It is more than fashionable, especially among the intellectual left, to hector everyone about the lack of governance in the market place. Arguing against governance is arguing against motherhood, and I, like most people, am not into matricide. Good governance is good, and more is indeed better.

Which is why the "firms" run by the intellectual left, like NGO's and QGO's (quasi- governmental organizations like the IMF, World Bank and United Nations) need to be questioned about what they are doing for their own governance. No, not what advice they are giving to hapless and often corrupt governments, but what they are practicing within. What is that old saying - QGO heal thyself?

The UN has just issued its flagship report on development, Human Development Report, 2003. It's (ideo)logical framework is as follows: growth is not being shared evenly, money is being spent on rich cows, and poor people are being left behind. More aid is needed to help the world's poor whose magnitude has stayed constant at 1.2 billion people throughout the last fifteen years, or certainly since 1987. And, of course, the best people to channel this aid are institutions like the UNDP and World Bank.

Some simple governance questions. What is the record of international aid agencies in helping alleviate poverty? How come, despite so much growth in developing economies, was there virtually no dent in poverty? Interestingly, the report does not answer the simple question as to how much did developing countries grow in the last two decades.

The reason not is presumably because the answer is inconsistent with the (ideological) conclusions. Excluding the transition economies of eastern Europe, the average person in a developing country increased her income by 3.5 percent per annum or a doubling of per capita income during the "bad" globalization period 1980-2000. In contrast, the average Ms. Jones from a rich country saw her incomes increase by only 35 percent, or only a third of the increase of the average poor person. Thus, without getting into pyrotechnics, this simple statistic proves that income inequality must have improved during 1980-2000. This is not the reality reported by the UN - it states that there were "ambiguous trends" in world inequality, or "findings on inequality vary considerably on the approach used to analyze it" (p.39).

Figures on this simple statistic - average growth of poor and rich countries - are not cited in the report though many involved and convoluted statistics ("the more to confuse you by") are presented. The all important poverty numbers are documented with gusto, though curiously the "most recent" poverty data reported is for 1999, almost four years out of date.

Poverty and associated data for only four countries - China, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan - can prove that something is massively wrong with the UN-World Bank case of poverty staying relatively stagnant at 1.2 billion (or a marginal decline, especially given a doubling of income, in the percentage poor in the world from 28 percent in 1987 to 23 percent in 1999). All the data presented in the table are from HDR 2003; the poverty figures are those of the World Bank and faithfully reproduced by the UN. Different measures of poverty are presented, along with per-capita income levels. While there is not a perfect correlation between the different measures of poverty, considerable research has pointed out to a "reasonable" degree of correlation between the different measures. Thus, if the poverty data are "consistent" and make sense to the reader, then there is NO governance problem at the QGOs and their data on poverty should be accepted; alternatively, if the inconsistency of the numbers border on the bizarre, if not nonsensical, then some answers are needed from those who base their policy prescriptions, and need for aid, on the basis of such (knowingly) faulty data.

According to the UN-World Bank figures, China is more than twice as rich as Pakistan, yet has a higher percentage of people in poverty! (Allowance for even a worse distribution of income still leaves a gaping hole in the logic). It is not the case that all countries richer than Pakistan will have a lower level of poverty - but adjusting for distribution of income, it has to be the case that a richer country will have lower poverty. India is 50 percent richer than Pakistan, yet has almost three times the percentage under poverty; and with practically the same distribution of income. Bangladesh is only 10 percent poorer than Pakistan, almost half the per-capita income level as India, and yet has the same percentage of poor As India and three times the percentage poor in Pakistan. Which one of these statistics, do you, the concerned for the poor citizen and the arbiter of governance at the QGOs, believe?

The associated "poverty" statistics presented may help you make up your mind. Pakistan with only 13 percent poor, has one of the highest under-5 mortality rate of 109 deaths per 1000 births, compared to only 39 for China. In terms of under-nourishment, India has 24 percent undernourished compared to 35 percent for Bangladesh, but has the same poverty level?

It is these flawed poverty statistics that form the fragile backbone of the UN case for more aid to alleviate poverty. It is these flawed numbers that allow the UN (and World Bank) to state that poverty has not declined, so give us more money to help achieve the development goals for 2015.

The UN report "smells" of breast-beating, of wanting to claim that the elites have only one thing in their hearts and minds- to improve the lot of the poor. If I come up with a higher poverty number does that make me a better human being? It is the case that all my friends are liberal, and not just my best friends. Not surprisingly, I am also a liberal. But how can I be a liberal and yet claim that poverty, according to the $ a day poverty line, is almost exclusively an African problem, and that the poor in the world are closer to 500 million, rather than the oft-cited UN-World Bank figure of 1.2 billion? And that the poor in India are less than 13 percent, and not 35 percent of the population. I sing the liberal anthem by advocating that the poverty line be raised to reflect the new reality, and raised by a magnitude to show more than 1.2 billion poor. (See my recent book "Imagine there's no country...

But back to governance, liberal style. Since governance itself is a vague concept, I cannot be precise and will have to indulge in some speculation. The reason for the ideologically faulty statistics is that liberal institutions, like the UN and the World Bank, have acted as a research monopoly with no internal checks and balances. The ideology of these institutions may have made people look the other way - there are likely pressures to conform, to toe the party line. It can also be argued that well-meaning people go along because after all, in quintessential liberal fashion, the end justifies the means - after all, the goal is to get more money for the poor, isn't it? And if the poor now get a larger fraction of the money spent on rich Japanese cows, what is the harm in overstating poverty?

The harm is one of a loss of innocence, a loss of governance, a loss of face, a loss of credibility, and eventually a loss of genuine actors for the poor. Because of increased data availability, the world has caught on to the game; researchers are publishing reports pointing out the anomalies, the glaring inconsistencies, in UN-World Bank estimates of developing country growth and poverty. Is it not much better to celebrate the success of Asia (more than 3 billion people, and more than one and a half billion removed from extreme poverty) and apply the lessons of this success to the poor continent of Africa? But this would involve seeing the glass as considerably more than half-full, when a quarter full is all that a relaxed liberal is willing to concede.