Simplify, simplify, simplify. - Henry David Thoreau
Paul Polak is a great man. He wrote the book Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail. Polak lectured tonight on campus about the ease of lifting people out of poverty through innovative, low-cost tools specifically tailored to meet their needs. The emphasis was on design and plain functionality. He knew their needs (having interviewed several thousand poor farmers around the globe), understood the wide applicability of simple, sized-right solutions (more than 80% of the world's farms are an average of 4 acres or smaller... many are just 1 acre), and wasn't afraid to admit that prosperity is what these farmers need first and foremost.
Paul shared an anecdote with us. He used to ask these poor farmers "Why are you poor?" He said they would look at him like he was some kind of nut. "Because we don't have money!" they would say. "If we had more income, we wouldn't be so poor!" Polak went on to explain that many scholars would scoff at that simplicity. Scholars assume that poverty is a much more complex and knotty problem, and can be remedied only by equally complex solutions. "Powerlessness" is the root of the problem; or "lack of education" is the root of the problem; or "poor health and nutrition" is the problem. All of these things are second to income, according to Polak. Those are the macro-level forces that outsiders can see (and insiders can sense and experience) but they have immediate, daily understanding of income. They have immediate understanding of being able to buy more food versus going hungry again. They have immediate understanding of not being able to provide the necessary dowry for their daughter's marriage. That needs no explanation or contemplation on their part. No money, no food, no dowry. Bigger forces be damned (for the moment). Income is a present, tangible problem - so why not work on solving that?? The problem of income is viscerally felt, and the solution will be equally visceral. People will invest in their own education, once they have the money; people will invest in their own health, once they have the money; people will have greater influence, once they have the money. What they want is money! They want greater incomes first! Take care of that, because that is the human-sized, family-sized solution. The societal changes (e.g., educational access) will follow.
Polak's point resonates with me. I think we often complicate things beyond necessity, and so simultaneously paralyze action in the face of enormity and entanglements that we build. It is as though we are trying to prove our intelligence by considering every possible variable, inside out and backwards. While this might prove our mental muscle, these gymnastics aren't inspiring. We can't get traction with all those factors clamoring for attention. We must parse problems into their principle and leading components. That is where the solutions are - right in front of our noses, waiting to be recognized. That is how we get started. We look dead ahead and call a spade a spade! Then we act. Many things are so plain! Not all variables need equal consideration, and not all variables need early consideration. Let's simplify our approach to problems so they do not get the best of us.
This is good for teaching. Let us teach the most necessary and unadorned concepts before we start to consider all the permutations and combinations. What are the most plain and basic needs of the students I will have next year? What do they need the most, and what is going to be the most valuable to them? I don't want to address step 5 when I haven't covered step 1. That isn't being smart. That is wasting effort and energy. I will need to find out - fast - where the biggest returns are for the smallest, shortest investment. Not everything is a brutal slog through mud or a thick forest. Some solutions are just as simple as walking up and ringing the door bell.
Plus, his presentation skills were second-to-none. He treated us, his audience, as equal participants, with ideas and commentary worth voicing. He repeated people's questions, to make sure he understood them correctly and to make sure everyone on the balcony could hear it. He didn't swat away any questions or let on to any distaste for someone's question by giving a damp response. He was conscious of people's time - asking, "Well, it is twenty past seven. Do you want to continue in this manner of questions-and-answer? Or go into the presentation? Which would be most useful to you?" It was genuinely our choice (we wanted to see his presentation; apparently, we were more enchanted with him than we were with our own inquiries). When he made a commitment to take initial questions for 10 minutes, then speak for about 30, and return to questions for another 30, he held to each of those spans. It was respectful of him, and kept us alert because we knew he wasn't going to ramble forever; best listen intently for a pithy 30 minutes because it was sure that was what he would deliver, and that was all he would deliver.
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1 comment:
Jessa!
This blog is great. As you requested, I will leave some comments and food for thought in the spirit of more-perspectives, more-truth academic exchange.
This is quite a departure from the piece you wrote for the Voice, the one about owning complexity. As in, Deal with the fact that complexity is real, don't try to make things fit into neat little compartments. But thats cool, changing our opinions is a sign of maturity and growth, so I welcome this fresh perspective from you. Probably reality necessitates a balance between seeing and owning complexity and not making things such a foggy mess that we cant even act or make positive change.
As a side note, the more I study social systems the more I wonder if social scientists just have no idea whats going on. Statistics, theories about political, economic, social, and cultural change, fancy grand Integral meta-theories.... All these things are great, and useful sometimes, but really arent we just making sense out of the big chaotic (dare I say feminine?) storm that is a social system? Isnt this thing like totally beyond what our minds can understand? Probably, but we have to work for change in spite of this, so Ill take my theories, the grand ones and the simple ones, I just wont believe them 100% of the time.
Anyway.
I think that Polak is basically right that often we come in with great big, gung-ho, "Lets save the poor people!" schemes that often do more harm than good. Myself, I wouldn't say that it is just as simple as Poor people need income. True, they need income, but this just begs the question, Why dont they have a good income? And so how will they RECEIVE this income in a fair and sustainable way that respects their autonomy and ability to earn (as nice as it is to just give people money, when you do this, you basically say You are too stupid to figure out how to get this for yourself, so here ya go)? How will they get this money day in and day out for years and years? When you ask this question you begin to deal with the problems of social systems, of the availability of work, how potentialities for agricultural production fit with the infrastructure, the wealth of the population to BUY food, the availability of markets to actually sell the food, not to mention culture, the inclusion of women, things like bride-price, polygamy, etc etc. The fact is that reality is complex, and ah, there's the rub.
I think a nice synthesis, or at least the BEGINNING of a nice synthesis, between what Polak is saying and what I am saying, is provided by William Easterly in his books The Elusive Quest for Growth and the White Man's Burden (which you read or skimmed, no?). The former chronicles the repeated failures of the Big Plans imposed by outside powers. It is crazy. Structural adjustment, education financing, liberalization and privatization, one after the other, all fail. Bam, bam, bam, like poor-country dominoes.
In the latter Easterly points out that development is, in fact, a million small projects all successfully, sustainably, executed. It is creating a financially sustainable (meaning for-profit) TeleCenter in a rural community that can use it to sell its crops and other products. It is getting electricity to these areas. It is finding a way so that people have access to affordable mosquito nets. It is getting water from the booming Congo river, cleaned, to our humble office/compound here in Plateaux de 15 ans, Brazzaville (sometimes we go for days or weeks without water from the tap, and we have take a taxi and fill up large jugs at a friend or neighbor's house where they DO have water). Development, as I said, is a million individual projects like this, not some grand plan. Im looking at you, Jeffrey Sachs.
Myself, more and more I view this like evolution. The evolution of, say, a fish, wasnt just one big evolutionary leap, from amoeba to fish. It was countless failed attempts by the speices as a whole, as evolution pushes forward in a search for what works, not a plan for what it THINKS will work. Sure, sometimes there were periods of enormous growth, or tipping points, or times when biological complexity accelerates and slows, but these in general are the result of many factors coming together in a confluence of gradually-acquired changes.
Petit-a-petit, as they say here. Little by little. Ca c'est la developpement.
Also, maybe youve already heard this in my notes on Facebook, but I too ask people why Congo is poor. Roughly half say that it is because of Western exploitation, the other half says that it is because of Congolese culture. So right there you have liberals and conservatives, just like in the States. I even tell them "When you come to the States, you will be a Republican, and you will be a Democrat!" They are like, Whatever. Haha.
Okay, well, Id say Ive rambled enough here, no? Hopefully Ive provided some good food for thought, and maybe no we are one step closer to untangling the often big and messy, often stunning simple problems that poor countries and poor people face. Thanks again for this blog, and write when you have time!
Brendan
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