Doing Development Better.

• Author: Datta, Christopher

Across the developing world the United States runs aid programs that have met the laudable goal of reducing infant mortality and maternal death resulting from childbirth. We have done some astonishing things, such as completely eliminating smallpox. Now we are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic by working to equip local communities with the tools needed to fight back against the coronavirus. Effective and inexpensive vaccines are everywhere administered to countless children who would otherwise die or be crippled by disease. More vaccines are on the way, perhaps even one for malaria, one of the biggest killers in the developing world. It is nothing short of a miracle.

And yet the impact of these efforts in many countries could well be a legacy of war, famine, misery and the creation of new and even worse diseases.

I pose a question. It is a shocking question, and I do not have the answer, but I pose it because I think it needs attention. The United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, prides itself on the fact that it can prove it has saved the lives of tens of thousands of women and children through its maternal health programs. But what has been accomplished?

The great social philosopher and satiric writer, Jonathan Swift, pondered this same question back in 1729 in his famous satiric essay, A Modest Proposal. In his essay, Swift satirically recommended that it would be more humane for the rich to buy and eat the year-old babies of the poor than to let them grow up to lead hopeless lives of misery and destitution.

Obviously, Swift did not seriously mean that the people of Ireland should sell their children for meat. His argument, of course, was that his society needed to find a way to deal more effectively with widespread poverty.

Are We Really Helping?

We face, I think, a similar dilemma in our current development work around the world. When we go into societies that cannot provide the basic services needed to support their citizens, in which the rule of law has no meaning, and in which real political participation is not possible, are we really helping by saving lives that in the future cannot be sustained? Are children who are rescued from death by polio, only to grow up in crushing poverty, without education or opportunity or hope, really saved?

In Sierra Leone, where my adopted son is originally from, this very crushing poverty led many young men and boys to join a murderous rebellion that tore their society apart...