One blogger whose posts I follow regularly is Kevin Kelly. Recently I came across a thought-provoking idea in his Technium blog.

Quote:
Poverty is the natural beginning state of all societies, east or west. Rather, decentralization is the engine which removes poverty and brings wealth. To the degree that infrastructure, education, and trade can be decentralized, wealth will rise in proportion. To the degree that infrastructure, education and trade are centralized, poverty will remain.

….Wiliam Easterly argues in his book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, that the billions and billions of dollars spent on aid for developing countries has not only *not* helped, it has set them back decades. Aid, as we know it, kills development. This harm occurs because almost all previous aid has funneled through a central government or semi-governmental organizations and that official route tightens centrality. Even if the governments were saintly, and they are definitely not, the scale of money flowing through these centralizing nodes prohibits the distribution of resources, infrastructure, trade, and education. The more aid that arrives, the less development can actually happen.
Unquote.

In Kashmir I feel that the problem is that all very often the motives behind providing aid are not entirely altruistic. Aid is more like largesse distributed according to a specific agenda of either the provider [aid agency] or the implementer [government agency/NGO] with the result that that aid-based development is skewed, even though it can be argued that it may be better than no development at all.

KK also has some interesting photos of Kashmir in his photogallery.
Well worth a visit.