On 3/13/07, Neha Viswanathan wrote:
Or are you strictly referring to bilateral/ multilateral aid?
Primarily, I mean this....
You say foreign aid in any form - what about - contributions from individuals of another nationality?
Even this.... I agree there a bunch of people, who know and understand where the money is going to and how it is going to be spent..... but from my experience, they are outnumbered by the sheer volume of people who do things like remote-fire-and-forget adoptions / by-the-orphan-in-vietnam-a-bicycle donation, or dial into the 0800 number flashed on television to save the children ... these people are either doing this out of pity, or to make themselves feel better.
What about contributions from say the Indian Diaspora in the UK?
Maybe i am not fundamentally opposed to this. A lot of such contributions i believe are towards their communities back home, small towns where they came from, or their distant relatives families etc....
(You know the funny thing - the toughies - the armtwisters like DFID (UK), USAID etc have been asked to stick - which the smaller ones - who hardly make any demands and are more likely to be working on natural resources management, gender, etc like Swiss Dev Corporation, DANIDA, etc have been asked to pack up in two years. )
That is indeed discriminatory. Everyone should be sent home.
