Foreign Aid & Civil Society

The UN Millenium Village

By Dweep Chanana ⋅ December 6, 2005 ⋅  Email this post ⋅ Post a comment

Last weekend’s workshop and field trip were organized in part by the MDG Centre, part of the UN Millenium Project. Not surprisingly, the field trip, therefore, included a visit to the UN Millenium Village. So much the better, because I had heard a lot about it. Now that I know what it is, I can draw my own conclusions.

I have serious reservations about the Millenium Village as a mainstream development mechanism. First, let me explain the strategy. The MDG Centre and the Millenium Project are working in several villages worldwide to provide integrated assistance to develop the capabilities of villagers. They provide technical and financial assistance to develop water harvesting systems, school education programs, healthcare systems, and agricultural support programs.

There appeared to be a fair amount of emphasis on financial sustainability. But I am not convinced. The healthcare program had 3 staff members - 2 paid by the Millenium Project. The agriculture committee of the village had created a ‘cereal bank’, with a one-time loan from the project.

The project has had several benefits. It has organized the villagers into committee and self-help groups that take initiative to identify and solve their problems. And there are signs of development - a water harvesting system for instance and an excellent health dispensary. So why my reservations?

On a practical level, this approach is changing the incentives of people to help themselves, and encouraging dependence on aid that may disappear, when people stop listening to Jeffery Sachs. I saw signs of this when I asked a villager what he would like. His answer - we need your assistance. You could blame it on English, or on my open-ended question, but there were signs everywhere.

My more fundamental objection is to the principle itself. Not so long back, the developed world was telling poor countries to dismantle and downsize the public sector. Integrated, planned projects, were inefficient and ineffective. Ironically, that is exactly what the Millenium Project is doing - taking a large scale, integrated approach. Except, instead of a government that is at least nominally representative and accountable, the work of providing public goods is being left to the whims of donors sitting far away in another country.

This is not to say the project itself is bad. On the contrary, a lot of interesting ideas are in evidence. The problem is in demands that such work should be scaled. No. The project is working in the area of public goods provisioning, providing basic services such as healthcare. That is the job of the government. The Millenium Project is a good incubator and laboratory for development ideas, but it should stay that way. When they talk of scaling, they should talk not of scaling the project and adopting more villages, but of scaling the outcomes and getting the government to adopt and roll-out the more successful efforts.