Poverty is history, not yet!

The Aid Trap shatters the well-entrenched myth that development aid will erase global poverty. Conversely, it argues that aid helps keep the poor alive to confirm the biblical certainty that 'the poor you always have with you'. Else, the trillions of dollars spent in development aid since the 1960s would have made a dent in poverty. Paradoxically, poverty has been perpetuated without any decline in the flow of development aid.

In the three decades that I've spent in the development sector, I haven't come across anything more clear, concise and incisive as The Aid Trap. It conclusively proves that the current systems of development aid and the nonprofit sector in the developing countries keep the poor poor. Neither does top-down aid that is often delivered to governments work, nor the bottom-up charity through non-profit system affect the poor.

Authors R. Glenn Hubbard and William Duggan, both of Columbia University's Business School, present a radical prescription to end poverty. 'Enhancing local businesses alone can generate jobs to tackle poverty', they suggest. The authors are seized of the fact that 'business is a very imperfect system' but leaf the history books to reveal evidences that give credence to their prescription that favors 'business' over 'charity'.

But if current economic crisis is any indication, should business be projected as a panacea? The authors favor local businesses over stronger foreign-owned businesses, though it will always be hard to draw a line between foreign and domestic firms. Rather then getting bogged down into the specifics, the crucial question worth addressing would be: 'what is the effect of your business on the domestic business sector'?

Curiously, there are no easy answers to global poverty yet. May be, a mix of strategies will contribute crucial pieces to the enduring poverty puzzle. However, by conclusively proving that development aid doesn't work, Hubbard and Duggan have set the pigeon out-of-the-hat. In doing so, they have reiterated the commonly-held adage which suggests that 'aid cannot be the answer if growth is the question'. But who decides what 'growth' is?....Link

The Aid Trap: Hard Truths about Ending Poverty
by R Glenn Hubbard & William Duggan
Columbia University Press, New York, 198 pages, $ 22.95

Will the real criminal stand up?

Try asking a simple question to a heterogeneous group: who is the free-roaming criminal in our society? Even before the question gets completed, the answer starts floating in the air. One is surprised if it would not be a 'politician'? One of the highly protected tribes that is rarely hounded by the forces of law even though records confirm that a sizeable number of honorable members of the legislative have consistent criminal records.

At the other end, there are tribes whose children are condemned 'criminals' much before they are born. For their failure to understand nomadic lifestyles, the imperial rulers assumed such communities to be thieves and dacoits and dubbed them criminals under the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Freedom from the British didn't change much for such 150 tribes; these were hounded by the police under the Habitual Offender's Act of 1952.


Words may have changed but the text remained much the same as the new piece of legislation continued to negate the universally proclaimed principle that 'all human beings are born free and equal' and gave the police wide powers to not only arrest them but to control and monitor their movements too. No wonder, the economic upturn in the recent past has meant little for such tribes as they continue to languish at the lower end of the growth spectrum.


Criminal Tribes of Punjab provides insights into the socio-anthropological existence of seven criminal tribes in Punjab, which bear close resemblance to the condemned existence of similar tribes in the country. The book critically discusses the issue of criminality as also it captures the brewing resentment of exclusion amidst them.


Using development as an indicator, the book argues in favor of repealing the Habitual Offenders Act for affectively rehabilitating such ostracized communities. The book is a timely narrative on a rather neglected section of the society which, contrary to Macaulay's assessment, has a rich cultural legacy....Link

Criminal Tribes of Punjab: A Socio-Anthropological Inquiry
by Birinder Pal Singh (Ed)                                                                                                               
Routledge, 151 pages, Rs 595