I went to a job interview at the Brazilian National Laboratory of Synchrotron Light. Its the only particle accelerator in Latin America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laborat%C3%B3rio_Nacional_de_Lu...). When I got there the Taxi driver dropped me off about a 10 minute walk away and I had to walk down a dusty mud track in order to get to at the centre. It seemed such a weird contrast to the gleaming and modern facility itself that I asked the guy interviewing me at the end why they didn't build a proper road to it.
He said - 'Officially, there is a road there. We raised the money and the local authorities built it. It just never appeared.' I assume this kind of corruption is everywhere in Brazil.
'Officially, there is a road there. We raised the money and the local authorities built it. It just never appeared.'
I am a huge fan of Brazilian culture, but what you described is why so many aid programs fail. People know that more money should go to educated, but they have no way to ensure it doesn't get diverted.
I went to grad school in a public university (UFRGS) there for a while, and that kind of contrast was present there too. The campus looks like an abandoned place, with tall grass everywhere, stray dogs, old buildings full of cracks, etc. But inside the labs, it's a completely different story: high-end machines, lots of computing resources, you name it. Professors make good use of grant money, but the administration doesn't take good care of the campus, probably because a lot of the money that goes to that is diverted somewhere along the way.
He said - 'Officially, there is a road there. We raised the money and the local authorities built it. It just never appeared.' I assume this kind of corruption is everywhere in Brazil.