Shakhawat Ullah Chowdhury :
Poverty is about not having enough resource (money) to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter. However, poverty is more, much more than just not having enough money. The World Bank describes poverty in this way: “Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways. Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape. So poverty is a call to action – for the poor and the wealthy alike – a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities. “Poverty is widespread in Bangladesh.
The international community recognizes that reducing global poverty is one of the major development challenges of the twenty-first century. The problem of poverty is particularly severe in Bangladesh, where a variety of poverty alleviation initiatives have been tried. The most recent one involves Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), which are collaborations between partners in different sectors. PPPs are assumed to be effective for reducing poverty as they are seen to optimize the use of scarce resources, promote economic growth and enhance efficiency. The Government of Bangladesh has recognized the use of PPPs as an innovative and effective approach for poverty alleviation in Bangladesh.
This article addresses this major policy issue by examining the novel arrangements of PPPs to determine how this approach can assist in alleviating poverty. The social structure of the country is dominated by traditional kinship patterns, and marked by patron-client relationship headed by local power elites dominating the surrounding mass of poor. The growth of state influence has extended traditional power relationships, contributing to the widening gap between the elite and the poor. This has helped accelerate the process of marginalization, impoverishment, class exploitation and social control with its attendant consequences of landlessness and growing urban growth and poverty. Throughout the country, the fragile and underdeveloped democracy permits continuing instability and undermine development. Against this backdrop, the task of poverty alleviation is massive and urgent in modern Bangladesh. Besides Government efforts, other organisations, popularly known as non government organisation (NGOs) in recent times, are also increasingly contributing for the alleviation of poverty in Bangladesh. Since gaining independence in 1971, Bangladesh has increased its real per capita income by more than 130 per cent and cut poverty by more than half. It is now well positioned to achieve most of its Millennium Development Goals, but still it remains a low-income country with substantial poverty, inequality and deprivation.
At least 45 million people in Bangladesh, almost one third of the population, live below the poverty line, and a significant proportion of them live in extreme poverty. The poverty rate is highest in rural areas, at 36 per cent, compared with 28 per cent in urban centres. Many people have an inadequate diet and suffer from periods of food shortage. Half of all rural children are chronically malnourished and 14 per cent suffer from acute malnutrition. Another root cause of rural poverty has been population growth, although this has dropped sharply from 3 per cent to 1.4 per cent in recent years. Population density remains extremely high, placing enormous pressure on the country’s natural resources – especially on arable land. Meanwhile, rural and urban industries are unable to meet the demand for jobs, forcing many Bangladeshis to seek work abroad. Bngladesh is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Two thirds of its territory is less than 5 metres above sea level, making it one of the most flood-prone countries in the world. Severe flooding during monsoons can cause significant damage to crops and property, and an adverse impact on rural livelihoods.
Climate change seems likely to add to the destruction by monsoon floods, and the frequency of cyclones may increase. Poor people are hit hardest because they are more densely concentrated in badly constructed housing on land that is prone to hazards. Poverty is especially persistent in three areas: the north-west, which is affected by droughts and river erosion; the central northern region, which is subject to serious seasonal flooding that limits crop production; and the southern coastal zones, which are affected by soil salinity and cyclones. The World Bank announced in June 2013 that Bangladesh had reduced the number of people living in poverty from 63 million in 2000 to 46 million in 2010, despite a total population that had grown to approximately 150 million. This means that Bangladesh was supposed to reach its first United Nations-established Millennium Development Goal, that of poverty reduction, two years ahead of the 2015 deadline. But in reality, it still lacks behind by some indicators. Bangladesh is also making progress in reducing its poverty rate to 26 percent of the population.
Establishment of the MDGs is one of the most important calls to reduce poverty worldwide. The Government of Bangladesh has responded to this call with several initiatives to reduce poverty and hunger, and has made strong progress towards reducing income poverty, placing it roughly on track to meet the target of halving the share of the population living on under Partnership For Development: Alternative Approaches to Poverty Alleviation in Bangladesh US$1 a day by 2015 (World Bank 2007, p. 3).
Despite slight improvement in the economy, the overall scenario of development of Bangladesh is still not satisfactory. Bangladesh remains ranked 129 out of 182 countries for the HDI; the HPI ranked Bangladesh at 112 among 135 countries in 2007 and 49.6% of the total population lived below US$1.25 a day in 2005. The MPI is the share of the population that is multi-dimensionally poor, adjusted by the intensity of the deprivations. This figure for Bangladesh is 0.291, in which the MPI headcount rate was 57.8% in 2008 (see Table 1). Despite remarkable attempts to reduce endemic poverty since independence, the incidence of poverty is still significant in Bangladesh.
Table 1: Bangladesh data on poverty and development Items Rank/Percentage
HDI in 2010 out of 182 countries in 2008 129
HPI 1 Rank in 2007 out of 135 countries in 2007 112
% of population with income below US $1.25 PPP a day in 2005 49.6
% of population below MPI (headcount rate) in 2008 57.8
In Bangladesh, the state of poverty is broadly estimated by two methods, namely the Direct Calorie Intake (DCI) method and the Cost of Basic Need (CBN) method. The DCI method is normally used by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) for household income and expenditure surveys. In the DCI method, the caloric threshold of 2122 k cal is used for determining the poverty line. The CBN method sets the poverty line by computing the cost of the food basket that enables households to meet pre-determined nutritional requirements, then adding to this an allowance for basic non-food consumption. Under the CBN method, price differentials over time and across areas are taken into account by costing the food items in a fixed bundle using area-specific prices prevailing at particular times. These two methods reflect both material and physical well-being – two of the dimensions of poverty. As demonstrated in the discussion above, poverty remains Bangladesh’s major development challenge.
The government is well aware of this and has taken several initiatives to attain the poverty reduction targets of the MDGs. Particularly the government has been allocating more resources for alleviating poverty in recent years than before. For example, the government has allocated about 60% of total budget resources for different direct and indirect poverty reduction activities only in FY2009-10. PPP is a cooperative relation initiated by the government and involving different private organisations such as NGOs, different community based organisations and donors in order to alleviate poverty. The donor in this case is a problematic category since it is neither a government organisation nor a business organisation. However, in this paper the donor is included as a separate private entity.
This partnership model is based on mutual recognition of respective strengths and weaknesses. The rationale of PPP is to overcome the limitations of the single stakeholder and maximise the
benefits by using PPPs that obtain resources from different stakeholders. Here, all stakeholders contribute resources (such as financial resources, human resources, political resources and political support), share expertise, experiences and knowledge, participate in the decision-making process and work towards the common aims and objectives of ‘poverty alleviation’ and the ‘development of poor peoples’ of the country. In this PPP, the partnership is a medium-term to long-term relationship depending on agreed targets to achieve the goals of the PPPs. PPPs have become widely adopted around the world from developed countries to developing countries. Since PPPs have been used for different purposes and in different sectors definitions of PPPs have varied.
We have seen four broad emphases in the definitions of PPPs. These are as tools of governance and management; as tools for financial arrangements; as tools of the development process and; for pro-poor purposes. However, there is broad agreement on the leading features of PPPs, that they are long term cooperative relations between public and private sector organisations to produce and deliver some goods and services. The study has shown that although PPPs have been widely used both in developed and developing countries, their usage has varied. PPPs have been mostly used for infrastructure in rich countries, while social sector development and poverty alleviation have Partnership For Development:
Alternative approaches to poverty alleviation in Bangladesh been prominent in developing countries. Several key reasons have been identified for introducing PPPs into developing countries, especially government failure to meet the increasing needs and demands of citizens for basic services and the scarcity of government resources. In addition, the promotion of market mechanisms, bureaucratic dysfunctions in developing countries and advocacy of international development agencies have further boosted the use of PPPs in developing countries. Although the pro-poor PPPs are mostly initiated by developing country governments, other stakeholders such as the private organisations, NGOs, community organisations, local and international donor agencies are keen participants.
This is because PPPs in developing countries are involved in a wide range of pro-poor activities including job creation, providing access to basic health services, education, sanitation, safe dirking water, credit, and skills and social awareness training. As has been demonstrated, PPPs are thought to be effective for poverty alleviation since they bring new resources such as management expertise and finance and potentially combine the resources to enhance effectiveness in poverty alleviation. A number of challenges threaten the success of PPPs, including political relationships between the stakeholders, political and bureaucratic processes, poor monitoring and evaluation and finally constraining political cultures.
Poverty is about not having enough resource (money) to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter. However, poverty is more, much more than just not having enough money. The World Bank describes poverty in this way: “Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways. Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape. So poverty is a call to action – for the poor and the wealthy alike – a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities. “Poverty is widespread in Bangladesh.
The international community recognizes that reducing global poverty is one of the major development challenges of the twenty-first century. The problem of poverty is particularly severe in Bangladesh, where a variety of poverty alleviation initiatives have been tried. The most recent one involves Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), which are collaborations between partners in different sectors. PPPs are assumed to be effective for reducing poverty as they are seen to optimize the use of scarce resources, promote economic growth and enhance efficiency. The Government of Bangladesh has recognized the use of PPPs as an innovative and effective approach for poverty alleviation in Bangladesh.
This article addresses this major policy issue by examining the novel arrangements of PPPs to determine how this approach can assist in alleviating poverty. The social structure of the country is dominated by traditional kinship patterns, and marked by patron-client relationship headed by local power elites dominating the surrounding mass of poor. The growth of state influence has extended traditional power relationships, contributing to the widening gap between the elite and the poor. This has helped accelerate the process of marginalization, impoverishment, class exploitation and social control with its attendant consequences of landlessness and growing urban growth and poverty. Throughout the country, the fragile and underdeveloped democracy permits continuing instability and undermine development. Against this backdrop, the task of poverty alleviation is massive and urgent in modern Bangladesh. Besides Government efforts, other organisations, popularly known as non government organisation (NGOs) in recent times, are also increasingly contributing for the alleviation of poverty in Bangladesh. Since gaining independence in 1971, Bangladesh has increased its real per capita income by more than 130 per cent and cut poverty by more than half. It is now well positioned to achieve most of its Millennium Development Goals, but still it remains a low-income country with substantial poverty, inequality and deprivation.
At least 45 million people in Bangladesh, almost one third of the population, live below the poverty line, and a significant proportion of them live in extreme poverty. The poverty rate is highest in rural areas, at 36 per cent, compared with 28 per cent in urban centres. Many people have an inadequate diet and suffer from periods of food shortage. Half of all rural children are chronically malnourished and 14 per cent suffer from acute malnutrition. Another root cause of rural poverty has been population growth, although this has dropped sharply from 3 per cent to 1.4 per cent in recent years. Population density remains extremely high, placing enormous pressure on the country’s natural resources – especially on arable land. Meanwhile, rural and urban industries are unable to meet the demand for jobs, forcing many Bangladeshis to seek work abroad. Bngladesh is particularly vulnerable to climate change. Two thirds of its territory is less than 5 metres above sea level, making it one of the most flood-prone countries in the world. Severe flooding during monsoons can cause significant damage to crops and property, and an adverse impact on rural livelihoods.
Climate change seems likely to add to the destruction by monsoon floods, and the frequency of cyclones may increase. Poor people are hit hardest because they are more densely concentrated in badly constructed housing on land that is prone to hazards. Poverty is especially persistent in three areas: the north-west, which is affected by droughts and river erosion; the central northern region, which is subject to serious seasonal flooding that limits crop production; and the southern coastal zones, which are affected by soil salinity and cyclones. The World Bank announced in June 2013 that Bangladesh had reduced the number of people living in poverty from 63 million in 2000 to 46 million in 2010, despite a total population that had grown to approximately 150 million. This means that Bangladesh was supposed to reach its first United Nations-established Millennium Development Goal, that of poverty reduction, two years ahead of the 2015 deadline. But in reality, it still lacks behind by some indicators. Bangladesh is also making progress in reducing its poverty rate to 26 percent of the population.
Establishment of the MDGs is one of the most important calls to reduce poverty worldwide. The Government of Bangladesh has responded to this call with several initiatives to reduce poverty and hunger, and has made strong progress towards reducing income poverty, placing it roughly on track to meet the target of halving the share of the population living on under Partnership For Development: Alternative Approaches to Poverty Alleviation in Bangladesh US$1 a day by 2015 (World Bank 2007, p. 3).
Despite slight improvement in the economy, the overall scenario of development of Bangladesh is still not satisfactory. Bangladesh remains ranked 129 out of 182 countries for the HDI; the HPI ranked Bangladesh at 112 among 135 countries in 2007 and 49.6% of the total population lived below US$1.25 a day in 2005. The MPI is the share of the population that is multi-dimensionally poor, adjusted by the intensity of the deprivations. This figure for Bangladesh is 0.291, in which the MPI headcount rate was 57.8% in 2008 (see Table 1). Despite remarkable attempts to reduce endemic poverty since independence, the incidence of poverty is still significant in Bangladesh.
Table 1: Bangladesh data on poverty and development Items Rank/Percentage
HDI in 2010 out of 182 countries in 2008 129
HPI 1 Rank in 2007 out of 135 countries in 2007 112
% of population with income below US $1.25 PPP a day in 2005 49.6
% of population below MPI (headcount rate) in 2008 57.8
In Bangladesh, the state of poverty is broadly estimated by two methods, namely the Direct Calorie Intake (DCI) method and the Cost of Basic Need (CBN) method. The DCI method is normally used by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) for household income and expenditure surveys. In the DCI method, the caloric threshold of 2122 k cal is used for determining the poverty line. The CBN method sets the poverty line by computing the cost of the food basket that enables households to meet pre-determined nutritional requirements, then adding to this an allowance for basic non-food consumption. Under the CBN method, price differentials over time and across areas are taken into account by costing the food items in a fixed bundle using area-specific prices prevailing at particular times. These two methods reflect both material and physical well-being – two of the dimensions of poverty. As demonstrated in the discussion above, poverty remains Bangladesh’s major development challenge.
The government is well aware of this and has taken several initiatives to attain the poverty reduction targets of the MDGs. Particularly the government has been allocating more resources for alleviating poverty in recent years than before. For example, the government has allocated about 60% of total budget resources for different direct and indirect poverty reduction activities only in FY2009-10. PPP is a cooperative relation initiated by the government and involving different private organisations such as NGOs, different community based organisations and donors in order to alleviate poverty. The donor in this case is a problematic category since it is neither a government organisation nor a business organisation. However, in this paper the donor is included as a separate private entity.
This partnership model is based on mutual recognition of respective strengths and weaknesses. The rationale of PPP is to overcome the limitations of the single stakeholder and maximise the
benefits by using PPPs that obtain resources from different stakeholders. Here, all stakeholders contribute resources (such as financial resources, human resources, political resources and political support), share expertise, experiences and knowledge, participate in the decision-making process and work towards the common aims and objectives of ‘poverty alleviation’ and the ‘development of poor peoples’ of the country. In this PPP, the partnership is a medium-term to long-term relationship depending on agreed targets to achieve the goals of the PPPs. PPPs have become widely adopted around the world from developed countries to developing countries. Since PPPs have been used for different purposes and in different sectors definitions of PPPs have varied.
We have seen four broad emphases in the definitions of PPPs. These are as tools of governance and management; as tools for financial arrangements; as tools of the development process and; for pro-poor purposes. However, there is broad agreement on the leading features of PPPs, that they are long term cooperative relations between public and private sector organisations to produce and deliver some goods and services. The study has shown that although PPPs have been widely used both in developed and developing countries, their usage has varied. PPPs have been mostly used for infrastructure in rich countries, while social sector development and poverty alleviation have Partnership For Development:
Alternative approaches to poverty alleviation in Bangladesh been prominent in developing countries. Several key reasons have been identified for introducing PPPs into developing countries, especially government failure to meet the increasing needs and demands of citizens for basic services and the scarcity of government resources. In addition, the promotion of market mechanisms, bureaucratic dysfunctions in developing countries and advocacy of international development agencies have further boosted the use of PPPs in developing countries. Although the pro-poor PPPs are mostly initiated by developing country governments, other stakeholders such as the private organisations, NGOs, community organisations, local and international donor agencies are keen participants.
This is because PPPs in developing countries are involved in a wide range of pro-poor activities including job creation, providing access to basic health services, education, sanitation, safe dirking water, credit, and skills and social awareness training. As has been demonstrated, PPPs are thought to be effective for poverty alleviation since they bring new resources such as management expertise and finance and potentially combine the resources to enhance effectiveness in poverty alleviation. A number of challenges threaten the success of PPPs, including political relationships between the stakeholders, political and bureaucratic processes, poor monitoring and evaluation and finally constraining political cultures.
(Dr. Md. Shakhawat Ullah Chowdhury is an Assistant Professor of Social Science and Head, Department of General Education, Southern University Bangladesh )
