In this profile interview by Robaiya Nusrat, Alex Cobham explains his choice to leave academia to try to better leverage his expertise on illicit financial flows, or ways in which forms of tax avoidance can hinder poverty alleviation and development efforts. Cobham left a research post at Oxford University to join UK-based Christian Aid, and he now serves as a research fellow at the London office of the US-based Center for Global Development. Details on CGD’s overall impact efforts are available at here

Q: Why did you decide to leave academia? What was it that you felt you couldn’t do as an academic researcher that you can do now?

Cobham: Well, I had been doing various research posts at the Queen Elizabeth House, the Department of International Development at the University of Oxford, since the beginning of 1999. During that time I was lucky enough to work with a professor who was especially then one of very few people who were seriously thinking of the role of tax havens and to some extent on the scale of the illicit financial flows and their impact on development. At the end of the 90s there was an OECD process looking at tax havens and it felt for a period that real policy change might be quite close. So one of the things we did in that period was to write a series of background papers for the UK Government’s white paper on globalization, which is one of the first major policy documents on that. It was quite explicit about the potential damage that tax havens can do. It felt like it was the right place in terms of being able to influence policy and persuade to that research agenda. Over the following few years, the OECD process more or less completely stalled, as a previous one 10 or so years earlier had done. It started to feel there was less and less policy attraction with research, so I suppose I got to the stage of thinking that I could sit in my office and write the perfect paper on tax havens and illicit financial flows in developing countries and nothing would happen. It simply wouldn’t matter.

Around about 2005, by that time I was working as junior teaching fellow at Oxford and doing more of my own research independently, mainly focusing on the importance of tax for development. Around about that time I met a very interesting economist called Charles Burgay who became the head of policy at Christian Aid — one of the big 5 development NGOs in UK. I think it was him more than anyone who saw the potential for the whole area of work to become the next big economic justice campaigning issue. I must say, the UK development NGOs, in terms of their scale but also on their commitment to campaigning on the policy issues, are probably the world leaders. So when eventually he and I talked about the possibility of my coming to work for Christian Aid and starting that campaign, it just felt like too good a chance to pass up. Christian Aid began the first really big development campaign on tax issues and illicit financial flows, closely followed by ActionAid, which meant you had 2 organizations among the big five. Over the course of 5 years or so, in combination of a lot of people, we were able to drive the issue up the agenda. The financial crisis was also turning up. As they say, \”Every cloud has a silver lining.\” The silver lining of the financial [crisis was that these] issues became impossible to escape even within the domestic context in a country like the UK, and making the development argument became that much easier, as people were more and more aware about the problems of tax evasion and tax avoidance for the UK and could very well understand how a country at the lower income level might face more extreme versions of those problems.

Q: Were there specific contributions you made in your work for Christian Aid, and now for the Center for Global Development (CGD), that wouldn\’t have been possible at Oxford?

Cobham: I think it was more of the fact that the work that I started doing at Christian Aid was tied directly into the campaigning. To be fair, it is also possible for academics to achieve a lot of the same opportunities without leaving academia in the same way I did. But, I think, having those links and being involved in to some extent in those campaigning and understanding the policy potential was important. So, the first serious piece of work we did at Christian Aid was to drawn some existing estimates of illicit financial flows and calculate both the potential tax revenue impact across a range of developing countries, but then also use estimates of the elasticity with respect to tax revenues. To calculate the potential impacts in terms of child mortality – so that first report gained enormous amount of attention and media coverage, because in a sense it was more media focused than anything that I might have done at Oxford. Potentially 1000 children under 5 years of age die in a day needlessly because of this problem. I think that was the first time that it really brought home to people the human impact rather than just saying this is a technical problem in the financial sector. It crossed a line in awareness of people’s human development issue. I guess that\’s the kind of thing you could certainly do from within academia, but then having that outlet to reach the kind of media and policy makers directly — I think you need to be thinking about the relationship with NGOs and with campaigning organizations.

Q: There is increasing emphasis on financial secrecy and international tax laws. Why is it of such importance now? Is this growing importance good news for the developing countries? How is the situation different for all those developing economies suffering from severe domestic corruption?

Cobham: First of all, you are absolutely right, this has taken a place on the international policy agenda, which reflects the importance of the issue, but which for a long time simply hasn’t been true. The fact that the UN High Level Panel on the post Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)- 2015 framework has explicitly recommended a target of reducing illicit financial flows and tax evasion is extremely good news for developing countries, but [also] actually more widely. Because this is one of those areas were people living in a country like the UK suffer in exactly the same way as people in countries of lower income levels. Not all the impacts are not to the same degree. Overall, however, nothing has actually changed yet. Really very little has been delivered. Now, the G8 held in the UK this year has finally got down to some of the real specifics. Again, they haven\’t really delivered much, but it was really important and I think the line that has been crossed here is that you now have the international policy agendas focusing on the right specifics, the things that would really make a difference rather than just the \’color of the flier\’ rhetoric. Unfortunately in this area we tend to hear this after every 10 years or so, and then it goes away. This time it feels different simply because the areas where progress is needed are very well identified, and that’s things like having public registers of who owns companies and trusts and foundations. That\’s not only important for fighting tax evasion but also money laundering and a whole set of or types of corruption. Again, we are also looking at the specifics around transparency in corporate reporting, which is crucial for reducing the scale of corporate tax avoidance, and also automatic information exchange between the type of financial centers sometimes called tax havens and developing countries.

Now coming to your final answer, on corruption within developing countries. There remains no question that this remain a problem in very many countries, but I think it\’s wrong, and it\’s increasingly being realized that it\’s wrong to see that as a developing country problem. One of the things you see over the last 20 years is a growing recognition in international media of the problem of corruption. But unfortunately that\’s being associated with a sense that corruption is a problem over there somewhere in developing countries, not a problem for major high income economies, and that\’s actually very misleading. If you look at the corruption perception index, it very strongly reinforces that view, but these are the perceptions of a very narrow international elite, and I think it\’s a growing concern about whether that index is playing a useful role. An alternative that gives you quite a different picture is the financial secrecy index, which actually ranks countries according to, in effect, how important they are in terms of tax havens. So, you often see countries which do extremely well on the corruption perception index, coming near the [top] of the financial secrecy index — and that\’s countries like Switzerland and Singapore, who in some sense very well regulate it but actually are encouraging corruption of various sorts, including tax abuse in countries of lower income levels. We need to thinking about corruption in that way as it appears as having a train of events. This is not about one person in one place perhaps working for a government, asking for a bribe. This is a pattern of asking for a corporate behavior, a pattern of consistent international bribery. But it\’s also about jurisdictions and the professionals, accounts and banks and others who facilitate and create structures to facilitate tax evasion, money laundering and whole range of types of corruption. I think, finally what we are seeing is the discussion around the post-2015 framework is a recognition of that, when we talk about corruption we will be talking about these global problems to which the solutions will be global rather than [this] very unhelpful and distorted view that corruption is a problem in developing countries and that they need to address by themselves somehow. I think again we have crossed a line on that.

Q: To what extent do illicit financial flows have impact on global poverty?

Cobham: Certainly income poverty in particular is overwhelmingly focused in developing countries, or concentrated. [It is] increasing in middle income rather than low income countries, and that tells you somewhat on the geography of poverty, that it is really about inequality within countries, not only about poor people living in poor countries. That in fact goes back to this global problem. One of the effects of the pervasive nature of illicit financial flows, not least tax evasion and tax avoidance, is that it becomes very difficult for countries at any income level, and particularly at lower income levels, to effectively tax income, profits and capital gains. If direct taxation is very heavily constrained in the developing countries by this problem of illicit flows, then almost inevitably you will end up with higher inequality than you would do otherwise. For example, if you look across Latin America, you see great many countries where the original market distribution of income is more or less as unequal as it is in the UK or in the US. The difference is that [especially] in the UK, fairly powerfully, you have a system of taxation and transfers that reduces that inequality quite significantly. Across Latin America, very often you simply don’t see that. Increasingly there are some efforts on the transfers but it\’s still very little very effective direct taxation and that means people living in these countries are left with higher levels of inequality and of course with all the social, political and human development problems that come alongside that. We know that economic growth is more unsustainable in developing countries. We know that conflict is more likely. We know that child development outcomes are much worse, gender and inequality is higher and so are the health outcomes. Henceforth, there is global attention and global policy change to address things which individual development countries can’t address on their own.

Q: Can you cite some examples of poverty effects from illicit financial flows, and which parts of the world are most affected?

Cobham: That\’s a major part of research agenda here at CGD, but we are not taking it forward in the sense of global development. In think the bulk of the research being done on the problems of illicit financial flows has not in fact been done by academics, and there is a clear gap and need for greater scholarly attention to these questions. The work that has been done has largely focused on generating the kind of big numbers, estimates of the total scale, which have been extremely valuable in driving these issues up the policy agenda. The shortcoming they have is this: they don\’t easily allow a break down into detail of the type of development impact of the different type of illicit flows in different countries, or if you want to look at countries by income level or by region. So, that\’s the kind of agenda we\’ve got at CGD, to start trying to push forward not just the estimates of the dollar scale of illicit flows but specifics types of impacts, whether that\’s on tax revenues, on governance and effective political representation, on inequality. It\’s about being a bit more precise on what the priorities should really be, whether that\’s individual developing country or for policy making at the global level.

It is important to stress that illicit financial flows are a global problem. There is not a single country that does not suffer, and to some extent the difference is the question of the type of illicit flows that a particular country has a problem with, and the scale. Let me give an example of the kind of problem that is perhaps most common in Sub-Saharan Africa, and this is the problem of illicit flows around the natural resource wealth of large number of countries. We had a bit of work few years ago looking at Zambia. Now, Zambia relies for its export-GDP largely on copper which it is mining. There are two major problems in the way Zambia benefits or fails to benefit from its copper resources. One is the ownership, and although this has improved somewhat in recent years, the ownership has historically been fairly well hidden. A great many of the copper mines have been owned by the British Virgin Islands, which is one of the most secretive jurisdictions. It\’s long been thought that various numbers of different governments have in fact been behind them, and the treatment of these companies, or the extent that those nations have benefited rather than the owners have benefited, has been questioned. The other aspect is that the majority of Zambia\’s trade, at least on paper has been with Switzerland. Now, Switzerland combines being a global hub of commodity trading. A Swiss company sells the copper it mines to a Swiss-registered company at prices greatly below the market value, which Switzerland subsequently declared on re-exporting copper itself. What comes out of it, when the Swiss company resells the same copper at a price far above the world price, taking the difference as profit in low-tax Switzerland, depriving Zambia of both export earnings and tax revenue. Zambia\’s GDP would have nearly doubled from something like $14 billion to more than $25 billion, and that\’s a country where about 80% of people were living on less than $2 a day. So, the potential of addressing the illicit financial flows in Zambia\’s copper trade in terms of the impact they could have had enlisting the majority of the population to come out of their income poverty would have been enormous. This is why you have a Zambian government which is being much more focused [on this issue] and trying to ensure better national benefits.

You can also talk about more extreme cases [like] extent of Nigerian wealth in the billions of dollars, taken by various, more or less dictatorial leaders and subsequently [sent to] those range of jurisdictions. In the case of Nigeria it has been particularly concentrated in the island of Jersey, one of the UK\’s grand dependencies, and in Switzerland of course. A lot of countries or jurisdictions offer either bank accounts or company or sometimes both which people can control completely and anonymously. That anonymity has been shown systematically to encourage and to facilitate the type of abuses I had been talking about, from the theft of public assets, to tax evasion and tax avoidance and related forms of corruption and bribery.

Q: If the Southern part of the developing world is heavily affected from illicit flows be it a larger or smaller economy, are things much worse for smaller economies in the South of Asia?

Cobham: Well I couldn\’t count it as small but we could think about Bangladesh, as having and facing a number of problems. Bangladesh is thought to have higher illicit financial outflows but also potentially a large number of inflows which are likely to be associated with undermining governance and the rule of law. So we shouldn\’t think these are largely benevolent. So, in Bangladesh we see different types of flow. But, what is particularly worrying is around trade mis-pricing. It\’s estimated that a great deal, and perhaps the majority, of exports from Bangladesh, often in the textiles, are mis-priced in such a way as to do one of two things: either to increase artificially subsidies that may arise for exporting, or to reduce the profit which is being declared within Bangladesh by artificially depressing the price declared, and having an additional fee for the exports being paid outside the country. A kind of classic example would be, textiles worth a $1000 have been depressed in terms of price or declared for exports as for $100 and that\’s what comes to the company. But perhaps the company doesn’t declare any profit, so it doesn\’t pay any corporate tax. The other $900 is paid into the bank account of the textile company owner, let\’s say in Switzerland, which will never exchange and never provide that information to the tax authority in Bangladesh or other parts of the government.

It will be absolutely outside government\’s ability to tax or explore whether there may be corruption, of course, since that $900 tends to be split with people who try to blind eye the customs, or the tax authority, or people in the government who otherwise wouldn\’t help to turn the process around. That\’s secrecy around who owns assets and income streams, the fact that information is not readily available to developing countries like Bangladesh, and it leads to all sorts of abuses which not only reduce the tax revenues that Bangladesh receives but also just domestically undermine the benefit of any economic activity taking place there and also of course undermine the rule of law. A sad additional fact on this is that when people in a country are aware that they are elites, whether there are individuals in power or large companies are not paying the tax as thought to, then people intending to pay tax are reduced — it\’s like why should I pay tax when people with higher incomes are evading? Since we know choosing to pay tax is voluntary, it is really necessary to raise the citizen-state relationship to the social public right, and the way that develops over time to support effective political representation is very fundamental to the process of development.

Q: There is a growing importance of approaching economic sustainability on the other hand continuing emphasis on market liberalization. How do you think the UN\’s High Level Panel (HLP) addressed these issues in their recommendations for Millennium Development Goal replacement efforts after 2015?

Cobham: I think the High Level Panel had a very difficult job to do in the way they were given the task. This has to be remembered that it is their first draft, where they are taking into account of the whole horizon of political, economic, environmental and social sustainability issues. In saying that, we should remember that their reports and their recommendations are only in the first draft. There\’s a long way to go, and it needs a great deal of improvement. So I think what they tried to do is whatever they can, but it\’s pretty clear from the report that it was difficult for them to interpret in a few places and that is also because they were under a lot of time pressure. One of the areas in which the integration is largely lacking or the area that the report lacks is, I would say, this area of illicit of financial flows and that of tax evasion and tax avoidance. So, I think yes you are right, from the view point of how companies can be set within rules of taxation in a market liberalized environment is something to be looked at. I mean the HLP have points that are committed to transparency and accountability, as well as to sustainability but the joint document probably lacks complete coherence on an economic approach to sustainability with emphases both on the multinationals\’ roles and market liberalization.

In my opinion, ASAP will have to work more in the issue of illicit financial flows. In a sense that it is quite new in its working arena on illicit finance, but they can make an elaboration of their tasks and make a contribution in the post-MDG framework.

Q: There are many institutions working towards transparency and anti-corruption. What do you see that is different in the High Level Panel\’s recommendations?

Cobham: Well I think it is — the recommendation of the panel is very much of a challenge. Their proposed target is to reduce the volume of illicit flows, which is an admirable aspiration, but that’s the problem of the target. To begin with, you don\’t have proper estimates of the flows, but probably a wider challenge is the qualitative measure than the quantitative one. What are the right set of indicators and targets? Are those targets set achievable? And, whether those measures would give us the right set of policy decisions. The panel\’s recommendation for a \’data revolution\’ is valuable to promote accountability, and the proposal for a target of reducing illicit financial flows is of course very important. The challenge is to populate what is currently just a placeholder for such a target with a meaningful target and a set of indicators that both reflect the range of the problem and will trigger the necessary, specific policy actions in countries at all income levels.

Q: There have been very public criticisms recently of big corporations such as Google and Starbucks, alleging tax avoidance. What sorts of specific solutions have been proposed, and would they be effective?

<

strong>Cobham: The OECD Base Erosion and Profit Shifting initiative, supported by the G8 and G20 groups of countries, is intended to address the issue of large-scale multinational company tax avoidance. Ultimately, however, the proposals so far resemble a piecemeal approach to what is a systemic problem. Fundamentally, the OECD approach to taxing multinationals relies on treating each company within the group as a separate (profit-maximizing) entity – when of course any such maximization occurs at the level of the group as a whole, and profit-shifting between group companies can be driven by a desire to reduce overall tax payment. Until there is a broader shift to recognize the unit of taxation as the group of companies as a whole, and then to allocate the tax base between countries of operation on the basis of the real economic activity taking place in each tax authority – not least in lower-income countries – we will face an uphill struggle to obtain an appropriate amount of tax.

Q: \’Global partnership\’ is given a lot of emphasis by the High Level Panel. To what extent do you think it is a progressive measure and do you think global partnerships can be effective on illicit financial flows?

Cobham: The global partnership goal of the MDGs, MDG8, is widely seen as a failure – the only one with direct requirements for donor countries, and the only one with no effective accountability measures in place. The optimism about the HLP\’s proposed goal 12 is that it does provide the space for verifiable contribution and accountability for all countries. And of course, illicit flows are a global problem, that no one country can deal with alone, so setting this issue in the context of global partnership is crucial. However, the current proposal is a long way short of the specific, verifiable target and indicators that will be needed to ensure serious progress.

Q: How do you see gender inequality, as highlighted by the High Level Panel, intersecting with issues around illicit financial flows?

Cobham: Arguably, the greatest contribution of the MDGs was to crystallize through MDG 3 the then growing but still fragile consensus that gender equality is a fundamental part of progress. The HLP proposal retains, and makes broader and more ambitious, the targets in this regard. Especially important also is the HLP recommendation that each marginalized group – not only in terms of gender but also by income, region, ethno-linguistic group, age and disability – must separately meet any target before that target can be considered to be met overall.

My main concern with the HLP recommendation is the decision to reject the findings of the global consultation in respect of a goal, or even a target, on economic inequality. While economic inequality can be more politically challenging to address than absolute poverty, there is very clear research that progress will be much weaker if economic inequality is not challenged; but also a growing consensus that the human effects of inequality are such that challenging it should be seen as important to development inherently, not only instrumentally.

Here’s a shocking statistic: 2.5 million children under the age of five continue to die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases. Vaccines are available, but lack of infrastructure often prevents them from reaching the remote and impoverished communities that need them most.

A new initiative pioneered by the non-profit organization Energize the Chain could hold the key to reducing this number dramatically and preventing needless deaths. The idea: use electricity from mobile phone masts to run vaccine refrigerators at sites in remote areas. ASAP spoke to the director of Energize the Chain, Dr Harvey Rubin of the University of Pennsylvania.

\”Just imagine a kid who’s suffering from a vaccine-preventable disease; just to be able to impact this kid\’s life – to keep him or her at home or in school, to keep the mother from worrying about taking her kid to a doctor in a remote health clinic – the day-to-day ripple effect is enormous. These kids are the most vulnerable in the world. To be able to do something for them has really motivated everybody involved in this project,\” said Rubin, professor of medicine and director of the Institute for Strategic Threat Analysis and Response at Penn.

The project had its genesis in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Rubin received a late-night phone call from an actor-friend and neighbor, David Morse, a veteran of film and television whose credits include The Green Mile, 12 Monkeys and the medical series House. Shocked by the scenes of devastation and suffering circulating in the media – particularly, images of a young boy dying of diphtheria – Morse was compelled to call Rubin and question why children were dying of what is a vaccine-preventable disease.

\”I told David that we have the vaccines, but the infrastructure to keep them cold has been destroyed,\” recalls Rubin. \”It\’s something we call the cold chain”. Vaccines remain viable only as long as they are kept refrigerated at the correct temperature. Any break in the \’cold chain\’ – from manufacture all the way through to administration – leaves the vaccines vulnerable to spoliation. Between 25 and 40 percent of vaccines spoil during the transportation process. \”David said, \’So, go solve the cold chain problem\’,\” chuckles Rubin. \”So we started thinking about it\”.

The solution that Rubin and his colleagues pioneered is the idea of siphoning electricity from mobile phone masts in order to run vaccine refrigerators. This is made possible by the fact that mobile phone technology is spreading rapidly – there is expected to be 100 percent global coverage by 2015. \”There’s plenty of electricity in the developing world because of cell towers,\” Rubin said. \”In the developing world the [mobile phone] industry is growing even more rapidly than in the developed world because we\’re basically saturated here. These are private corporations which are either on the national grid or they have diesel, solar or wind backup, but their whole business model of providing cell phone coverage in the most remote parts of the world depends on having energy.\”

Rubin and his colleague Alice Conant published a paper in New Scientist floating the idea. \”We wrote that paper, people read it, we got invited to give talks around the world and, lo and behold, it\’s actually happening.\” From there, the idea snowballed. Rubin was invited to speak at a conference of mobile phone mast owners, operators and suppliers in Kenya. In the audience was Bernard Fernandes, a representative of Econet – a telecoms provider in Zimbabwe – who was so impressed by the idea that on returning home, he took it straight to Econet\’s CEO, who greenlighted a pilot project which now runs on sites all across the country:

\”Bernard was the local champion, the local hero,\” Rubin beams. \”He got his engineers to design it, he reached out to the public health service in Zimbabwe and he ran with it — which is exactly how we want it to happen. We want people to take this on as their mission, and Bernard is a perfect example of how this could lead to really wonderful things.\” The feedback from the Zimbabwe project is encouraging: \”We\’ve heard it\’s making a huge impact already. We would now love to do an academic study to measure the health impact of this solution, to get the hard data to really prove that this solution is one that can be rolled out globally and really make a health impact.\”

Rubin\’s ambition is for the initiative to be rolled out across the world via locally owned, locally run programs. There are discussions around launching similar projects in Kenya, Nigeria and Argentina, and an Indian launch is imminent. Karuna Trust, which runs a number of health clinics in the Karnataka region, is committed as the Indian health service partner; Indus Towers, which operates more than one million masts across the country, and Vodafone are on board from the telecoms side. Conant is due to visit India in the summer of 2013 to solidify the arrangements.

While there are plenty of countries interested in implementing this initiative, Rubin acknowledges \”our real limitation is the human resource.\” As the technology expands in the future, Rubin envisions a super-efficient system made possible by the central connectivity of masts: \”Once we put ID tags and remote sensing in the refrigerators, we\’ll be able to conduct real-time inventory control – we\’ll know which fridge is running low on which vaccines. That way the healthcare worker doesn\’t have to carry vaccines that don\’t need to be replaced. We\’ll be able to say, \’Go to this location and replenish it with X vaccine.\’\”

A persistent challenge to implementation, Rubin observes, is cementing successful public-private partnerships between the telecoms industry and ministries of health, which are regulated by local governments. \”The hard part is getting the partners to sit down with each other and sign memorandums of understanding,\” he said. \”The real issue is that the health ministries want to be sure that the cell towers are there for the long term – they don\’t want to change their processes and procedures if the cell towers are there only while a particular CEO or champion is there. Likewise, the cell tower companies want to be sure that the health ministry is there for the long term. So this is a lot about educating both sides, so the public-private partnership can work even when we\’re not there. And that\’s because these are two industries, two segments of the economy that generally don\’t speak to each other. When they realise that they both have so much to gain, they generally come together.\”

The political component of this initiative is certainly important. There are several issues to consider: who pays for new vaccines? Who pays for distribution? \”If we expand the cold chain and make it much more efficient, new polices will have to come into play,\” muses Rubin.

So what\’s in it for the telecoms companies? \”The cell tower operators gain a lot by it: they gain great recognition in the remote villages and [compliance with] corporate social responsibility. They all want to do something that benefits the communities that they serve, and when they are presented with the idea that this could help the communities and in fact doesn\’t cost that much – we calculated that in India it costs just [US] 60 cents per day to run one of these refrigerators – I think once the cell tower companies understand the economics, they\’re more than willing to be on board, so I\’m hoping that this is something that most cell tower companies will embrace. The one thing I really want to do is not put too much burden on the telecoms companies – it\’s great that they\’re providing the energy, but I don\’t think it’s necessarily their job to replace or augment the healthcare industry.\”

It might seem strange that very poor communities will have extremely limited public health infrastructures but a highly developed telecoms industry. While Rubin is careful not to pass judgement on the failures of local government when it comes to infrastructure, he concentrates on the fact that this initiative can help to address how to best use the often minimal infrastructure that is in place: \”Our solution makes it much more efficient to distribute vaccines, so that even with a less-developed health infrastructure, because the towers are remotely placed – we don\’t rely on every step along the cold chain to have somebody responsible for them – we can maximally use the minimal health infrastructure that\’s in place. Part of this whole process is educating people. We need to help educate people on how to use the solution, how to use the health infrastructure effectively. How do we really make that balance?\”

When quizzed on whether local governments should make it mandatory for the granting of planning permission for telecoms companies to install vaccine fridges at mast sites, Rubin is cautious, but optimistic: \”That would be ideal. Wouldn\’t that be great if that happened? I don\’t know enough about local regulations, but I can certainly see how telecoms companies could get tax or licensing benefits if they agreed to put this in place.\”

Regardless of the initial enthusiasm, with so many parties and components involved, there must have been several obstacles in getting the initiative off the ground. \”The biggest obstacle is the human interaction. The only obstacle we\’ve found is the two different sides – the public and the private – getting comfortable with each other. The technology is very easy – there\’s no new technology that we have to put in place; the cost is minimal. The interesting part of this solution is the human relations. Again, once people realise that it\’s not going to cost them a lot of money, that the health ministry will be able to use [the resources] very effectively, people say, \”Yes, this is a great solution – we all win\”. Most importantly, the children win. And that\’s really what we\’re in it for.\”

And what would Rubin say to the skeptics? \”A pandemic is not going to start on Broadway and 42nd Street in Manhattan or Piccadilly Circus [London]; a pandemic is going to start somewhere in a remote part of the world. We have to be able to get vaccines to that part of the world. Having the ability to keep vaccines cold and the cold chain in tact is going to protect everybody. We try and make the case that this is good for the developing world, but in fact if you want to step back and look at the global picture, it\’s really important to make sure that if something really starts happening in the developing world, that we – as the developed world – can get vaccines and know that they will be delivered effectively, efficiently and safely. This [solution] stands alone: this is good for children under the age of five in the developing world, but when some of the bureaucrats in the developed world say \’What do I care about that?\’ I say, \’It could be you that\’s going to be affected down the line somewhere.\’ And then they stop and think maybe that\’s important.\”

Can Rubin envisage a world free of vaccine-preventable deaths? \”No vaccine is 100 percent [effective], but I can foresee many, many, many fewer deaths. Measles and polio are tremendously important diseases to prevent. No vaccine is 100 percent, but even if it\’s 80 percent to 90 percent, we\’d make an enormous impact.\”

Rubin was slated to take part in a UNICEF-hosted meeting in June aimed at bringing together all the partners (including telecoms companies, the pharmaceutical industry, health ministries, courier companies, energy companies and parties from the remote-sensing world) interested in this initiative in order to consider how to roll it out globally. He was hopeful about possibilities from that meeting and moving forward.

He ended on a thought-provoking note: \”Who knows? Maybe eventually we\’ll have an HIV or malaria vaccine; [using this initiative] they\’ll all be able to be given safely across the globe. The impact would be enormous.\”

In this article, Luis Cabrera interviews Fred Carden. Read more of our Impact Interviews.

When it comes to influencing government anti-poverty efforts, the policy climate matters, Fred Carden notes, but so does a researcher\’s focus on actually having an impact.

\”If you\’re not trying to do it you are not very likely to do it,\” said Carden, who heads evaluation and impact efforts at the Canadian government-sponsored International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa. \”People are often not very intentional. They want to address poverty but they don’t have a clear intent about what they want to do.\”

Carden led team efforts to assess policy influence in 23 IDRC-sponsored research studies in developing countries worldwide. The findings were presented in his book, Knowledge to Policy: Making the Most of Development Research (Sage, 2009), and he has continued to refine the framework.

Key Impact Variables

Carden\’s overall conclusion, from the case studies and subsequent work, is that two sets of contextual variables are crucial in determining whether impact-minded researchers will be able to influence policy outcomes. These are:

General Context: This includes a government\’s actual capacity to apply research findings, the stability of decision-making institutions, how centralized governance is in the country. It also includes general economic conditions, and whether a country is in crisis or otherwise undergoing a dramatic transition, which can open opportunities for influence.

Decision Context. Here, the key is government appetite for research. In descending order of interest, Carden found situations in the case studies of clear demand from government, demand but a leadership gap in realizing it, and demand but a lack of resources to act on it. In a number of cases, he found great interest from researchers in sharing new findings, but small interest from policy makers. In some cases there was open hostility from the policy community.

In cases of strong demand, he said, \”it was often where it was a brand new problem they didn\’t know how to address. Often in IT [information technology] policy, a lot of countries didn’t know what to do about it. They were a lot more willing to ask researchers for advice, where they were less willing in areas like education and health where they purported to already know what should be done.\”

Some cases found a very different climate, where policy makers simply weren’t receptive to research, regardless of the strength of its findings.

In Guatemala, for example, where IDRC funded research on unequal access to education by women and members of indigenous groups, the findings fell on deaf ears. \”The government was actually in a mode where they were saying \’we are one country\’. They were coming out of civil strife, and they were putting out the message that \’we are all the same, we are all Guatemalans,\’\” and findings that identified a need to devote more resources to particular groups were not well received, he said.

\”They could have presented their research differently, and really taken the tack that in order to be one Guatemala we have to bring them in more directly,\” Carden said. \”I think they just missed that. They didn’t actually sit down and think about, \’what\’s the ability of policy makers, what\’s the capacity, and if they\’re not asking us for advice on this, how are we going to frame it in a way that supports what they are trying to do?\’\”

Other cases were drawn from IDRC-funded studies in developing or lower-income countries worldwide – all led by nationals from those countries — including Peru, the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda, Jordan, Tunisia, and Ukraine.

Diverse Study Subjects

The subjects and aims of the studies varied widely. They included research on water resources and irrigation, mining, enhancing influence on international trade issues, health issues, promoting traditional knowledge, increasing access to new technologies, and addressing \’brain drain\’ issues.

In approaching an assessment of impact in such a variety of individual studies in diverse locations, Carden said, he sought to take as much input as possible on research design. \”I brought together case study writers, IDRC programme staff. I didn\’t give them a framework, but said \’look at the cases.\’ That’s how we developed a way to analyze across cases. We took detailed notes at workshops, looked at what\’s coming out over and over again.\” That process, and the ongoing findings around impact \”has influenced how people ask questions at IDRC, and how they provide advice to researchers,\” he said.

Evolving Impact-Study Methods

Carden, who holds a PhD from the University of Montreal and joined IDRC in 1993, sees the policy influence work as a natural outgrowth of his evaluation design work for the center, including outcome mapping.

\”That\’s an approach to planning, monitoring and evaluation, relationships exposure and activities. A lot of work can\’t be defined as direct impact, but you can look at what are the changes in relationships between the people — are they finding different ways to interact with policy makers or are they staying in their own little research world?\” he said.

\”How do they transmit their messages? How do they build the relationships they need to influence people — with media, policy makers and others? Outcomes are actually in them making those efforts and beginning to build those relationships. So, outcome mapping is actually a methodology for designing your work around those outcomes you are trying to achieve, that will support, you think, the change you want to see happen ultimately. A lot of that is around the boundaries, because you can only talk about changing the behavior and activity of those you actually are interacting with.\”

Building Impact in from the Ground Up

Carden also encourages researchers to think about impact beyond specific policy influence, to include impact on civil society efforts and deep engagement with the subjects of research studies themselves. Such efforts can pay important dividends to the researcher, he said, in terms of strengthening a study but also in some cases realizing significant positive change.

\”I really think researchers have to get more directly engaged with the people who are directly affected by the research,\” he said. \”People who are poor have a huge amount of intelligence about why they’re poor and what\’s going on around them.\”

He noted one case study from the book of a study aimed at enhancing the organization and sustainability of the Honey Bee Network, a grassroots group focused on support for India\’s traditional small farmers.

The study highlighted ways to have impact “not in talking to policy makers directly but getting the community engaged and then getting community members to go talk to policy makers. It\’s changing the mindset of researchers that’s key and making it legitimate for them, giving them permission almost to go out and talk to people in the community.\”

Carden exhorts researchers to work closely with the groups and individuals they study, including in the research design process and data analysis, for gaining insight into the broader context in which findings are embedded.

\”Avoid doing the research in isolation. Avoid big pronouncements and research studies about people that don\’t involve those people. You\’ll have numbers that are consistent but not necessarily a good understanding of the implications of that research,\” he said. \”A lot of times, the data all looks very clean but nobody actually sees the truth. That kind of back and forth, in a very iterative exchange, could be very valuable.\”

That kind of deep engagement can be built into funding applications as well, he noted, and it often is well received by funders such as IDRC.

On applications, \”don\’t be afraid to expand beyond the typical academic response, of preparing policy briefs and doing presentations to ministers,\” he said. \”We get quite frustrated that what’s coming in doesn’t try to move beyond the typical response. I’d say be creative, say we actually want to get out there in the community.\”

When it comes to influencing government anti-poverty efforts, the policy climate matters, Fred Carden notes, but so does the researcher’s focus on actually having an impact.
“If you’re not trying to do it you are not very likely to do it…

In this article, Sumaiyah Moolla interviews Dr Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, senior lecturer, International Development Department, University of Birmingham. Articles in the Impact: Global Poverty Series have thus far focused on researchers seeking to have a more direct impact on aspects of poverty alleviation policy or practice. This article focuses on teaching as well as research contributions by a group of Canadian academics working with teachers and students in Haiti. Read more of our Impact Interviews.

In 2010 Haiti was devastated by an earthquake of epic proportions. More than 300,000 people lost their lives, countless more were injured and an estimated 1.5 million were left homeless, their communities reduced to rubble. Haiti’s plight was witnessed on a global scale, as shocking images of human suffering and destruction were disseminated in the world’s media.

The impact of the earthquake on the country’s education system was devastating. Many universities were severely damaged or destroyed, including the newly christened campus of Quisqueya University. There, researchers from Quebec had been supporting the development of an urban studies programme through the Precarious Neighbourhoods and Sustainable Urban Development in Haiti project. ASAP spoke to programme participant Nicolas Lemay-Hébert about his ongoing work in Haiti and the struggles that Haitian academics and their students face as recovery continues.

What motivated you and your colleagues to go to Haiti?: The Precarious Neighbourhoods and Sustainable Urban Development in Haiti project is led by three senior researchers from the University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM): Jean Goulet, Paul Bodson (both urban studies) and Paul-Martel Roy (economics). They have a longstanding history of collaboration with Haitian institutions, stretching well before the earthquake. The project started in 2007, and I joined in 2010 in my capacity as adjunct professor of economics at UQAM. They were looking for an additional colleague to supervise graduate students in Haiti and to teach specific seminars on post-disaster reconstruction and humanitarian action. As a scholar interested in humanitarian affairs, peacebuilding and statebuilding, and with increased interest in these themes among Haitian students, they asked me to join their team. I also think they approached me because of my flexibility as a (still fairly) young researcher; there are not a lot of lecturers who are ready to spend their Spring breaks teaching under a tent in Haiti! Personally, it provided me with the opportunity to see Haiti for the first time, and to extend my expertise from Kosovo and Timor-Leste to the newest focal point of the ‘aid caravan’. This research interest further developed into a passion for me, as I have now visited Haiti seven times since the earthquake.

What was the original aim of the project? The initial goal of the project was to support local institutions with the aim of strengthening networks of local organisations and enabling them to intervene effectively and competently in poor neighbourhoods in Haiti. Training and support structures offered under this project have been designed and implemented in partnership with local actors, in particular, the Research and Technological Exchange Group (GRET) in Haiti, a French non-governmental organisation (NGO), which is active in poor neighbourhoods.

Images of the aftermath of the earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12 2010 have been all over the media, revealing the vastness of the destruction in several cities, particularly Port-au-Prince [Haiti’s capital city], but also the precarious conditions in which the majority of the urban population live. Yet, these same images also revealed another reality: they showed mechanisms of local solidarity, which are crucial to understanding these precarious neighbourhoods. Faced with a growing structural shortage of available housing, as well as the absence of coherent government urban management policies, these populations have provided themselves with housing and urban services which they deemed essential to their own specific community. The aim of the project was certainly not to teach Haitians ‘what to do’, but rather to help them build from existing resources and support them in the process of setting up a department of urban studies at Quisqueya University (UNIQ). Obviously, the earthquake – and the death toll associated with it, for students as well as for faculty members – increased the need for supervision and teaching on our behalf. Sadly, the university had inaugurated its new campus a few weeks before the earthquake; it was completely destroyed by the earthquake, killing many students and teachers.

How did the partnership between UQAM and UNIQ come about? The partnership between the two universities officially started in 1997, but there is a longstanding history of collaboration and exchange between Haitian and Quebecian universities. It is mostly due to the special relationship that the Quebecois have entertained with the Haitians since the 1970s. Montreal is home to one of the biggest Haitian Diaspora communities, and we have many well-established scholars, artists and civil servants of Haitian decent (including the 70,000 Haitians living in Montreal – almost two per cent of the city’s population). Hence, I presume that the partnership between the two specific universities made sense from the start – especially if we take into account the linguistic affinities between the two countries. This project was enabled by a grant from the Canadian International Development Agency, under the University Partnerships in Cooperation and Development programme (www.acdi-cida.gc.ca).

Describe the scene when you first arrived in Haiti. This likely betrays my western culture bias, but I immediately thought of the images of the bombing of Dresden during the Second World War. It was probably the sight of the Port-au-Prince cathedral, with only its lower walls and its façade standing after the earthquake, which made me think of the images of Dresden Cathedral after Allied bombing. In any case, the cathedral was clearly a landmark in the city, and images of its destruction came to represent the extent of destruction caused by the earthquake (on par with the National Palace, home to the president) for news agencies. It is also quite telling that the design for the new cathedral, to be rebuilt in the same spot as its predecessor, will integrate the façade of the collapsed building – an important marker both on the road of reconstruction and of the necessity to remember the traumatic experience and the deceased.

I also realised the extent of the destruction by accompanying my colleagues on their visits to various precarious neighbourhoods. With the overpopulation of Port-au-Prince and its vicinity, the poorest segments of the population were progressively forced out of Port-au-Prince’s nicest areas to the coast, the slopes, the ravines and the central areas, a product of the deterioration of older neighbourhoods. As Solidarités Internationales notes, it is not only 30 to 40 per cent of the urban population that live in these precarious neighbourhoods (as in most Latin American capitals); in fact, the vast majority of Port-au-Prince citizens live in a self-constructed, self-organised district.[i] It is important to understand that these neighbourhoods respond to a specific way of spatial organisation, articulated around mechanisms of local solidarity and needs arisen from the informal economy. At the same time, this spatial organisation exposes the population to environmental risks, especially in the slopes and ravines area. In one such area (Canapé Vert), I saw a lorry literally dropping bricks from the top of a hill down into the valley. It was also disheartening to see inhabitants pulling buckets of rubble to the top of a hill – one bucket at a time. The topography of these areas makes them almost impossible to access by car – let alone by truck – which makes rubble removal a very difficult operation.

If the earthquake killed more than 300,000 (many Haitians buried their relatives privately without notifying the government, which makes official estimation a tricky business), signs of the human catastrophe were not immediately visible on my first trip, six months after the earthquake. Port-au-Prince was a gigantic pile of rubble (the equivalent of 10 World Trade Centre sites), but you become de-sensitised to the sight of collapsed buildings after a while. Also, people with mental or physical disabilities suffer widely from stigmatisation and marginalisation in Haiti, which results in them being kept out of sight in the central areas of Port-au-Prince; consequently, the most blatant signs of the earthquake’s human toll had been removed in the first few months. However, I still remember vividly the first conversation I had with my colleagues at UNIQ and the State University of Haiti, describing their own ordeal during and after the goudougoudou (Creole for earthquake). I also remember seeing little things that reminded me of the sheer human cost of the earthquake: drafts of documents scattered where the United Nations headquarters once stood, a testimony to the suddenness of the event; people digging in the rubble to find the bodies of loved ones; babies’ shoes lost in the middle of piles of debris – a reminder that the earthquake had spared no one.

It is thought that a large proportion of Haitian higher education institutions were damaged or destroyed in the earthquake. What are conditions like for Haitian students? It is difficult to say, since my personal experience derives from my involvement with one specific university – moreover, a private university. However, one thing appears clear to me (and my colleagues in Haiti): universities in Haiti suffer from a structural phenomenon where the best elements (students and faculties) are hired by foreign universities and institutions (external brain drain) or by international non-governmental institutions (internal brain drain), weakening governmental agencies in the process. While this is a situation that may appear advantageous at first sight, especially for students (who is not looking frantically for placement opportunities for their students in these tough economic times?), recruitment conditions are not always optimal, and most students discover that their degrees are not recognised abroad and subsequently have to retrain. This is especially true for healthcare and engineering graduates. It is difficult for us to make any judgement, as we obviously don’t have any legitimacy in commenting on this process. I have lived, studied or worked in Canada, France, the United States and now the United Kingdom, so who am I to judge the personal choice of many colleagues in Haiti, leaving their home country for better working conditions – a choice I have myself made multiple times? One thing appears clear though: if the personal choice and motivations behind each decision to leave the country cannot be disputed, it compounds to a collective disaster for Haitian universities and institutions. Hence, the situation of the higher education institutions cannot be understood by looking only at the institutional destruction of the earthquake; one has to look at the structural factors which have marginalised and weakened higher education institutions in the past decades. At the same time, it is not a situation that is specific to higher education institutions; it has to be understood within the wider story of the progressive weakening of Haitian state institutions. There is an inherent tension between the conscious policies of many western governments at attracting the most promising segments of the Haitian society in their ‘chosen immigration’ schemes and their pledge to support local ownership and strengthen national capabilities in Haiti. However, it\’s not all gloom and doom, as there are positive signals emerging from recent developments, including the inauguration of the Roi Henri Christophe Centre for Higher Education in Limonade (northern Haiti), or the continued excellence of scholars associated with UNIQ and Haiti’s State University resisting the siren song of expatriation.

What response have you had from your Haitian students? What knowledge or skills do they most want to learn? They are so eager to learn and make a difference, it is just amazing. When you see the conditions in which they are forced to write their essays – relying almost exclusively on excerpts of books available on Google Scholar (rarely full chapters, which in turn forces the students to show imagination in completing the author’s arguments) or the grey literature available online – you can only be amazed by how resourceful they are. I have taught two intensive seminars as part of the project: an advanced seminar on qualitative methods entitled “Local-International Interactions in the Reconstruction Process of Precarious Districts” and one on “Emergency, Reconstruction and Rubble Removing”. The students were particularly eager to learn how to conduct interviews and write articles or reports. I thought it was important to make them understand the ‘rules of the game’, to make them aware of what was considered an ‘authorised discourse’ and, in the process, break the cycle of reproduction of certain discourses (‘Haitians cannot take care of themselves’ type of narrative). As an assistant editor of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, I deal with the rejection of articles and the reproduction of a certain knowledge on a daily basis. My students have also shown a marked interest in past experiences in Kosovo, Timor-Leste, Iran (Bam) or Indonesia (following the tsunami). I guess it helped them put the Haitian situation into perspective.

How do your Haitian students apply the knowledge that’s passed on? Most of them work full time during the day and attend university in the evening, so they have an opportunity to apply their knowledge right away. They are also in high demand by the aid community, looking for locals to contribute to the reconstruction efforts. I am also currently working on the publication of three outstanding essays written by Haitian students, which hopefully will send a signal to the other students that it is possible to publish and make your ideas well known outside of Haiti.

Do you think that providing assistance via knowledge transfer is as effective as offering practical help in the field? It’s not an either-or situation. Practical help was clearly needed in the aftermath of the earthquake, especially in the first few months. However, there was indisputably a tension between reconstruction efforts conducted ‘from the outside-in’ and strengthening local capacities and local actors. The tension is not as much actor-driven per se (as any international NGO will employ locals, for instance) as it is a by-product of a specific mindset – the ‘we do it ourselves’ mentality that plays such a crucial role in humanitarian action. As former Haitian Minister of Heath Daniel Henrys once said, “Haiti has lived in a state of urgency for the past two decades”. So, I would argue that knowledge transfer and strengthening of local capabilities is – and should be – a crucial element for every international intervention. Quite honestly, I think it is an opinion that has become quite consensual in policy circles and in the specialised literature, despite the fact that there is actually no consensus on how to implement a significant modification of current mindsets. Hence, we end up following the same patterns of intervention, while labelling these patterns differently.

Haiti is considered one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere – how can knowledge transfer and improving research methods facilitate in alleviating poverty? Certain scholars (Jeffrey Sachs, among others) are preaching for the establishment of a Marshall Plan for Haiti – mirroring the postwar reconstruction effort of Western Europe through American funding (and lending). The Marshall Plan represented two per cent of French gross domestic product (GDP) over a period of three years. Yet, Haiti received an average of eight per cent of its annual GDP in aid in recent years, representing nothing less than four Marshall Plans per year.[ii] There needs to be significant change in how aid is disbursed in Haiti, and how local actors are included (or not). There is certainly a need for ‘alternative’ development schemes, focusing on local capabilities and knowledge transfer. There is a need to address the root causes of the fragility of the state in Haiti – and like it or not, that also means conducting an analysis of the role played by international actors in the marginalisation process of state institutions. I don’t believe that international factors are the unique cause of the stalled economic development in Haiti, yet I question the seriousness of any analysis leaving international factors unexamined.

What academic capabilities are in need in Haiti? Without romanticising the local, so to speak, I find the Haitian production of articles and books is outstanding. Most of my Haitian colleagues are both innovative and highly productive. Most of them are already well integrated in the knowledge production fields, especially through French connections, so I feel slightly uncomfortable with the assertion that we should strengthen their academic capability in one way or another. However, other social scientists are operating under the radar, mostly because they are producing research using alternative frameworks. Personally, I think that what is lacking is a better integration of these alternative frameworks into the global field of knowledge production. This is mostly a joint responsibility – meaning that it is our responsibility in western institutions to open our minds to unconventional analyses and research, and it is the responsibility of researchers to submit articles and books using the accepted format and following the ‘rules of the game’. In these difficult economic times, and with the current crisis of neoliberal capitalism, I believe it is more relevant than ever to look for alternative conceptions of social integration, new frameworks and new ways to approach intervention.

How can academics and researchers who do not specialise in disaster recovery/management get involved (either in Haiti or in other disaster-struck areas)? It is a common misconception to believe that development is only for development specialists (ie, social scientists). While there is a continuous need for locally-sensitive, energetic and hard-working aid workers (I am based in an international development department, after all), international and local organisations are also looking for engineers (especially agricultural engineers), urban planners and physicians (eg, Doctors Without Borders). So, I would suggest to anyone interested in an experience overseas to look at the websites of the major aid organisations.

What can teachers and researchers learn from teaching abroad? Would you encourage others to join projects overseas? I would certainly encourage colleagues to teach overseas, even for small stints. It is a fabulous way to reflect on your own research, among other things. I know it sounds clichéd, but I have learned a lot from my students, discussing how they see the future of their country, how they are dealing with the everyday, with their international colleagues and so on. It is also a great opportunity for social scientists to develop new research projects, extending their stay for seven to 10 days to conduct a first round of interviews, for instance. This can considerably strengthen a research proposal. The most difficult aspect is probably being away from your loved ones for a while – but here again, most organisations understand these particular constraints and suggest intensive seminars over two weeks to limit the negative impact on your family and work.

What inspires you to keep returning to Haiti? Several factors: first, I have to mention the resilience of the Haitian people, their ability to focus on positive aspects and to keep their morale up, even in difficult times. Working on and in Haiti might sound depressing; actually it is far from it. People are continuously smiling and welcome you with open hearts, and you rarely feel in danger in Port-au-Prince. Second, there is the Haitian culture, including visual arts, music and theatre. Haiti might be poor in global economic terms, but culturally speaking, it is a tremendously rich nation. Third, I also have to be honest and say that for someone interested in local narratives of resistance to international interventions and the political economy of aid and peacebuilding, Haiti is a particularly stimulating environment. Finally, I am inspired by local success stories, made of local initiatives (and sometimes empowered by visionary international actors) and anchored in local communities. I have participated in a short documentary on one such initiative (available online at: http://vimeo.com/18668506). For me, it means that there is no determinism in the current debate over the limits of aid in Haiti and elsewhere, and alternatives routes to sustainable development exist.

Some overseas opportunities for academics are detailed at the following websites:

UK Department for International Development

United Nations Development Programme

The European Commission Community Research and Development Information Service

European Commission EURAXESS

European University Institute Academic Careers Observatory

[i] Simon Deprez and Éléonore Labattut, La Reconstruction de Port-au-Prince: Analyses et Réflexions sur les Stratégies d’Interventions en Milieu Urbain, Report for Solidarités Internationales, October 1 2011, Available online at: http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/mission-d\’appui-retour-quartier-rapport-final-deprez-labattut-version-finale-doubles-pages-light-30-12-11.pdf

[ii] Nicolas Lemay-Hébert and Stéphane Pallage, “Aide Internationale et Développement en Haïti: Bilan et Perspective”, Haïti Perspectives 1(1), 2012, p 14.

Articles in the Impact: Global Poverty Series have thus far focused on researchers seeking to have a more direct impact on aspects of poverty alleviation policy or practice. This article focuses on teaching as well as research contributions by a group of Canadian academics working with teachers and students in Haiti. In 2010 Haiti was devastated by an earthquake of epic proportions. More than 300,000 people lost their lives, countless more were injured and an estimated 1.5 million

As a young boy, Sukhadeo Thorat felt humiliation when an upper caste child slapped his face for inadvertently touching the communal well. As a teen-ager, he felt anger when he and other local dalits (former untouchables) were slurred or socially shunned at gatherings, and excluded from religious temples. As one of India’s leading economists and public intellectuals, Thorat has felt compelled to put caste discrimination on the mainstream research agenda, as well as to seek to influence policy and social movements with hard evidence about the ways in which tens of millions of persons remain ‘blocked by caste.’

The caste system (and its reflection, untouchability), with thousands of subcastes, is like so many stinking ponds which have polluted life for all those who came in contact with them. What we want is a flowing river with fresh and pure water.
(Sukhadeo Thorat, “Passage to Adulthood: Perceptions from Below\”)

As a young boy, Sukhadeo Thorat felt humiliation when an upper caste child slapped his face for inadvertently touching the communal well. As a teenager, he felt anger when he and other local dalits (former untouchables) were slurred or socially shunned at gatherings, and excluded from religious temples.

As one of India’s leading economists and public intellectuals, Thorat has felt compelled to put caste discrimination on the mainstream research agenda, as well as to seek to influence policy and social movements with hard evidence about the ways in which tens of millions of persons remain ‘blocked by caste.’**

Thorat was reared in humble circumstances as a member of the Mahar dalit group in Maharashtra state, northeast of Bombay (Mumbai). By long tradition, Mahars and other dalits in villages across India have been forbidden from living alongside upper-caste residents, and from holding any but low-status, or dirty jobs. In his autobiographical essay, “Passage to Adulthood”* Thorat describes the daily indignities to which Mahars were subjected in his home village. He also tells of a social awakening for himself and others, beginning in the 1950s, under the inspirational leadership of B.R. Ambedkar, the architect of India’s constitution and himself a Mahar.

After struggling to acquire a primary and secondary education in various Christian missionary and other schools that would accept dalit pupils, Thorat enrolled in Ambedkar’s Milind College of Arts in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. There, he joined a student body composed almost exclusively of dalits. He deepened his study of Ambedkar’s writings and Buddhism – a religion to which many lower-caste Hindus converted at Ambedkar’s urging – and assumed leadership roles among dalit student activists. He also became determined to pursue further study on caste discrimination.

In a recent interview at his home on the expansive south Delhi campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Thorat recalled the difficulties he faced in actually bringing his student activism, and his personal understandings of exclusion, to bear in his economic research, beginning in the 1970s. His initially proposed PhD thesis topic, on untouchability and occupational linkages, was declared by JNU’s Economics Department as too far outside the mainstream to be acceptable, he recalled.

He was later accepted for doctoral studies at JNU’s Centre for the Study of Regional Development, but only to study a more traditional topic in agricultural economics. “I joined that center, but I was not able to do research on issues that I wanted to work on. … So, I lost 10 years.”

It was not until he served as a visiting faculty member at Iowa State University from 1989-91 that Thorat had the opportunity to pursue theoretical and empirical studies on economic discrimination, which shaped his research on economic of caste and the problems of excluded communities in India. There, he had access to North American literature on economic discrimination, in particular that directed against African-Americans, as well as some studies of caste discrimination by non-Indian authors. From those sources, and his own intensive study of Ambedkar’s writings and related material, he began developing an approach to market economics that could take appropriate account of caste discrimination.

Ongoing efforts have involved developing concept of caste and untouchability based economic discrimination through market and non market exchange, and its consequences on unequal opportunity and the poverty of the dalits. He also has strived to persuade other economists, as well as grant-funding bodies, that caste discrimination affects economic outcomes in significant ways. In a study on market discrimination in rural area sponsored by the International Labour Organisation, for example, Thorat provided evidence of discrimination faced by dalits in the sale of milk, vegetables, fruit and other farm goods.

In developing and refining measures of untouchability, Thorat and colleagues have conducted similarly fine-grained field research, measuring exclusionary patterns in village schools, primary health centers, shops and in daily activities. A study sponsored by Thorat’s Indian Institute for Dalit Studies revealed that “Private doctors, for example, often avoid visiting or entering the houses of the untouchables. And often the health service providers avoid touching the untouchable child. They ask the untouchable mother to hold the child and do the treatment from the side.”

As Thorat’s work on caste and economic discrimination deepened and became more influential in academic circles, so was he able to exercise some influence over policy. He was instrumental in persuading the Indian government to recognize that the privatization which accompanied the country’s greater economic openness in the 1990s could be a blow to lower-caste persons who had climbed some rungs on the employment ladder through policies of affirmative action. Because such policies were focused on public jobs, the privatization of public enterprises could mean huge employment losses for dalits.

Thorat and colleagues organized workshops on the issue, gave testimony and met with high-level officials. Thorat himself shared his concerns with then-Finance Minister (now Prime Minister) Manmohan Singh.

He also was instrumental in helping to develop affirmative action policy in India’s private sector. “The private sector says ‘we don’t discriminate, we go merit and efficiency.’ Through proper research, we provided the evidence of discrimination in hiring.”

A series of studies followed, including ones which involved sending job applications to private employers that were identical except for different applicant names. Some surnames were associated with Hindu upper castes, some with dalits, and some with Muslims. The dalit and Muslim candidates were invited to interview at far lower rates.**

Ultimately, research, testimony and opinion pieces by Thorat and collaborators was crucial to the development of government-backed, incentive-based affirmative action program for private firms, as well as caste-sensitive policies on government procurement. Thorat noted both as important steps forward, but he also said that recent reviews have found private-firm compliance with affirmative action policies uneven, and that more pressure likely will have to be brought to bear.

Besides impact on government policy, Thorat has made significant contributions to broadening the study of societal exclusion and supporting civil society groups with research. In the early 2000s, he took leave from his duties as a JNU faculty member to develop the Indian Institute for Dalit Studies in Delhi, along with dalit NGO leaders from the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR). Backed by a grant from the Ford Foundation, initial efforts were focused on providing a research base for the campaign, which sought formal United Nations recognition of caste discrimination as a human rights violation. The NCDHR continues to call attention to caste-based exclusion across India.

Thorat remains integrally involved with the Dalit Studies institute as its Managing Trustee, conducting and facilitating numerous major research projects with Institute members.

Further, as chairman of India’s main higher-education funding body, the University Grants Commission, from 2006-11, Thorat oversaw the creation of 32 Centres for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at universities around India. “I could see that there was a huge interest now around these subjects, and a group of scholars who wanted to do work but could not find space to do it. Now many of these researchers have opportunities to undertake research on issue related to exclusion and problems of discriminated communities” he said.

Thorat appreciates now how much progress has been made in bringing caste into the mainstream of academic research in economics, which in turn has provided a knowledge base from which important policy concerns can be raised.

“There was nothing by way of economic data much when I started in the early 1990’s,” he said. “The data organizations used to publish only few isolated report on dalits and adivasi [tribal groups] … There were many issues that we were not able to address. So we had to really provide an empirical base.”

—

Sukhadeo Thorat has written more than 70 articles and written or edited 19 books on social exclusion and dalit and other excluded groups, with Oxford University Press, Sage and other international publishers.

*Sukhadeo Thorat. 1979. “Passage to Adulthood: Perceptions from Below,” in Sudhir Kakar, ed., Identity and Adulthood (Delhi: Oxford University Press), 65-81.

**Sukhadeo Thorat and Paul Attewell. 2010. “The Legacy of Social Exclusion: A Correspondence Study of Job Discrimination in India’s Urban Private Sector,” in Sukhadeo Thorat and Katherine S. Newman, eds., Blocked By Caste: Economic Discrimination in Modern India (Delhi: Oxford University Press), 35-51.

In this article, Sumaiyah Moolla interviews Professor Alan Fenwick of Imperial College London about his work leading the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, which delivers cures to diseases afflicting a huge proportion of the severely poor globally. Read more of our Impact Interviews.

Malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS – all are highly ‘visible’ diseases, well-known on a global scale. Lesser known are a set of parasitic and bacterial infections, referred to collectively as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), which afflict over one billion persons worldwide.

NTDs are found almost exclusively in the poorest and most deprived regions of the world, where residents face unsafe water, poor sanitation and limited access to basic healthcare. The afflictions form part of a vicious cycle, in which ill health resulting from NTDs helps to anchor millions of people in long-term destitution. Some 500 million people – two-thirds of Africa’s total population – suffer from two or more NTDs and require regular treatment.

The Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI) works with ministries of health in numerous countries to develop, fund and implement in-country control programmes. It aims to manage and eventually eliminate the seven most prevalent NTDs from sub-Saharan Africa, including schistosomiasis (bilharzia), river blindness, roundworm and hookworm infection, and elephantiasis.

Since its inception, the initiative has successfully treated scores of millions of patients in Africa, often dramatically reducing the proportion of those afflicted by NTDs. In Uganda, for example, fewer than three percent of school-age children now suffer from schistosomiasis, compared to more than 26 percent before SCI’s campaign there. We spoke to SCI Director Professor Alan Fenwick about the origins of this tremendously effective impact effort, and the challenges he and his team have overcome and continue to face in reaching those who need treatment.

Q: What motivated you to want to undertake an impact intervention such as this?

A: My motivation was that I had worked in several African countries where I had visited many schools and seen children desperate to learn, and yet I was aware that they all suffered from parasitic infections which hampered their development and affected their health. I also knew that two drugs – praziquantel for schistosomiasis and albendazole for intestinal worms – were available and inexpensive (US 8 cents and US 2 cents respectively in 2002). I therefore wanted to fill the gap – offer as many children as possible access to these drugs and set up ministry of health and education facilities for delivering the drugs on an annual basis. If we could achieve this and monitor the impact, there would be many publications to be written on the results at a never-before-reached scale.

Q: How were you able to launch the initiative?

A: I applied to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2001 when I heard about the money available for tropical diseases. I pointed out to the foundation just how many people (200 million) were infected with schistosomiasis (a parasitic disease) and that a drug was available at a reasonable cost. When the foundation agreed to fund the work, I approached Sir Roy Anderson (a leading British expert on epidemiology), who agreed to chair the SCI Board and sponsored me into Imperial College.

Q: What would you say are your most significant successes in the project?

A: The fact that 15 countries now have SCI supported intervention programmes and that we can claim credit for assisting delivery of over 95 million praziquantel treatments and well over 100 million deworming treatments. Most countries now have an NTD master plan which donors have bought into.

Q: What were the most significant challenges you faced in the early days of the project?

A: After receiving funding, the first tasks were to select the countries to benefit from the funding and then to agree memoranda of understanding with the countries’ ministries of health. Then we had to get the ministries to prepare proposals. I convened a technical committee to scrutinise 12 proposals and selected six countries: three in East Africa and three in West Africa. The next challenge was to obtain good quality praziquantel (used to treat infections caused by parasites) at a reasonable price.

Q: What are the most significant current challenges?

A: The current challenges are several and all different. The first is governance: so many African countries seem to have a tendency for civil unrest, which always disrupts health programmes. The second is how to hand over ownership of the programmes to the countries and yet ensure that there is good accountability of donated funds. The third is the expansion into problematic countries, because in order to retain credibility, we have to be reaching out to assist the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Ethiopia – all of which present massive challenges.

Q: What do you see as the key to actually making an impact? How do you go about trying to influence policy, and otherwise make it possible for a project such as yours to make a positive difference?

A: We won over and received fantastic support from the World Health Organization. I am passionate in delivering a simple message: 200 million people are suffering from an infection which can be safely and effectively treated for just US 50 cents per person per year. All we need is the drugs and the political will combined with the expertise and logistics to ensure timely delivery.

Q: What would you say to those people – whether they be administrators, academics or others – who say that academics should focus on research, not seek to make direct interventions on specific issues?

A: Mostly they are right, but having an academic institution behind me has helped enormously to give me credibility when approaching governments. Academic research is important, but so is implementation of the results. Research had found the two drugs mentioned above, but no one was delivering them, so we filled the needed gap.

Q: What advice would you offer to an academic who wants to make a more direct contribution?

A: Provided that the project offers something unique, think hard about the mechanism of funding and the home – whether to remain as I did in an academic institution or establish an independent non-governmental organisation; both have advantages and disadvantages.

Q: If you could have done something differently at any point in the project, what would it have been?

A: When I was offered funding from Legatum and Geneva Global, I routed it through the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases, because I felt that the network had something special to offer. The network does offer advocacy now, but that particular funding suffered from too many layers of bureaucracy and I should not have introduced that extra layer, because it proved to be top heavy. I think I lost a bit of management credibility with that decision.

Q: Next steps for SCI?

A: Our project has achieved a lot in terms of saving millions of lives and improving the health of millions more. Now SCI needs to switch from morbidity control to elimination. To achieve this we need to introduce clean water and better hygiene and sanitation in the areas where we offer treatment.

Read more of our Impact Interviews.

Here is the latest in a series of profiles of academic difference makers produced as part of ASAP’s Impact: Global Poverty project. In this article, project Contributing Editor Sumaiyah Moolla interviews Professor Alan Fenwick of Imperial College London about his work leading the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative, which delivers cures to diseases afflicting a huge proportion of the severely poor globally. If you would like to nominate an academic to be profiled in the series, please contact Luis Cabrera at a.l.cabrera@bham.ac.uk