Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque :
Eight MDGs goals range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education – have been a milestone in global and national development efforts. The framework has helped to galvanize development efforts and guide global and national development priorities. While three of the eight goals have been achieved prior to the final deadline of 2015 progress has been uneven within and across countries.
Thus further efforts and a strong global partnership for development are needed to accelerate progress and reach the goals by 2015. Poverty in Bangladesh is primarily a ‘rural phenomenon’ with “53 percent of its rural population classified as poor, comprising about 85 percent of the country’s poor. Achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving poverty to 26.5 percent by 2015 will require a growth rate of at least 4.0 percent in agriculture and 7.0 percent in the non-farm sector
17 October is marked out as a day for observing eradication of poverty. It reminds us of the urgency to rid the poor below overt line to of the onslaught of pauperization. The theme of 2014is: Leave no one behind, think, decide and act together aganst extreme poverty.
The 2014 theme recognizes and underscores the demanding challenge of identifying and securing the participation of those experiencing extreme poverty and social exclusion in the “Post-2015 Development Agenda” that will replace the Millennium Development Goals. The official commemoration on 17 October at UN Headquarters will be an occasion to recognize people living in poverty as critical partners for fighting the development challenges we face.
“Help the United Nations to raise awareness about the progress made and the challenges that remain for people living in poverty. Use #IDEP2014 and #EndPoverty to post your messages about the MDGs and the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
Other ways to get involved:
Learn and help share the infographics and videos about accelerating the Millennium Development Goals.
Sign up for Thunderclapto stand with people in poverty
Watch persons affected by poverty share their views at the official commemoration at UN Headquarters, live, on UN webcast on 17 October.”
However, economic and institutional realities, the country’s geographical and demographic characteristics, and its vulnerability to natural disasters, make this a very challenging task”, observed experts.
Land-base in rural areas is shrinking ‘while the country’s population is growing at the rate of 1.6 percent per year, demographic pressures and increased urbanization has caused cultivated area to decline at a rate of 1 percent per year.
As cropping intensity has approached its limit (about 175 percent now), growth will need to come from intensification of cereal production, diversification into high-value crop and non-crop activities, and value addition in the agro-processing sector, including storage, processing and marketing.
This will require reforming the agricultural research and extension systems, and financial and other regulations.
Land administration and security issues also need to be addressed”. That is the common agreement of the development gurus. From time immemorial rural economy operated as the supplier of food and raw materials. Exploitative machinery sucked the blood of the peasants who used to contribute substantially to crop production but received much less below the market rate. Subject to notorious process of exploitation many among the small farmers being rendered landless have to drift to town to change their lots.
Now the village has become the supplier of cheap labour in urban areas. There is no denying the fact that unless the policy makes mull steps to address the predicaments of the farmers living below poverty line any attempts at poverty reduction will be meaningless.
The first and foremost duty is to rethink development to combat the problems of marginalization and pauperization accumulated during the lengthy process of deprivation and neglect.
Well, our think tanks stress the importance of food security as a matter of contemporary global concern. Agricultural development project cannot bypass the burning issue like the survival of the small farmers and the landless.
Their maladies have accentuated due to perennial neglect the non-monetized and stagnant rural economy suffer. Landholding in our country has long been subdivided and fragmented due to the operation of the law of inheritance. Population pressure over land has become unmanageable.
The result is fast increasing of the number of marginal farmers and the farmers with no arable land. Those without land till cultivable plot either as wage earners or share croppers.
The pre-existing process of production based lopsided economic relationship can hardly provide any incentives to the marginal farmers. Low productivity of the poor farmers as ‘farm laborers’ may be attributed to the stingy benefits offered to this toiling working class that cannot be called incentives as such. The small farmers hard pressed by increasing marginalization sell their land thus creating ‘uneconomic size of land’.
The phenomenon of small holding estate poses a threat to food security. Capital investment on intensive cultivation for producing enough food has been in doldrums in the context of subsistence economy. Any attempt at reinvigorating rural economy warrants acceleration of small and the landless development through institution building.
We have an institution like small farmer development programme (SFDP). In fact the vulnerable has been brought into policy fold under this institutional safety umbrella. Awakening of the small farmers and the landless to buttress their organization potentials to the desired level can help them to be self-supporting backed by an institutional agency. They will be able to change their outlook, attitude and approach.
There needs to be action research under the aegis of small holder agricultural programme with a’ full sequence of data collection; time series data, compilation, analysis, documentations and participatory assessment methods.
True scores of marginal farmers’ families suffer displacement and dislocation because of climate change.
The vulnerability of the marginal in the coastal belt beggar description.
As has been reported by business desk, the New Nation, ‘small holder farmers in developing countries , who are working to grow more food in some of the world’s most marginalized areas are already facing more job and livelihood challenges due to severe weather such as droughts and floods.
The upcoming intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) physical science summary will be of crucial importance for the 2 billion people dependent on small holder farms, many of which are owned and operated by families.
As small farmers in developing countries are among the most affected by climate change the time to adapt cannot be delayed.
IFAD’s new adaptation for small holder agricultural programme (ASAP) is now the largest global initiative dedicated to supporting the adaptation of poor smallholder farmers to climate change across the world. Alarmingly the number of landless and sharecropper has registered an upward trend
(Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, Professor of Public Administration, Chittagong University)
