Bill Vaughan, celebrated American columnist and author, once ruefully said, "It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them." It seems he possibly produced the famous quote keeping Bangladesh in sight well in advance. This is because poverty alleviation through different social protection schemes so far taken did not occur as rapidly as was expected. That too, in view of the fact that all past governments had allocated large amounts of funds for cutting poverty at the grassroots. But political cronies ate up a sizeable segment of the cake in the name of delivering the goods. One can blame lack of strict monitoring of different social security programmes for it. The last five years were, too, no different.
Thanks to initiatives by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, her government, despite many constraints, undertook a number of social protection schemes during her last five-year tenure. Funds being allocated yearly for the vulnerable groups were not small. But needed at the moment is a comprehensive survey as to how much money actually reaches the really vulnerable segment of the population.
The latest government plan to formulate a social protection strategy to bring all the poor and vulnerable people including newborn babies under the government's cash and food benefit schemes has to be viewed against past performances.
The General Economic Division (GED) of the Planning Commission is reportedly working on a policy document titled "National Social Protection Strategy (NSPS)" by March next, according to Professor Shamsul Alam, chief of the Division.
"Under the proposed strategy a lifestyle approach would be adopted where five stages of a human being would be taken into account for providing the target group with the state benefits," he said.
The plan is fine but it has to be drawn up taking inputs from our bitter past experiences. There had been no striking progress in poverty alleviation, despite enough allocations having been made for all the previous five-year plans. The misuse of government funds allocated for poverty alleviation and non-government organisations (NGOs) are responsible for this. The NGOs have also not succeeded much in bringing effective results in this regard.
Even celebrated economist Prof Rehman Sobhan had once regretted: "Allocations for poverty reduction are not utilised properly. If things go on like this, then we'll not be able to say bye to poverty."
BRAC executive director Mahbub Hossain hit the right chord when he said the majority of those who were not poor had turned poor due to natural calamities, medical expenses and for many other reasons.
Irregularities are there in determining who are poor or who are not. Extra allocation will not help if transparency is not ensured in this regard.
Even in international rating, Bangladesh has not fared well. The country came in 28th out of the 35 Asian countries surveyed for its provision of social protection for its poor and vulnerable citizens. The neighbouring Nepal, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan fared better on the Social Protection Index (SPI) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB). The ranking is based on the availability of social insurance, social assistance such as cash or in-kind transfers, child welfare, assistance to the elderly and disabled, and labour market programmes such as skills development and training.
The Bank found the country to have spent only 1.4 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) for social safety net. The study, however, used 2009 government data, meaning the increases in safety net spending in recent years were not reflected. In fact, in the following fiscal year, the country doubled the sum to 2.64 per cent of GDP. In the budget for fiscal 2013-14, Tk 253.71 billion has been set aside for various social safety net programmes. This amount is equivalent to 2.13 per cent of the country's GDP. The allocation is 9.85 per cent higher than that of the immediate-past fiscal year. Over the last four years, the government allocated Tk 823.25 billion for social safety net programmes. The money was indeed whopping in size.
Meanwhile, spending in most middle-income countries, including India, Indonesia and Pakistan, also remained below 3.0 per cent of GDP. Only in Japan, South Korea, Mongolia and Uzbekistan did it equal to, at least. 5.0 per cent of per capita gross domestic product.
The failure to support large numbers of poor and vulnerable people is leaving them exposed to risks and many unforeseen difficulties like unemployment, ill health and natural disasters. There are many vulnerable groups, including women and informal sector workers, who do not have access to unemployment, health or other social insurance coverage but are also not poor enough to be eligible for social assistance such as cash transfers. The ADB recommended the government's social protection programmes be expanded to cover this unprotected 'missing middle,' a demographic group which stands the chance of falling into poverty if an economic, environmental, or health shock of some kind takes place.
The study also noted that relatively little was being spent on labour market programmes like cash-for-work and skills development. Bangladesh, the labour market programmes of which account for 36 per cent of all social protection expenditures, however, was lauded in this respect.
Of the country's three major programmes, the Employment Generation for the Ultra-Poor, which is the largest, reach well over 6.0 million beneficiaries, or about 23 per cent of beneficiaries of different social protection schemes. Bangladesh's expenditure on disaster relief has been a major part of its social assistance system. This accounted for 19 per cent of social protection spending in 2009. Almost 18 million people, roughly 12 per cent of the population, were beneficiaries that year.
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Money that never goes to empower the poor
Rahman Jahangir | Published: January 25, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
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