Steve Hutcheson

I have spent 3 and half years in Afghanistan since 2002 and have been the program manager in charge of about 200 million in various infrastructure projects, the last year with the Counter Insurgency program. It is all largely a waste. We are not bringing about peace, we are not changing anything. Why build a road to market if there is no market? Why give Afghan government workers computers when they cannot write and do not even have a manual system functioning first?

I think of America as a country developing on the basis of small government, small welfare and high on entrepreneurship. In Afghanistan we have introduced aid on a system that is focused on big government, big welfare, no entrepreneurship and all managed by public servants.

If they were to measure the impact of a project they funded three years ago, there would be nothing to comment on. We are doing work now that was being done six years ago, we are simply providing maintenance, not development.

It is extremely frustrating that those making the decisions on how funds are dispersed do so on a whim that they bring from the west, without understanding the people or the internal systems of the people of Afghanistan and all with a new way of doing things that they think will work knowing none of the above.

There are currently two groups of criminals in Afghanistan, one being the insurgents, the other being in government. We provide support to one side of what is a essentially a turf war between the two.

My guess is that ultimately, the west will stop giving aid and it will revert to the civil war with the Talibs driving the criminals out as they did in 1996 at which point the government will fold as it did then.

I wish that were not the case. Where we have failed is that we have not changed anything. We have not created sustainable industry but sought to enhance the existing economic structure of subsistence farming. There is no industry other than what is required to service the international assistance and budget. Take that away and you will be left with a big zero in economic activity.

Let me see if I have this straight. Masood Qaim who recently wrote in the Guardian (I’ve Changed my Mind about the West published 30 Dec 2009) about the failure of the west to take its reconstruction activities in Afghanistan seriously, who grew up the son of a General with power, position and was part of the privileged elite in socialist Afghanistan, losing it all on departure of the Russians. He is unhappy and grumbles that the Americans or the west have not reinstated his life to that which it once was and have not bought back the development in a manner that would suit him.  As a journalist Masood and judging from his complaint, sees himself as part of the intellectual mass of Afghanistan that believes and challenges the west should be doing more to reinstate his county to its former self.

Frankly, Masood represents about one percent of Afghanistan as it stands. Afghans voted and it was Karzai whom for better or worse the apparent majority Afghans felt represents their plight best of all.  

There are substantial issues for Afghanistan to face up to, least of all the rampant corruption amongst the government, the abuse of power by the warlords and the ongoing philosophical battle that represents the fundamental policy of the Taliban versus the liberation espoused by a more humane western sense of human rights. Biting the hands that primarily feeds them is the last thing Afghans need to be doing if they are to move anywhere in the direction of change and development.

In a Facebook thread on this article posted by Nushin Arbabzadah, another Guradian journalist, I have challenge Masood to address the question of how change would come about to Afghanistan if the west was to abruptly withhold all aid and intervention in the processes that are taking place. How will Afghans solve some if not all of the seemingly intractable problems his country faces?

In another more inspiring article that I have read lately drawn by Nicholas D Kristof in the New York Times (His Gift Changes Lives published New York Times 16^th December 2009) Kristof writes about a Sudanese youth, Valentino Deng who at first escaped the rigors of the war in Sudan but on eventually achieving some sense of stability and security in the US, has returned to his country work on the development process himself, building a school where countless NGOs have failed. He is not carping about how that the west is not doing enough, he has moved on and is doing it himself, he sees himself as the lucky one and that it is up to him to actually bring about the change needed to his country.    

Masood, and he is not alone in this, need to take control of their own set of circumstances. If it cannot be achieved at the ballot box then it needs to be done irrespective of the government and the corruption that exists in the world as they know it. It is after all, only what he is presently expecting the west to do for him.  

I take umbrage at his dismissal of the work of foreign NGO’s where he labels them as the greatest source of corruption in Afghanistan. Far be it from me to defend the actions of all of them, I often disagree with the methods and programs they become engaged in, however having worked there and experienced firsthand where the problems lie, it is not the internationals per se, it is more often in the local staff who find an avenue to corrupt the processes, who take backhanders from contractors, who manipulate the flow of funds an any number of other ways of stripping the funds out of NGO programs. For the most part as a program manager, I saw my role and that of other international functionaries in part was to introduce systems and processes that perhaps would not eliminate the corruption but would at least bring it into a respectable level of say eighty percent delivered. Where international inexperience on the part of the program manager was evident is where the most rorting of the aid funding existed. Many believed much like Masood seems to believe that Afghans would not be the major protagonists in this failure to see full delivery of program funding to bring about major impact by its delivery. It is not an intentional process but one brought about by default and consequence of young idealists taking a lead in many programs.

There is a problem with much aid funding that is for sure. Programs are introduced that have no commercial basis, they are feel good projects that do little to alter the economic plight that is at the root of the complaint Masood has.  We build schools in remote locations and then cannot get any qualified teachers to attend them because of security or remoteness or simply a lack of teachers. More than three hundred schools in the eastern provinces are vacant because of this. We build and equip clinics when there is no qualified staff to man them for the same reasons.  We build roads to market and then do nothing about ensuring that there is in fact a market at the end of it. We do nothing to ensure that the 70% of rural poor who are landless have an opportunity to have greater aspiration than to simply be an itinerant farm laborer or part time Taliban as an alternative. We look at our individual programs as self important and fail to register them holistically with the overall development process needed for the county.

Simply put, Masood is wrong in his assessment. He would do well to take a leaf out of Valentino Deng’s book and consider his good fortune to be one of the lucky ones and take action to make the changes he wants for Afghanistan himself.

Capitalism as we know it is perhaps at a crossroad. It may have reached a position in the way we live our lives that only social disorder will resolve some of the difficulties we are now facing unless new options are created to alter the way our communities co-exist. Presently hundreds of millions of people around the world have been affected by the fallout of the financial collapse that has occurred over the past year. Millions upon millions are presently unemployed; countless millions of others have lost their homes and lifestyles and again hundreds of millions if not billions have suffered financial loss through the collapse of investments.

Part of the problem is the development of unfettered capitalism, the belief that the acquisition of more and more wealth is immutable and inscribed in stone. Thirty to forty years ago the salary difference between the lowest and highest in any organization may have been in the order of three to four times. Now differences in compensation in the hundreds of times are not unusual. It raises the question of how much additional contribution the highest paid is making to the overall success of the operation.

I was once complimented in that as the former manager of a program in Afghanistan and after considerable absence I gave credit and greeted as a friend a humble man whose single role was to open and close the gate as we entered the compound. As I explained to my engineer, I saw that the gatekeeper’s role was as important to the overall operation as anyone. If he was not vigilant in his task to secure the compound as he did, we were all at risk and in that respect he was critical to the safe operation of us all. The same can be said in any organization today.

People and governments however in another respect are intrinsically generous.  For the past decade I have had the good fortune to have been engaged in dispensing some of the universal largess in some of the world’s more difficult crisis zones, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Aceh and to a lesser extent Thailand and now Malaysia. People with the most have been the most generous. Bill Gates has contributed billions in the fight against malaria; countless trusts have been established by philanthropists worldwide to engage in social restoration, building schools and clinics or simply provide financial aid and hundreds of millions of people have contributed to millions of charities and social programs worldwide. From my own small involvement I have been given the managerial task to dispense more than two hundred million dollars over the period I have been working in these operations.

 But in all the time I have been involved in this line of work I have questioned the overall impact that all this generosity has made in solving the problems of half of the world’s population. If we provide aid today, we often need to provide more aid tomorrow. I liken it to placing a dollar in the cup of a beggar. We don’t solve his problem since he will most likely be there again tomorrow. We take on a role of Benefactor and Beneficiary where one party is always kept at a disadvantage and is unlikely to become our equal.

Since 2002 more than thirty billion dollars has been provided in direct aid to Afghanistan yet they still have the worst social indicators across all measures of all the countries in the world. The aid program has not been successful. We have however perpetuated the roles of benefactor and beneficiary without developing any sort of successful partnership between the two parties.

I firmly believe it is now time to address this particular issue directly. If I give you something, I want you to something in return to develop the partnership. I was heartened to see an article recently about an admirable young Sudanese man, Valentino Deng who has been moderately successful in the US and is now actively working towards building schools in his own country. He view is that “he is the lucky one so it is incumbent upon him to help his people solve some of their problems.”

In some ways, (I am an engineer so am taking an engineering approach to developing a solution) I believe that for the most part, people are prepared to work. Over the years I have employed more than 60,000 people on cash for work programs and I know and they know that the money we would hand out each week was theirs, they had earned it. But the question that always niggled me was the lack of sustainability these programs had. We would employ a thousand people for three months to construct a road to market for some isolated community. At the end of the project however, there was no continuing work for the thousand engaged in the process.     

Presently UNESCO has listed part of Penang to be a cultural and social World Heritage site. That in itself has created something of a commercial flurry in the development of the region however the most likely scenario is that it will become a gentrified enclave, eliminating in its progress the lifestyle and social framework of those that presently live within its boundaries.

The solution as I see it is to put the property development aspect required for Penang to work in conjunction with the social development work that is necessary to retain the social and cultural structures as they are. Through this there is also an opportunity to modify our approach to dealing with the social issues of the disadvantaged such that we arrive at sustainable outcomes and that problems are not simply solved only for as long as the aid continues, we enable the poor and disadvantaged to reach a position where they no longer require aid. That then brings into account a new means of addressing social philanthropy, philanthropy that enables the poor to have sustainable incomes and permanent jobs where they are in partnership with those that provide them the means to achieve that status, the benefactor and the beneficiary are as equals.

To do this requires the philanthropist to become not simple the benefactor giving alms to a beneficiary but working as the financier providing soft loans that need to be repaid and as that is returned providing further soft loans to start more projects and so on and so on all the while retaining a direct connection and equity with the process.  It is not simple one gives and the other takes, they both have a common objective and outcome in mind. Perhaps that is a solution to address the existing faults of capitalism. It is one that I am certainly working on.

In terms of finance and financial instruments, venture capital is the provision of funding that enables pilot industries to get started and the investors take a calculated risk on its success or failure eventually withdrawing their funds and profit within a specified timeframe.

Social venture capital (SVC) should have a similar framework. The difference however is that with SVC the objective of the investment is to assist social programs to create sustainable employment or public utility for people at the lower socio-economic levels of developing economies. At the same time, the original investment should be returnable to those that make it along with a profit.

In almost every country there are people at the bottom of the social-economic ladder who need some form of assistance. Often that takes the form of social welfare in developed countries to international donor funds and charity delivered though the United Nations and international non government organizations in less developed countries. Looking at it more closely however, most if not all assistance to the poor is largely unsustainable. The need for funds continues year in year out and where there is no development these lower social groups are exploited and kept poor for generations on end. It is akin to a beggar in the street. He was there yesterday, he is there today and he will be there tomorrow. Putting ten dollars into his cup merely solves his problems today and at the same time creates a level of dependency that is not sustainable unless that is you are prepared to do the same thing day in day out.

Most people are not and so the beggar relies on finding new donors on a daily basis.

That said, there is a need to help the beggar resolve his problem. Sometimes the beggar opts to continue his existence as a beggar for very sound commercial reasons. In many third world countries for instance, a field worker might earn two dollars a day for his labor in agriculture. A beggar located in a busy city location for instance can draw two dollars an hour if not more. Why would he work in the field? In other instances, they are forced to work as beggars and receive a “salary” from those that command them.

In terms of venture capital or technical assistance for the poor, little is made in the way of direct business intervention that will enable a sound idea to germinate and create an economic independence that can stand on its own two feet. In most countries, capital is held in the hands of a few. There are no banking systems to speak of and when there is, they are again limited to conventional lending standards that exist all over the world and available to very few in the community.

On the other hand, each year the world through its many donor agencies and private donations, contribute some thirty billion in aid funding that has no possibility of a return primarily to address the immediate needs of the very poor. Each succeeding year the demand for the same level of funding and assistance is the same and in largely the same areas of operations. We don’t solve the problem. We simply contain it and often we contribute to the continuation of the problem by doing so.

What is not happening is a stabilization of the problems to arrest the constant need for support. In the US the banks recently needed propping up to continue operations with a massive injection of funds through the US federal government. The same scenario happened in a dozen countries around the world. At the very bottom of the social tree it is exactly the same situation except they have no alternatives.

Economic stimulation at these lower levels can bring about change. The very poor in developing countries are equally as industrious and capable within a limited skill set to undertake numerous enterprises that their counterparts in developed countries take upon them self. What are lacking are available risk capital and the technical knowledge that is required to change their present situation.

It is with this in mind, that I am seeking to develop a mechanism that will enable donors to invest rather than donate into a pool of funds that builds economic development at the almost micro level. A similar program currently exists in micro finance however I have issues with this program but for different reasons. It does not go far enough.

Many people are not inclined to be a business owner not withstanding that they are self employed. They want the regularity of a stable income that gives them a surplus to make choices on how their earnings are spent.

Social venture capital is intended to provide small to medium level enterprises establish in areas where the industry has not been in existence before. For instance, in Afghanistan, cotton is grown in areas where irrigation is plentiful however the crop is sent to Pakistan to be processed into cotton fabric and bought back into Afghanistan. The value added difference of the finished product can be fifty times the value of the cotton crop itself. This is a major loss in revenue to these communities. What is necessary is the establishment of a small cotton processing plant located within the region of cotton growing.

To get to that point their needs to be an entrepreneur identified who can build upon any assistance. He will need financial assistance and technical support until he can become established. He will need management guidance and constant monitoring of the investment funds. However, once established, he will be in a position to employ numerous workers, he will retain funds within the country. If he gets to be wealthy as a consequence then that is to be lauded. It is exactly the principle that the people of the US demand for them self yet those that administer international funds have lost sight of that ideal when it comes to dealing with developing economies.

At the end of a period of time, the investors will be returned their investment with a profit that is negotiated up front.

There will be failures. That is to be expected. It happens in all economies. It is the nature of venture capital. There will however be profit and the business will be sustainable and people will be employed and that is something that does not happen with charity or international assistance programs that simple distribute aid.

There is considerable angst amongst international circles regarding the corruption of the recent Presidential elections and the lack of capacity that is available within the Afghan government.  But what is it that they are wanting?

Presumably they want to see good government however what they have is an administration that is wracked with corruption, staffed by untried criminals, lacking all manner of administrative capacity and a litany of other failings. It simply begs the question as to what is it that they are suppose to provide in the big equation that is Afghanistan?

From the perspective of the average Afghan, their lives would in many cases be better off simply by eliminating all local government intervention. Governance as it exists is a matter of favors and rampant nepotism all managed by incompetent and corrupt officials. It is of parties playing off other parties, be they of a different tribe, ethnic group or gender. 

There function is marred by an unrealistic desire. A desire to emulate good government such as it might exist in pristine environments of the west. That is not going to happen. Much of the present intervention is to provide these agencies with new tools, new infrastructure and new skills without addressing what purpose they serve in the long run. It provides computers to people in government who for the most part cannot read, have no electricity to drive the processors and comes before the ability to affect an administrative system that cannot even operate on a manual system since almost none exists. If seventy percent of the public servants in Afghanistan were dismissed, there would be almost no affect on the functioning or well being of the Afghan community.

Government is necessary but it has to arrive from a position of demand. Afghanistan as it is possible has the most laborious bureaucracy in the world. The administrative process is rife with incompetence and payoffs. It is simple not needed. It is proposing to address the problems of a fully functioning economy and social system when there is no economy and the social systems is more in tune with the local mosque than it is with the warlords.

The US and the west would do better to reconsider what it is they are proposing to build in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is not going to advance simply because it has good government. It is going to advance if it has an economic activity that provides every one with a basic income and life support. Everything else will be or at least should be a flow down process from that. Inventing laws or holding up activity until the laws are drafted is the thinking that Lewis Carrol may have been considering when he drafted Alice. Allowing local officials unfettered power to dictate terms and conditions of projects has been the greatest stumbling block in developing a working economy and social reform.  

Afghanistan has traditionally had a socialist styled administrative system with hundreds of inefficient public departments, utilities and state owned enterprises controlling major sectors of the economy. The public service is increasingly large and cumbersome with multiple layers of bureaucracy at a national, provincial, district and village level, each sucking relentlessly on the public teat. So far through Afghan history, it has failed to function realistically. The international assistance program however continues to build on that failed model. Coincidentally, this flies in the face of a demand by the main providers and backers, the US where its domestic population is demanding smaller government and smaller government regulation enabling the market to sort out its own problems as part of whatever is perceived to be enshrined in its two hundred year old constitution.  

Where the west can assist Afghanistan is not in continuing to protect its failed government. It has an obligation at this stage to build a credible economy allowing market forces to regulate unfair practices as they evolve and not spend billions on creating a corrupt preventative environment before they even start. Hundreds of industries have stagnated waiting for the legislation to be introduced that in part will provide the legislators with unfettered access to the benefits that might flow out of them.

Afghanistan needs what might be termed “social venture capital”, funds and technology backed up with technical support to get the population and the economy moving forward and not simply allowing the unrepresentative government to control and restrict that process as it does. 

Of recent times, I have decided to scale back my thankless pursuit of money and opt to establish a more balanced set of objectives before me for the future. Now if you read my posts you will have established I am generally a liberal sort of person. For the past ten years I have been engaged in the humanitarian business, another thankless task. I have worked for non-government organizations in war torn high risk countries for the pittance they pay, I have been a UN volunteer living on a ridiculously small stipend, more recently I have worked for one of the beltway bandits sucking up US taxpayer money faster than the new hoover it has bought for our maid.  But things have changed, for my next exercise  I am looking not so much to how much I can make, but to how much I can do.

The beltway income has been sufficient to lay down a sizable deposit on a small house in Penang in Malaysia where we are currently setting down some roots and it will also pay to undertake a major renovation of the building before we finally decide if we will live in it or rent it out. The building however happens to be within the boundaries of a newly conscripted UNESCO World Heritage site which draws me into the reasons to do what I am doing. The idea that I can spend time on a project that will with some degree of personal satisfaction, recover some aspect of a history that has been allowed to degrade appeals to me. What I need to be conscious of is the possibility of over gentrification of the region and even in my own little project I am in since it is the cultural and ethnic inhabitants that form the heritage significance as much as it is the architecture.

What I am now also engaged in is putting together a proposal that will enable me to take on bigger projects that are not just for the moment, I will be able to create projects that, like buying art, are done as much for the sake that the end result can be enjoyed and is a sound investment.

I am reading a column by George Monbiot in the Guardian where  he is lamenting the fact that a TESCO is coming to his small Welsh village. The people who live in the village do so because they are satisfied with the slower pace it offers them and would seem to be universally driven to ward off the TESCO if they can however the inevitability of big business succeeding is ever present. The same can be said about my new project in Penang although not for the same reasons.

Penang is very busy. It has a multicultural community that over the years have bought in a diversity from all over Asia. Yet it is slowly dying. Over the past few years there have been local developers wanting to pul down part of the decayed buildings and construct multi storied hotels and office blocks. Thankfully they have been resisted. This small segment of the city should be enabled to retain its historic outlook, it will nto make one iota of difference to the world at large if these rich developers do not have their way.

The city blocks do however need developing and undertaken on a larger scale than private investment can manage before they totally disappear into a rotting mess. Money nees to be provided to preserve the cultural backdrop against which we measure our progress, money should be invested simply because the outcome provides us with pleasure. Not every thing we do has to be for a profit.

When I finish my tour in Afghanistan at the end of this month, I already have interested some major financiers in my proposition that there is investment potential in conserving Penang’s heritage. In it I am appealing to individual investors who care not just about the next tenth of a percent, but that they are contributing to worthwhile projects that will also repay due to the fact that their projects have greater interest than the availability of a new t-shirt. it may not be for everyone but then it doesn’t require everyone, just enough.

In this months Quadrant, an Australian  journal that tends to push a conservative line on most things has published an article that includes comments by a number of scientists and commentators on what they see as the fallacy of the climatic change occurring due to mans presence on earth.  Maybe they are right but then again, maybe they are wrong.

In another article perhaps not as scientific but more related to the financial impact of climate change, that impact is being calculated. It would seem that if we can believe the likes of the National Oceanographic Data Center, a division of the National Oceanic and  Atmospheric Administration, both US organizations whom are tasked with collating information around the world, the average heat content of the worlds oceans are heating up. The following is their graph showing the rise in the contained heat over the years.

It would seem however that the rise in the sea water temperature also has a deleterious effect on the ocean’s coral reefs, and none more so than the Great Barrier Reef along the north eastern coastline of Australia. In a recent report commissioned by the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, a business-backed body investing in science, estimates half the tourists drawn to see reef coral will stay away if projections of permanent bleaching prove correct.

Their estimate is that the it will cost Australia almost 38 billion dollars if the bleaching of the reef takes place, which is the value placed on the tourism and eco-industries that rely upon it remaining as it is.

I am not particularly swayed one way or the other by the various arguments. I liken it to the dispute between the Christians and the atheists, in that case neither can substantiate their position. In the case of weather however, there seems to be a lot of supporting information to suggest that there is a shift in climatic conditions. Whether it is merely nature taking its course or it is in fact, the result of man pumping billions of tons of pollutants into the atmosphere over the last century is a matter of conjecture.

In one instance, there is not a lot we can do about it, in the other however, there is. Much is made by those who argue against the rise being man made about the high cost we are going to be faced with if we are obliged to trade carbon dioxide production or for industry to invest in new technologies to take over the existing ones. Theirs seems to be a an extremely self interested motivation to do nothing, “am I going to have to pay more for my transport” sort of argument? While on the other hand, those that are arguing for change to take place also often have a self interest in securing funding in research or promotion of green technologies. Yet it is advances in technology that the world requires sooner rather than later. The idea that fossil fuels are endless is to disregard reality.

On the other hand, we can live with research into new processes for the production of power or ways that we go about our business. Five hundred years ago all they had was fire, now we have electricity that can be created from the sun. My first cell phone cost me one hundred times what I can pick one up for in a market now. It is not cheap however these new technologies are getting cheaper and will continue to do so as usage increases. As I am writing this, advances in the production of solar cell material, increased output of this material in new factories in China, a saturation of the solar market has caused the price of solar power to drop by some 40% in the past year alone.

There is also the criticism that imposing taxes on dirty production will cause job loss yet those that argue this fail to acknowledge that the recent financial crisis has caused more job loss world wide than would be possible though these new measure introductions. That argument is puerile and lacking substance in the long term.

What we can’t live with is the consequence of doing nothing until we leave it go until we reach the point where it is all too late.

I was reading an article this morning in the British Guardian Online. It was about an isolated tribe of Jarawa natives who were starting to come out of the jungle in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for the first time and how they are beginning to interface with the tourists and recent arrivals. The writer, quite rightly alluded to the difficulties the tribes faces in the future in terms of integration, adapting to diseases, alcoholism, materialism etc as they become more and more integrated into the western notion of development. Necessarily these are traditionally poor people who have survived for centuries by their instinct and what the jungle can provide for them, the thing for the moment is that, they do not know they are poor, nor do they appear to care or are in any particular need of what the west can provide for them. Unfortunately that will progressively change as well meaning, but poorly advised “assistants” help them adapt to the western world. The richness of their present simple life will eventually become the symbols  of their future poverty.

Jarawa women of the Andaman Islands

It got me to thinking however about the general notion that we see indigenous peoples need to reach levels in their lifestyles that are consistent with western norms that may be askew. The Jarawa seem to have an idylic lifestyle. They are not constrained by any moral conventions that constrain the outside world, they live a semi nomadic existence where there appears no need for anything other than what their surroundings can provide for them. Ecologically and environmentally, the Jarawa appear to leave a negligible footprint on their surroundings yet seem happy with that even to the extent of repelling intruders with spears and arrows until quite recently. However, as they start to integrate as they are now doing, their lives will become irreversibly changed and it needs to be decided soon if that is for the better or should they be protected.

Their future is perhaps written for them as development takes hold of their tiny island. Inevitably they will through contact establish needs they previously did not have or could not obtain from the jungle.  Sweets, clothing, housing, liquor, medicine, education, money, communications, transport and a host of other symbols of development and advanced society. Through bitter experience of how other indigenous people have fared in the past, they will not fare well. They will lose their skills at living with nature, they will contract diseases, they will become indolent, always living around the edges of society eventually becoming a serial pest as that society loses its tolerance with their slow adaptation to western expectation. They will live in hastily constructed shanties at the edge of civilization instead of in their organized jungle village.

Going by the conventions set down by agencies such as the United Nations Human Development Reports, the Jarawa people will be included in deserving the minimum standards laid out for their existence yet what that fails to acknowledge is that these standards would generally exceed their current expectations and what is more, it needs to be asked if in fact they are needed or should what we be doing is to maintain the status quo.

Is development only a western perception that would enable them to live in a developing western world with western needs. Poverty world wide is measured against an immeasurable standard if say compared to the Jarawa people. The same, to some extent can be said for peoples all over the world in different locations and different sets of ideals. We tend to presume that what we can offer is what is best and fail to understand that sometimes what they have might well be what is in fact best after all.

For several years I have worked in Afghanistan. When I first arrived I had the opportunity to travel to remote regions of Nangahar province where I met with villagers whom I considered had an almost idyllic if not austere life, similar to that of the Jarawa however with a greater degree of development you might say. They had little to be sure however they had enough to live a lifestyle that was free of material needs. They live in mud houses with a mud floor and rarely a window. They grow and eat their own simple foods. They do not own cars and they do not travel far. They are uneducated but they can live under extreme weather conditions as they have done for centuries. It is rich in its simplicity. There were growing issues of education of which they had little and medical resources of which they had none and much of the issues of maternal and natal health were frequent problems that needed resolutions. Much of it compared to others who had only recently acquired these services.

Yet there is resistance. In the far reaches of Nuristan province to the east of the country, the local people are resisting all comers. That includes the US military and the Taliban as well as the development community. Their villages are only accessible by foot tracks in the mountains that even the donkeys find difficult to traverse. They don’t want change and will fight to prevent its arrival.

In terms of their material wealth however, apart from the land beneath their feet, they have little to show of wealth. Most Afghans live in harsh inhospitable environments where an austere religious lifestyle and work at subsistence levels of farm production that regulates their daily lives yet, for the most part, provides a sense of order and a level of social security within each tiny hamlet.  Many never venturing out even to the next village but remain within the family compound. It is only when change takes place that dislocations to these tiny communities begin to eventuate. They are poor however their poverty is relative to a system that they are being introduced to that advocates development.

A question that needs to be asked, is do they really need it until they decide for them self? Is development aiding in the destruction of societies? Well meaning but often self serving aid agencies who set an agenda that is rarely based on what these communities actually need as opposed to what they might say they want or promote ideas the aid groups can sell to them and proceed to offer a change to their lifestyles. A move towards one that emulates their own along with their own particular set of values, changing social structures, material wealth and complete with vague notions of democracy and the inherent politics of gender, education and health care.

Development at peoples own pace can be good. Development at paces they cannot maintain is not good. For the Jarawa people, development will most likely only bring them poverty and hardship that they otherwise would never have known.

I am engaged in a discussion on  whether aid agencies should be regulated. I am not necessarily in favor since I don’t really see that as the problem. This is in part what I have added to the discussion. What is more at stake is the way we do business.

Takes building schools for instance. We do a lot. I must have built 30 schools in the ten years I have been working in this business but I have to say, I am happy enough if I see a group of kids sitting under a tree and the teacher has a simple blackboard propped against it. It was good enough for Socrates. Schools are not just buildings, it is about what the kids are learning. Looking back at a situation I was faced with in Jalalabad in 2002. We wanted to build schools and clinics. The difficulty was for both there was a problem with staffing with health professionals or qualified teachers in some of these remote locations. The teachers and the nurses need to be trained before we start worrying about constructing the buildings.

That brings me to probably the most serious constraints we have in the aid industry. One of the things see all the time however is this fear of profit, particularly by the NGOs but also by the UN and for the most part the donors. I was in Aceh just after the tsunami and I along with several INGOs were in a meeting about the need for ice factories. Since they started making ice, it had been in the hands of private enterprise however no one wanted to fund the owner and figured that a cooperative would have been a better idea. I am sure that in a truly socialist environment it might have but this was not a socialist environment. What was necessary was that the owner needed funding to get his business back on track as much as they needed new schools. Without ice, the fishermen could not preserve their catch so the whole community was suffering because of this issue of support to an individual making a profit.

I come from Australia. The whole economy is profit-centric yet in crisis locations people argue for socialism and the development of a welfare economy.

USAID are the funniest in this regard. America has been built on small government, small welfare and the advancement of big thinking entrepreneurs however where ever they apply funds, Afghanistan for instance, it is big government, big welfare and prohibition of profit, all managed by government workers.

Rearrange that thinking and then we might start to get somewhere in solving poverty instead of simply supporting it while we hold their hands.

So do we need to regulate. I don’t think so. If the donors who are the providers of the funds are to change their thinking and recognise that supplying a country with donation wheat is not as good idea as getting a regional marketing organisation functioning then we might see progress. Too often we look at the small picture instead of the big picture and the small picture is certainly not working.

On the basis that there are some six billion people in the world, I am convinced that a fair number of them are what we would call “good people” who would make interesting reading if only someone bothered to take the time to ask them their story and write about it in an interesting way.

I am not talking about the sport stars or the actors and singers who succeed publicly and make lots of money doing it and then turn out to be prats in real life, I am not talking about the politicians or business leaders that are in fact doing it for themselves, I am talking about real people who do good things in life, who change peoples lives in some small way without asking for a reward or give up part of their lives to help their fellow man and not expect to reap any benefit beyond their due.

They do it because it needs to be done. The sort of people I am talking about would be be the characters behind Lawrence of Arabia or even Indiana Jones or even Dawn Dulhunty.

Behind it all however what they do is inspiration of another kind. Far too often we as a society are driven by the excesses of greed and corruption, we have it instilled in us daily that you can be bad, you can be corrupt and still you can be regarded as successful, whatever that means.

Recently a well known TV character in Melbourne Australia who had a massive following based on his hosting character on television and his later involvement in the art world, pleaded guilty to corrupt business practices that saw him being fined a huge amount of money in normal terms but possibly only a small percentage of whatever he made through that scam and being excluded from business for several years. How many people were affected by his greed is unknown or what effect it had on their lives is inconsequential but affected they were. It has been a couple of years perhaps but now his publicity machinery is driving him back into the public sphere again and I have to ask why? Why are we allowing it? What has he done to make amends for the pain and suffering he has caused? Surely there are enough people around with good vibrations that we can idolize?

It goes on of course. There are any number of people in the news this week who are there because they are bad or they entertain us with their excesses as opposed to being good people doing good things and making life an adventure as it should be.

So much for my high horse. Initially this column started out as a political commentary on stuff that six million other writers are commenting on so I have decided to forgo that and perhaps concentrate on finding good stories about good people in the world and bringing them to the fore where they should be and to work on new projects where good things can be done. I must say I was driven to change focus when I read about this kid who gained notoriety on trashing his parents house with a party then appeared on a national TV program and was paid some $80,000 by the program to do so. Maybe I am getting old but I just find it difficult to reconcile that this is what it being promoted as the present value system of Australia. It is a big world out there and it is my conviction that there are many more interesting people out there than that.

What this exercise will be is stories about people as I said who make life an adventure and contribute to the well being of other people either as individuals or collectively in the same way that Indiana Jones could save the good people from pending disaster. If I can achieve it, it will not be a simple chronology of events but a discovery of the hardships and sense of adventure that is part of their achievements. That kids can read and become intoxicated by their exciting if not difficult lives. As I write, there is plenty of that happening in the world right now what with the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China. As I see it, no one knows who are the men and women who will go to these disasters, no one knows the men and women of the fire service or the regional hospital systems, no one knows the men and women who protect Australia’s shores and numerous other endeavors that change peoples lives on a daily basis. It these people that should be the inspiration for the future generations of Australians.

You can be the judge. Please nominate someone for inclusion.

p.s. My bet is you do not know who Dawn Dulhunty is. Well you should. She is An Australian humanitarian who has worked with her husband Paul for their church group in places like Nepal and India and Kosova and a dozen other places around the world, riding elephants to work, putting peoples lives back together for thirty years. She is an Australian version of Mother Teresa, without all the hype. She inspires me and I will write about her if she lets me.