And indirectly led to a tyranny of exports. Lets call it that technocratic approach to Economic Development it is the idea that poverty is really just a set of technical problems. For example, from malaria there are a variety of Technical Solutions. One of them is bring at chemical called pyrethrum on the walls of peoples houses, on the inside of walls. That is a solution. Helps fight malaria. Another technical solution might be to convert land to higher value uses like food scraps that have low value to the great products that have higher value. Now let me tell you why the technical approach seems so appealing, so straightforward, so uncontroversial, might in fact be not quite ready. Here is the story. This is not a happy story. This is not like do not think of this has the runup to the punch line to a joke. I will try to work some and later, but this is not the happy part of the talk im afraid. On the morning of that urey 28, 2010, the villagers of that the gun that district or in church. They heard the sound of gunfire outside, and they came out and found that men with guns were burning down their homes and torching their crops, shooting their livestock, and keeping them at gunpoint from rescuing their burning homes, and in the men with guns marched them away at gunpoint. 20,000 farmers lost their land. This happens in the guise of a World Bank Forestry project. The World Bank Forestry project was designed as a technical solution to income. Obviously it did not work out as intended. A couple of additional things that this is obviously an extreme story, or story, and i couple of things are somewhat revealing of what this book calls the forgotten rights of the poor. The poor are so often neglected, ignored, forgotten. So two things happen next. One is, unlike many other Rights Violations that happened, this one actually made it on to the front page of the new york times. You would have thought that would have led to some kind of corrective response. The world bank on twitter the next day said they would do a investigation into what had happened which sounded like the right response of the time. It has now been four years, and theres never been a world Bank Investigation into what happened that was the first non event and revealing of the for gun rights of the port. The second non event, hardly anyone protested. And the last thing that is revealing is that the story is a truly forgotten by almost everyone except a few people paying attention on the outside and, of course, the victims themselves. So the story, you cannot do with the world bank has always tried to do. It from its very founding of World Bank Articles of agreement have this clause in the. The World Bank Project shall be designed, loans, granted, interventions shall be made, not taking into account the political character of the governments or the aid recipient, not considering the political character of the government, whether it is an autocracy, men with guns, influence project or whether it is a democratic government that recognizes political and economic rights. And the world bank seems to have the illusion that something called economic considerations can be separated out and that economic considerations somehow do not include the political character of the government. The political character of the government is not itself something that could be entering or helping Economic Development. This kind of separation is what im calling the technocratic approach of the government, the illusion that Technical Solutions can ignore the political system in which they operate. And it the consequences of this, well, first lets get a couple of things clear. One is that development is not always very open about this, but partly a field that is making recommendations. End we too often forget that in order to make normative recommendations you have to state your own normative values. For example, i personally would consider this Rights Violations that i just described in an of itself. I would consider the rights that were violated, but political right to protest what happened to them and their economic right that is the property right that they held over the land that was taken away from them. I myself would openly say to those rights in and of themself, the principle of freedom of choice and consent of individuals, value in and of itself. No, i dont want to kind of play it fast and very and save it the moral statement automatically wins the arguments for the right of the poor because there could be other competing moral good. Maybe there is a tradeoff with some other morally good thing that we are trading off. All im saying is, we cannot ignore the normative value of the rights of the poor. The rights of the port in and of themselves which is primarily the way rights have spread historically. People treat them as something good in of itself that they want for themselves. Of course, the second thing we have to consider is ours is a system based on political and economic rights isnt more likely to foster Economic Development for maybe it is the reverse. You need an autocrat to implement Economic Development to make the hard choices. Maybe people dont care about their rights until there is some higher standard of living, their material means have already been met. This is a debate that we need to have, and this one is not its a policy debate. Economic development happens or is, in fact, autocracy a better system . That is the debate that we need to have on Economic Development. And what has happened is that by making statements like this, having it technocratic approach to development, we are not openly having that debate. The world bank is not alone in that debate to happen. It is the world bank is not even allowing itself to open the talk about the issue of democracy or autocracy. In fact, i have been following the past two World Bank President s. Neither one has ever openly used the word democracy in a speech. Theyre for five years. He managed a 05year term without ever using the word democracy. Just to make sure was not missing anything i talked to the World Bank Press spokesman, and thus press spokesman confirmed to me that he said, the president is not allowed to use the word democracy. Havent you Read World Bank article for section ten . You know, that is not an acceptable state of affairs. Not binding the operations of people who want to provoke development. It should not be binding the rest of us. We should be able to open the debate over democracy, individual rights for the poor. The primary complaint of this book is that that debate has not happened anywhere near enough let me give you a little bit of history on the technocratic idea where did it come from and how has it held on so long . This article eyes never been changed, and the technocratic approach is being called today. Some say that authors get to do research for books, reading in areas that turn out to be fun. One area that turned out to be fun for me was the history of the idea of technocratic development. One thing i found is that it is not a new idea. We actually went back deep into colonial times. Here i am showing a technocratic report that was done in 1938 by the British ColonialOffice Officer named lord healy did this report. 1,837 pages long. A very long list of Technical Solutions to poverty in africa which reads remarkably like the United Nations report that was done in 2005. The u. N. Report was authored by an economist who is a professor at columbia whose name i cannot remember right now. I think angelina jelly supplied a consultant report. The only thing i want to take away from the slide is that the technocratic idea that what is missing is the technical solution does not fare too well. These particular problems and Technical Solutions have been around for 70 years. So it is hard to argue that the problem was just that the Technical Solutions were missing until the experts come along. It does not seem like the problem. We have had experts for 70 years. Apparently not all that successful because we are still talking about the same solutions 70 years later, now almost 80. The other way in which this history is interesting is this technocratic approach actually form a lot of the justification for the British Empire by the time of world war ii. The old justification for the British Empire was openly racist, the british were a superior race. That kind of language was becoming critically kind of deadly by the time of world war ii. The British Empire was in a fight for its life and wanted to offer a more benevolent vision to colonial subjects of was not so openly insulting and racist. So it offered this technocratic justification. Were the people who are going out to solve your Material Party with these long lists of Technical Solutions. I think that it helps to kind of see the debate today, when we see this same debate going on in a time like this in a very different context. Let me give you a little bit of that kind of protest perspective. Another set of people had to convince that technocratic justifications for colonialism by the way, colonialism was one of the regimes that the world bank was being neutral about. Not only dictatorship, fascism, communism, also colonialism was considered a political character that could not be considered in a world bank loan, and there were some world bank loans to colonial territories of the british and french. Theyre is a colonial mentality at that time that, i dont want to be unfair and tarnish todays ideas. That is unfair, but it helps us see what the issues are. One easy way that lord he lee found, he was very shrewd and kick found a way to convince the Roosevelt Administration to go along with the technocratic justification. The Roosevelt Administration was taking the same technocratic approach to one of their internally underdeveloped regions and peoples which were africanamericans in the south. Eleanor roosevelt had lunch. Look, you know, roosevelt, i dont think he needs the votes of racing segregationists. Can you please post bonior challenged segregation. In the meantime, the new deal will offer a technocratic solution to the material poverty of black people in the United States. Thinking of that parallel helps us think about this debate. In the end fdr went along because they saw the parallel between colonialism and their own treatment of blacks, material solutions, but not rights, not the right to end segregation, not the right to vote. What happened after the end of colonialism, one thing now was in a story, the end of colonialism was not anticipated by anyone during world war ii. It was really a surprise collapse. There were statements that i could show you. The british expected their empire in africa to endure for generations, if not centuries. This was indefinite justification. But what happened after colonialism did collapse, a new set of parties found technocratic justifications for authoritarian rule to be very helpful. First authoritarian rule called colonialism that technocratic idea is justified. In a new set of autocrats came on the scene, the indigenous autocrats and africa. They found it they did not want to give rights to their own citizens either. They wanted to replace the empire as being the new autocrats that could justify their own rule with technocratic ideas. Autocrats be in power so that we can solve material poverty. They used to be the divine right of kings in medieval times. In our day after the end of colonialism and became the development right of dictators. It really justified dictators. The u. S. Was also happy about this because autocrats make better allies than democrats do during the cold war. So the u. S. When it started getting into Development Economics during the cold war, a very wellknown story, the new angle im suggesting you had is that the nt is that justified the autocrats also have political motivation. The story we are in a new situation that is somewhat analogous. Again, the u. S. As Foreign Policy apparatus, implemented the or someone happy with ideals that justify autocrats. Hes also appeal lastly about the development agencies, development experts, philanthropists because these ideas make the operation of philanthropy and a much easier. You can, again, ignore, as the world bank did, the character of the government youre dealing with an focus directly on Technical Solutions, the direct appeal that never goes away. There is one philanthropist you may have heard of named William Gates jr. Bill gates. Bring about . Okay. He said in 2012 that a dictator in ethiopia had, made Real Progress in helping the people of ethiopia. Bill gates said that the donors working on their technocratic Solutions Together with the government have followed this approach, set, cleared legal clear goals, choosing an approach to measuring results, and then using those measurements to continually refine our approach which helps us on wedding or may be wedding kind of coalition that the autocratic government. Daughters, philanthropists, experts working together. Helps us to deliver tools and services to everybody will benefit. Now, bill gates was partly enthusiastic because ethiopia have had a few years of good growth. And there were also a few years of measured reductions in child mortality, which he again give the credit for. Now, lets talk of a bit about how much the Development Community has had this debate on the positive value of autocracy. In giving that credit theyre seems to be factual sightings on the idea of autocracy being good one of the strange things about the debates is people always are looking either for autocratic Success Stories within the developing country or if you challenge that they want you to provide a democratic success story. There is one very strange thing that has been going on off the route the history of development , and that is looking for possible models for how to succeed it development. Excluded the cases of all those who actually succeeded. This is pretty important. Let me repeat that. Having any debate about how to succeed in development, the models of those who have actually succeeded. A very strange way to handle evidence. They excluded not america, australia, new zealand, japan, western europe, recently joined by other Success Stories within the developing countries that had greater political and Economic Freedom. The strange thing is the exclusion of the history of developments that excluded all the successes. That shows you something in the ways in which this debate has really not been happening enough that we would treat the evidence in such a strange way and celebrate bill gates would celebrate just a very few years of apparent success which is automatically giving credit and not reflecting this long history of success of democracy and development. Of course, one of a bit of direct evidence is when you see something good happening in a country there is always a tendency to infer that the leader must be a good guy because good things are happening. That is a strong tendency. Even if you have direct government with a leader is not such a good guy. So kind of showing his autocratic credentials in a variety of ways for a number of years prior to bill gates statement. His Security Forces had killed peaceful demonstrators in the streets after regulations in 2005, manipulated famine relief in the year 2010. Only willing support the Party Supporters in the night to the opposition. Again, sort of this the same sequence are describing the gone up. A promise to investigate, and then the investigation was acquired the canceled and never happened. And, you know, the abuses continue. In 2012 there is forest militarization Program Within ethiopia, again another rights violation financed by the world bank. There is also 18 years in jail for online president wellliked of the world bank he did use the word democracy. For that crime is now serving 18 years in prison in ethiopia. So the a version that we can ignore their rights of the poor is what i am protesting against your. I really think that we have to have this debate. We have been talking about development for so long, and this debate has not happened. It is like everyone is happy with these technocratic ideas. At the time of the colonial debate, i forgot to show you this slide, a common by the British Colonial secretary on how well or david haley had done, our happy americans were with technocratic development, how happy everybody was. This was an actual copy i found on the internet of the colonial secretary during world war ii. This technocratic idea is their word for everyone. The experts, the aid agencies, the autocrats, Foreign Policy. Also it makes it easier because i nationalsecurity interest and development interests can be complementary. If we think autocrats are good allies in the war on terror and are good for development, then supporting autocratic Development Aid accomplishes kills two birds with one stone. That is wonderful. If we had is inconvenient idea that autocrats are not the solution but are actually the problem, an obstacle to development, a much more difficult situation by having a trade