150 Poverty and Hunger
a heyday for area-based initiatives, including Integrated Rural Development
Projects promoted and supported by the World Bank (World Bank, 1988). These
did not have settlers, only small farmers or pastoralists already on the land; so
when many failed, as they did especially in Africa, they were easier to abandon.
Unlike Perkerra, they passed into history on the ground, leaving a legacy of disil-
lusion, debts and staff housing. In aid policies during the 1980s and 1990s, struc-
tural adjustment programmes became prominent, required by lenders for the
repayment of debts. And the 1990s were marked by shifts towards sector pro-
grammes and direct budget support, debt relief, good governance, participation
and human rights policies proclaimed as pro-poor. As the new century came in,
lenders and donors were abandoning field projects and focusing on policy.
Some big projects, though, if well surveyed, fairly administered and then irre-
versibly implemented, are needed and justified. I was probably wrong, on an Inter-
national Labour Organization mission to Sri Lanka in 1978, to muster arguments
against the Accelerated Mahaweli Development Project to increase hydropower
and irrigation and to brand it Sri Lanka’s Concorde.^16 And who now would wish to
argue that it would have been better not to have built the Volta Dam or the Aswan
Dam? Some big projects are right. Some are not. And much depends upon how
well and fairly they are undertaken.
All of this may be quite well accepted. Perhaps less explored is the changing
significance of dimensions of commitment and continuity and their implications
for practice. In what follows, much of the focus is on aid agencies, and their pri-
orities, activities and relations with governments; but much also applies to govern-
ments themselves. Let us follow the historical sequence and start with projects.
Commitment and continuity with projects
For exploring the relevance of irreversibility and commitment, especially with
projects, insights come from Albert Hirschman’s classic Development Projects
Observed (Hirschman, 1967). From a study of 11 World Bank-supported projects,
all of which had serious problems, Hirschman put forward his hypothesis of the
‘Hiding Hand’. This was the principle that those proposing and planning projects
habitually underestimate the difficulties that will be encountered, but that this
may be just as well, since they also habitually underestimate the creativity that can
be mustered to overcome them. With hindsight, the Perkerra experience suggests
that Hirschman may himself have made an underestimate – of the costs of ‘creativ-
ity’, for these can include recurrent costs of staff, subsidies and protection, addi-
tional infrastructure and the pre-emption of scarce administrative capacity. Still, in
Hirschman’s view, too little commitment and too easy withdrawal could mean
premature abandonment before there was time to learn and improve. This, he
argued, was a weakness of agricultural projects, which were easier to abandon than,
say, electric power or railways. Irreversibility, in his view, could be an asset because
of the creativity it stimulated and the learning to which it gave rise.
Hirschman’s thesis about commitment, continuity, learning and creativity is
borne out by the RIPS (Rural Integrated Project Support) Programme in Lindi