Proposed National Social Protection Strategy

In a country where nearly one-third of the population still live below the poverty line and many more exist on the border line, the state can hardly ignore its responsibility for extending the much-needed social protection to the most disadvantaged people. Rich nations usually put in place different sorts of social benefit schemes for their citizens, irrespective of their financial status. But the poor countries do not have the resources to make available the minimum social benefits to all their citizens. So, a few of them have devised strategies only to help the most underprivileged section of the population using a part of their scant amount of public resources.

Being one of the resource-starved countries, Bangladesh has also been trying to employ a portion of its otherwise meagre public resources under the social safety net programmes. Yet it has not been possible on its part to reach the benefits of such programmes to all who deserve the same. The government now spends around 2.5 per cent of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) on social safety net programmes annually. The expenditure has more than doubled over the last one and a half decades. Against this backdrop, the policymakers have reportedly decided to increase the spending, equivalent to 3.0 per cent of the GDP, on such programmes under the proposed National Social Protection Strategy (NSPS).

The General Economic Division (GED) of the Planning Commission is now busy formulating the new strategy that would adopt the 'lifestyle approach' to make available the benefits to the economically vulnerable groups. Under the proposed NSPS having seven segments, financial and other benefits would be made available to the deserving new-born babies, working-age population, poor primary- and secondary-level students, disabled people and senior citizens. And all the existing safety net programmes will be merged with the NSPS that plans to initially cover 50 per cent of the economically vulnerable population.

An investment worth more than $3.5 billion in safety net programmes aimed at helping the poor and vulnerable population should be considered a considerable one, given the tight resource position of a country like Bangladesh. Initially, the investment in the programmes was a modest one. With the expansion of the programmes over time, the size of the investment has also grown. The segmentation of the safety net programmes on the basis of different target groups appears to be an innovative and right idea. The blanket-type formula that has so far been followed, has only met the survival needs of the disadvantaged section of the population. The proposed NSPS, upon its implementation after finalisation and approval by the government at its highest level, is expected to meet, at least, some of the basic needs of different sections of people in distress.

However, the designers of the proposed protection strategy do need to address a basic flaw -- diversion of resources using political influence -- in the safety net programmes. Several studies, including one conducted recently by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), have found that a substantial part of the safety net allocations does not reach the target groups because of leakages of different sorts. Since the strategy is still being discussed at different levels, it is expected that experts would find ways to plug the holes in the programmes so that the benefits reach the right kind of people.