From Cheap Credit to Easy Money: How to Undermine Rural Finance and Development

Abstract

Four development decades have passed since the early 1950s. During that period we have become masters in the art of underdevelopment: at the levels of experts, institutions, governments and donors. Underdevelopment in large parts of the world has been expertly prepared, government-made and donorsupported. Of course, there are exceptional cases of successful development. Yet by treating them as such, there is little to be learned from them. We are now rich in experience and hope to have learned from it – like the proverbial banker who invariably gains from making a loan: either in monetary terms, when the loan is paid back, or in experience, when it is not.