Gates ‘uninstalling’ its Program from India: Clean but there will be Major System Failures

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Bill Gates Foundation ‘uninstalling’ its Program from India: Clean but there

will be Major System Failures

During the 1980s, the Microsoft slowly entered into our lives and controlled the

way we operate computers. That sounded perfectly logical since the company

pioneered software programs and led the computer revolution in the early stages

of the information era.

But when some 25 years later, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation logged into

India with a program called Avahan to prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS, the

poor people, residing in the most remote areas, – who had never heard about the

incurable, fateful virus but were definitely suffering from preventive diseases

such as diarrhoea, malaria and tuberculosis – felt a bit confused.

However, the whopping 258-million-dollar budget of this program, which funded,

among other things, lofty salaries, lavish office rooms, high-profile campaigns,

fancy publications, sumptuous conferences and luxurious travel for governmental

and non-governmental organizations and individuals, indubitably helped increase

the pandemonium on HIV and AIDS in many areas of the country.

Now after six years, Bill Gates has held up signs that clearly indicate the end

of Avahan, but has promised funding for other health problems. But the end will

not happen without supplementing an addition of 80-million-dollar cash into the

program to “sustain” it as if the initial $258 millions were rendered without

thinking of sustainability.

Now the total 338-million-dollar question is: Will this elephantine set-up,

which has emerged knowingly or unknowingly, as a result of the Foundation’s

generous donations, really “sustain” when even the Indian Government is refusing

to take it over due to its high cost implications? The question may not be so

relevant to the targeted community for whom the program was actually designed,

but it definitely pinches the souls of several government officers, NGO workers

and development consultants who have worked from lavish offices, participated in

the sumptuous conferences and undertook luxurious travels.

Sadly, there will not be able to taste the luxury of being involved in the

development sector again at least for some time.

According to Amba Batra Bakshi’s article, “Exiting All Windows” published in

Outlook, India’s weekly newsmagazine, most of the funding from the Foundation

was spent on unsuccessful interventions combined with poor monitoring and

coordination including the one in Manipur where “it concentrated on condom usage

when it should have focused on IV drug users.”

The article further points out that Avahan published IEC material mostly in

English without considering the native languages and local sentiments of the

targeted community; peer educators were paid a premium allowance of more than

twenty dollars per day; and eunuchs who were appointed as peer educators for

counselling truck drivers ended up as sex workers for them.

Besides, during the “Bill and Melinda Gates’ last visit to India in November,

local NGOs dressed up a handful of men as eunuchs to show them as part of the

MSM [Men having sex with men] intervention programme.” Such controversial

allegations can be countered with evidence of the progress made by Avahan and

there could be further counter-evidence on the failures recorded. But such

never-ending contentions will not solve a basic, long-awaited issue and that is,

the sustainability of developmental interventions.

For donors, ‘sustainability’ is merely limited to a 100 or 200-worded paragraph

with beautiful but convincing writing that justifies the intervention so that

the grant can be quickly passed over to the organizations.

There are community-based structures created such as self-help groups and

cooperatives to convey the idea of sustainability, but when short-term projects

begin to provide community-based workers with a temporary compensation of over

twenty dollars per day, even the most voluntary social cohesion networks at the

grassroots-level can fall flat and reverse anti-poverty efforts.

Aid policies formulated and implemented by donors over past many decades are

mostly like one of those ships that aspire to carry the world’s poor to the

destination of their dreams by engaging the NGO community as the crew managing

the voyage. But no sooner that the ship has begun to sail, the donors,

constrained by external conditions, announce that they need to take it back and

ask everyone to leave it.

The passengers inside the ship, who are used to hardships can easily wake up to

the reality and quickly swim back to the shore where they had started off and

re-adapt themselves to their previous living conditions. But the crew members,

who have now become used to the new luxuries of sea travel, may refuse to make

compromises.

They may instead wait for another ship to take them ahead or they would just

prefer to drown into the sea rather than return back to the shore to face the

ire of the cast away passengers waiting there.

This is a relative situation of what has been happening in most developing

countries. It is justified for cash-strapped and unskilled NGOs to fail to

foresee a situation where there will be no external funding for them at some

point of time in future.

But for donors, who are well-equipped in resources and management, it is

difficult for us to reckon as to why they are unable to implement sustainable

actions, not just sustainable planning, through their grantees and why they also

get caught into the illusion that they would maintain their generosity forever.

Perhaps, in such times of unsustainability, we need to revisit and rethink about

the decades-old donor dependency model which has considerably handicapped the

creativity of NGOs.

- Article by Sameer Zuhad (May be subjected to copyright protection

http://www.fundsforngos.org/ngosustainabilitynetwork/article/bill-gates-foundati\

on-uninstalling-its-program/