Why has it happened?

Very simple! Aid bureaucracies are large, growing and unaccountable. Aid functionary does the report and advising and gets rewarded for cute stories and clever while all failure is the responsibility of the idiot governments. Meanwhile aid functionary lives on a tax free salary in some poor country in a mansion with a number of servants.

Not to forget the many conferences at beautiful locales where nest to nothing is discussed except jargon and stories of how lovely the innocent babies are.

I apologize to the few well meaning people who are trying to make a difference. But much of aid establishment is the way i describe it. A bureaucracy out to expand its empire! A bureaucracy that has no accountability and is really quite corrupt.

I think that this needs a serious unemotional debate but no one wants to have it and the aid Establishment is too powerful to allow it.

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After that a Marshall plan can be wriiten to improve infrastructure, health and education.

Sounds familiar.

As for the intrusiveness, dead wrong. Structural adjustment was the height of blunt conditionality and intrusion in aid. New aid modalities and approaches are attempting to become less intrusive. We can say a lot about how they fail and what more they should be doing, as I do on a daily basis in my job. But the fact remains that there are more aid modalities that attempt to avoid distortion of developing country poverty now than there were 20 years ago. They’re not perfect, but they are at least there to improve.

And finally, small interventions that work are fine. But what ‘works’ depends on your definition. Is immediate impact ok? I think only for humanitarian crises. I don’t agree with the use of money and expertise for development activities unless we at least try to aim for a five-ten year impact, things that remain useful or leave a lasting impact. That means two things: 1) evaluating project / activity impact well after the project has finished; and 2) working at the same time to increase the revenue generating capacity of local Governments or NGOs or whoever, so they can take over the useful activities using their own funds.