A Peace Corp in every country

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”. When John Kennedy uttered those stirring words, it inspired a whole generation of young Americans but it was the creation of the Peace Corps in 1962 which enabled those ideals to be put into practice.

In the fifty years since the creation of the Peace Corps, almost 195,000 young Americans have served two year stints in 139 developing to work on issues ranging from AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation. By all accounts this has been one of the most successful programs in the western world. But the real success of this program has been one of unintended consequences. People are apt to forget that the original mission of the Peace Corps, as enshrined in its mission statement, were to help countries in meeting their need for trained men and women, and promoting a better understanding between these countries and Americans. Its creators must have known that given the fact that most of the early volunteers only had liberal arts degrees, their impact on actual development in poor countries could only be limited. The original thrust was thus more on burnishing the image of the US around the world than to really undertake substantive development work. The US had the USAID for that. But what the creators had not really anticipated was the impact the two year of duty in a poor country would have on the volunteers themselves!

In fact the most lasting impact of the Peace Corp may well have been on the future lives of those who volunteered. A large number of these volunteers went into public service on their return. Many became politicians and public servants at various levels of government. Most retained a love of the country they had spent two years of their lives in and many confided that these were for them life changing events.

I had been struck by these changes as I met many of these volunteers in late sixties when I was at Berkeley and working part time with an NGO called Forum International. I became convinced that a similar initiative in the developing countries would yield similar results and so we developed the concept of an international action corps modeled on the Peace Corps. At that time we failed in our efforts to raise funds to start this initiative but four decades later, perhaps the time has come when every developing country needs to develop its own Peace Corps.

In my travels through a large number of developing countries, I have found that the young people there are no less idealistic than the Americans but they have no avenues to channel their idealism. Most young people are really keen to leave their domestic confines to see and experience the world outside but again have neither the money nor the opportunity. Almost all the countries in Asia seem to have not only a history of conflict with their neighbors but also a high level of ignorance about each other. This lack of knowledge and empathy is breeding ground for needless jingoism and conflict. Public service in these countries is being increasingly seen as a path not to nation building but rather to corruption. The growing middle class is unwilling to enter the political arena or join any public service, with predictable results. In the recent Indian elections, fully one quarter of the candidates have prison histories. Of the rest, a large number come from political dynasties both at the federal and state levels. In many developing countries, it has been a truism that while the middle class and intellectuals are vociferous in their criticisms of their government, few are actually willing to do something about it other than write articles of protest. Rather than bewailing the lowering of political morality, the corner can only be turned by a change in the participants in the political process. A call to service to the young around the world is fundamental to this change.

What Obama said at a commencement speech to graduating seniors at Wesleyan university, he could have equally said it to graduating seniors at any college in the developing world: “Each of you will have the chance to make your own discovery in the years to come. And I say “chance” because you won’t have to take it. There’s no community service requirement in the real world; no one forcing you to care. You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should by. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live your life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America’s. But I hope you don’t. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, though you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get here, though you do have that debt. It’s because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter.”

This is what a Peace Corp could do for a developing country? It would create an avenue- a path for idealistic youngsters to harness their idealism to some practical and useful ends. It would provide them unwittingly an education about the problems of their neighbors first hand thus leading to a better understanding between neighboring countries. It would most importantly lead to the creation of an ethos of public service that most developing countries – after the first flush of the freedom struggles have worn off- presently lack. And most importantly it would perhaps lead to a substantial portion of these volunteers joining public service in their own countries on their return.