Not really. No doubt these agencies and people hope to do good, but they view "poverty" through Western, materialist eyes. Many people do not know that they are poor and deprived until Westerners tell them that they are because they lack refrigerators and large-screen TVs . (See Eskimos as a case in point.)
I am not talking about famine and the like, just about normal times in subsistence pre-industrial areas with pre-industrial societies. Isn't there a condescending assumption that these brown people cannot figure out their lives by themselves? Why do Westerners wish to intrude on these peoples' lives and cultures? I suppose the Asians and Westerners have done so already through our desire for their natural resources, though, especially in Africa.
What would happen if the aid industry started collecting data on how the people it serves actually feel about their lives?
The classic Heinlein on material poverty:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck.”
Robert A. Heinlein
