The article describes the IDDS (International Development Design Summit) workshop in which participating engineers design things like water-carrying backpacks to help the world’s poor. The engineering solutions being offered do not appear to have much to do with development nor with getting people out of poverty but rather to keep them poor by making them more functional in poverty. It appears that these gadgets will be useful but their impact would have been greater if there were also a development component. For example, the Grameen Bank micro-credit program in Bangladesh offers credit that the poor can use to leverage themselves out of poverty so that they can afford a well or running water and no longer have to carry water on their backs or otherwise. The IDDS objective of keeping the poor more content with poverty seems strangely incongruent with mainstream anti-poverty programs.
Cha-am Jamal
Thailand
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