Dr Md Shairul Mashreque :
The state seeks poverty reduction through welfare strategies, social insurance, compensation programs, income maintenance, curative strategies and preventive measures. In capitalist democratic society welfare policy concept is taken to be a rational policy posture articulating broad humanitarian goals.
However, there is every reason to believe that welfare policy, as a paradigm of social development of Great Britain and Scandinavian countries is difficult to implement in Bangladesh. Its implications are not clear in this country. In fact poverty remains persistent afflicting different types of low-income households in all-environmental settings.
Impoverisation is staggering despite increasing gross national product, capital-intensive industrialization, export production, and market-oriented growth.
Discrimination in major sectors of development has downtrodden the mass of peasants, industrial labourers, workers, and other low-income groups.
Researchers point out that the gap between income and expenditure of the low-income group – a clear sign of income poverty – creates manifold social problems including violence and corruption. Poor salary structure of the fixed income group causes erosion of ethical values. The members of this group living in metropolitan cities and peri-urban communities have inadequate level of living, with poor health status, poor food, insanitary housing and poor amenities. On the other hand, income of the wage labour, marginal peasants and the landless in rural areas is too meagre to make both ends meet.
The migrant labours drifting into towns for working in industrial, manufacturing sectors and those drawing small amount of money from rendering services in private sector and from various small trades suffer a lot as the most vulnerable. More, aggravation of unemployment situation in villages and towns is worsening poverty situation that creates the crisis of terrorism of the spoiled youth.
Distressingly low income group and the unemployed youth/girls having no income source are hard hit for tremendous rise in cost of living as well as for unprecedented inflationary any stress caused by extremely high salaries of the consultants and high level project personnel and corruption of the high-ups in bureaucratic contingents of administration. The situation such as this warrants a systematic policy analysis on the economy, society and poverty situation in Bangladesh.
The least developed countries (LDCs) can pin high hopes about the future of anti poverty social movement. For, the UN is determined to combat a worse poverty situation a threat to human dignity – by declaring International Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006). More heartening is the advocacy and campaign for Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to curb poverty situation. Constitutional obligations, various international conference, UN poverty alleviation decade and MDGs mandate governments to promote improvement of the lower income group of population and sustainable development through resilient macro economics and different social indicators as the targets for social welfare programs. The state shaped the policy framework and this turned to the latest dimension of poverty alleviation policy in the name of Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). Of late, the planning and policymaking agencies of Bangladesh have adopted appropriate strategies for economic growth and poverty reduction. The target of social welfare is to be achieved through a comprehensive approach on the social indicators like adult literacy, enrolment, health, and population.
It is true that stable growth is absolutely impossible without poverty alleviation. Contemporary policy concerns about the magnitude of poverty emphasise increasing institutional attention to the alleviation of worst form of pauperisation. Hardcore poverty (HCP) now posing a formidable threat to stability is the culmination of fuzzy governance and misdirected policy intervention. Policy strategies influenced by exogenous factors like globalisation and SAP rather add to structural tension by reinforcing HCP.
Challenges of the new millennium are hard facts about structural tension that looms large in HCP. Policy revision with shifting strategies has been given due institutional attention with the advent of the issue of HCP. However, it is not presumptive to comment that peasant economy developed overtime as a sign of stable agricultural development is facing griping cries in the midst of HCP. Some features of crisis syndrome bedevilling peasant economic life are: population explosion, fragmentation and subdivision of holding, river erosion, flood, draught, epidemics, politics of scarcity, indebtedness, bhumi santras (land terrorism), loss of cooperative based integration, dilapidated living conditions, malnutrition, starvation, like access to marketing and adverse effects of external intervention that threaten withdrawal of govt. subsidies.
Human development sector is considered of critical importance for poverty alleviation. Target oriented emphasis of this sector is aimed at increasing income generating activities for the surplus human resources. The micro credit delivery system intends to enhance productive capacities of the poor enabling them to find way out of dependency. This is sort of outreach program now under the threshold of expansion to address the issue of hard core poverty. Another outreach program to ‘put the last first’ is non-formal primary education (NFPE).
Nevertheless hard facts about the lives of the ‘last’ but not least are starvation, half meal, malnutrition, disease, epidemics, poor housing and unhygienic living conditions, ill treatment by the security forces and fear of hooliganism. Many a study on human development presents a pen picture about a grim poverty situation touching upon hard facts about the suffering masses remaining at the outer margin of development policies.
The dichotomy between development and poverty continues to be a palpable fact of south Asian situational context. Policy institutions both at the micro and macro levels hardly scale up articulation of the ideas of those living at the corner of misfortune. Lofty ideas are within the confines of conventional wisdom suffering from subjectivity and misconception. Policy intervention today is thus devoid of its objective content much less capable of facing the challenges of the new millennium.
The dominant paradigm of human development with regard to gender issue and child in particular is completely based on conceptual abstraction sidetracking hard facts about the disadvantaged lots. These lacunae in conceptual scheme demands objective policy analyses based on class analysis of feminism and child development. Forward-looking programs of women development, for illustration, favour high status women. Daughters of well-known social workers and women organisers obtain easy access to the benefits of public policy. They are much less likely to be socially neglected compared to their poor counterparts that cannot afford such benefits. In another example, child development policy barely addresses the street child as the sub-unit. Street child is neglected as untouchables suffering manifold harassment, abuses and hazards. True, socio economic differentials along class lines influence the direction of human development policy in a highly stratified South Asian society. Bangladesh is no exception.
Needless to mention MDG stresses social safety nets with three-fold set of goals
The first set of policy on the social safety net for the poor through works and income transfer programme:
Food assisted and cash assisted program (VGD, FFW, Old age pension sachems in rural areas)
Supports for the female destitute
Traditional relief program
The second sets of policies put emphasis on the development of social solidarity:
Organisation of GB, NGO, CBOs to support capital formation of poor people
The third set of polices is about risk insurance:
Provide access to credit to the poor in times of emergency
Ensure good public health to reduce health hazard
Strengthening disaster preventing and mitigating mechanisms to enhance the coping capability of the poor in times of natural disaster increasing personnel security (legal and judiciously, human rights, freedom of press and media)
Policies and institutional measures for broadening participatory governance and enhance the voice and influence of the poor would involve several actions:
Strengthening the system of good governance, especially, decentralization at the local level
Effective local government bodies at union, upazilla and district level (with adequate financial and administration power)
Local level democracy
Policies And Institutions For Reducing Inequality
Access to land assets/common property
Access to education and higher level of skills for better employment and income
Access to financial assess (micro-credit)
Access to political assets
Caring For Environment
Environmental communication would be integrated into national poverty alleviation strategies
Incorporating people’s knowledge, percept on and attitudes in planning and implementation
Social safety net policy putting the poor first will be effective if the poor get help and institutional logistics they deserve. There must be regular monitoring of implementation status with all measures to reduce corruption and malfeasance. Otherwise policy prescription for social safety net will remain only on paper.
The state seeks poverty reduction through welfare strategies, social insurance, compensation programs, income maintenance, curative strategies and preventive measures. In capitalist democratic society welfare policy concept is taken to be a rational policy posture articulating broad humanitarian goals.
However, there is every reason to believe that welfare policy, as a paradigm of social development of Great Britain and Scandinavian countries is difficult to implement in Bangladesh. Its implications are not clear in this country. In fact poverty remains persistent afflicting different types of low-income households in all-environmental settings.
Impoverisation is staggering despite increasing gross national product, capital-intensive industrialization, export production, and market-oriented growth.
Discrimination in major sectors of development has downtrodden the mass of peasants, industrial labourers, workers, and other low-income groups.
Researchers point out that the gap between income and expenditure of the low-income group – a clear sign of income poverty – creates manifold social problems including violence and corruption. Poor salary structure of the fixed income group causes erosion of ethical values. The members of this group living in metropolitan cities and peri-urban communities have inadequate level of living, with poor health status, poor food, insanitary housing and poor amenities. On the other hand, income of the wage labour, marginal peasants and the landless in rural areas is too meagre to make both ends meet.
The migrant labours drifting into towns for working in industrial, manufacturing sectors and those drawing small amount of money from rendering services in private sector and from various small trades suffer a lot as the most vulnerable. More, aggravation of unemployment situation in villages and towns is worsening poverty situation that creates the crisis of terrorism of the spoiled youth.
Distressingly low income group and the unemployed youth/girls having no income source are hard hit for tremendous rise in cost of living as well as for unprecedented inflationary any stress caused by extremely high salaries of the consultants and high level project personnel and corruption of the high-ups in bureaucratic contingents of administration. The situation such as this warrants a systematic policy analysis on the economy, society and poverty situation in Bangladesh.
The least developed countries (LDCs) can pin high hopes about the future of anti poverty social movement. For, the UN is determined to combat a worse poverty situation a threat to human dignity – by declaring International Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006). More heartening is the advocacy and campaign for Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to curb poverty situation. Constitutional obligations, various international conference, UN poverty alleviation decade and MDGs mandate governments to promote improvement of the lower income group of population and sustainable development through resilient macro economics and different social indicators as the targets for social welfare programs. The state shaped the policy framework and this turned to the latest dimension of poverty alleviation policy in the name of Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). Of late, the planning and policymaking agencies of Bangladesh have adopted appropriate strategies for economic growth and poverty reduction. The target of social welfare is to be achieved through a comprehensive approach on the social indicators like adult literacy, enrolment, health, and population.
It is true that stable growth is absolutely impossible without poverty alleviation. Contemporary policy concerns about the magnitude of poverty emphasise increasing institutional attention to the alleviation of worst form of pauperisation. Hardcore poverty (HCP) now posing a formidable threat to stability is the culmination of fuzzy governance and misdirected policy intervention. Policy strategies influenced by exogenous factors like globalisation and SAP rather add to structural tension by reinforcing HCP.
Challenges of the new millennium are hard facts about structural tension that looms large in HCP. Policy revision with shifting strategies has been given due institutional attention with the advent of the issue of HCP. However, it is not presumptive to comment that peasant economy developed overtime as a sign of stable agricultural development is facing griping cries in the midst of HCP. Some features of crisis syndrome bedevilling peasant economic life are: population explosion, fragmentation and subdivision of holding, river erosion, flood, draught, epidemics, politics of scarcity, indebtedness, bhumi santras (land terrorism), loss of cooperative based integration, dilapidated living conditions, malnutrition, starvation, like access to marketing and adverse effects of external intervention that threaten withdrawal of govt. subsidies.
Human development sector is considered of critical importance for poverty alleviation. Target oriented emphasis of this sector is aimed at increasing income generating activities for the surplus human resources. The micro credit delivery system intends to enhance productive capacities of the poor enabling them to find way out of dependency. This is sort of outreach program now under the threshold of expansion to address the issue of hard core poverty. Another outreach program to ‘put the last first’ is non-formal primary education (NFPE).
Nevertheless hard facts about the lives of the ‘last’ but not least are starvation, half meal, malnutrition, disease, epidemics, poor housing and unhygienic living conditions, ill treatment by the security forces and fear of hooliganism. Many a study on human development presents a pen picture about a grim poverty situation touching upon hard facts about the suffering masses remaining at the outer margin of development policies.
The dichotomy between development and poverty continues to be a palpable fact of south Asian situational context. Policy institutions both at the micro and macro levels hardly scale up articulation of the ideas of those living at the corner of misfortune. Lofty ideas are within the confines of conventional wisdom suffering from subjectivity and misconception. Policy intervention today is thus devoid of its objective content much less capable of facing the challenges of the new millennium.
The dominant paradigm of human development with regard to gender issue and child in particular is completely based on conceptual abstraction sidetracking hard facts about the disadvantaged lots. These lacunae in conceptual scheme demands objective policy analyses based on class analysis of feminism and child development. Forward-looking programs of women development, for illustration, favour high status women. Daughters of well-known social workers and women organisers obtain easy access to the benefits of public policy. They are much less likely to be socially neglected compared to their poor counterparts that cannot afford such benefits. In another example, child development policy barely addresses the street child as the sub-unit. Street child is neglected as untouchables suffering manifold harassment, abuses and hazards. True, socio economic differentials along class lines influence the direction of human development policy in a highly stratified South Asian society. Bangladesh is no exception.
Needless to mention MDG stresses social safety nets with three-fold set of goals
The first set of policy on the social safety net for the poor through works and income transfer programme:
Food assisted and cash assisted program (VGD, FFW, Old age pension sachems in rural areas)
Supports for the female destitute
Traditional relief program
The second sets of policies put emphasis on the development of social solidarity:
Organisation of GB, NGO, CBOs to support capital formation of poor people
The third set of polices is about risk insurance:
Provide access to credit to the poor in times of emergency
Ensure good public health to reduce health hazard
Strengthening disaster preventing and mitigating mechanisms to enhance the coping capability of the poor in times of natural disaster increasing personnel security (legal and judiciously, human rights, freedom of press and media)
Policies and institutional measures for broadening participatory governance and enhance the voice and influence of the poor would involve several actions:
Strengthening the system of good governance, especially, decentralization at the local level
Effective local government bodies at union, upazilla and district level (with adequate financial and administration power)
Local level democracy
Policies And Institutions For Reducing Inequality
Access to land assets/common property
Access to education and higher level of skills for better employment and income
Access to financial assess (micro-credit)
Access to political assets
Caring For Environment
Environmental communication would be integrated into national poverty alleviation strategies
Incorporating people’s knowledge, percept on and attitudes in planning and implementation
Social safety net policy putting the poor first will be effective if the poor get help and institutional logistics they deserve. There must be regular monitoring of implementation status with all measures to reduce corruption and malfeasance. Otherwise policy prescription for social safety net will remain only on paper.
(Dr Md Shairul Mashreque, Professor, Department of Public Administration,
Chittagong University)
