Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder and Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque :
There has been phenomenal growth of anti-poverty programs over the last couple of decades. Anti-poverty programs are wide ranging covering a large variety of subsectors, e.g., helath, hygiene, sanitation, primary medicate, education, non-formal education, agriculture, horculture, agro-forestry, livestock, poultry, fisheries, cottage industries, institution building, social mobilization, conscientization, micro-credit and income and employment generation.
NGOs intend to wage crusade on poverty through target group approach putting the last first. “A broader definition of target group approach is: the functionally landless poor or those who earn more than half of their livelihood by selling their manual labour, artisan, craftsman, fishermen, manual thransport workers, who own no implement, gear or employment related issues” (Report of the Task Forces: 72).
To the disenchantment of many basic need policy strategy side tracks the HCP despite alarming level of destitution in rural area including feminization of crushing poverty. It is true that any intervention to alleviate HCP is a Herculean task. It is expected to attempt at combating gross imbalance in power relations, giving collateral-free institutional credit to promote self-development, removing lopsided patron client relationship, capacity building, empowering destitute woment who own no arable and often no land for homestead, especially the helpless women because of disablement, divorce or death of husband.
The Hard Core Poverty (HCP) as a conceptual and practical issue is not brought into development interventions of GO-NGO alike for poverty alleviation. In other words HCP people have been excluded from the purview.
In recent times a number of ‘NGOs at home and abroad’ have come to realize this omission growing out of hitherto existing gap in the state of knowledge “A very important segment of the poor who composes twenty five percent of the poor household (HH) is known by various different labels such as the poorest of the poor” ultra poor vulnerable, hard core poor, etc.
Proper knowledge about this seemingly neglected otherwise important aspect of the impoverished population has much to do with empirical definitional continuum as a mark of identifying HCP This is a sine-qua-non for strategic management of poverty alleviation process focussing on HOP.
As an emerging poverty issue HCP is now treated as a special component of poverty alleviation policy of national government.
Poverty alleviation in general and hard core poverty in particular, have received consideration in the sectoral program. This reflects the commitment of the national government in addressing the crisis of hardcore poverty.
Evidence now shows that social safety nets are making a substantial contribution in the fight against poverty.
Safety nets help people escape extreme poverty, close the poverty gap, and reduce inequality. Safety nets build household resilience to respond to shocks across the life cycle, key to building human capital.
Our new report highlights that while safety nets helped 36 percent of the poorest escape extreme poverty, only one in five of the poorest in low-income countries are covered by safety net programs. The report focuses on two special themes: (1) adaptive social protection – increasing the responsiveness of social protection programs to adapt to and meet changed needs on the ground after shocks have materialized; and (2) old-age pensions – which provide an alternative source of income for elderly adults who are not covered by contributory schemes.
Among the very poor who received safety net benefits, 36% escaped extreme poverty, providing clear evidence that social safety net programs are making a substantial impact in the global fight against poverty, says a new World Bank Group report.
The impact of social safety nets on poverty is measured based on available household data from 79 countries by comparing the welfare of the safety nets beneficiaries to what it would have been had they not received such support.
Data from the State of the Social Safety Nets 2018 report shows that safety nets – which include cash, in-kind transfers, social pensions, public works, and school feeding programs targeted to poor and vulnerable households – also lower inequality, and reduce the poverty gap by about 45 percent, even if they do not emerge from poverty. These positive effects of safety net transfers hold true for low and middle-income countries alike.
Safety net seems to an anti-poverty programme. Several countries, in the midst of the global financial crisis, stress an expansion of their social safety net programs.
Existing delivery mechanisms for social assistance in the region tend to be basic, in line with the smallness of programmatic intervention. New programmes are expanding.
At times lack of coordination, ambiguous criteria for identifying and selecting beneficiaries, low administrative capacity, lack of transparency and limited beneficiary participation may impair program effectiveness and accountability.
Good governance is necessary for improving program outcomes through program coordination, stronger accountability and transparency and participation.
Governance in social safety nets continues to stand at greater risk due to lack of effective programme management there are programs for the poor households, but poverty status may change over time rendering it difficult for eligibility verification. Responsibilities for implementing programs hinder accountability. The outcome is not desirable excluding those among poor who are target beneficiaries.
Implementation with well conceived ideas go hand in hand with transparency. Transparency needs program information disclosure: like capturing information on the program i monitoring and evaluation helping to provide information for accountability and lessons learned to all stakeholders; and transparency involving community stakeholders l may ensure better program outcomes and reduce error, fraud and corruption.
Transparency also relate to two main aspects: like program results and program rules, including eligibility criteria, benefits, existing conditionalities, etc. With beneficiaries of social assistance program, transparency does not suffice to guarantee real access to information and in many cases must be accompanied by active communication strategies and the participation of civil society.
(Dr. M Abul Kashem Mozumder is the Pro-VC of BUP and Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque is a retired professor of Chittagong University).
