Problems with local legitimacy for your development project? Invent yourself a Goddess!

Normally academic papers about organisational theory don't yield much comedy value. But Derick W. Brinkerhoff has spiced up my Friday night in ways he could never have imagined with his 'Organisational legitimacy, capacity and capacity development'.

Aside from the fact that he references the concept of 'isomorphic mimicry,' which is my favourite thing at the moment because in one fell swoop it manages to explain both those 'fake wasps' that freak me out while actually being totally harmless and why education in many developing countries is so rubbish (here's a nice podcast to explain), there is a little gem half way down the left-hand column on page 9. And it's delivered so a matter-of-fact-ly in an otherwise innocuous paragraph about manipulative legitimacy strategies that you almost miss it.

"An interesting example [of manipulative legitimacy strategies] comes from the local family planning association in the village of Koppa, India, where to increase legitimacy for the association's services, staff created a new goddess of family welfare, Kalyaneshwari, to inspire women to limit family size"

WTF?!

Now you often hear about local beliefs being an impediment to implementing development initiatives. In the Global Poverty MOOC I'm currently taking (see earlier post) Ban
erjee and Duflo mention that some people in Udaipur are reluctant to get their children vaccinated for fear of the 'evil eye' that might fall upon them. But the audacity to take that problem and turn it into a solution is stunning, surreal and disturbing in equal measure. Local religious beliefs undermining your project? Create new ones, duh!

God-creation: tried and tested method for achieving development outcomes

Anyway if we can harness the brain-washing power of religion for development, then that's something I guess. God of good governance and democratic accountability anyone? Maaaah! Kind of speechless.