Apologies in advance for a straight-up self-indulgent and frivolous post. So I'm currently reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (nice counterpoint to following international development blogs and source of endless fantastically enigmatic quotes for hypothetical dinner parties). And it turns out, despite his self-professed superficiality (the guy basically trades his soul away to keep his incredible Greek-god level beauty - one lover of his: “The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history.”), he is an astute commentator on the contradictions of the international NGO apparatus. Who knew? Granted if my source of cutting, up-to-date analysis of development issues is a novel written in 1890 it is not worth your time reading it. But the irony of a guy who rejects anything moral or 'deep' serving up a classic commentary on the paradox of big-D Development was too much for me to resist just this once. So here you go (no spoilers by the way):
Dorian Gray to Basil Hallward, his friend and creator of the painting of Dorian which gets old and disgusting as he morally decays in order that he can keep his wonderful youth:
"You remind me of a story Harry told me about a certain philanthropist who spent twenty years of his life in trying to get some grievance redressed, or some unjust law altered -- I forget exactly what it was. Finally he succeeded, and nothing could exceed his disappointment. He had absolutely nothing to do, almost died of ennui, and became a confirmed misanthrope"
What Dorian actually means here: In a nutshell, many development NGOs are set up to run projects in a developing country and achieve some outcome like improvements in education or enabling people to escape poverty. But a by-product of success (or the realisation that it actually makes more sense to just employ someone local who is infinitely better equipped to do the job than a well-meaning white, middle-class expat) is that there is no longer any reason for said NGO to exist (at least in the form of predominantly expat-staffed). But that means all of us lovely people in the global North who want to work in Development are out of a job (boo). So faced with this basic contradiction, instead of taking Gray's philanthropist's option of retiring bitterly, probably to become a bloodsucking banker (those are the only two options right?), many NGOs have reinvented themselves as intermediaries in the aid-chain to keep their relevance (classic justification being that they are more flexible, closer to the grass-roots and innovative than big bulky donors thus better vehicles for partnerships with Southern NGOs). Or others just carry on doing an implementation job which is less efficient than letting local people/organisations do the same thing. And others still carve out another niche, maybe bringing relevant actors together to facilitate change or highlighting the needs of the poor, Oxfam-style.
Basically what Dorian is trying to say here more generally is that there is often a fundamental disjuncture between the desire to help and the actual need for us development workers (aspirational in my case). Which is a common idea, highlighted by people like Angus Deaton most recently. Fortunately for me, I don't buy into this view, that there is little or no need for the activities of the development 'sector'; it just means that we have to make sure that we keep questioning the value of what we do and ensure that the results for the 'beneficiaries' of the work are always put first. Ed Carr offers one defence of why it is fundamentally good and useful to work in development (crucially, given the right skills and the right programme, see HowMatters on this). So we are not doomed to 'die of ennui' for a lack of development work, fortunately.
Next week, how to deliver structural economic transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa using quotes from Romeo and Juliet.
Brilliant, as ever.
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