"The White Man's Burden" debate continues

I blogged on this book the other day as it and the polemical debates it has engendered are interesting.

Easterly's book, The White Man’s Burden: How the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, which was named among the Best Books of 2006 by the Economist, the Washington Post, and the Financial Times, challenges some orthodox thinking on aid from various perspectives.

One of my heroes, Amartya Sen, has written an excellent review of the book. Click here for Amartya Sen's review of The White Man's Burden in Foreign Affairs, and here for Easterly's response to Sen.

Easterly has stirred some luminaries of the aid world to cerebral sparring and this is timely as growing poverty is the real terrorist spectre haunting the planet. Our best brains need to be focussed on how the world's resources can be mustered to find lasting solutions.