Development Aid - Should It Be Conditional

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Development Aid – should it be conditional? Past decades have seen aid conditionality as a normal practice. Donor governments aim to increase the effectiveness of development aid by imposing conditions to achieve specific outcomes. Though, checks and balances are required to ensure efficient running of any program and to ensure the development aid is effectively appropriated, where do we draw a line when the same conditions cease to be mutually agreeable and become dictatorial and imperialistic in nature. The research essay will analyse the objectives for conditionality and how far they are successful in meeting the set outcomes. In doing so it will assess aid based on policy conditionality and good governance, on its implementation through Structural Adjustment lending. It would further conclude by suggesting alternatives that may be considered to make development aid more effective. The prime objective for conditionality is to induce reform [Collier Paul, Guillaumont Patrick, et al. 1997] whereby the donor may offer aid as an incentive to entice the recipient into changing its policies. The donors have felt that their aid for development has not been effective in achieving the desired outcomes mainly because of the existing policies in the recipients countries. Secondly, Selectivity – the process by which the recipient is chosen based on its ‘good policy environment’ - has been in the forefront of conditions to ensure that the recipient has a congenial environment for the optimum success of the aid dollar. Donors have gone to the extent of adopting a ‘paternalism’ approach in dictating the way in which the aid may be spent. Furthermore, the donors seek commitment from the recipient government to ensure the maximum effectiveness. And lastly the donors want to give a positive signal to the private agents to follow suit and invest in aid and development

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