Sanjay Pradhan: How open data is changing international aid

29,130 views ・ 2012-10-30

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Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
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I grew up in Bihar, India's poorest state,
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and I remember when I was six years old,
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I remember coming home one day to find a cart
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full of the most delicious sweets at our doorstep.
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My brothers and I dug in,
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and that's when my father came home.
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He was livid, and I still remember how we cried
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when that cart with our half-eaten sweets
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was pulled away from us.
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Later, I understood why my father got so upset.
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Those sweets were a bribe
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from a contractor who was trying to get my father
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to award him a government contract.
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My father was responsible for building roads in Bihar,
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and he had developed a firm stance against corruption,
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even though he was harassed and threatened.
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His was a lonely struggle, because Bihar
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was also India's most corrupt state,
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where public officials were enriching themselves,
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[rather] than serving the poor who had no means
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to express their anguish if their children
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had no food or no schooling.
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And I experienced this most viscerally
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when I traveled to remote villages to study poverty.
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And as I went village to village,
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I remember one day, when I was famished and exhausted,
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and I was almost collapsing
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in a scorching heat under a tree,
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and just at that time, one of the poorest men in that village
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invited me into his hut and graciously fed me.
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Only I later realized that what he fed me
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was food for his entire family for two days.
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This profound gift of generosity
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challenged and changed the very purpose of my life.
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I resolved to give back.
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Later, I joined the World Bank, which sought to fight
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such poverty by transferring aid from rich to poor countries.
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My initial work focused on Uganda, where I focused
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on negotiating reforms with the Finance Ministry of Uganda
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so they could access our loans.
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But after we disbursed the loans, I remember
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a trip in Uganda where I found newly built schools
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without textbooks or teachers,
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new health clinics without drugs,
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and the poor once again without any voice or recourse.
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It was Bihar all over again.
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Bihar represents the challenge of development:
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abject poverty surrounded by corruption.
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Globally, 1.3 billion people live on less than
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$1.25 a day, and the work I did in Uganda
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represents the traditional approach to these problems
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that has been practiced since 1944,
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when winners of World War II, 500 founding fathers,
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and one lonely founding mother,
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gathered in New Hampshire, USA,
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to establish the Bretton Woods institutions,
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including the World Bank.
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And that traditional approach to development
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had three key elements. First, transfer of resources
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from rich countries in the North
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to poorer countries in the South,
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accompanied by reform prescriptions.
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Second, the development institutions that channeled
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these transfers were opaque, with little transparency
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of what they financed or what results they achieved.
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And third, the engagement in developing countries
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was with a narrow set of government elites
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with little interaction with the citizens, who are
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the ultimate beneficiaries of development assistance.
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Today, each of these elements is opening up
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due to dramatic changes in the global environment.
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Open knowledge, open aid, open governance,
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and together, they represent three key shifts
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that are transforming development
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and that also hold greater hope for the problems
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I witnessed in Uganda and in Bihar.
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The first key shift is open knowledge.
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You know, developing countries today will not simply
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accept solutions that are handed down to them
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by the U.S., Europe or the World Bank.
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They get their inspiration, their hope,
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their practical know-how,
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from successful emerging economies in the South.
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They want to know how China lifted 500 million people
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out of poverty in 30 years,
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how Mexico's Oportunidades program
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improved schooling and nutrition for millions of children.
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This is the new ecosystem of open-knowledge flows,
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not just traveling North to South, but South to South,
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and even South to North,
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with Mexico's Oportunidades today inspiring New York City.
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And just as these North-to-South transfers are opening up,
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so too are the development institutions
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that channeled these transfers.
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This is the second shift: open aid.
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Recently, the World Bank opened its vault of data
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for public use, releasing 8,000 economic and social indicators
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for 200 countries over 50 years,
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and it launched a global competition to crowdsource
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innovative apps using this data.
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Development institutions today are also opening
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for public scrutiny the projects they finance.
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Take GeoMapping. In this map from Kenya,
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the red dots show where all the schools financed by donors
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are located, and the darker the shade of green,
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the more the number of out-of-school children.
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So this simple mashup reveals that donors
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have not financed any schools in the areas
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with the most out-of-school children,
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provoking new questions. Is development assistance
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targeting those who most need our help?
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In this manner, the World Bank has now GeoMapped
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30,000 project activities in 143 countries,
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and donors are using a common platform
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to map all their projects.
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This is a tremendous leap forward in transparency
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and accountability of aid.
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And this leads me to the third, and in my view,
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the most significant shift in development:
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open governance. Governments today are opening up
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just as citizens are demanding voice and accountability.
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From the Arab Spring to the Anna Hazare movement in India,
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using mobile phones and social media
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not just for political accountability
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but also for development accountability.
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Are governments delivering services to the citizens?
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So for instance, several governments in Africa
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and Eastern Europe are opening their budgets to the public.
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But, you know, there is a big difference between a budget
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that's public and a budget that's accessible.
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This is a public budget. (Laughter)
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And as you can see, it's not really accessible
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or understandable to an ordinary citizen
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that is trying to understand how the government is spending its resources.
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To tackle this problem, governments are using new tools
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to visualize the budget so it's more understandable
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to the public.
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In this map from Moldova, the green color shows
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those districts that have low spending on schools
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but good educational outcomes,
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and the red color shows the opposite.
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Tools like this help turn a shelf full of inscrutable documents
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into a publicly understandable visual,
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and what's exciting is that with this openness,
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there are today new opportunities for citizens
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to give feedback and engage with government.
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So in the Philippines today, parents and students
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can give real-time feedback on a website,
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Checkmyschool.org, or using SMS, whether teachers
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and textbooks are showing up in school,
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the same problems I witnessed in Uganda and in Bihar.
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And the government is responsive. So for instance,
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when it was reported on this website that 800 students
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were at risk because school repairs had stalled
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due to corruption, the Department of Education
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in the Philippines took swift action.
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And you know what's exciting is that this innovation
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is now spreading South to South, from the Philippines
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to Indonesia, Kenya, Moldova and beyond.
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In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, even an impoverished
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community was able to use these tools
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to voice its aspirations.
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This is what the map of Tandale looked like
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in August, 2011. But within a few weeks,
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university students were able to use mobile phones
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and an open-source platform to dramatically map
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the entire community infrastructure.
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And what is very exciting is that citizens were then
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able to give feedback as to which health or water points
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were not working, aggregated
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in the red bubbles that you see,
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which together provides a graphic visual
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of the collective voices of the poor.
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Today, even Bihar is turning around and opening up
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under a committed leadership that is making government
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transparent, accessible and responsive to the poor.
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But, you know, in many parts of the world,
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governments are not interested in opening up
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or in serving the poor, and it is a real challenge
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for those who want to change the system.
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These are the lonely warriors
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like my father and many, many others,
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and a key frontier of development work
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is to help these lonely warriors join hands
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so they can together overcome the odds.
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So for instance, today, in Ghana, courageous reformers
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from civil society, Parliament and government,
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have forged a coalition for transparent contracts
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in the oil sector, and, galvanized by this,
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reformers in Parliament are now investigating dubious contracts.
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These examples give new hope, new possibility
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to the problems I witnessed in Uganda
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or that my father confronted in Bihar.
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Two years ago, on April 8th, 2010, I called my father.
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It was very late at night, and at age 80,
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he was typing a 70-page public interest litigation
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against corruption in a road project.
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Though he was no lawyer, he argued the case in court
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himself the next day. He won the ruling,
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but later that very evening,
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he fell, and he died.
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He fought till the end, increasingly passionate
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that to combat corruption and poverty,
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not only did government officials need to be honest,
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but citizens needed to join together
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to make their voices heard.
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These became the two bookends of his life,
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and the journey he traveled in between
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mirrored the changing development landscape.
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Today, I'm inspired by these changes, and I'm excited
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that at the World Bank, we are embracing
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these new directions, a significant departure
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from my work in Uganda 20 years ago.
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We need to radically open up development
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so knowledge flows in multiple directions,
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inspiring practitioners, so aid becomes transparent,
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accountable and effective, so governments open up
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and citizens are engaged and empowered
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with reformers in government.
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We need to accelerate these shifts.
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If we do, we will find that the collective voices
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of the poor will be heard in Bihar,
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in Uganda, and beyond.
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We will find that textbooks and teachers
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will show up in schools for their children.
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We will find that these children, too,
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have a real chance of breaking their way out of poverty.
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Thank you. (Applause)
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(Applause)
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