Two weeks ago, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made his first visit to India, and he brought along Rajiv Shah, born in the United States to Indian immigrants and now chief of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Kerry and Shah told Indian officials during their visit that the United States has a new strategy for the country which aims to change the bilateral relationship from aid recipient to trade partner.
But how will this be achieved? Through more partnerships and homegrown innovation, John A. Beed, USAID’s new mission director in the country, told Devex in his first-ever media interview.
India, he said, is a country of contrasts, housing both underdevelopment and some of the world’s cheapest and most cutting-edge development solutions, and USAID has set its sights on helping India tap into this capacity under its country development cooperation strategy extending until 2016.
“There are 750 R&D laboratories of multinational corporations in India, and some of the most innovative and cost-effective solutions to the world’s most vexing development challenges are emanating from India. Is there something that business knows that the development community is not yet fully leveraging?” asked Beed, who assumed office on June 17 just before Kerry and Shah’s tour of the country.
Beed explained that this is why the U.S. government and USAID have been working to move their approach and relationship with India away from “a traditional donor-recipient relationship to a true peer-to-peer partnership for addressing both Indian and global development challenges.”
A change in strategy
USAID’s new strategy, Beed said is much more than development innovation: “It is about delivering game-changing solutions to intractable development problems by working directly with local partners, optimizing on the financial and intellectual capital of the Indian private sector, crowdsourcing solutions among India’s vast population, and grounding all of this on objectively verifiable evidence.”
The plan centers around the Millennium Alliance — USAID’s flagship initiative and a $15.4 million partnership with India’s Federation of Industry and Chambers of Commerce and Department of Science and Technology that aims to find and support transformational solutions from both the country’s non-profit and for-profit sectors by harnessing financial resources from donors, social impact funds, venture capitalists, corporate foundations, angel investors and others.
USAID is thus changing its business model from taking the lead on development to reaching out and supporting others — particularly the private sector — to engage in development efforts, he added.
Beed also announced future initiatives like a new $3.2 million alliance to teach five million Indian children how to read at the primary level, as well as an off-grid partnership to benefit the country’s huge population without access to modern electricity.
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About the author
Johanna Morden
Johanna Morden is a community development worker by training and a global development journalist by profession. As a former Devex staff writer based in Manila, she covered the Asian Development Bank as well as Asia-Pacific's aid community at large. Johanna has written for a variety of international publications, covering social issues, disasters, government, ICT, business, and the law.
