One reason why officers gave become more desk-bound is the way we measure their performance. In the past few decades, organisations have increasingly been subjected to performance measurements that define success or failure according to narrow and arbitrary metrics. The outcome should have been predictable: institutions have focused on doing what they can to boost their metrics, often at the expense of performance itself. There are three tenets to the metrical canon. 

The first holds that it is both possible and desirable to replace judgment ~ acquired through personal experience and talent ~ with numerical indicators of comparative performance based on standardized data. 

Second, making such metrics public and transparent ensures that institutions can be properly monitored and made accountable. And, third, the best way to motivate people within organisations is to attach monetary or reputational rewards and penalties to their measured performance. 

The mistake we have made is that merit has been reduced only to that which can be expressed in quantifiable metrics. In our search for standardized and uniform measuring yard-sticks, we are ignoring the subjective qualities. 

Performance has much to do with the context or setting; there are difficult contexts and there are smoother contexts. Quantifiable metrics do not account for several important subjective parameters. It is time to pay more attention to the less palpable features of progress, which, while difficult to measure, are not hard to take a measure of. 

Years of working on poverty issues teach one to be patient. This is a field with a great many experts. These experts are committed, knowledgeable, well-intentioned, and used to speak- ing with authority. 

They are, perhaps understandably, a little impatient with upstarts who start talking about data and evidence and even sometimes implementing large-scale interventions to fix things, without necessarily having spent decades immersed in developmental theory.

The virtual reality in which its authors live, full of action plans, road maps and fact sheets, is frightening. Only intellectual activists who have no idea how to reach the very poor need that. For example, abundant evidence suggests that education can be transformative in a poor country, so donors often pay for schools. But building a school is expensive and can line the pockets of corrupt officials. 

The big truancy problem in poor countries typically involves not students but teachers. To make sure that the students don’t do embarrassingly badly on those exams, the teachers write all the answers on the blackboard. The real tragedy of the poor is that their voice is unheard in forums, even by those who are exclusively devoted to their problems. As the Malagasy proverb goes, “Poverty won’t allow him to lift his head; dignity won’t allow him to bow it down”. 

Those in need of aid are shouted down by those who consider them illiterate and uninformed and who abrogate to themselves the wisdom and the right to speak for the poor. And of course, the public places where such meetings are held are designed to keep the poor away from any scope for voicing their problems. 

The failure of so many “normal” or conventional profession- al solutions points to the need to re-examine the perceptions and priorities of these professionals: the degree-bearing urban elite who define poverty and give lengthy prescriptions for what should be done about it. The other need is to examine the perceptions and priorities of the poor themselves. Neither has received much attention in discussions against poverty. Most such professionals ~ are from every sector of society, be it governments, civil society, private sector, entrepreneurs, 

trade unions, academia, scientists, social influencers and others ~ have neither the time nor the political will to examine their predispositions, leave alone those of the poor. 

Development administrators, professionals, authors and writers arrogate to themselves the right to hand out certificates on best practices. They shut themselves from the ground realities and give lengthy opinions based on reports and statistics. 

Senior managers usually turn into glib talkers on poverty and underdevelopment, and tragically or by design, they are the ones who influence the directing of public policies and pro grammes. Consultants have for long been the key people in poli- cy mechanics, and there has been a glaring over-dependence on them. It is vital to temper their reports with ground realities. Practitioners would do well to ask why, if the consultants are so confident of their advice and plans, they don’t simply execute these themselves! This should not, however, prevent us from recognising the contribution of consultants in guiding several successful programmes. 

There is something of continuing value about bringing an outsider in. If the consultants are experienced, they can ferret out problems. Deep knowledge of the way many other organisations have handled similar problems can help provide solutions to the new context. In addition, consultants can act as disseminators of state-of-the-art expertise and practices in the academic and practitioners’ worlds. 

The development community does possess a vast trove of expertise and wisdom in advancing social change. Not all of it is accessible, locked as it is in people’s heads or within organisational memory. It is important to enable free access to these valuable insights to move the field forward. 

When there are people from different backgrounds everyone gets an opportunity to collaborate, and you get different perspectives and a new way to look at the problem, also to find solutions. The problem and their solution are generally not far away, but we need to think beyond our silos to see it. It would be wise to remember the famous African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go on your own. If you want to go far, go together.”