Redefining development strategy for poverty alleviation
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
Syed Fattahul Alim
While the economic powerhouses of the world are busy protecting their own houses in the face of the slump, the commitment of the rich nations towards addressing global poverty has naturally been put on the backburner. This is the reality, though the governments hit hard by the recession have not failed to reiterate that they are still committed to the greater cause of helping the poorer nations out of their predicament.
Poverty alleviation has a lot to do with redistribution of income and wealth. With industrially advanced nations embroiled in their own problems, the responsibility of helping the poor has to a large measure devolved on the governments of the nations known for their high incidence of poverty themselves.
In Bangladesh, for example, the general level of awareness about poverty is very high, both at the government and the private level. In addition to the numerous projects being run in collaboration with the government and the development partners, the non-government organisations have also been operating a very wide network of poverty mitigation activities. The main focus of these privately-run anti-poverty activities is creation of income opportunity for the poor. Besides these ongoing measures, the government has also its safety-net programme to address extreme poverty. So, for all practical purposes, the cause of poverty mitigation should be an issue that is well-looked-after in Bangladesh.
But this general level of awareness and supporting activities to fight poverty notwithstanding, question arises from time to time as to whether the ongoing measures are really reaching their targeted beneficiaries. A recent World Bank (WB) report on this score has drawn quite an opposite picture of the reality on the ground.
The report titled "Poverty Assessment for Bangladesh: Creating Opportunities and Bridging the East-West Divide" presented at a press conference highlighted the pattern of public resource allocation in the fight against poverty and the actual situation of poverty in the country. The report, however, brought the government's safety net programme under review.
Though the report concerns itself with a particular poverty-related programme run by the government, it points at the common fault line of the poverty alleviation activities run either by the government from the public exchequer or by the private agencies with the help of the charity or low-interest dedicated funds. The WB report in question shows that geographically there is a bias in the poverty mitigation programmes. Though traditionally the incidence of poverty is more pronounced in the western part of the country than the east, the flow of resources does not comply with this reality. The geographical division of the eastern and western parts of the country is however drawn by the rivers Padma and Jamuna. It is important to note here that the geographical division so drawn thanks to the two major rivers has not been done just as a matter of convenience for academics engaged in poverty research. In point of fact, the two rivers are also the major hurdles to the redistribution of the nation's resources between the eastern and western parts of the country.
The WB study under review shows how the safety-net funds provided by the governments are reaching different divisions of the country in a disproportionate fashion. As for example, the poorest division of the country is Rajshahi with its poverty figure at 51.2 per cent, while it gets only 12.1 per cent of the safety-net coverage. In a similar fashion, the Khulna division, which has the second highest rate of poverty incidence at 45.7 per cent, is getting only 9.6 per cent of the safety-net coverage provided by the government.
The study further revealed that only one-fourth of the bottom 10 per cent of the poor is getting any access to the public fund provided under the government's safety-net programme.
As expected, the prescription of the World Bank to get over this problem is to make the existing safety-net system as expressed by its country director 'more coordinated and strategic'.
The discrepancy in the public resources allocation under the government's safety-net programme is but the tip of the iceberg. In fact, the authors of the WB report have only brought what is obvious to the fore. Had the study been carried out in a more broad-based manner, it would be found that the discrepancy is more pervasive than it appears on the surface. It is not only the funds for poverty alleviation, the focus of the entire socio-economic development activities have so far been carried out in a skewed manner in the geographical sense of the term.
So, it is not a matter of just rationally apportioning the fund of a particular programme among different regions of the country. The government needs to have a fresh look at its very priorities of national development. In this connection, the issue of poverty needs also to be looked at from this broader perspective.
Alleviation of poverty cannot be an issue divorced from the government's overall strategy of national development through stimulating growth by building infrastructures and promoting business. As it has been noted in the foregoing, the natural barriers like the mighty rivers Padma and Jamuna have come in the way of equitable distribution of resources across the country. It is unfortunate that thus far the natural barriers are still remaining as a big excuse to deny one part of the country its due share of public resources for development. And how can the scourge of poverty be tackled meaningfully on a nationwide scale through using only contingency funds, when the government's development policies remain highly out of true?
The policymakers in the government cannot escape their responsibilities in this respect. As revealed through the WB study, the major fault line of the nation's development approach lies along East-West divide. The policymakers in the government must recognise this line of division in their priorities for achieving national growth and development. And one cannot also lose sight of the fact that the secret of poverty alleviation lies in the distribution of national income among the different section of the population. This cannot be done only through distribution of charity or special purpose funds among certain groups of the people categorised as the poor.
The first condition of poverty alleviation should be to create access of the section of the population in question to the development activities being carried out under both the private and the public sectors. As more industrial and commercial ventures are established in the backward region, the common people will naturally be able to share their benefits. The linkages and markets created by the ventures will be able to involve more and more people in productive engagements.
The western and northern districts of the country are victims of discrimination since long. The government of today needs to be sensitive to this issue, if they really mean to eradicate poverty and redistribute income among the different sections of population in the country.
The problem of poverty alleviation is inextricably linked to the creation of job opportunities all across the nation in an equitable fashion. In the recent times, the number of people in the job market has registered a sharp increase.
According to an estimate, the number of people to be looking for new jobs in the next decade would be around 2.2 million every year. This is about double the figure noted between 2000 and 2005. The government will therefore have to devise a more balanced and inclusive development strategy so that no section of the population in a any particular geographical region is left out.
This poses the greatest challenge before the next government hopefully coming to power through the freshly announced date for general election on December 29, 2008.
While the economic powerhouses of the world are busy protecting their own houses in the face of the slump, the commitment of the rich nations towards addressing global poverty has naturally been put on the backburner. This is the reality, though the governments hit hard by the recession have not failed to reiterate that they are still committed to the greater cause of helping the poorer nations out of their predicament.
Poverty alleviation has a lot to do with redistribution of income and wealth. With industrially advanced nations embroiled in their own problems, the responsibility of helping the poor has to a large measure devolved on the governments of the nations known for their high incidence of poverty themselves.
In Bangladesh, for example, the general level of awareness about poverty is very high, both at the government and the private level. In addition to the numerous projects being run in collaboration with the government and the development partners, the non-government organisations have also been operating a very wide network of poverty mitigation activities. The main focus of these privately-run anti-poverty activities is creation of income opportunity for the poor. Besides these ongoing measures, the government has also its safety-net programme to address extreme poverty. So, for all practical purposes, the cause of poverty mitigation should be an issue that is well-looked-after in Bangladesh.
But this general level of awareness and supporting activities to fight poverty notwithstanding, question arises from time to time as to whether the ongoing measures are really reaching their targeted beneficiaries. A recent World Bank (WB) report on this score has drawn quite an opposite picture of the reality on the ground.
The report titled "Poverty Assessment for Bangladesh: Creating Opportunities and Bridging the East-West Divide" presented at a press conference highlighted the pattern of public resource allocation in the fight against poverty and the actual situation of poverty in the country. The report, however, brought the government's safety net programme under review.
Though the report concerns itself with a particular poverty-related programme run by the government, it points at the common fault line of the poverty alleviation activities run either by the government from the public exchequer or by the private agencies with the help of the charity or low-interest dedicated funds. The WB report in question shows that geographically there is a bias in the poverty mitigation programmes. Though traditionally the incidence of poverty is more pronounced in the western part of the country than the east, the flow of resources does not comply with this reality. The geographical division of the eastern and western parts of the country is however drawn by the rivers Padma and Jamuna. It is important to note here that the geographical division so drawn thanks to the two major rivers has not been done just as a matter of convenience for academics engaged in poverty research. In point of fact, the two rivers are also the major hurdles to the redistribution of the nation's resources between the eastern and western parts of the country.
The WB study under review shows how the safety-net funds provided by the governments are reaching different divisions of the country in a disproportionate fashion. As for example, the poorest division of the country is Rajshahi with its poverty figure at 51.2 per cent, while it gets only 12.1 per cent of the safety-net coverage. In a similar fashion, the Khulna division, which has the second highest rate of poverty incidence at 45.7 per cent, is getting only 9.6 per cent of the safety-net coverage provided by the government.
The study further revealed that only one-fourth of the bottom 10 per cent of the poor is getting any access to the public fund provided under the government's safety-net programme.
As expected, the prescription of the World Bank to get over this problem is to make the existing safety-net system as expressed by its country director 'more coordinated and strategic'.
The discrepancy in the public resources allocation under the government's safety-net programme is but the tip of the iceberg. In fact, the authors of the WB report have only brought what is obvious to the fore. Had the study been carried out in a more broad-based manner, it would be found that the discrepancy is more pervasive than it appears on the surface. It is not only the funds for poverty alleviation, the focus of the entire socio-economic development activities have so far been carried out in a skewed manner in the geographical sense of the term.
So, it is not a matter of just rationally apportioning the fund of a particular programme among different regions of the country. The government needs to have a fresh look at its very priorities of national development. In this connection, the issue of poverty needs also to be looked at from this broader perspective.
Alleviation of poverty cannot be an issue divorced from the government's overall strategy of national development through stimulating growth by building infrastructures and promoting business. As it has been noted in the foregoing, the natural barriers like the mighty rivers Padma and Jamuna have come in the way of equitable distribution of resources across the country. It is unfortunate that thus far the natural barriers are still remaining as a big excuse to deny one part of the country its due share of public resources for development. And how can the scourge of poverty be tackled meaningfully on a nationwide scale through using only contingency funds, when the government's development policies remain highly out of true?
The policymakers in the government cannot escape their responsibilities in this respect. As revealed through the WB study, the major fault line of the nation's development approach lies along East-West divide. The policymakers in the government must recognise this line of division in their priorities for achieving national growth and development. And one cannot also lose sight of the fact that the secret of poverty alleviation lies in the distribution of national income among the different section of the population. This cannot be done only through distribution of charity or special purpose funds among certain groups of the people categorised as the poor.
The first condition of poverty alleviation should be to create access of the section of the population in question to the development activities being carried out under both the private and the public sectors. As more industrial and commercial ventures are established in the backward region, the common people will naturally be able to share their benefits. The linkages and markets created by the ventures will be able to involve more and more people in productive engagements.
The western and northern districts of the country are victims of discrimination since long. The government of today needs to be sensitive to this issue, if they really mean to eradicate poverty and redistribute income among the different sections of population in the country.
The problem of poverty alleviation is inextricably linked to the creation of job opportunities all across the nation in an equitable fashion. In the recent times, the number of people in the job market has registered a sharp increase.
According to an estimate, the number of people to be looking for new jobs in the next decade would be around 2.2 million every year. This is about double the figure noted between 2000 and 2005. The government will therefore have to devise a more balanced and inclusive development strategy so that no section of the population in a any particular geographical region is left out.
This poses the greatest challenge before the next government hopefully coming to power through the freshly announced date for general election on December 29, 2008.