Who should the donors fund?

I just returned from a trip to Germany organised by the Heinrich Boll Foundation, a think-tank-cum-funding institution of the German Green Party. The purpose of the visit was to explain post-flood Pakistan. The dialogue was necessary since the German parliament decided to halt any increase in assistance to Islamabad. The fault is our own, since the formal civil society has been up in arms telling the world that it should fund the NGO sector rather than the government.

The decision to freeze funding was taken after a number of German parliamentarians carried out an assessment trip to Pakistan. I was part of a meeting in which some members of the privileged civil society were arguing that foreign governments should not help the corrupt Pakistani government but give their funds to NGOs. It was almost ridiculous to see the elite talk about the myopia of Pakistan’s ruling elite and its inefficiency. The ability of the rich and the privileged to sell the poor of this country never ceases to surprise me.

These days, all it takes to appear credible in the eyes of foreign aid donors is to have command of the English language, speak the right jargon and get published in a few newspapers and magazines. It helps when foreign donors are not looking for solutions but for partners in distributing some money. Since the NGO sector is the latest fad, donors do not consider the corruption of this sector. This is not against NGOs in general but about the principle of selective accountability. Given that the ruling elite dominates the NGO sector too, why should it not be subject to accountability?

It is a strange idea that NGOs, including the Tehreek-i-Insaaf, are pitching for diversion of funds from the government to alternative channels when it is the government that has the greatest capacity to deliver during the rehabilitation phase. Infrastructure development and reconstruction is a gigantic task that can only be carried out by the government.

This is not to suggest that misappropriation of funds did not take place or that the government was on top of distributing resources. There are stories of the cold-heartedness of many politicians, such as the prime minister refusing to allow money for the development of his city, Multan, to be diverted to flood relief. However, the solution is to include the civil society and NGOs in greater monitoring and evaluation. While Transparency International seems to be a great model, in Pakistan’s case it will make a lot of sense for donors to help develop local sources of monitoring and evaluation. There are a lot of credible personalities that can be roped into the process.

The fact of the matter is that the government is the strongest entity to deliver aid to the masses. A comparative case, for instance, pertains to the supply of food subsidies to farmers by the Indian government. One should hear the Indian elite criticise the programme as being a case of corruption and inefficiency of the state. Such an argument is made without even considering the huge subsidies that elite members of the society or elite sectors get from the Indian government. Luckily, the food aid to farmers programme was never discontinued. In the post-flood phase, it is vital for the government to increase social assistance networks, such as its income support programme.

As for donors who get excited from their partnership with the local elite, they need to shun their hypocrisy while dealing with such situations. They have a right to get critical of the corruption of the ‘native.’ However, it will also make sense if they reconsider their own behaviour, such as the continued supply of weapons to poor states, especially those affected by natural calamities or other equally serious crisis. Pakistan cannot afford to increase its non-development expenditure. The government had to cut the public sector development programme by half to help the flood-effected, which is bad news. While Islamabad must think of diverting non-development expenditure, foreign governments must see the duplicity of their own behaviour. It is a bad idea for their defence industry to run at the cost of our poor. Perhaps its time Germany and others reconsider their weapons sales’ figures.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2010.