporting DFID's work in this field?
Dr Greeley: I think if you look
at the experience under the caretaker government where there were
very deliberate attempts by those in office at the time to enforce
political party reform, we see that in fact there was sufficient
political leverage with the leadership in both the BNP and the
Awami League to resist that, and even when the caretaker government
went to extremes of jailing the leadership and otherwise putting
them in difficulties, there was sufficient political clout in
both parties to resist that. I find it difficult to imagine that
even so influential a voice as the British Government's is really
going to make very much difference to that, but I welcome the
pressure, and I think that continuing to spend in that manner,
encouraging reform, is what we should be doing, but do not expect
to count your chickens.
Q82 Hugh Bayley: Can I ask you to
comment before Geof does himself on Geof's example of setting
up an all-party group within the Parliament to look at poverty
reduction. Are you aware of this initiative or other initiatives
of this kind and would you put this in the category of "worth
trying"?
Dr Greeley: I think the all-parliamentary
approach is good, for sure, but again I am not very hopeful about
it. I rather prefer the line that Geof was suggesting that if
we are looking at generational transitions within the party political
leadership then it is possible to identify some likely winners
from a governance perspective and a shrewd level of support but
not overwhelming public endorsement would be very appropriate.
Professor Wood: You are going
to listen to Pierre Landell-Mills after us and I am sure he will
have comments on this as well. Part of the problem clearly with
an all-party parliamentary group idea, just to pick that up, is
that we can be absolutely sure for the moment that the opposition
will not play into this. You are a mixed group here from a range
of parties. This does not happen in Bangladesh and one of the
ways that the opposition parties attempt to de-legitimise any
government in power of course is not to play ball in the Assembly,
on the main floor of the house as well as the committees, so this
is going to take a long time.[1]
I think you can only do this if you are prepared to see it holistically
as a combination of pressure from civil society, good journalism,
holding MPs to account and asking them why they are not participating
in some of the business that they should be as opposition MPs.
I think we just have to modify our aspirations and ambitions here.
One of the problems with the aid business generally is that it
expects results too quickly. Obviously that is a problem for governments
in our own country where we try to justify taxpayers' money against
programmes of support that may take a long time to materialise.
Q83 Chairman: I take that point but
John Battle put that question specifically to the Prime Minister
about having an anti-poverty committee, which she was enthusiastic
about and said she was going to take forward, but what you are
saying is, is there no way that pressure can be brought to bear
on the opposition to say, "So you care so little about poverty
you are not prepared to take part?"
Professor Wood: Exactly.
Q84 Chairman: Does that have any
effect?
Professor Wood: I think that is
where the pressure has to be applied. There has to be an element
of embarrassment-creating processes.
Hugh Bayley: Thank you, that was very
interesting.
Q85 Richard Burden: Could we just
examine for a minute how the extent to which providing basic services
through NGOs fits into this whole picture of accountability and
what that means. In the evidence that you have put forward and
the things you have said you have described Bangladesh as a "franchised
state". Perhaps you could say to us what you think the developmental
implications are of that and to what extent the state, with all
the accountability issues we have been talking about, actually
does have an influence or control over the policy and the strategic
direction of basic services even if not the actual delivery of
them?
Professor Wood: I suppose I ought
to kick off since that is a reference to my arguments here. For
those of you who may not have come across this it is just a simple
point that I was making in the late 1990s that there is a bit
of a contradiction between having a lot of donor aid supporting
the NGO activity in Bangladesh and the growth of it and so on,
particularly in the area of the delivery of basic services—education
and health and so on—and at the same time the donors being
concerned about governance. Because it seems to me that what you
have is NGOs effectively taking on the functions of the state
but in a non-statutory framework in which they have no statutory
obligation to their clients; it is a voluntary relationship essentially,
so you have this problem. I think this is a big development problem
in Bangladesh because clearly Bangladesh is famous for, and has
led the world in the creation of, a series of NGOs, some of whom
are now international as well like BRAC, who have done huge scales
of work and implementation and brought ideas and so on to Bangladesh.
So there is a lot of praise to be given for that process, but
it does seem to me ultimately that there is a danger in over-privileging
NGOs as a target of aid and strategic partnerships for DFID, say,
the World Bank and anybody else, because it seems to me that then
you have a self-fulfilling prophecy in that you are undermining
the capacity of the state and you are getting in between the relationship
between citizen and state and reproducing that accountability
issue. I would make one more point. I know that Martin Greeley
has a lot of familiarity with BRAC, as indeed I do, and you may
have been given copies of this book, and I saw Abed a few weeks
ago in Dhaka myself, so there is huge respect for an organisation
of this kind.[2]
I do not think we are yet there with the thinking but I wonder
whether we have to say with a society like Bangladesh perhaps
the political settlement about policy and about the strategy and
strategic priorities and implementation is one involving political
party governance alongside large NGOs. However, at the moment
when democratic parties are in power then they seek to marginalise
the NGOs from the policy process as far as they can. Ironically,
it is only when you have military governments that they are concerned
to have strong alliances with NGOs as part of their reach-out
to the constituency.
Q86 Richard Burden: Maybe, Dr Greeley,
you will have something to say about this. If that would be the
kind of settlement that donors should be looking at, what in practical
terms would that mean as far as donor policy is concerned? How
would that be different to what happens now?
Professor Wood: I think it is
not realistic at the moment to propose to governing political
parties that have won through the ballot box—and I think
actually fairly in this last election—that they have got
to share their winner-takes-all approach with a set of NGOs in
a significant strategic way. However, it does raise this question—what
do we think about NGOs? Are we saying that they are guides to
policy, they are innovators, they show the way, but in the end
they are not the ones to do the macro-delivery, or are we saying
they are big enough and significant enough in Bangladesh to bring
them far more into the policy and implementation process. I think
that is the strategic dilemma.
Q87 Richard Burden: And you ultimately
come down on the second of those?
Professor Wood: No, I think I
come down ultimately on the first of actually hanging in there
with democratic parties and state responsibilities.
Chairman: I think we might pursue this
in some more detail. Mark Hendrick?
Q88 Mr Hendrick: Just on that point.
You are saying the opposition are not playing ball and therefore
they are not doing their job as an opposition. Government is not
doing the things it should be doing because if it was doing them
you would have no need for organisations like BRAC. When we were
in Bangladesh and we met with BRAC, the head there Abed was saying
that he does not want to get involved with governments because
then he is showing political bias to one party or another party.
How do you get round this?
Professor Wood: I think he is
right. That is why I opt for the first of the two solutions but
I simply open up a second one.
Q89 Mr Hendrick: If you are saying
then let us not be reliant on NGOs, this is a job of government
and government is not doing it, and we stop supporting NGOs like
BRAC, then what is going to happen? The whole place is going to
go even further down the drain, surely?
Dr Greeley: We are not doing justice
to NGO thinking on this issue. Abed and his colleagues at BRAC
are extremely aware of the need for transition. If we take for
example the education sector, last year DFID agreed to support
a new programme with BRAC and BRAC put in a budget to the donors
of over US $450 million and the donors rightly turned round to
BRAC and said, "Why should we give you $450 million for primary
education when we are also giving $800 million to the government
under the primary education development programme, phase two,
at the same time? What is the point in doing this?" BRAC
had developed an idea of public/private partnership in their original
documentation and this was very much a response to pressure from
donors to demonstrate that they were working with government.
In fact, we tore up that draft and we rewrote it completely because
it is not up to the NGOs to say, "We are going to form a
partnership with government." Government has to come to the
NGOs and make that request, so what, in effect, happened in the
outcome of all this was that BRAC said, "Okay, we will continue
to provide education services where the government cannot reach,
in remote areas, to ethnic minorities, to the poor. We will continue
to support the training of government staff in the teaching programme
and we will try to ensure that there is a process of transition
so that in five years' time we will not be looking at BRAC schools
but we will be looking at BRAC teacher training and BRAC support
to government systems." I think they are very aware of it,
but the timing of transition and the modalities of transition
do depend upon initiatives from the government and there is a
critical role for the donors to play in supporting that transition
in ways which do not undermine the political neutrality of the
NGOs.
Q90 Andrew Stunell: This is a very
interesting line of enquiry. We have focused rather on BRAC, which
is clearly quite an exceptional organisation. There are of course
many other NGOs operating in the education sector, for instance,
and in some cases it seems to be almost the other way round in
that the government does not really acknowledge the work that
the NGOs are undertaking. Could you say something about that relationship
between the government and NGOs in general when it comes to the
delivery of health and education and whether that relationship
is sufficiently robust?
Dr Greeley: I think it is important
to distinguish amongst the community of NGOs in Bangladesh. There
are lots of them. What we have seen, for example in the education
sector, was that upon occasion when the government decides that
its chosen modality for service delivery is through the NGOs,
as it has in some of its urban education programmes, that what
happens is that politically minded individuals set up NGOs in
order to access these programmes, and the record shows this has
happened for example with major World Bank programmes in the education
sector with really very, very poor outcomes for children. I think
talking about NGOs in general is risky but if we talk about some
of the bigger NGOs that have been there since shortly after independence,
such as BRAC and some of the smaller partners which are supported
and nurtured by international NGOs, then we are looking at organisations
that can deliver quality services. I am a strong supporter of
DFID and others providing them with resources to do that. It seems
to me it is not reasonable that we should put achievement of the
MDGs and the removal of extreme poverty on hold until the political
process in Dhaka has sorted itself out, which may take a very
long time.
Q91 Andrew Stunell: Which way round
does this relationship actually work? What seemed to us was that
the NGOs spring up and then the government kind of accepts them
or not rather than the government initiating a process, but tell
me about these political NGOs, are they party-based NGOs?
Professor Greeley: They are set
up by individuals with connections to the political parties who
are willing to pay to politicians to get access to financial resources
through programmes such as the hard-to-reach out-of-school children
programme.
Q92 Andrew Stunell: So it is a way
of siphoning off some money rather than delivering an education?
Professor Greeley: It is a way
of siphoning off some money. You have to be careful which NGOs
you work with. It is a very mixed bag in Dhaka.
Q93 Andrew Stunell: Do you think
at the strategic level the government of Bangladesh has come to
terms with how to form those relationships and monitor those relationships?
Professor Greeley: No, it has
not. It has an NGO watchdog which has had good leadership on occasion
and which has had reasonable relationships with some of the bigger
NGOs. It could potentially fulfil that role and be an effective
watchdog. It has the law behind it, it has clout, but it is not
trusted because it is perceived to be political in the way in
which it goes about its business.
Q94 Andrew Stunell: Does the government
intend to have a pro-poor preference in terms of the way it supports
NGOs in their programmes in different areas?
Dr Greeley: Yes. If you take the
example of their support to microfinance, the government runs
a major apex body which supplies microfinance, targeted only at
those NGOs which are targeting the poorest households. Government
has been able to have quite a decisive influence, in fact, on
the way in which a particular sector has developed and helped
it to develop in a pro-poor way.
Q95 Andrew Stunell: I think we were
offered a fairly rose-tinted picture of the work that NGOs did
on the one hand, in contrast to what the government was able to
do on the other. You are painting perhaps a more realistic picture.
Would you like to comment on where the advantage of governance
lies in delivering a pro-poor policy in a rural village in Bangladesh
between money channelled through an NGO and money channelled through,
say, the Department of Education.
Professor Wood: One issue that
really has to be understood about Bangladesh, and it affects how
you think about NGOs, in the way that Martin has been saying,
but it also affects how you think about government, is that you
have prevailing cultural forms of doing business. These are patron-client
type relationships that stretch across the country and they are
extended kinship groups controlling different bits of business
and so on. You are never looking at open, transparent relationships
in the way that projects are selected and in the way that money
is managed and handled and invoiced and all the rest of it, and
it is terribly important to acknowledge that NGOs are no more
insulated, in the ways in which they work on the ground, from
those prevailing cultural forms of doing business, than the government.
There is an organisational culture which is strongly patron-client,
strongly kinship/friendship/contact-based, and that operates,
as it were, beneath the surface of the formality. That is the
case for non-government organisations, as it for government. When
we talk about issues of governance and democracy and accountability
and so on, we are really talking about trying, as it were, to
take formal political and development actors, detach them, as
it were, from the prevailing cultural forms of doing business
that surround them, and they of course have to meet those expectations
and pressures within their own societies, within their own families,
amongst their own clients, so you can have very flashy, formal-looking
organisations at the apex, but the reality on the ground will
always be influenced by these cultures of doing business. One
of the things that we have particularly noted in research over
the last few years is, for example, the phenomenon of the mastaan.
I do not know whether anybody mentioned this to you, but we used
to think of mastaan as simply gang leaders in urban situations
(recognising that power in the countryside in the past was landlords
and money lenders and so on) but we are now seeing what we call
a `mastaanisation' of the countryside; that is to say, these political
brokers connected to political parties and connected to business,
connected to projects, contracts, engineers who are taking the
big infrastructure contracts. The way in which that is done, the
way in which labour is managed on rural works programmes and any
contract, is all filtered through these kinds of relationships,
and it is pervasive. That is why this is a long haul business
and—while I remember to say it—why you need people
in DFID in Dhaka who have that field exposure and understanding
rather than keep churning people over on a three-year basis who
really do not see all of that.
Q96 Chairman: BRAC is such a unique
organisation.
Professor Wood: But not insulated
from what I have just said.
Q97 Chairman: No. That was part of
my question. It is huge in Bangladesh and internationally, and
there are a number of aspects of that we want to explore. On the
point you have just made, before I ask a general question and
then bring in John Battle, there is the Public Procurement Bill
which is being brought through. I am anticipating your answer
would be, "What a good idea, but it will take years to take
effect," but what is your general view about how effective
it can be?
Professor Wood: For your efficiency,
I suggest you really do ask that question to Pierre Landell-Mills.
Q98 Chairman: All right, if you think
so, we will come back to that. The meeting we had with Dr Abed.
BRAC is an inspirational organisation, although perhaps a little
paternalistic and patronising in some of its approaches, but it
is difficult to imagine what Bangladesh would be like without
it. DFID perhaps understandably said it wants a strategic alliance
with it. You have partially answered that question, saying, "That's
all very well, but you have to build the state up as well."
Do you think DFID is in danger of going up the wrong track, or
do you think it is possible to do that whilst building up the
state or, indeed, necessary to do so? Is it also a shortcut: BRAC
is so big, DFID is a big organisation, it is very easy to deal
with BRAC, it saves all the trouble of dealing with lots of other
NGOs (who are clients of BRAC in many cases.) Do you think DFID
is moving on the right path there, or is it in danger of going
down the wrong path?
Dr Greeley: It would appear to
be a sensible move from both DFID and BRAC's perspective, in that
it should reduce the transactions cost of doing business. DFID
has several different contracts with BRAC at the moment, supporting
a variety of their programmes, but that could be centralised.
It appears to be a major advantage. I worry that this is looking
at it too narrowly and looking at it just from a DFID and BRAC
perspective. How carefully has DFID thought through the consequences
of the ways in which a government might look at this relationship?
How well have we thought through how the rest of the NGO sector—which
is very important for service delivery as we have been discussing—looks
at this? What signals does it send about the relative importance
of the NGO sector versus the state in the thinking of DFID Bangladesh?
Whilst I can understand the reasoning behind it, it is making
a major statement about British understanding of the development
path in Bangladesh, and I worry that all the implications of that
have not been thought through.
Professor Wood: I am very glad
Martin said that, because he is closer to BRAC then I am, but
that very much is my view. It is worth saying, also, that about
10 years ago DFID went into an over-privileged relationship to
BRAC, supporting its microfinance work, and supporting the evolution
of the BRAC Bank, and I had a lot of arguments with DFID at that
time because by setting up the relationship exclusively with BRAC
to enable the bringing about of the BRAC Bank, DFID effectively
undermined other negotiations that were going on to create a bank
for the NGO sector as a whole, to enable a whole lot of other
microfinance organisations to move into the same banking relationships
with the poor as Grameen obviously already had and BRAC was able
to evolve. I think that DFID at that time behaved quite non-developmentally
across the sector and I think on our over-privileged relationship
with BRAC it will do the same.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q99 John Battle: We visited BRAC's
Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction programme. We went
out and saw a pre-school, we went to a village where a woman called,
if I remember rightly, Chanka told us that she had lost her husband
to TB. She had nothing and there was a scheme to give her a grant,
that enabled her to use good husbandry—from chickens to
goats to cows—to get enough money by selling milk to get
a loan to put a tin roof on her home. Then we met the village
Poverty Reduction Committee that was managing this. We sat round
and I was impressed by BRAC's blending of livelihoods, legal advice—as
well as barefoot medics, barefoot lawyers—and for women
in the Muslim context as well. That blend was quite impressive,
but I have come away asking: if I liked the community development/integration
that is going on, what impact does it really have? They have coined
the phrase "the ultra poor" but what impact is BRAC
having in Bangladesh on tackling the percentage of ultra poor,
making sure they get access to resources and development? Are
they the only ones in the game? What are the main challenges in
seeking to expand the programme? How large is it? Really whether
it is making a structural impact on poverty reduction targets
nationally.
Dr Greeley: This programme emerged
from a recognition that the main vehicle for poverty reduction
in Bangladesh had been the delivery of microfinance services.
Research demonstrated that the ultra poor, the extreme poor, were
not getting access through these services. BRAC took a long time
developing that programme. I am really pleased that the Committee
had the opportunity to visit this in the field. It is one of the
most important programmes in Bangladesh. It was very influential
in the development of DFID's other programme, the Chars Livelihoods
Programme. Many ideas were borrowed and it has also been useful
for those partners working in DFID's Shiree Programme in partnership
with the government. The important thing about this programme
is that it is an innovation that provides an alternative model
to two main pathways to development. It is not a programme of
pure social transfers, it is not a programme of economic empowerment
through the market, it is a blend of those two. By providing a
grant element initially and the support for health and for legal
services, it provides the basis for households which otherwise
would not be able to do so, to engage effectively in the market.
It is a one-off lift-me-up, a promotional safety net. It is a
model which is now being copied in seven other countries. It is
called a graduation model, somewhere between the social transfer
and the market-based approach. The research on the long-term benefits
to the clients is coming in now. There are some very scientific
studies underway. The initial evidence is extremely positive.
The most positive element that visitors time and time again repeat
is the transformation that they observe in the behaviour, attitudes
and aspirations of the clients. If you see these households, particularly
the women in the households, prior to programme participation
and after they have been there two years, it is absolutely incredibly.
You will not need to look for science. You can see it in their
eyes. You can see the transformation.
1 Subsequent to this meeting, I addressed the APPG
in Dhaka on 7 and 8 December 2009, and to my surprise, there was
all-party membership. Back
2
Fajle Abed, Director of BRAC. The book referred to is Freedom
from Want by Ian Smillie. Back
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