The place of aid in development
Thursday November 11 2004 09:13 IST
By Karmayogi
International AID has
come to stay. Its role is considerable. The World Bank is an organisation of 60
years. Its prestige is so great that men like Clausen, the President of Bank of
America, gave up a salary of $1 million to serve the World Bank as its
President with a salary of $58,000 per annum.
The entire Western Europe devastated by the Second World War was fully
rebuilt with the funds of the World Bank. It would be interesting to know how
many nations are there who have not been a recipient of Aid in one form or
another from one country or the other.
Apart from the actual facts of Aid, which are seen in so many versions, one
question is of interest. Is there any theory about such aid or what is the
theory that governs such functions?
In India, during her first
few Five Year Plans, the Left was vociferous against any aid from the West. But
they had no qualms about aid from the then USSR. So our steel mills were erected with
the help of the West as well as the then USSR.
About 40 western countries ushered themselves into very high levels of
prosperity all by their own efforts – financial and technical. That was a high
period of civilisation. No nation is known to have had its development
sponsored by the generous assistance of AID and still retained its
independence. Aid in any form saps the vitality of a nation and robs its
self-respect.
Why speak only of aid from another country? No government has ever succeeded in
building up its own nation without the entire society rising and taking up
development in its own hands.
In the widest scheme of God, known as cosmic creation, there is no giving
without taking, as there should be a two way process to maintain the
equilibrium. Usually aid comes in and self-respect goes out. Worse than that,
the very capacity of self-reliance is undone essentially.
All the nations of Western Europe that received a generous dose of aid
through the Marshall Plan have become satellites of the USA and her permanent
market. In the field of politics, they have lost their voice to the giver of
aid.
Self is the Soul of a nation. It is seen as self-respect and self-reliance. They
are not worth parting with. It is worth founding an impartial study of aid and
its aftermath in the developing nations to discover the economic consequences,
the political residue and the social self-reliance in the last five decades.
India has recently closed
several such offices here, perhaps for eternal GOOD.