gleanings from the web, (slightly wonkish) july 21 edition
I'm just now seeing this great essay by Eric Randolph on how a capitalist state uses "development" as more of a weapon to protect the elite, rather than an honest means to improve the lives of its poor:
At its heart the priority of the capitalist state is to protect its most successful capitalists, and all the tools at its disposal are geared towards this goal. The state is benevolent only until an individual refuses its help, at which point its true character is revealed.
Randolph employs this framework to tear apart the Indian government's Integrated Action Plan, basically a fatter and fatter bundle of cash being earmarked to build roads and schools in Maoist-affect districts. The IAP, which will become a Rs. 111 billion initiative (or about $2.1 billion) by the end of 2012, is meant to show the poor that "the government is friendly to their way of life, but wants to help them change their way of life," according to Home Minister P. Chidambaram, because "abject poverty breeds extremism."
To Randolph, the development initiatives under the Integrated Action Plan are little more than ham-fisted machinery for propaganda and extending the writ of the state:
At the same time as it draws people out of the forest and away from the influence of non-state groups, the Integrated Action Plan also aims to extend the writ of the state by encouraging reluctant officials to travel into rebel-controlled areas – the most obvious incentive being the opportunity they will gain to syphon off funds from the scheme. The construction of new buildings also has practical uses for the police and paramilitary forces, given their predilection for camping out in schools, while the success or failure of construction projects provides a useful gauge of which areas are under Maoist control. Of only marginal interest to the authorities is whether any of this really improves conditions for the locals, and that is because at some level they understand that development is ineffective at stopping recruitment. ... The Integrated Action Plan promises new school buildings, roads and government offices, but seems completely disconnected from more fundamental problems such as the lack of teachers, the lack of political representation and the lack of jobs. No one hangs around to ask whether the plan has improved the lives of the locals. Rather, its success is measured by asking local officials how much of the money they have spent.But perhaps that is beside the point, since the more crucial rationale from the government’s perspective is how these development schemes play as a form of propaganda aimed, once again, at those areas that are far away from conflict zones. ... Fortunately for the Maoist leadership, the Integrated Action Plan runs little risk of being an effective piece of propaganda for the government. Initial figures suggest that, of the money released so far, less than a quarter has been spent and only 15.5% of projects actually completed. Not only is the scheme dubious in its ability to live up to its own promise, but it also misses the central point of the Maoist critique, which is that the system is structurally geared against the poor and therefore incapable of providing real, long-lasting improvements in their lives.
Just for fun, I tried to find a counterargument against this critique. I couldn't. Let's assume for a second that the main premise of the article is null: that is, capitalist states are not geared towards protecting their most successful capitalists. Even so, if there's one thing I learned from working for Bill Easterly, it's that development initiatives won't work without built-in feedback mechanisms. A more sinister take would be that some development initiatives lack feedback mechanisms because they were never meant to work in the first place. The phantasmagoric performance of the Integrated Action Plan, its myriad failures in implementation, are both are both cause and result of neglecting to respond to what the program's beneficiaries actually need. So the Integrated Action Plan is, at best, failing because it is a development program that has not been designed to promote, you know, actual development.