SCARCELY a day passes without the news of another massive development project being initiated, generally funded by foreign donor agencies.

Pakistan is inundated with billions of dollars in development money, which surge through the country daily in the name of the poor, the marginalised, and the women and children. But this money never reaches its beneficiaries: it tantalisingly hovers above, just a little out of reach of those who need it most. Where does the money go? Why is there so little to show for all the purported ‘development’ initiatives undertaken?

Here I will offer several suggestions for improving the performance of development projects from my experience in the field.

Firstly, projects should closely examine the realities on the ground. Many if not most development proposals are developed without conducting a thorough analysis of beneficiary communities’ real needs. In fact, project designers rarely discuss the project with intended beneficiary groups either during or before it is designed.

Secondly, projects should partner with local institutions and communities before being implemented. Instead, they are forced on communities rather than designed as a collaborative effort. Signing partnerships with target beneficiary groups signals not only respect for the people one is intending to support, it also dismantles the hierarchal ‘top-down’ approach that characterises most development projects.

A hierarchal ‘top-down’ approach is seen in most projects.

Similarly, through partnerships, projects will come to reflect the beneficiaries’ needs, and beneficiaries can be held responsible and accountable if they fail to play their part.

Thirdly, projects should provide continuous professional development opportunities to their project staff. Most projects focus on capacity building of their beneficiaries, yet do not accord the same attention or resources to enhancing the skills of the staff. The result is the creation of an industry of development workers, with limited skills, who repetitively transfer from one agency to another, reproducing the same undeveloped skills. This could be resolved by allocating a sufficient sum in the annual budgets towards staff training.

Fourthly, projects should raise salaries to recruit and retain talent rather than expending vast sums from limited resources on operational costs. For the cost of several plane tickets, a one-day seminar, or one simple activity, projects can instead identify, recruit, and retain top talent who will inevitably produce more value for the project.

Operational costs generally rise when there is poor coordination and inadequate synchronisation in project activities. Effective leadership and management reduce operational costs by enhancing the quality and outcome of each initial input.

Lastly, projects need to maintain realistic expectations about what they can achieve. One common mistake is a mismatch between the project implementers’ capacity and their expected outcomes. Stakes are too high, goals too lofty, and the capacities of the staff overestimated. The result is unnecessary and leads to stresses that weaken institutions, their projects, and their constituent systems. The stress affects not only project performance, but fatigues and burdens project employees.

Failure to maintain realistic expectations results in scope creep, in which the project loses focus and expands the scale and reach of its activities and programmes without a defined and clear mission on how the expansion will help it achieve the desired objectives. As a result, needless strain is placed on project staff, whose res­ponsibilities and tasks multiply without their being equipped with the necessary resou­rces to handle the increa­sed workload. Quality is sacrificed for quantity and scale, and large numbers are flaunted that purportedly demonstrate impact but do not actually bear significance.

Project staff often dismiss their critics and detractors, claiming that they’re at least ‘trying’ or ‘doing something’. There are two concerns with such rebuttals that should be self-evident. First, even if one has done ‘something’, does that justify the extraordinary costs entailed? Can one say that an accomplishment, if small, is cost-effective? Secondly, an ambiguous target of doing ‘something’ allows one to categorically absolve oneself of all negligence, incompetence, poor planning, and outright indifference.

I can recall instances of teams travelling to other cities to conduct poorly planned seminars in luxury hotels on topics they have no knowledge about. The cost of airfare, rent of venues in upscale hotels, accommodation, extravagant lunches and dinners, and entirely inane seminars with minimal or no participation due to poor planning is justified on the grounds that at least ‘something’ was done.

It is an honourable endeavour to devote one’s life to improving the living conditions of others. Many successful development projects have radically transformed the lives of many people across the world. But for the remainder, intentional (or even unintentional) mismanagement of finances and poor planning should be considered criminal negligence.

The writer has worked in an education development project in Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2014