INTERVIEW BY BRANDON CURRIE, GV CONTENT EDITOR

While he doesn't have the panache of Bono or the credentials of Jeffrey Sachs, the wily, suspender-clad Paul Polak has something altogether more important in development circles: measurable results. By his count, the organization he founded - International Development Enterprises (IDE) - has helped to lift some 17 million people out of dollar-a-day poverty.

Through simplistic treadle pumps, drip irrigation systems and a host of other design and marketing innovations, Polak and IDE have succeeded where many rural development projects have failed. On a recent visit to the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) to promote his book Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail, Polak went out for coffee with Governance Village to explain why he's changing how people think about the developing world.

IDE claims to have lifted 17 million people out of poverty. How did you measure that?

We made the numbers up! But it sounds good, that's the important thing [laughs].

No, it's actually a conservative number. In round numbers we've helped three million families with an average of five and a half members per family. In all of our projects we have three-year evaluations done by outside organizations. The simplest way is to count the number of irrigation tools that have been sold. By and large we've sold 1.5 million treadle pumps in Bangladesh, 2.1 million treadle pumps worldwide and 500,000 drip irrigation systems.

The Swiss, who were funding us, thought we were cooking the books so they sent an independent group to verify everything and they came back with higher numbers than us.

How does something as simple as a treadle pump have the ability to lift an entire family out of poverty?

What we do is go to an area and start at the market end. So we interview 25 farmers and ask them what [crop] they made the most money on last year. Out of that you end up with 15 to 20 high-income generating crops that small farmers have already grown successfully. Next thing is going to the marketplace and talking to the traders - ask them about the volume and pricing patterns for different crops - to get an idea where there will be a sustainable demand. That helps us narrow it down to about five [crops].

Then we work backward and say ‘what do the farmers need to be able to grow those five crops?' You have to focus on the critical constraints - one of the reasons integrated rural development schemes fail is they try to do it all at once. Very often one of the constraints is water, either drawing or distribution. At the market end, you have to look at the value chain where [the farmers] can get their stuff to market. You have to look at transport, aggregation and quality control.

If you're a family in Nepal who can grow six kilos of eggplant, how do you sell it? They can send one of the wives to the market or sell it to traders. What [IDE] did to facilitate that was to support a cooperative collection centre so farmers in the village would be part owners of a cheap warehouse that employed a commissioned sales agent with a mobile phone. Now their entire product goes to that one centre so there's enough volume to attract traders and the farmers also get feedback about quality standards.

In your book, you argue that - contrary to some development theorists - you can't "donate your way out of poverty." Why do so many in the West think we still can?

The charity model [of development] has a lot of self-serving characteristics. It's more designed to make you feel good because you're doing something to help these poor unfortunates. But it's patronizing because you're giving them - in your superior wisdom - what you think is best. People do it because it feels good. And it's a lot easier.

What do you mean by that?

A lot of people I talk to that are interested in helping poor people say ‘Can I give you money? I don't have time to go over there.' But if you're going to help a poor person you need to talk to that person and treat them with respect. And if you're going to sell things to these people you need to learn about them as customers. A lot of people want to buy 10 treadle pumps and give them away but we don't do that. That doesn't provide a basic solution to the problem.

Is this to say the bilateral aid regime is fundamentally flawed? If so, how can it redeem itself?

I would unhesitatingly say [it can't redeem itself]. The bilateral funding channel has not worked no matter how attractive it is as a rational model. It makes sense to not just build a highway but to teach a government how to build highways on their own. But the people in power will build them in places that reflect their own self-interest, not that of the majority of the people.

That's why you have to build an entirely new system. Many of the people in Western organizations like the World Bank and the UN are passionate and want to make a difference. But the institutional structure gets in the way. To put out a quota of money, they have to form alliances with power structures in developing countries, promise to fund this and fund that and it doesn't work.

So what would you say to Bob Geldof and the ‘more money less problems' school of development thought?

Number one, I think the contributions that rich countries make to the developing world are pitiful. So I support the need for more investment.

But saying that we can solve poverty by donating a certain amount of our GDP is hopelessly misguided. More money alone won't solve the problem. We need a revolution in how we invest that money. If we give things away, it won't work. [Jeffrey] Sachs loves treadle pumps, but he wants us to give them away.

The idea that you can solve poverty by reaching some target of money to give to poverty is stupid. Look at Sachs' Millennium Villages project. They take a huge amount of money to increase yields of rice because of all the foreign experts, then when the money is withdrawn it all goes back to the way it was. There's a lot of money in Swiss bank accounts and no permanent change.

By starting your development projects at a micro level and growing them out, has IDE been able to avoid the mistakes - in terms of corruption and misappropriation - of larger initiatives?

Of course we have had people try and take advantage of us, but that's just part of everyday life. We have a policy of not paying bribes and, other than in some tiny situations, don't do that. Working at the grassroots, you don't have to pay bribes. It takes longer, but if you talk to poor people and respond to what they need - at the end of that process you rarely have a failure. It's so direct and so simple.

What is IDE spending its money on? We are providing open-source technology by investing in research in development and hiring local people at the grassroots for our mass marketing campaigns. The proof is in the pudding and our averages are fantastic in terms of results. Even if there was corruption, if you've got those kind of results, that's all you're interested in.

In your book you talk about how working in development - at least in the traditional sense of foreign assistance - can often cause otherwise enthusiastic people to lose faith in being able to make a difference. How does it feel to have a development job that works?

[Poverty reduction] is just a byproduct of what I like to do. I like to ask questions and satisfy my curiosity. Trying to solve these problems is fascinating and I'm always learning. It's not a dreary, dry, depressing topic - it's a hell of a lot of fun. I just love it.

Maybe I'm downplaying the thing about helping [17 million] people because I feel a great sense of peace. I feel great about it - it's so many more than we ever thought we could help. But it's a drop in the bucket compared to what can be done using this simple approach.