People First: A Guide to Self-Reliant Participatory Rural Development PDF

# People First: A Guide to Self-Reliant Participatory Rural Development ## **Stan Burkey** ### **Go to the People** - Live with them - Love them - Learn from them - Work with them - Start with what they have - Build on what they know - And in the end - When the work is done - **The People will re...

# People First: A Guide to Self-Reliant Participatory Rural Development ## **Stan Burkey** ### **Go to the People** - Live with them - Love them - Learn from them - Work with them - Start with what they have - Build on what they know - And in the end - When the work is done - **The People will rejoice:** * 'We have done it ourselves!' ### **A Guide to Self-Reliant Participatory Rural Development** ###### *People First: A Guide to Self-Reliant Participatory Rural Development* was first published by Zed Books Ltd, 57 Caledonian Road, London N1 9BU, UK and 165 First Avenue, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey 07716, USA, in 1993. ###### Copyright © Stan Burkey, 1993. ###### The right of Stan Burkey, author of this work, has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ###### Cover designed by Andrew Corbett. ###### Cover photograph by Paul Weinberg. ###### Typeset by EMS Photosetters, Thorpe Bay, Essex. ###### Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn. ###### All rights reserved. ###### A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ###### ISBN 1 85649 081 5 Hb ###### ISBN 1 85649 082 3 Pb ## **1. Understanding Poverty** There is no use trying to help these people. These dirty, ignorant people are putting too many children into the world. They won't work, they have no discipline. They misuse every opportunity they get. Every time they get some money in their hands it all goes to drinking and senseless waste. All the help we give them is just an incentive to laziness, and another opportunity to produce even more children. The statement above was written by an English industrialist working in Norway in the 1880s. Norway was indeed a poor country 100 years ago. The fact that nearly every Norwegian family has relatives in Canada or the United States, who emigrated 'for a better life', attests to the widespread poverty during the last century. And yet Norway today has one of the highest incomes per capita of the industrialised nations. But what do we mean by poverty? And what are its causes? This chapter attempts to show how poverty can be analysed so that its root causes can be identified in a given situation. ### **Basic Needs and Poverty** Basic needs are those things that an individual must have in order to survive as a human being. Essentially, these are clean (unpolluted) air and water, adequate and balanced food, physical and emotional security, physical and mental rest, and culturally and climatically appropriate clothing and shelter. However, the survival of the human race depends not on the survival of a single individual, but on the survival of communities. It is thus necessary to expand the list of basic individual needs to include those of a community. These might be defined as sexual regeneration, a system of communication (language), a belief and educational system for cultural continuity, physical and cultural security, a political system defining leadership and decision-making, and systems of health and recreation for maintaining well-being among sufficient numbers to maintain the community. Poverty can be defined in terms of basic needs. A group of development workers in Uganda defined absolute poverty as the inability of an individual, a community or a nation to satisfactorily meet its basic needs. They defined relative poverty as the condition in which basic needs are met, but where there is an inability to meet perceived needs and desires in addition to basic needs. They also discussed an expression much abused by development agencies: the poorest of the poor. These were considered those unfortunate individuals who, because of serious mental or physical handicaps, were incapable of meeting their basic needs by themselves. In terms of external assistance, people existing in a situation of absolute poverty need immediate relief in order to survive while those existing in relative poverty can hopefully benefit from development assistance which ideally should help them to become independent of such assistance. Needless to say, many handicapped or disabled people can be assisted to manage on their own. However, the truly 'poorest of the poor' must survive on charity which ultimately must be provided by their own family or community either privately or through governmental programmes. Development assistance should aim at making this possible. ### **Identifying and measuring poverty** The wealth of nations is often measured in terms of Gross National Product (GNP-the total value of a nations’ annual output of goods and services). GNP measurements are usually presented in terms of per capita figures. The World Bank annually publishes comparative lists showing low income, middle income and high income countries. In 1987, Ethiopia had one of the lowest per capita GNPs listed of US$ 120. Norway’s GNP per capita was US$ 17,110. Countries like Thailand (US$ 840) and Guatemala (US$ 940) are classified as middle income. Yet both these countries have hundreds of thousands of people who are little better off than an average Ethiopian. Per capita GNP figures are aggregate numbers, i.e. they are based on averages. But averages can be highly misleading. A fair number of very wealthy families in an otherwise very poor country will pull-the average higher than observation might expect. The man with his head on an ice block and his feet in the fire cannot exactly be said to be comfortable. As a counterweight to the national economic statistics approach to measuring poverty, the Physical Quality of Life Index (PQLI) has been developed. Various ways of putting together the index have been proposed. All of these are based on the selection and measurement of physical factors which indicate the state of people’s health and welfare. The standard factors are usually life expectancy, child mortality and adult literacy. These factors are measured and averaged on a national basis. The averages are given relative weights, and an index is produced. Other factors can also be used in generating the index, such as malnourishment, child morbidity and school attendance. Generally speaking, Physical Quality of Life Indices give a better indication of the standard of living for an average person than the national economic statistics. However, the PQLI does not tell the whole story. Sri Lanka is perhaps the best example of this. With its high literacy rate (about 80%), high life expectancy (69 years) and low child mortality (32 per 1,000), Sri Lanka rates high on nearly all PQLI measurements. Yet it is classified as a low income country (GNP per capita US$ 400) and any casual observer travelling in the country can attest to the widespread poverty. In recent years, a third way of identifying and measuring poverty has been developed - the Basic Needs Approach. In this method the presence or absence of minimal basic human requirements for life as well as essential services indicate the degree of poverty or, if you wish, the level of the standard of living. The basic requirements for a family are considered to be adequate food, safe drinking water, suitable shelter and clothing as well as basic household equipment. The essential services are considered to be sanitation, public transport, health and educational facilities. There are various measurements and standards used to quantify these needs, e.g. food: calories per day; water: litres per day; shelter: sq. metres per person, etc. There are numerous problems involved in attempts to identify and quantify poverty. No one set of measurements will give a complete picture. And what about immeasurable factors of welfare such as happiness, security, togetherness? Is an African villager less well-off in these terms than an elderly person sitting alone and isolated in a cold big-city flat in Europe? For most development workers, estimates of the levels of family income, food and nutrition, infant mortality, shelter, potable water, sanitation, indebtedness, etc. are adequate to identify those areas and groups of people who are most in need of developmental efforts. ### **Rural Poverty Unperceived** We have all been exposed numerous times to media presentations of the appalling human suffering arising under conditions such as drought, floods and civil wars, yet many of us, including even experienced development administrators, are not personally aware of the real extent of persistent poverty in rural areas of the Third World. Although the vast majority of the poor live in rural areas, our mental image of poverty in the Third World is usually based on the unavoidable confrontation with the deplorable conditions in the shanty towns of the major cities. Robert Chambers in his book *Rural Development: Putting the last first* has thoughtfully analysed why rural poverty is often unperceived and how development workers can rectify this serious deficiency. He writes in his introductory chapter: *Outsiders are people concerned with rural development who are themselves neither rural nor poor. Many are headquarters and field staff of government organisations in the Third World. They also include academic researchers, aid agency personnel, bankers, businessmen, consultants, doctors, engineers, journalists, lawyers, politicians, priests, school teachers, staff of training institutes, workers in voluntary agencies, and other professionals. Outsiders underperceive rural poverty. They are attracted to and trapped in urban `cores’ which generate and communicate their own sort of knowledge while rural `peripheries’ are isolated and neglected. The direct rural experience of most urban-based outsiders is limited to the brief and hurried visits, from urban centres, of rural development tourism. These exhibit six biases against contact with and learning from the poorer people. These are spatial - urban, tarmac and roadside; project - towards places where there are projects; person - towards those who are better off, men rather than women, users of services and adopters of practices rather than non-users and non-adopters, and those who are active, present and living; seasonal - avoiding the bad times of the wet season; diplomatic - not seeking out the poor for fear of giving offence; and professional-confined to the concerns of the outsider's specialisation. As a result, the poorer rural people are little seen and even less is the nature of their poverty understood. If we are seriously concerned with helping the rural poor to improve their lives, then we must minimise rural development tourism and learn to eliminate those biases which are preventing us from finding and working with the genuinely poor and vulnerable in the rural areas of the Third World.* ### **What are the Causes of Poverty?** There are almost as many theories explaining the causes of poverty in the Third World as there are development theorists. For many people the statement by the English businessman quoted at the beginning of this chapter adequately sums up the problem - if he had been talking about Africa instead of Norway! But even the serious students of development problems disagree, often substantially, as to the real causes of poverty. Some of these arguments are coloured by ideological convictions, education and training, class prejudices, etc. The reasons that have been given for the continued existence of poverty in the Third World can be grouped under five headings: 1. Lack of modernisation tendencies 2. Physical limitations 3. Bureaucratic stifling 4. Dependency of Third World countries 5. Exploitation by local elites Those who explain poverty in terms of a lack of modernisation tendencies in Third World communities often group their reasons into two main categories: lack of modern technology, and lack of `modern’ outlooks among the people. They are inclined to believe that if these `growth-inhibiting factors’ can be removed and replaced with modern technologies and motivations, then development will take-off for the betterment of all concerned. ### **Lack of modern technology** It is argued that poverty exists because the poor lack modern techniques of agriculture, fishing, industry, etc. Farmers lack not only modern equipment, improved seeds, fertilisers and pesticides, but also the necessary knowledge to use these techniques. They lack irrigation, roads, cooperatives and other support facilities. Fishermen lack motorised boats and equipment. Industry needs modern equipment, electricity, management, etc. Those who interpret the causes of poverty in this way tend to believe that introducing modern technologies together with the required training and extension programmes will lift the poor out of their destitute situation. Although these ideas were widely accepted during the first two development decades, many more recent researchers have vigorously pointed out the weaknesses in these arguments. They maintain that the development of modern cash-crop agriculture has not led to a generalised improvement of the incomes and living standards of the rural population. They point out that export crops have replaced food crops and, although incomes have risen, food consumption has often decreased. Profits have become concentrated in the hands of merchants, middlemen, large landowners and government bureaucrats. The high cost of modern inputs has increased the debt of small producers. Mechanisation has produced a pool of under-employed landless. Violent price fluctuations in the international markets have severely affected small producers as well as national incomes. It has also been pointed out that no amount of modern technology is going to help peasant farmers unless they also have access to land, reasonable credit and fair market prices. ### **Lack of a modern outlook** *I have been thinking about this `resistance-to-change’ accusation. And I say it now clearly: it is the landlords and the government who are resistant to change! I mean have they not done everything to fight our demand for a change in the ownership of the land?* ###### Mang Pedring, peasant farmer, Philippines ###### (quoted by Bhasin, 1980a) Viewpoints relating to the presumed `lack of modern outlook’ among the poor vary from the derogatory to the genuinely serious, and tend to be based on the broad concept of resistance to change. Poor people are said to resist change because they are ignorant, superstitious, fatalistic, traditional, etc. They have a limited world view and are unable to see the advantages of modernisation. They lack innovativeness and are unable to perceive the advantages of `investing today for a better tomorrow’. They have limited aspirations and are unable to defer today’s gratifications to the future. They are either dependent on or hostile to government and other outside interventions. Rural economists have shown that poor peasants as well as other poor producers will tend to adopt production strategies that minimise the risk of failure. Because they have nothing to fall back on, they concentrate on producing adequate quantities of food and a little surplus to sell in order to purchase necessary consumer goods. They cannot afford to risk everything on maximising profits. They tend towards mixed farming to spread their risk. They avoid hybrid seeds which require expensive fertilisers and insecticides and which are often more susceptible to bad weather conditions and pests. Poor farmers are not afraid to make money, but they are deathly afraid of losing an entire harvest. ### **Physical limitations** Another set of explanations for poverty relate to the physical limitations of geography. Many areas of the Third World are subject to long periods of drought; rain, when it comes, tends to come all at once causing flooding and waterlogging; soils are thin and very delicate; cyclones and earthquakes supplement drought and flooding in a frequent cycle of natural disasters. Often, however, the problem is not the natural disaster, but a nation’s inability to respond to it effectively. After the 1974 floods in Bangladesh which devastated standing crops, there was enough rice stockpiled during the subsequent famine to feed the entire nation for four months. But the vast majority of the people were too poor to buy it. The ability to overcome physical limitations often depends on addressing other causes of poverty. Poverty and population pressures intensify the physical limitations. Deforestation caused by over-grazing or the need for more land and firewood leads to desertification, soil erosion, flooding and micro-climatic changes. The physical conditions of the poor resulting from their destitute condition create new barriers to development. The symptoms of poverty become the causes of continued poverty. Malnutrition, disease, lack of clean water and proper sanitation weaken the poor and often make it physically difficult for them to break the vicious circle. High rates of childbirth weaken women physically, and lead to greater pressure on the environment. However, physical limitations can be overcome assuming that political and social conditions, especially population growth, can be changed rapidly enough to reverse environmental deterioration. ### **Bureaucratic stifling of development** *Welfare programmes are instruments of manipulation and ultimately serve the purpose of dependence and domination. They act an anaesthetic, distracting the oppressed from the true causes of their problems and from the concrete solutions of these problems.* ###### (Freire, 1972) A third set of reasons, often proposed by non-governmental organisations, is the stifling of development by bureaucratic heavy-handedness. Third World governments are, in this view, saddled with overgrown bureaucracies attempting to control all aspects of rural peoples’ development. Over-centralisation leads to decisions and programmes which are not only unrelated, but also often detrimental, to the real interests of the people. The lack of genuinely representative local government prevents the emergence of local initiatives. Government bureaucrats and politicians are said to be part of an elite who are uninterested in or, even worse, antagonistic to the real needs of the poor. Their formalism makes it impossible for them to communicate with the common man and woman. Programmes and projects initiated from the top-down either never reach the poor or actually make their situation worse. Finally, there is a widespread conception that all bureaucrats and government officials are corrupt, that their actions and decisions are related primarily to their desire for personal gain and prestige. Where government programmes are temporarily successful in reaching the rural poor, such programmes are often based on the provision of subsidised inputs. And as Paolo Freire has pointed out, they create even greater degrees of dependency and domination. When such programmes inevitably collapse, the people tend to sit back and say, “When is the government coming back to develop us? ### **Dependency of Third World countries** The ideas contained in this section are often espoused by observers with more politically radical tendencies although not exclusively so. These arguments are based on a particular analysis of capitalism and international economic relationships. It is maintained that colonialism was the beginning of a process in which the profits or surplus from the production of exported foodstuffs, minerals and other raw materials were expropriated by the colonial powers, thus draining the colonised countries of their wealth. Before independence the process was maintained through military force, but it has continued since independence in the more subtle form of neo-colonialism in which economic power has replaced military power. Third World countries are dependent on the developed countries for capital, technology and markets. The rich countries of the West set the interest rates, the terms of trade, the tariffs and import barriers and generally, through their economic power, drain off the surpluses produced in the poor countries. Even worse, in the eyes of these observers, is the fact that the bankers and governments of the West seem able to dictate the policies adopted by Third World governments thus perpetuating their dominant position. The world has been polarised into the rich and powerful `haves’ and the poor and dependent `have nots’. Capitalism in the form of all-powerful transnational corporations have monopolised the production and extraction of raw materials, the production of manufactured goods, commerce, marketing, banking and information. It is maintained that they use not only their enormous economic power, but also corruption and unfair or immoral practices, to eliminate competition and preserve their dominance. The submission of the Nestlés Corporation to charges of improper marketing tactics in the promotion of the sale of powdered milk to nursing mothers in the Third World is given as proof of the existence of such tactics. The continued marketing of unsafe pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals is credited to the ruthlessness of international capitalism. Some observers maintain that so-called development assistance is another mode of domination leading to an especially pernicious form of dependency. Aid is often given on terms which benefit the donor countries’ own bankers, industrialists and industrial workers - not to speak of those benefits which accrue to the expatriate `experts’. It is suggested that many Third World leaders and bureaucrats are dependent on aid programmes to maintain their positions and lifestyles. Aid projects are exported from the high-technology donor economies and placed in very inappropriate situations. Even `good’ development projects perpetuate attitudes of inferiority, and dependence on outsiders for progress. ### **Exploitation of the poor** *They used to say we were unproductive because we were lazy and drunkards. All lies. Now that we are respected as men, we’re going to show everyone that we were never drunkards or lazy. We were exploited!* ###### *Chilean peasant leader (quoted by Freire, 1972)* The final set of explanations for continued poverty focuses on the local socio-economic situation of the poor. It is here maintained that the immediate causes of poverty lie in the domination of poor people and their resultant dependence on powerful local elites in the form of landowners, merchants and middlemen, moneylenders, corrupt officials and sometimes even religious leaders. Exploitation of the poor in this context takes many forms. Unable to accumulate their own savings or obtain reasonable loans from established credit institutions, they must borrow from money-lenders at usurious terms in order to purchase agricultural inputs, food and supplies in lean pre-harvest periods, or to meet the unexpected expenses such as funerals and weddings. In order to secure such loans, they mortgage their land and all too often lose it thus becoming landless labourers, sharecroppers or even indentured/bonded labourers little better off than slaves. As sharecroppers they must pay excessively high rates of sharecropping rentals (often as much as 50% of their harvests) without the landowners contributing to any of the production input costs. As agricultural labourers they are paid minimal wages and are thereby denied their rightful share of the production surplus. On every hand they are cheated. Not only do they pay high prices for their purchases of agricultural inputs, food and supplies, but these essential supplies are often short-weighted, diluted, impure and of inferior quality. When selling their products, they are subject to exceedingly low sales prices resulting from their inability to store produce for later sale as well as to monopolistic pricing by the merchants or government marketing boards. And again they are short-weighted; high quality produce is low-graded resulting in lower prices. The merchant is usually the moneylender, and the cycle is complete.. Observers, in their indignation, maintain that the poor are never visited by the government extension agents. They can’t get bank credit. They have no say in co-operative decisions. Their children are discriminated against at school, as are the women at health clinics. They can’t draw water at the wells controlled by the wealthy and the high-caste. They are always at the tail-end of irrigation systems and never receive their rightful share of the precious water. The list of oppressions is endless. Many poor people consciously enter into dependency relationships with wealthy merchants or landowners. These patron-client relationships are not as irrational as they might look. If something goes wrong - a poor harvest, illness or death in the family - the patron can be relied upon to provide a loan or wage labour. Obliged by circumstances, the poor peasant is forced to adopt a short-term strategy to solving problems which inevitably leads to greater debt and dependency. Organising to break out of these exploitative relationships carries a high risk of violent repression by the patrons. Any strategy of development, if it is to be successful, must act upon the factors that create dependency without creating a new and unbearable high-risk situation. ### **Analysing Poverty** We have looked briefly at some of the explanations given to explain the continued existence of extreme poverty in the Third World. Some observers tend to hold to one set of explanations. Technocrats and practitioners are inclined to put their faith in the lack of modernisation, the physical limitations, and the bureaucratic stifling viewpoints. Academics and leftists tend to emphasise local and international exploitation and dependency relationships as well as blaming the capitalists and the transnational corporations. Chambers (1983) has pointed out the dangers in the tendency of both practitioners and academics towards partiality: they tend to concentrate on one or a few explanations and actions and ignore others. He then argues eloquently for the need for pluralism - recognising multiple causation, multiple objectives and multiple interventions. He defines pluralism in rural development as standing on three legs, the two cultures - academic and practical - joining together with a third: *The third culture, of the rural people in a particular place, is the true centre of attention and of learning. As some officials were once told, `The village is the centre; you are peripheral.’ The micro-level is again and again out of focus; and when in focus it is seen from a distance, through the urban professional’s telescope. To understand rural poverty better, and to judge better what to do, outsiders, of whatever persuasion, have to see things from the other end.* It would therefore be wise to analyse each given situation individually, starting with an examination of the local causes and finishing with an evaluation of how national and international political and socio-economic relationships affect the poor in each particular programme area. In each situation we will undoubtedly find a complex network of interrelated causes - some from each of the categories listed above. This network of inter-related causes for one particular area will differ from that of another area, although within the same country there will normally be a high degree of similarity. This similarity lessens as the comparison moves to other countries and continents. The first step in assisting poor rural people onto the path of development must therefore be an analysis of the causes of poverty affecting a particular people in their own particular situation. This analysis should preferably be carried out with the active participation of the people themselves. The remainder of this chapter shows how some development workers in Uganda analysed the situation of the people with whom they were working. ### **Symptoms versus causes** Question: What is the cause of underdevelopment in your country? Answer: Ignorance, disease and poverty. This refrain seems to be a permanent fixture in many Third World school curricula; but I have also heard it said by ministers, presidents and development workers. Sometimes it is stated as the goal of development: eliminate ignorance, disease and poverty, which seems to imply that the remedy is simply books, medicines and money. If you push a bit harder, you can get people to make a list of what they think are the causes of poverty. Interestingly, the list made by a European businessman will not differ very much from that made by a Third World government official. Topping the list will be ignorance, disease and possibly poverty itself. A typical list might look like Table 1.1. | Causes of Poverty | | :--- | | Malnutrition | | Illiteracy | | Poor sanitation | | Laziness/idleness | | Backwardness | | Drought/floods | | Deforestation | | Lack of markets | | Colonialism | | Traditions | | Lack of capital | | Low income | | Lack of transport | | Overpopulation | | Drunkenness | | Hunger | | Indebtedness | | Lack of tools | | Low prices | | Poor management | | Lack of credit | | Mistrust | | Lack of clean water | | Low productivity | | Poor housing | | Superstition | | Corruption | | Exploitation | | Unemployment | | Lack of skills | | Lack of industry | | Lack of initiative | | Lack of cooperation | With a little effort this list could go on and on. But are all of these really causes of poverty? If so, then the thought of development really becomes daunting! Is poor housing a cause of poverty? Or is poor housing a pretty good indication that the people living in the house are poor? Is idleness a cause of poverty, or are people apparently idle because they have nothing productive to do with their time? A symptom is a sign, an indication of something else. We need to separate the symptoms from the real causes. ### **Vicious circles of poverty** It’s all very well saying that some things are symptoms of poverty while others are the real causes, but is it all that simple? Surely disease and malnourishment cause poor health; and if you are sick, you can’t work as well in your fields; and if you don’t work well your production is going to be lower than it would have been and your income will also be lower. On the other hand, what are the root causes of debilitating disease and malnourishment? We all get sick at one time or another, but poor people seem to get sick more often and recover more slowly or not at all. Why is that? Part of the answer is that they don’t get proper treatment. Why not? If there is a hospital or a doctor around, poor people may not be able to pay for treatment because they have low incomes. Why doesn’t the government provide a free medical service or build more clinics and hospitals? The government doesn’t have enough money to pay for all these things. Where does the government get its money from? By taxing the surplus of production. But production is low because people are sick! Yes, we are going around in circles; and that is what is meant by a vicious circle of poverty. One problem causes another which in turn causes a third, and we keep finding new linkages until we are right back where we started from and the vicious cycle starts all over again. At this point it might be instructive to draw a diagram of what we have so far discovered about disease and malnutrition: ![]() This is a simple drawing of a vicious circle of poverty. The real world, unfortunately, is even more complicated. There are factors other than the lack (or unaffordability) of health facilities causing illness in poor families and communities. Three of these are poor sanitation (the lack of toilets or sewage facilities), lack of clean drinking water and poor housing. Why are these lacking? Once again, low taxation and/or low income. Does everything boil down to a lack of money (capital)? Not quite. Some people have money, but they don’t improve their sanitation or housing (a crude, but adequate, rural pit latrine is a very inexpensive innovation). Why not? Some people lack the knowledge of the close connection between health, sanitation and clean drinking water. Some people don’t care; perhaps the man in the family prefers to use the little surplus money they have on a bicycle or a watch, or perhaps drinking - this is what we can call misdirected priorities. Some people don’t like the taste of water from a borehole; they prefer river water. Some people will not build or use a latrine because they are afraid that jealous neighbours will bewitch the latrine or the pathway leading to it and they will fall ill and die. Thus superstition and social traditions also play a role in the vicious circle of disease and poverty. Not only are there monetary (economic) factors involved, but also social factors. The following illustration shows how these factors can also be integrated into the diagram of the vicious circle of disease/malnutrition and poverty: ![]() Our diagram is getting a bit messy, but we’re not yet finished. Most poor people in the world today are found in the tropics. The tropics may have beautiful beaches for tourists, but they are also a tough place for poor people. Not only do the tropics have those diseases which have been brought under control in the northern developed countries - typhus, dysentery, typhoid, pneumonia, measles, malaria, hookworm, leprosy, tuberculosis - but also quite a number of exotic diseases such as schistosomiasis, trypanosomiasis, filariasis and onchocerciasis, which kill or handicap millions annually. Many of these diseases are transmitted with the help of vectors (mosquitoes, flies, snails, etc.) which are not found in colder climates. Thus there are also physical factors relating to disease and poverty. Some of the diseases mentioned above can be controlled to some extent through mass social mobilisation to eliminate the vectors. Communities could also dig a cement-lined open well, or protect a spring, or even have a borehole drilled. Why aren’t these things done? For one thing, many rural poor do not trust each other or their leaders. They will not pool their meagre funds because they are afraid that someone will misuse them. They lack cooperation, they lack social cohesion and they lack local organisational structures. All of these are social factors which contribute to the continuation of the vicious circle of poverty. Some governments in the Third World do have enough revenue to considerably improve the health facilities, carry out the water programmes and implement the disease-eradication programmes that their people need. But the funds get diverted to fight civil wars, to finance prestige projects or through blatant corruption. What are the underlying causes of these failures of public accountability? Some of the reasons identified by the Ugandan rural development workers were political instability, lack of representational government, over-centralisation and lack of local government. So in addition to economic, social and physical factors, we also have a series of political factors which are contributing to the perpetuation of the vicious circle of disease and poverty. I shall not attempt to put all of the factors which we have now identified into the diagram. Perhaps you can give it a try? There are many other vicious circles of poverty that can be analysed and diagrammed. Below are some more which were developed by the same group of rural development workers in Uganda. They are shown in a simplified form. Perhaps you can elaborate on them with other factors that you can think of. ![]() Our diagram is getting a bit messy, but we’re not yet finished. Most poor people in the world today are found in the tropics. The tropics may have beautiful beaches for tourists, but they are also a tough place for poor people. Not only do the tropics have those diseases which have been brought under control in the northern developed countries - typhus, dysentery, typhoid, pneumonia, measles, malaria, hookworm, leprosy, tuberculosis - but also quite a number of exotic diseases such as schistosomiasis, trypanosomiasis, filariasis and onchocerciasis, which kill or handicap millions annually. Many of these diseases are transmitted with the help of vectors (mosquitoes, flies, snails, etc.) which are not found in colder climates. Thus there are also physical factors relating to disease and poverty. Some of the diseases mentioned above can be controlled to some extent through mass social mobilisation to eliminate the vectors. Communities could also dig a cement-lined open well, or protect a spring, or even have a borehole drilled. Why aren’t these things done? For one thing, many rural poor do not trust each other or their leaders. They will not pool their meagre funds because they are afraid that someone will misuse them. They lack cooperation, they lack social cohesion and they lack local organisational structures. All of these are social factors which contribute to the continuation of the vicious circle of poverty. Some governments in the Third World do have enough revenue to considerably improve the health facilities, carry out the water programmes and implement the disease-eradication programmes that their people need. But the funds get diverted to fight civil wars, to finance prestige projects or through blatant corruption. What are the underlying causes of these failures of public accountability? Some of the reasons identified by the Ugandan rural development workers were political instability, lack of representational government, over-centralisation and lack of local government. So in addition to economic, social and physical factors, we also have a series of political factors which are contributing to the perpetuation of the vicious circle of disease and poverty. I shall not attempt to put all of the factors which we have now identified into the diagram. Perhaps you can give it a try? There are many other vicious circles of poverty that can be analysed and diagrammed. Below are some more which were developed by the same group of rural development workers in Uganda. They are shown in a simplified form. Perhaps you can elaborate on them with other factors that you can think of. ![]() You may have noticed that in all of the vicious circles illustrated above there were several common elements: low income, low production, lack of knowledge, lack of awareness. Two of these are economic constraints to development and two are social constraints. There is a vicious circle of economic constraints, and these are so important to development efforts that they need to be looked at more closely: ![]() From the diagrams above, it is apparent that the analysis of the symptoms and causes of poverty, even in relatively isolated rural communities, is quite complex. If we are to find ways of breaking out of any of these vicious circles of poverty, we will need to make our analysis more systematic. ### **Causes of poverty** In the analysis of the vicious circles of poverty we discovered that some of the causes were economic, some were social and others were political or physical. Earlier it was noted that some causes had their roots in local communities, others at national level and even some in the realm of international relationships. This gives us a number of categories on which to sort out the causes of poverty. This categorisation may help us to identify the key constraints to development at each level of intervention - local, national and international. In making such lists there will obviously be duplication as some constraints, such as corruption, will be found at two or more levels. There will at times also be an element of arbitrary placement of certain constraints. For example, lack of clean water could be considered either physical, social, economic or even political if you think it is the government’s obligation to provide clean water for its citizens. As we shall see later, this arbitrariness does not lessen the value of categorisation. Although the categories will be the same, the contents of such an analysis will vary from region to region and from nation to nation. An analysis in Asia is more likely to include land scarcity and debilitating indebtedness than an analysis done in Africa. An analysis in Latin America and the Philippines is more likely to mention exploitation by large landowners. For the sake of continuity, we shall continue with the analysis done by our friends in one area of Uganda as seen in Tables 1.2 and 1.3. | Physical causes of poverty | | :--- | | **Local** | **National** | **International** | | Poor soils | Land destruction: Deforestation | Tropical disease Vectors | | Unreliable rainfall | Erosion | Land-locked nation | | Lack of surface water | Overgrazing | | Lack of natural resources | Lack of energy sources | | Unfavourable terrain | | It was realised that the placement of a particular cause under the category local, national or international was a bit arbitrary inasmuch as land destruction and tropical disease vectors were also local problems. It was felt, however, that land destruction was a major national problem and disease vectors an international problem. It was realised that a cause such as land destruction, which was included in the list of physical causes, could perhaps more rightly be said to be social since it is more often than not caused by humans. It could also be political - if the causes were land tenure systems or other government policies. ### **The legacies of colonialism** Perhaps you are