A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE (Part 9). A continuation of the review of The Nature of Mass Poverty by John Kenneth Galbraith
Education
Professional educators readily attributed poverty to the absence of an educational system. Former civil servants attributed it to poor public administration. Potential teachers and administrators from the poor country could be brought to the United States or Europe for training. This remedy also recommended itself because it was and remains greatly popular with those who hope to be selected. A very large number of those so prepared do not return more than momentarily to their own countries.
Technical skills and capital
The rich countries had technical skills in abundance. So the cause of mass poverty was seen as technical backwardness in methods of production. Few improvements in production methods are possible without capital investment. So shortage of capital also became a cause of poverty and its supply a remedy. Both public officials and scholars brought to the field by the expansion of interest after 1950 had a tendency to allow faith to be a substitute for critical judgment. Judgment is more readily made subordinate to self-interest than we commonly imagine.
Economic circumstances and motivation might be different in the poor country
The accepted diagnosis of mass poverty – insufficient capital, backward technology – went beyond its strategic convenience. It had also the blessing of the most reputable economic thought. What was recommended for the poor countries was what had served, and seemed still to serve, in the rich countries. No serious and exacting thought was given to the possibility that both economic circumstances and economic motivation might be fundamentally different in the poor country from such circumstances and motivation in the rich. What seems plausible is real. The tendency of the rich country is to increasing income; the tendency of the poor country is to an equilibrium of poverty.
The village of Senapur in northern India
In October 1953, a young Cornell anthropologist, W. David Hopper, took up residence in the village of Senapur in northern India and for the next 15 months studied its agricultural economy in intelligent detail. He concluded: “An observer in Senapur cannot help but be impressed with the way the village uses its physical resources. The age-old techniques have been refined and sharpened by countless years of experience, and each generation seems to have had its experimenters who added a bit here and changed a practice there, and thus improved the community lore.”
Conclusions influenced by the available remedy
Other scholars have reached broadly similar conclusions. This impression of optimal technical achievement, given the resources that are available, is substantially at odds with the accepted beliefs of agricultural education, especially in the United States, conclusions that are again heavily influenced by the available remedy.