Misery Marketing:How Bill Gates Blew $258 million in India's HIV Corridor

From recent news article:

How Bill Gates Blew $258 million in India's HIV Corridor

Some of the things done by Avahan are just what an NGO in India should not do. Hopefully others will do better in wake of so much money spent for little to show.

Some points from the article below with my comments:

Why would a clinic serving illiterate visitors use more English than Indian languages?

Answer: It is a programme designed by misery marketers. Misery marketers want to get funding for their idea so they can enjoy the fat salaries. They want to impress the international funders, not the suffering people they are supposed to serve!

When it started on the ground in 2003, Avahan set for itself three goals: Arrest the spread of HIV/AIDS in India, expand the programme from the initial six states to across the nation, and develop a model that the government can adopt and sustain so that the project could be passed on to it. More than five years later, Avahan hasn’t achieved any of these goals.

This is a clear message that success in social work requires lot more than money. Money is important but it is only so much important. It cannot give anyone the fire in their bellies! That has to come from satisfaction of social work.

Soon, the 15-member team was in place. Ten of them had come from a private-sector background. The team members tackled HIV/AIDS much as they would a problem at McKinsey. Alexander’s office is papered with data and maps containing hundreds of coloured dots plotting the disease across the country. The argot is sheer B-school: Avahan is a “venture,” its HIV/AIDS prevention programme a “franchise,” the sex worker the “consumer.”


Oh really! sex worker is the consumer. The consumer is Queen. So how do we satisfy the queen! Can social work be really strategized by using business school metaphors! The business world is based on transactions which are done by equal parties based on mutual need. Decisions can be made on cost-benefit analysis. In social work, gathering trust of your target people is very important. Even with all good intentions it takes a lot of time and effort to build that trust. It is not so simple that we believe someone needs help, we are there to help, so we just need to go out there and help them.