CONTENTS:- Preface; 1. NGOs better than the state; 2. NGOs: searching for solid ground; 3. No miracle weapon for development: the challenges facing NGOs in the 21 century; 4. Who is responsible for corruption in aid? 5. The dynamics of rural poverty in India; 6. Overcoming the poverty in India and the lessons learned; 7. Rural poverty in India; 8. The persistence of Indian poverty and its alleviation; 9. Employment and poverty alleviation; 10. Peace and poverty; 11. For richer, for fairer: poverty reduction and income distribution; 12. Can economic growth reduce poverty? 13. Democracy and poverty: are they interlinked? 14. Taking poverty to heart: non-communicable diseases and the poor; 15. City politics: a voice for the poor; 16. Rural poverty in India and development as a policy challenge; 17. Link between disability and poverty; 18. Women and poverty; 19. Taking a lead in the fight against poverty? 20. The dematerialisation of the world economy; 21. Solving the unemployment problem by looking beyond the job; 22. Income gap widens; 23. Employment and promoting ecology: how a service culture could put people back to work; 24. Consuming the future; 25. The population challenge; 26. Law and social justice; 27. The future of work; 28. Population growth and housing; 29. Population growth and jobs;
DESCRIPTION
Non-Governmental Organisations have become the new hope of development cooperation. Criticism of official and multi-lateral development assistance is mounting. After more than four decades of international cooperation, there is more poverty in the Third World (with the exception of a few countries) than ever before. It has become clear that existing instruments cannot bring about change. Even the large donor organisations doubt their own ability to solve problems and find their doubts confirmed by internal evaluations. What led to this state of affairs, and is there reason to hope that the NGOs can do a better job? Development assistance started in 1949 with U.S. President Harry Truman's famous point four program (named after point 4 of his inaugural speech in Congress on January 20, 1949) as a continuation of the Marshall Plan. The policy of containment of communism, which was originally restricted to Europe, thus became a global strategy. This origin was the reason that development assistance was geared from the beginning exclusively to governments, and not to social groups in the developing countries. The accusation that the U.S.A. as well as the other western donors were willing to provide development assistance to any government, even the most under democratic and corrupt one, as long as it was an ally against communism, was never dropped.
