Alexander Cooley on the New Great Game in Central Asia The accumulated wealth of policy experience failed to prevent financial crisis and recessions. The effect of these experiences on beliefs is long-lasting. This raises serious questions about the relevance of past policy lessons to the present predicament that confront us. Moreover, an important element (humanity/moral duty to our fellow people) is too often underdeveloped, invisible, not explicit or missing altogether. Nevertheless, evaluation practices still tend to focus on counting inputs and outputs, rather than telling stories. In this light, should we discount these past lessons and why is it crucial to consider the entire policy portfolio of interventions in evaluating a human capital investment strategy rather than focusing on one type of policy in isolation from the others to inform future policy from recent experiences?