Dream or doable?

Poverty continues to be the perennial human problem in Bangladesh. It is thus no wonder that the issue of poverty overtakes everything in the documents of the government, the private sector and the donors. It is very unfortunate that even more than four decades after independence, Bangladesh remains as one of the poorest countries in the world map. Researches on poverty under different shades and connotations are as widespread in this country as the level of poverty itself.  There are various estimates of poverty levels, and each of them could be criticized from different corners. It may duly be so, given different data set and assumptions used by the researchers.
Poverty is basically a multi-dimensional concept that does not arise only from lowness of income. It is not a state of deprivation either; it is also a state of vulnerability. The starkest manifestation of poverty is in the incidence of actual exposure to violence of one category or another. Poverty shows up its ugliest face in terms of hunger and malnourishment. Inadequate dietary intake or metabolic disorder triggers off a chain of reactions which cause depletion in body tissues and fluids leading to the loss of body weight and impairment of physical growth, especially among children. This may pass on to next generation to put person(s) in poverty traps.
Poverty also involves gender dimensions. Thus, only to concentrate on family poverty without paying attention to gender can be misleading in terms of both causation and consequences. Poverty may also be looked at from the angle of 'social exclusion' or 'voices' where a particular segment of the population is barred by laws or customs to participate in economic activities or social functions. We can also mention about absolute and relative poverty. For example, poverty level of an individual may improve over time but the difference with his neighbor might equally increase at the same time. And finally, Human Poverty embraces health and education in addition to per-capita income that led to the emergence of the concept called 'Human Development Index (HDI).
Progress in poverty reduction: Bangladesh can duly take a pride in its attempts at reducing poverty. There had been a uniform and steady decline in poverty rates from 2000 to 2010 with an average decline of 1.74 percentage point per year. In 2000, about half of the population was poor that dropped to about one-thirds by 2010. The Planning Commission estimates show that about one-fourth of population remained poor in 2015 and hopefully it would reach one-fifths by the end of the Seventh Plan in 2020. Pitted against internal and external shocks, the performance sounds soothing. It has to be mentioned that the incidence of extreme poverty fell faster during the same comparable periods - from one-third in 2000 to about one-fifth in 2010, about 13 per cent in 2015 and projected to go further down to only about 9 per cent in 2020.But significant gap exists between urban and rural poverty as evidenced by the fact that in 2010, 35 per cent of the rural population was poor compared to 21 per cent in urban areas. For extreme poor, the rate is 21 per cent and 8 per cent respectively. The historical regional disparity - showing eastern region of Bangladesh (Dhaka, Chittagong, and Sylhet Division) witnessing lower incidence of poverty than western regions (Khulna, Barisal and Rajshahi - seems to have narrowed down over time. By and large, Bangladesh is on track for reaching the poverty and extreme poverty MDG target FOR 2015. Available evidences show that at national level, poverty depth was nearly halved over 2000-2010 period, and Bangladesh 2015 poverty headcount is below the MDG target of about 29 per cent for 2015.
Based on solid progress in poverty reduction so far, the Seventh Five Year Plan (FY2016-2020) intends to cut sharply extreme poverty to only about 9 per cent by 2020: "As Bangladesh attains middle income status it must free itself from the incidence of extreme poverty. While it may not be possible to completely eliminate the incidence of extreme poverty during the next five years, it is certainly possible to accelerate the pace of reduction by complementing the broad-based poverty reduction strategy of the Sixth Plan with many more targeted programme for the extreme poor."
A breakthrough by BRAC: In consort with government's commitment, and in addition to government's own initiatives, various NGOs have already stepped up their support to extreme poor by various ways and means. Many of those programmes have successfully addressed the issue. But BRAC's Challenging the Frontier of Poverty Reduction- Targeting Ultra-poor (CFPR-TUP) floated since 2002 deserves separate discussion on more than one counts. First, the model has already been replicated in several countries of the world. Second, its effectiveness in some of those countries has been evaluated by a group of researchers from world famous universities like MIT, Yale, and Princeton etc. to provide a credible opinion. Third, and more importantly perhaps, about a dozen of articles have already been published in international journals on various impacts of this programme. Fourth, in the BRAC's strategic plan for next five years, the ultra-poor programme has been given top priority. Fourth, BRAC's experience suggests that women-headed households, single women (whether widowed, divorced, deserted or never married), disabled women and women from linguistic and religious minorities and marginalised ethnic groups are over-represented among the poor. And finally, as we shall see later, multi-dimensional problems of the ultra-poor are addressed through multiple weapons.
There are currently around 2.5 million households that fall under BRAC's definition of ultra-poverty. BRAC aspires to eliminate extreme poverty completely from the country by 2020. Over the next 5 years, BRAC aims to graduate a million household out of extreme poverty itself. This will necessitate the 'Targeting the Ultra Poor' (TUP) programme - which currently graduates approximately 100,000 household every year - to be intensified and scaled up. For achieving complete elimination of extreme poverty, BRAC will closely work and advocate with the government to effect favourable changes to its social safety net programmes. Some auxiliary streams of work will involve the establishment of a high level advocacy team and facilitating efforts to standardise measurement criteria among all practitioners.  As the government launches its National Social Safety Net Strategy, BRAC needs to work closely with the government to meet this ambitious target and promote its model and knowledge with the government.  Within the programme itself, work will continue to improve the model and introduce different versions of such as grant based and loan based interventions. Beyond targeting the extreme poverty directly, BRAC will also continue to work towards protecting the poor and the vulnerable from health, disaster and economic shocks.  Its integrated approach towards poverty needs to be biased in poverty pockets and hard to reach areas. BRAC will also consider a quota of extreme poor students in pre-primary and primary schools and other programmes such as skills, migration etc.  Curative health care cost can cause up to 40 per cent income loss. Continuous focus on protecting the poor from health shocks through its health programme, including TB, infectious disease and emerging non communicable diseases, would work towards reducing that cost. Also by providing liquidity through health insurance and loans, by raising awareness about road accidents, a growing cause of economic shock, through road safety programmes and protecting them from disasters through the disaster protection programme are some of other means that would go towards building resilience among the poor.
Theoretic framework: The participation of a household in the programme would depend on meeting following conditions: (a) owning 10 decimals or less land; (b) children of school age (5-14) are engaged in income generation; (c) no productive asset; (d) mainly dependent on irregular income (from working as housemaid/day labour, begging etc.) of female member and (e) no male member capable of working.
After the selection - based on Participatory Rural Appraisal Method, discussions with village stakeholders etc. - participants are offered a menu of assets such as livestock, small crafts, small retail, vegetable cultivation, horticulture nursery etc. worth USD 140from which to choose one. All the participants receive a weekly subsistence allowance of approximately BDT 175 (USD 2.50). This aims at smoothening consumption and compensate for the opportunity cost of the time involvement in the programme. Besides occasional visits to check upon man and materials, free health, legal and other services are provided to the poor. By and large, the theoretical framework is as follows:
Impact assessment: As mentioned earlier, BRAC reports to have lifted, on average, 100,000 extreme poor households out of poverty every year. Further, the largest NGO of the world also aims at lifting on average 200,000 households every year during next five years.
The concerns of the critics, however, centre around two basic issues such as replicability and sustainability. The former has been answered by Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo with others (Published in Science), drawing upon experiences in six countries excluding Bangladesh, in the following words: "We present results from six randomized control trials of an integrated approach to improve livelihoods amongst the very poor. The approach combines the transfer of a productive asset with consumption support, training and coaching plus savings encouragement and health education and/or services. Results from the implementation of the same basic programme, adapted to a wide variety of geographic and institutional contexts and with multiple implementing partners, show statistically significant, cost-effective impacts on consumption (fueled mostly by increases in self-employment income) and psychosocial status of the targeted households. The impact on the poor households lasted at least a year after all implementation ended. It is possible to make sustainable improvements in the economic status of the poor with a relatively short-term intervention."
The sustainability question has been answered by Narayan C Das, Farzana Misha, and Jinnat Ara drawing upon experience of Bangladesh. The sampler households included beneficiaries called SUP (selected ultra-poor) and the rest of ultra-poor called NSUP (not selected ultra-poor). In order to evaluate the programme, households were surveyed in 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2014.The instruments used were randomized control trial (RCT), quasi-experimental methods etc. The impacts, based on three rounds of surveys in 2007, 2011, and 2014, are as follows:
l After 7 years of the programme intervention, never enrolled in schools decreased by about 5 percentage points, and primary enrolment increased by almost the same points;
l After 4 and 7 years of the intervention, per capita income increased by BDT 2,049 and 3,042 respectively, and food security increased by 4 and 16 percentage points respectively;
l Amount of cultivable land increase by 0.82 and 1.36 decimals;
l After 4 and 7 years of intervention, both male and female members' engagement in wage labour decreased and that of self-employment increased;
l Per capita food consumption s well as food expenditure increased significantly with an access to fruits, fish, meat, milk etc.; non-food expenditure increased by BDT 3,967 and, 1970 respectively.
l Amount of homestead land increased by 0.25 and 0.69 decimals respectively;
l Value of business asset increased BDT 30,767 and 17,741 respectively, and value of non-business asset went up by BDT 6, 81 and 436 respectively.
Research is not just an act of muddling through mathematical equations and econometric tools; it is also an act of reading minds of the people. Quantitative impact apart, qualitative impressions also reveal a significant gain out of the programme. Eminent researcher Ahmed Mushtaque Raja Chowdhury once met a dozen of beneficiaries in informal meetings to know their impressions about improvements in their own words. He reckons that, as told by the women, their lives before 2007 (year of inclusion in the programme) were miserable, without food, hopeless and exploited. But after the programme, they have increased assets, repaired houses, sent children to schools, having satisfactory meals. They are now engaged in economic activities taking loans (to the tune of BDT 7-10,00 from microfinance institutions. By and large, these extreme poor women have graduated from ultra-poverty. May be that the improvement is not much but it is far better than 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short'. CFPR-TUP programme apparently proved that given commitment, concretization, cost-effective and compact package, elimination of extreme poverty within a couple of years may not be a dream but a doable.
Abdul Bayes is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University. [email protected]