Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque and M Abul Kasem Mozumsder :
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 industrialisation, 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 meager 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, enrollment, health, and population
Several East Asian countries, following the global financial crisis, are considering good governance in the expansion of their social safety net programmes. Delivery mechanisms in many cases tend to be in line with the small programmes. As field repots describe:”In a context of coverage expansion and proliferation of new programs, the risk of creating increasingly complex systems characterised by cross-incentives is high. Lack of coordination, ambiguous criteria for identifying and selecting beneficiaries, low administrative capacity, lack of transparency and limited beneficiary participation pose risks for program effectiveness and can decrease accountability. Good governance can improve program outcomes through effective program coordination, stronger accountability arrangements, provider incentives and greater transparency and participation. This paper proposes an analytical framework to systematically identify governance risks and constraints which, if removed, could improve the outcomes of modern social assistance programs.”
Human development projects and sub-projects are very much in the safety net expansion. As has been reported” Discussions on Social Protection have been published to have information on “the results of The World Bank’s work to the development community with the least possible delay. The World Bank and its affiliated organisations, or those of the Executive Directors of The World Bank or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work.”
Conceptually rural development is equated with the creation of service oriented field agencies that are meant for administration of development at the rural local level. Public sector has enlarged its involvement in rural development with a vast body of departments, public institutions and public utilities and their respective wings. Public sector thus has to exercise various functions with huge financial involvement for actualising multifarious projects in connection with rural development.. Given the complexity of rural development, the size of the organisation has become larger with vast establishment. In other words, local government has to manage this stupendous problem with vast establishment that administers multi-sectoral programs and projects. The line agencies with authoritative proceduralisation conduct day-to-day functions and activities (or gratifying public interest at the rural point. The crisis of rural communities bedeviled by a heap of problems and the resultant demands for services and utilities calls for massive institutional support and organisational intervention.
Rural development in Bangladesh conceptualized in terms of improving quality of life of the ruralities as the beneficiaries has become a function of field administration. The broad categories o functions performed by field administration with its diverse operating structures range from building physical infrastructure, construction and reconstruction works, and dissemination of knowledge to the area of functions connected with for social development. Field administration responds to calls for support and services with an efficient system of governance. It has to ensure optimal use of available resources and funds, prompt actions and timely response to local needs for effectively handling local affairs. In Bangladesh field administration for rural development is organised at the thana level with numerous extension agencies.
One kind of corruption found in officers’ behaviousral predisposition relates to allocations in those areas of projects which favour those local influential with whom they cultivate special relationship based on configuration of interest. It does mean that some officials are motivated by lucrative interest in some rural development projects. There is another form of misdemeanor explicit in the tendency of some corrupt officials to go for misappropriation of financial resources. True, the cases of embezzlement are available in plenty. Another form of corruption is the fact that union parishad chairman and members conducting food for works programs are apt to misappropriate huge amount of wheat earmarked for distribution among the labourers. Such cases are many. It is hardly surprising that they sell out this food aid to the black market. In most cases complaints about the story of scandals are not received for redress and judgment.
The whole gamut of administration in Bangladesh is structurally streamlined for functional specificity aid institutional course of action. The dynamics of administration flowing from the main-steam percolate downward. The central secretariat functions with various organisational divisions, units and sub-units.
Policy structure in bureaucratic organisation regulates all functional areas. The officials and staff in a hierarchically structured pattern of relationship interact within the bounds of the legal framework. To make it clear, the top official can hardly find any option for urgent sanction, as they have to strictly follow regulation and standards. On the frontier of performance the field agencies can hardly demonstrate potential for effective management, participatory decision, productivity and efficiency. They are rather underperforming, procrastinating and cost escalating. All though they are locus of action, dispensing authorities and promotional agencies they do not seem to perform well with transmission of input, output and feedback.
(Dr. Md. Shairul Mashreque worked at Chittagong University and M Abul Kasem Mozumder worked at BUP)
