The dystopian social net

The friend always talks up a local organization. For all the good reasons, of course.  I have no problems with the work that they do.

But, I have always maintained that the presence, the need, and the growth of such organizations actually reflects something more serious that I have always been worried about: The breakdown in the social contract.  The big holes in the social safety net.

Consider, for instance, the homeless.  Whatever be the circumstance, there is something seriously wrong when there are homeless people out on the streets and in makeshift cardboard tents. Especially on cold and wet winter days and nights.  What happened to the social contract to take care of them?

Republicans decided a long time ago that this is not a collective problem that we need to address. To the typical Republican, protecting guns and protecting fertilized human eggs are the kinds of "collective" problems that taxes are for, and not to address real, in-your-face, human problems like homelessness.

Homelessness is not a blue-state problem nor a red-state problem.  It is not a problem faced only by fair-weather cities.   It is large-scale, with a whole range of reasons that are largely beyond the scope of any one local entity.  But, the rabid Republicans even stopped talking about these problems.  If they didn't recognize the problem, it does not exist, right?  And they can then press on with real problems like Haitians working with ISIS to steal all the American jobs!

These collective issues are then left to the liberal wusses and the truly religious to take care of them.  Our hearts bleed and we do our best to take care of them.  But, the massive effort requires the machinery of the government, which is exactly what the damn Republicans do not want to fund:

The dystopian social safety net alleviates pain and suffering, so it is necessary in the short term. But the roots of the pain and suffering need to be addressed, and when there are shortcomings (as there will be), the government should be the safety net, not only civil society.

A few months ago, I read about a group that was trying to help poor mothers post bail.  It is not as if these mothers had assaulted or killed.  Nope. It could even be simple scenarios like this: They have a broken brake light in their cars, which they have not fixed because of the precarious economic lives they lead.  The police officer tickets them, especially if the women are non-white. These women don't have the money to pay the ticket because they are dealing with far more pressing issues. And soon, well, the government decides that non-payment is a felony and they are jailed.

I donated money to that group.  That's what we bleeding-heart liberal wusses do.  But, groups like that shouldn't even have to exist in the first place!

But these programs, though wonderful and needed, shouldn’t have to exist in the first place. Of course, they should be praised and supported. But they should also be understood for what they are: temporary palliatives that we should not accept as long-term solutions.

Exactly.  But, guess who has to figure out the long-term solutions?

Such is the state of affairs, which we don't typically see in Scandinavia, for instance.  Why?  Because, the nearly all-white GOP is worried that the beneficiaries will be non-white people.

Is it, therefore, any surprise that the rabid republicans voted for the openly racist white male?  The surprise will be if he does not get re-elected!

Narendra Modi loves the Chinese model. Heck, any anti-democratic model!

A couple of days ago, after reading a news item that half of India's rivers are polluted, I tweeted about it.  A high school friend from India replied, with his characteristic sarcastic brevity, "just half?"

Talking about pollution, working on highlighting the damage to the natural environment, and actively engaging to protect it, might sound as valid democratic activities to us here in the US.  Every plant and animal and river and lake and mountain seems to have a group or two championing the cause openly and loudly.  Which is what I expect in a democracy, even when I disagree with them.  If we can have the NRA and the Chamber of Commerce, then why not the other organizations too?

It can be frustrating, no doubt, to have all these people yelling and screaming about their favorite issues all the time.  But, the alternative is far worse.

There are countries that are not willing to accommodate the multiple and competing interests and claims.  Especially the ones that don't agree with the government's bottom-line.  At an extreme is North Korea.  But, along that continuum of gradual change, a change from conditions here in the US to North Korea, lie a bunch of countries.  A whole range of them.  And, many of them seem convinced that the Chinese approach is better than the American one.  Unlike in the US, what if the troubling voices are silenced?

With every passing day, it appears that India's Narendra Modi's government is moving farther away from an American-style democracy--however screwed up it might be--towards a Chinese model.  The latest example:

Stating that acceptance of foreign contributions by Greenpeace India has prejudicially affected the public and the economic interest of the country in violation of the Section 12 (4)(f)(iii) and Section 12(4)(f)(ii) of the FCRA, the government said the act also amounted to violation of the conditions of grant of registration certificate. Accordingly, the Central government has suspended the registration of the organisation, including its branches and units, under the FCRA, for six months beginning Thursday.

I like how the government makes explicit "the public and the economic interest of the country."  The "Make in India" slogan shall not be compromised!

Have I violated the rule? ;)
"Use of the 'Make in India' logo is strictly prohibited without permission of DIPP"

India being a complex labyrinth of rules and regulations that are meticulously implemented by the "Ramamrithams" that this blogger caricatures and tortures, the following is no surprise:

The suspension order faulted the NGO for shifting its office and activities from Chennai to Bengaluru and also replacing 50% or more of its executive committee members without approval or intimation of the home ministry.

How dare somebody move their office from Chennai without the government's approval!

Greenpeace, I am sure, took quite a few line-in-the-sand approaches that were against "the public and the economic interest of the country."  It is not the only one either:

Activist groups working against coal-fired power plants and other infrastructure projects have accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of diluting environmental rules and making it easier for businesses to buy land and set up factories. Modi came to power a year ago with the promise of reviving Asia’s third largest economy and break business bottlenecks.

Dissenting opinions and movements are, well, dissenting and not supportive.   In a democracy, we learn to live with opinions that don't agree with ours.  I know it all too well--it seems like I am always on the dissenting side, at my work and even otherwise.

In a democracy, we don't work to silence dissent.   But then, China is no democracy and that is the model that appeals to quite a few these days, Modi included.

Ethics in giving to the poor in Africa, and elsewhere ...

Two interesting reads on the same day, from two different perspectives, and both adding to the increasingly loud arguments on why financial aid to the poor, especially in Africa, might be more harm than good--at least in the way we have been doing it.
First, from an NGO field worker/volunteer, Andrew Morgan (ht to you-know-who-you-are for the link):

“I was shocked when I saw my family not digging,” my Ugandan friend Joseph said. “It was the start of the rainy season. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked them when I saw them sitting at my mother’s hut. I asked, ‘Why aren’t you preparing your fields?"
He stared out at the black ribbon of asphalt ahead of us, a narrow road that connects Gulu to the nation’s capital, Kampala. We had a few more hours to go before reaching home, and with a busted radio in the car, words were our only comfort. I waited for him to continue as he dug through the memory.
“You know, they had just returned from life in the camp. For ten years plus they were receiving food from the World Food Program. One of them said to me, 'We are not foolish. We decided not to farm. We are still waiting to meet the right NGO that will help us with food.’ Tssssssk! Can you imagine?”

Yet, despite such ground-level experiences, Morgan writes:

Sure, my money could end up reinforcing negative stereotypes on the ground. And some of it might even be used to line the pockets of a local government official somewhere. But despite this, I made the donation because I still have faith in giving. I am still convinced of its potential, its ability to catalyze opportunity.
I keep this faith even though I don’t take charity at face value anymore; I’m more critical now, and this, I think, is a good thing.

I suppose at an individual level this might be ok.  We make lots of decisions in life that are faith-based.  How much ever those decisions might come across as "irrational," well, those are the individual's decisions.

Now, add up all these individuals, and we get an entire country.  When the country has to decide whether or not it should allocate some of the common money to such causes, then it cannot act merely on faith, can it?  In democratic societies, most resource allocation decisions have to go be justified, and we hope that notorious wastes like the Bridge to Nowhere are in the minority.

Collective resource allocation requires, and rightfully so, evidence-based decisions not faith-based.  Then it is the Dambisa Moyo kind of people that appeal to me, who point out that aid in its old format is a colossal waste..  To add to that growing list is the "Dutch journalist Linda Polman, who draws on decades of experience of reporting from wartorn disaster zones" whose book War Games has been reviewed in Spiked. 

The question Polman wants to raise – and the one she urges aid workers, journalists reporting on aid operations and the governments and individuals who donate money and resources to ask – is if Doing Something is always that good when attempts to do right can go so wrong. War Games suggests that international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) have exacerbated tensions, poured money into the coffers of war lords and rebels, prolonged conflicts and contributed to entrenching an image of the ‘Third World’, particularly Africa, as a basket case for the wealthy nations.

Later, even while bursting a few bubbles in the book, the reviewer writes:

Aid is indeed Big Business today. Since the end of the Cold War, the number of INGOs has mushroomed. In the 1980s, around 40 were active in Cambodian refugee camps set up by the Thai border. Today, by contrast, the ICRC estimates that each major disaster attracts around 1,000 national and international aid organisations. In 2004, some 2,000 organisations descended on Afghanistan.
It is the somewhat luxurious job of journalists to raise tough questions without having to provide any solutions. But considering how willingly journalists generally go along with accounts of war and famine provided by INGOs, and how much they have abandoned their job of investigating, questioning and interrogating the complexities of conflicts, then we should welcome the publication of Polman’s book, or at least parts of it, as an example of when Doing Something is very worthwhile.

I can already imagine the shocked expressions of most of my students when I respond with all these and more ammo to their remarks in favor of more aid.

Sir Fazle Hasan Abed

The founder of BRAC, by some measure the world's biggest NGO: