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I grew up in Bihar, India's poorest state,

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and I remember when I was six years old,

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I remember coming home one day to find a cart

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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

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when that cart with our half-eaten sweets

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was pulled away from us.

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Later, I understood why my father got so upset.

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Those sweets were a bribe

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from a contractor who was trying to get my father

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to award him a government contract.

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My father was responsible for building roads in Bihar,

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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

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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,

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and I was almost collapsing

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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

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such poverty by transferring aid from rich to poor countries.

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My initial work focused on Uganda, where I focused

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on negotiating reforms with the Finance Ministry of Uganda

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so they could access our loans.

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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:

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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

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represents the traditional approach to these problems

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that has been practiced since 1944,

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when winners of World War II, 500 founding fathers,

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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.

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And that traditional approach to development

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had three key elements. First, transfer of resources

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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

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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

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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?

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So for instance, several governments in Africa

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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

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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

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that is trying to understand how the government is spending its resources.

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To tackle this problem, governments are using new tools

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to visualize the budget so it's more understandable

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to the public.

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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

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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,

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when it was reported on this website that 800 students

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were at risk because school repairs had stalled

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due to corruption, the Department of Education

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in the Philippines took swift action.

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And you know what's exciting is that this innovation

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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

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community was able to use these tools

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to voice its aspirations.

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This is what the map of Tandale looked like

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in August, 2011. But within a few weeks,

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university students were able to use mobile phones

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and an open-source platform to dramatically map

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the entire community infrastructure.

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And what is very exciting is that citizens were then

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able to give feedback as to which health or water points

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were not working, aggregated

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in the red bubbles that you see,

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which together provides a graphic visual

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of the collective voices of the poor.

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Today, even Bihar is turning around and opening up

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under a committed leadership that is making government

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transparent, accessible and responsive to the poor.

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But, you know, in many parts of the world,

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governments are not interested in opening up

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or in serving the poor, and it is a real challenge

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for those who want to change the system.

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These are the lonely warriors

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like my father and many, many others,

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and a key frontier of development work

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is to help these lonely warriors join hands

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so they can together overcome the odds.

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So for instance, today, in Ghana, courageous reformers

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from civil society, Parliament and government,

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have forged a coalition for transparent contracts

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in the oil sector, and, galvanized by this,

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reformers in Parliament are now investigating dubious contracts.

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These examples give new hope, new possibility

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to the problems I witnessed in Uganda

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or that my father confronted in Bihar.

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Two years ago, on April 8th, 2010, I called my father.

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It was very late at night, and at age 80,

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he was typing a 70-page public interest litigation

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against corruption in a road project.

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Though he was no lawyer, he argued the case in court

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himself the next day. He won the ruling,

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but later that very evening,

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he fell, and he died.

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He fought till the end, increasingly passionate

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that to combat corruption and poverty,

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not only did government officials need to be honest,

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but citizens needed to join together

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to make their voices heard.

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These became the two bookends of his life,

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and the journey he traveled in between

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mirrored the changing development landscape.

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Today, I'm inspired by these changes, and I'm excited

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that at the World Bank, we are embracing

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these new directions, a significant departure

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from my work in Uganda 20 years ago.

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We need to radically open up development

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so knowledge flows in multiple directions,

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inspiring practitioners, so aid becomes transparent,

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accountable and effective, so governments open up

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and citizens are engaged and empowered

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with reformers in government.

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We need to accelerate these shifts.

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If we do, we will find that the collective voices

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of the poor will be heard in Bihar,

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in Uganda, and beyond.

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We will find that textbooks and teachers

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will show up in schools for their children.

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We will find that these children, too,

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have a real chance of breaking their way out of poverty.

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Thank you. (Applause)

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(Applause)