0:00:00.402,0:00:05.411
I grew up in Bihar, India's poorest state,

0:00:05.411,0:00:08.877
and I remember when I was six years old,

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I remember coming home one day to find a cart

0:00:12.643,0:00:17.964
full of the most delicious sweets at our doorstep.

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My brothers and I dug in,

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and that's when my father came home.

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He was livid, and I still remember how we cried

0:00:30.205,0:00:34.269
when that cart with our half-eaten sweets

0:00:34.269,0:00:37.486
was pulled away from us.

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Later, I understood why my father got so upset.

0:00:42.287,0:00:45.512
Those sweets were a bribe

0:00:45.512,0:00:49.093
from a contractor who was trying to get my father

0:00:49.093,0:00:52.556
to award him a government contract.

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My father was responsible for building roads in Bihar,

0:00:57.217,0:01:01.820
and he had developed a firm stance against corruption,

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even though he was harassed and threatened.

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His was a lonely struggle, because Bihar

0:01:09.236,0:01:12.973
was also India's most corrupt state,

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where public officials were enriching themselves,

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[rather] than serving the poor who had no means

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to express their anguish if their children

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had no food or no schooling.

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And I experienced this most viscerally

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when I traveled to remote villages to study poverty.

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And as I went village to village,

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I remember one day, when I was famished and exhausted,

0:01:49.591,0:01:51.910
and I was almost collapsing

0:01:51.910,0:01:54.940
in a scorching heat under a tree,

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and just at that time, one of the poorest men in that village

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invited me into his hut and graciously fed me.

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Only I later realized that what he fed me

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was food for his entire family for two days.

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This profound gift of generosity

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challenged and changed the very purpose of my life.

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I resolved to give back.

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Later, I joined the World Bank, which sought to fight

0:02:35.083,0:02:40.851
such poverty by transferring aid from rich to poor countries.

0:02:40.851,0:02:45.883
My initial work focused on Uganda, where I focused

0:02:45.883,0:02:50.111
on negotiating reforms with the Finance Ministry of Uganda

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so they could access our loans.

0:02:52.940,0:02:56.071
But after we disbursed the loans, I remember

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a trip in Uganda where I found newly built schools

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without textbooks or teachers,

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new health clinics without drugs,

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and the poor once again without any voice or recourse.

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It was Bihar all over again.

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Bihar represents the challenge of development:

0:03:19.812,0:03:23.723
abject poverty surrounded by corruption.

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Globally, 1.3 billion people live on less than

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$1.25 a day, and the work I did in Uganda

0:03:32.692,0:03:37.623
represents the traditional approach to these problems

0:03:37.623,0:03:41.915
that has been practiced since 1944,

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when winners of World War II, 500 founding fathers,

0:03:47.535,0:03:50.971
and one lonely founding mother,

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gathered in New Hampshire, USA,

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to establish the Bretton Woods institutions,

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including the World Bank.

0:03:57.822,0:04:01.122
And that traditional approach to development

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had three key elements. First, transfer of resources

0:04:05.058,0:04:07.009
from rich countries in the North

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to poorer countries in the South,

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accompanied by reform prescriptions.

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Second, the development institutions that channeled

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these transfers were opaque, with little transparency

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of what they financed or what results they achieved.

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And third, the engagement in developing countries

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was with a narrow set of government elites

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with little interaction with the citizens, who are

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the ultimate beneficiaries of development assistance.

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Today, each of these elements is opening up

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due to dramatic changes in the global environment.

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Open knowledge, open aid, open governance,

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and together, they represent three key shifts

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that are transforming development

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and that also hold greater hope for the problems

0:05:00.805,0:05:05.378
I witnessed in Uganda and in Bihar.

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The first key shift is open knowledge.

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You know, developing countries today will not simply

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accept solutions that are handed down to them

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by the U.S., Europe or the World Bank.

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They get their inspiration, their hope,

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their practical know-how,

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from successful emerging economies in the South.

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They want to know how China lifted 500 million people

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out of poverty in 30 years,

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how Mexico's Oportunidades program

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improved schooling and nutrition for millions of children.

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This is the new ecosystem of open-knowledge flows,

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not just traveling North to South, but South to South,

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and even South to North,

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with Mexico's Oportunidades today inspiring New York City.

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And just as these North-to-South transfers are opening up,

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so too are the development institutions

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that channeled these transfers.

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This is the second shift: open aid.

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Recently, the World Bank opened its vault of data

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for public use, releasing 8,000 economic and social indicators

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for 200 countries over 50 years,

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and it launched a global competition to crowdsource

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innovative apps using this data.

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Development institutions today are also opening

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for public scrutiny the projects they finance.

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Take GeoMapping. In this map from Kenya,

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the red dots show where all the schools financed by donors

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are located, and the darker the shade of green,

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the more the number of out-of-school children.

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So this simple mashup reveals that donors

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have not financed any schools in the areas

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with the most out-of-school children,

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provoking new questions. Is development assistance

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targeting those who most need our help?

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In this manner, the World Bank has now GeoMapped

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30,000 project activities in 143 countries,

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and donors are using a common platform

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to map all their projects.

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This is a tremendous leap forward in transparency

0:07:36.132,0:07:38.974
and accountability of aid.

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And this leads me to the third, and in my view,

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the most significant shift in development:

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open governance. Governments today are opening up

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just as citizens are demanding voice and accountability.

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From the Arab Spring to the Anna Hazare movement in India,

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using mobile phones and social media

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not just for political accountability

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but also for development accountability.

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Are governments delivering services to the citizens?

0:08:11.489,0:08:15.634
So for instance, several governments in Africa

0:08:15.634,0:08:20.658
and Eastern Europe are opening their budgets to the public.

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But, you know, there is a big difference between a budget

0:08:24.061,0:08:28.098
that's public and a budget that's accessible.

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This is a public budget. (Laughter)

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And as you can see, it's not really accessible

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or understandable to an ordinary citizen

0:08:38.842,0:08:43.840
that is trying to understand how the government is spending its resources.

0:08:43.840,0:08:47.775
To tackle this problem, governments are using new tools

0:08:47.775,0:08:52.458
to visualize the budget so it's more understandable

0:08:52.458,0:08:54.658
to the public.

0:08:54.658,0:08:58.592
In this map from Moldova, the green color shows

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those districts that have low spending on schools

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but good educational outcomes,

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and the red color shows the opposite.

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Tools like this help turn a shelf full of inscrutable documents

0:09:14.776,0:09:18.530
into a publicly understandable visual,

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and what's exciting is that with this openness,

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there are today new opportunities for citizens

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to give feedback and engage with government.

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So in the Philippines today, parents and students

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can give real-time feedback on a website,

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Checkmyschool.org, or using SMS, whether teachers

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and textbooks are showing up in school,

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the same problems I witnessed in Uganda and in Bihar.

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And the government is responsive. So for instance,

0:09:53.599,0:09:58.109
when it was reported on this website that 800 students

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were at risk because school repairs had stalled

0:10:02.295,0:10:04.886
due to corruption, the Department of Education

0:10:04.886,0:10:07.840
in the Philippines took swift action.

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And you know what's exciting is that this innovation

0:10:11.537,0:10:16.199
is now spreading South to South, from the Philippines

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to Indonesia, Kenya, Moldova and beyond.

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In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, even an impoverished

0:10:24.803,0:10:28.357
community was able to use these tools

0:10:28.357,0:10:31.329
to voice its aspirations.

0:10:31.329,0:10:34.248
This is what the map of Tandale looked like

0:10:34.248,0:10:38.601
in August, 2011. But within a few weeks,

0:10:38.601,0:10:43.067
university students were able to use mobile phones

0:10:43.067,0:10:47.617
and an open-source platform to dramatically map

0:10:47.617,0:10:51.104
the entire community infrastructure.

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And what is very exciting is that citizens were then

0:10:55.569,0:11:00.576
able to give feedback as to which health or water points

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were not working, aggregated

0:11:03.450,0:11:06.050
in the red bubbles that you see,

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which together provides a graphic visual

0:11:10.648,0:11:15.103
of the collective voices of the poor.

0:11:15.103,0:11:20.713
Today, even Bihar is turning around and opening up

0:11:20.713,0:11:23.585
under a committed leadership that is making government

0:11:23.585,0:11:28.753
transparent, accessible and responsive to the poor.

0:11:28.753,0:11:32.281
But, you know, in many parts of the world,

0:11:32.281,0:11:35.259
governments are not interested in opening up

0:11:35.259,0:11:40.376
or in serving the poor, and it is a real challenge

0:11:40.376,0:11:44.720
for those who want to change the system.

0:11:44.720,0:11:48.289
These are the lonely warriors

0:11:48.289,0:11:51.753
like my father and many, many others,

0:11:51.753,0:11:54.877
and a key frontier of development work

0:11:54.877,0:12:00.073
is to help these lonely warriors join hands

0:12:00.073,0:12:03.614
so they can together overcome the odds.

0:12:03.614,0:12:08.357
So for instance, today, in Ghana, courageous reformers

0:12:08.357,0:12:11.557
from civil society, Parliament and government,

0:12:11.557,0:12:15.749
have forged a coalition for transparent contracts

0:12:15.749,0:12:19.805
in the oil sector, and, galvanized by this,

0:12:19.805,0:12:25.485
reformers in Parliament are now investigating dubious contracts.

0:12:25.485,0:12:30.413
These examples give new hope, new possibility

0:12:30.413,0:12:33.525
to the problems I witnessed in Uganda

0:12:33.525,0:12:38.627
or that my father confronted in Bihar.

0:12:38.627,0:12:45.596
Two years ago, on April 8th, 2010, I called my father.

0:12:45.596,0:12:50.994
It was very late at night, and at age 80,

0:12:50.994,0:12:55.795
he was typing a 70-page public interest litigation

0:12:55.795,0:12:59.409
against corruption in a road project.

0:12:59.409,0:13:04.027
Though he was no lawyer, he argued the case in court

0:13:04.027,0:13:08.241
himself the next day. He won the ruling,

0:13:08.241,0:13:10.263
but later that very evening,

0:13:10.263,0:13:14.857
he fell, and he died.

0:13:14.857,0:13:19.801
He fought till the end, increasingly passionate

0:13:19.801,0:13:23.746
that to combat corruption and poverty,

0:13:23.746,0:13:27.753
not only did government officials need to be honest,

0:13:27.753,0:13:31.002
but citizens needed to join together

0:13:31.002,0:13:33.897
to make their voices heard.

0:13:33.897,0:13:38.758
These became the two bookends of his life,

0:13:38.758,0:13:41.472
and the journey he traveled in between

0:13:41.472,0:13:46.257
mirrored the changing development landscape.

0:13:46.257,0:13:51.210
Today, I'm inspired by these changes, and I'm excited

0:13:51.210,0:13:54.314
that at the World Bank, we are embracing

0:13:54.314,0:13:57.403
these new directions, a significant departure

0:13:57.403,0:14:01.281
from my work in Uganda 20 years ago.

0:14:01.281,0:14:04.822
We need to radically open up development

0:14:04.822,0:14:07.626
so knowledge flows in multiple directions,

0:14:07.626,0:14:12.417
inspiring practitioners, so aid becomes transparent,

0:14:12.417,0:14:16.576
accountable and effective, so governments open up

0:14:16.576,0:14:20.522
and citizens are engaged and empowered

0:14:20.522,0:14:22.181
with reformers in government.

0:14:22.181,0:14:25.378
We need to accelerate these shifts.

0:14:25.378,0:14:30.378
If we do, we will find that the collective voices

0:14:30.378,0:14:34.768
of the poor will be heard in Bihar,

0:14:34.768,0:14:36.990
in Uganda, and beyond.

0:14:36.990,0:14:41.065
We will find that textbooks and teachers

0:14:41.065,0:14:44.102
will show up in schools for their children.

0:14:44.102,0:14:48.185
We will find that these children, too,

0:14:48.185,0:14:54.303
have a real chance of breaking their way out of poverty.

0:14:54.303,0:14:57.518
Thank you. (Applause)

0:14:57.518,0:15:00.238
(Applause)