Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque and Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder :
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. Impoverization 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 laborers, 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 labor, marginal peasants and the landless in rural areas is too meager to make both ends meet. The migrant labors 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, enrollment, health, and population.
It is true that stable growth is absolutely impossible without poverty alleviation. Contemporary policy concerns about the magnitude of poverty emphasize increasing institutional attention to the alleviation of worst form of pauperization.
Lot of project intervention has so far been done for reducing rural poverty. Yetlittle is done on the state of urban poverty. Intervention is going on at the research level. For studies on urban squatter settlement are plenty. There are many stories of slum destruction. Urban city corporation despite lofty pledges care little about unban poor living a subhuman life. They need proper rehabilitation. To cite a study:
A massive imbalance exists in the level of support given to the urban poor and the rural poor under the social safety net programmes (SSNPs) initiated by the government, research by Concern Worldwide Bangladesh has found.The study showed that among the two major SSNPs – the Old Age Allowance and Widowed and Distressed Women Allowance – there is a vast discrepancy in the distribution of support between the urban poor and the rural poor.Of the Old Age Allowance, 94.03% covers the rural poor while only 5.97% goes to the urban poor. The Widowed and Distressed Women Allowance is even more lopsided, loaded 98.32% in favour of the rural poor and only 1.68% to the urban poor.Gazi Mohammad Nurul Kabir, director general of the Department of Social services, said the programmes are partly designed to reduce the migration of lower income groups to urban areas.”One of the major intentions of the SSNPs is to provide more support to rural areas [and] that is why the government has been running different programmes as an incentive to have them return to the villages,” he said.However, the National Social Security Strategy 2015 acknowledges the shortcomings of the safety net programmes and aims to reform the provisions to ensure “more efficient and effective use of resources, strengthened delivery systems and progress towards a more inclusive form of Social Security”.
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.
(Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque, Retired Professor, Chittagong University and Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder, Pro-VC, BUP)
