But this looks like another dabbling in Political Economy by an anthropologist. The critical points that are raised with regard to the post-tsunami aid circus are real and valid but the over all analysis seems to be a lousy attempt at ‘political economy’. Joining the dots and using cliched rhetoric a la Escobar (anthropologist) or Ben Fine (Marxist economist) does not represent any serious engagement of politics or economics.

In that sense I agree with Concerned – this does not advance thinking constructively – it just seems to be a diatribe.

DRS, is certainly capable of doing better!

FYI –I’d suggest three books: the latest published this year by African Economist, Dambisa Moyo, titled “Dead Aid: Why aid is not working and there is a better way for Africa”. She critique celebrity disaster advertising and asks for an end to the Aid Game in Africa and an exit for all aid actors in 5 years. The other two books are: by New York University economist William Easterly: The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s efforts to aid the rest have done so much a harm” and “the Lords of Poverty: the Power, Prestige and corruption of the International Aid Business”.

There is a distinguished social science tradition that constitutes a non-naïve critique of aid that views the modern aid industry as ‘colonialism by other means’. While there is little doubt that many have humanitarian impulses and act upon them, the critique however is a systemic and structural one.

Today the international aid industry is part of a wider international (financial) culture, where rent seeking, corruption, toxic assets and shady transactions have been normalized along with celebrity disaster advertising that is condescending to the survivors of disasters. Aid governance is a problem and aid hence encourages greater corruption at the local lvel and results in de-development as Moyo shows in her book. That is why I think that finally, trade rather than aid is the way forward.

President Obama has asked for a cap on salaries and perks and there have been investigations into the large bonuses and salaries that CEOs, experts and executives in the international financial system paid them selves over the years. Likewise there is an ongoing scandal re. improper payments made by several British Parliamentarians to themselves. Similar inquiries need to be made with regard to the international development and humanitarian aid industry which is lacking in transparency, whose CEOs and experts pay themselves enormous salaries while claiming to be doing poverty alleviation!

Finally, this critique of aid is based on empirical evidence. I have evaluated aid agencies and have been shocked and horrified by what I have learned in the past. I once thought of being a whistleblower but confess that I lacked the courage at the time. I asked local NGOs to help me take out a public interest litigation case on behalf of those victimized by an INGO but they were unwilling –also given the murky politics of I/NGO bashing in Lanka.

The International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) brought in 183 foreign delegates to Lanka after the Asia tsunami disaster (they were volunteers from the different RC socieites in different countries, the majority with no particular educational or technical expertise), and each delegate cost over 120,000 USD per annum. They lived and some still live in fancy houses in Colombo 7. The funds they consume/d where meant for tsunami victims. UN agenceis, WB, IMF, regional banks, IFRC, and a range of INGOs also pay themselves and their staff enormous salaries, “hardship” allowances, perks etc. while claiming to do poverty alleviation and humanitarian work. Receptions in five star hotels are the norm!

Just as the international financial system and British politicians excesses are being exposed and there is a down sizing of extravagance, at this time ETHICS need to be re-inserted into the international aid business. It seems that now is the time to do it!

Do not give them money unless it can be accounted for!!!!!!!!

I am generally a fan of your work, particularly your work on identity in the borderlands, which I felt showed a real receptivity and understanding of the complex and everchanging nature of multiethnic, multireligious and multilingual politics.

Your tone of sustained anger, indignation, and moral crusading has also been welcome, particularly as you hold a position that can be heard both in Sri Lanka and carries some credibility in the West (though, I imagine that politics is always politics and that your reputation and work also is dependent on how you play the game- (I hope, and feel, though I do not know you at at all, that you don’t play it at all).

However there has been a thread of almost bigotry and ‘anticolonialism’ in your work on the ‘aid industry and the peacebuilding industry’ which at times I feel has ‘overdetermined’ your position. Yes, the tools and processes of aid orgs are insufficient, ineffective and sometimes, utterly irrelevant to the specific contexts they operate in. Yes, they also may sometimes contribute negatively to the cycles of conflict, privileging one group over the other, depriving local institutions of their ability to grow and transform, ‘crowding out’ entrepreneurial initiatives, contributing to the “colonial-subject” discourse. This may be done through neglect, carelessness or worse (though rarely) premeditation. I agree with the possibility and the probability of all of this happening.

Yet, I am sure as you know, that the intentions of aid officials, much like the intentions of Sri Lankan civil society (such as CPA etc.), and the intentions of political representatives, are largely either positive or neutral. They command attention, access to resources, the ability to mobilize people, and power and influence.

You may see sinister intentions behind every INGO, and attribute to them an ability and desire to enforce their sinister agendas motivated by their own geopolitics, in Sri Lanka. Yes, they are relatively inscrutable, don’t have clear accountability systems to the people they serve, and have opaque mandates too. But they are formed in an international system that has oversight (even if the power imbalance is there between North and South) and these institutions have been around for some time, and there has grown up with them, a critical and questioning body of individuals and institutions that attempt to hold them accountable. These institutions are also evolving (albeit glacially) a system of ethics and moral accountability, accompanied by a pressure on evolving their technical capacities to be more suited to the context they work in. All this may not be immediately apparent, but it is nevertheless true.

Compared to this kind of aid, the aid from India and China, which have less ‘conditionalities” upon it, which you see as a good thing, is to me, quite clearly MORE opaque, more suspect and more sinister, more clearly influenced by local geopolitics, less ‘altruistic’, and certainly indifferent to the welfare of local populations unless it serves their political interest. I would hesitate to say that in Sri Lanka, this represents a positive step forward (although it certainly is fodder for triumphalist nationalist rhetoric). The special session of the UNHRC last week, was an utter abrogation of the council’s responsibility to attend to the state of human rights. Just because SL was supported by 29 of the world’s worst human rights offenders, does not mean it has a mandate, or that India and China’s support is somehow “better”- more of a mandate, than European “colonialist” powers.

It is time I think to not, automatically assume knee jerk anticolonial responses, which are not sincere in any case (cf Dayan Jayatilake), but to see whether your writing above is really accurate, and whether it furthers the discourse in a constructive way.

Apologies if I have been needlessly rude. I did not mean to be.