With the debate on development attaining a certain maturity and international funding practices having come under the microscope like never before, three conclusions are emerging. Firstly, the impact of aid on recipient countries is largely undocumented and even when it is done, the results remain unpublished; secondly, the way international aid is currently managed, with little or no accountability or coordination, it is little wonder that it often fails to achieve its ends; and thirdly, if things are to improve, greater accountability has to be worked into the system.
Critics of foreign aid, both from the left and the right, challenge the efficacy of aid with multiple arguments. From the left perspective, one of these is that foreign aid gives rise to a 'dependent bourgeoisie' that sustains itself on Western grants, support and scholarships, as well as on the lucrative jobs that donor agencies offer to trained people of the South. Meanwhile, the right holds that aid gives governments in developing countries excessive control over the economy, allowing resources to be distributed as political favours, one effect of which is the diminishing of private capital flow into the national economy. The point at which these two arguments overlap is in bringing into focus the bureaucracy as it affects and is affected by aid. Three recent court cases in Bangladesh concerning the alleged abuses of a United Nations development agency and a Bretton Woods lending organisation illustrate an empirical convergence of these critiques.
Altruism and egoism
In 2001, three separate cases were filed against donors in Bangladesh. Two were against the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), one on policy issues and the other having to do with personnel procedures; and one against the World Bank involving a mix of personnel and general issues. A forthcoming collection of essays, Rotting from the Head: Donors and LDC Corruption (University Press, Dhaka), takes its cue from these cases where, for a change, donor corruption in a Least Developed Country (LDC) has been exposed. While the focus of detail is Bangladesh, the essays also show the international relevance of the aid problem by shedding light on the workings of the three foremost international aid agencies, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the UNDP.