Towards a new paradigm for poverty eradication in South Asia

Towards a I lew paradigm for poverty era( lication in South Asia z zyxwv Shaikh Maqsood Ali and Susil Sirivardana Report of the independent South Asian Commission on poverty alleviation ‘Agenda for Immediate Action’.’ The messages were: (1) South Asia has a common history, common eco-system and shared fundamental values The Report of the Independent South Asian which could provide a vision of a South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation of the South community based on ‘unity in diversity’. (2) But South Asia is facing a multifaceted Asia Alliance for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) provides the point of departure for crisis - poverty reproduction, slow economic this article. growth, uneven development, population pressA multifaceted crisis in South Asia - polit- ure, natural resource erosion, high - defence ical, economic, social and expenditure and an internal arms race, social polarizecological - began to Shaikh Maqsood Ali has been secretary ation, religious fundamenemerge in 1990. Heads of of the Bangladeshi Ministry of Planning talism, youth alienation and state felt that no South and member of its Planning Commission. He chairs the Bangladesh Task Force on ethnic conflicts, as well as Asian country could meet Poverty Alleviation. Address: Sadharan marginalization globally. the external and internal Bima Corporation, 33 Dilkusha ComThese conflicts and probchallenges without closer mercial Area, Motijheel, Dhaka 1000. lems are becoming unmaneconomic and political coSusil Sirivardana has been in the Sri operation at several levels ageable and external trends Lankan Administrative Service for are pushing South Asia within the South Asian twenty-five years. He was adviser to the Independent South Asian Commission further and further to the region. It was also felt that on Poverty Alleviation. Address: 1516 the SAARC could not move margins of the world econAlfred House Gardens, Colombo 3 , Sri forward purely as an interomy and international poliLanka. governmental body. A tics. No South Asian coungreat deal of research suptry can solve these problems port, innovative thinking, individually and collecand participation by non-governmental actors tively. Regional co-operation is essential. would be required to bring out the potential in (3) A more complex sustainable human South Asia for sustainable human development development strategy than hitherto adopted, and democracy. which includes greater decentralization and An Independent Group of South Asian empowerment of the poor, could provide an Scholars and Professionals (IGSAC) was one answer to the region’s needs, the challenge of of the first to respond to this challenge to human development, participatory democracy the intellectual and non-governmental actors. and good governance. Drawing on a number of earlier studies, they The IGSAC Report stated that the reasons submitted a study to the 1991 Colombo Summit for closer economic and political co-operation which contained three powerful messages and an were strong and left no choice for South Asia. zyxwvu zyxwv zyxwvutsrq zyxwv ISSJ lW1996 0UNESCO 19%. Published by Blackwell Publishers. 108 Cawley Road, Oxford OX4 IF. UK and WI Man Sueet. Cambridge. MA 02142, USA. 208 zyxwvutsrqp zy Shaikh Maqsood Ali and Susil Sirivardana It recommended an Agenda for Immediate finally, to identify the critical elements in a Action, to move SAARC towards a South Asian coherent overall strategy of poverty alleviation Economic Community through five interrelated in South Asia. There was a deep realization core areas of regional co-operation. that without poverty eradication, the one billion The five core areas - poverty eradication, strong mass market could not become a reality. The Report that emerged was a unanimous food security, trade co-operation, payments union and external resource mobilization - were one. Achieving this unanimity in relation to not only closely interrelated, but also necessary such a complex problem area was worthy of prerequisites for achieving the vision of a South note. It conveyed some sharp political messages Asian Economic Community with sustainable and some practical recommendations. The human development, poverty eradication, real analysis was not based on a priori theorizing or democratic political formations and good on borrowed ideologies. It was based on the governance. Food security is the other side of South Asian reality and on the hard lessons of the poverty coin and in a region which has nearly half a century of development experience a food surplus and further potential for food on the ground. This was the first time that South production, poverty eradication and the right Asian heads of state had collectively sought to food go hand in hand. For trade, co-operation independent advice from a group of South Asipayments arrangements are essential. In Europe ans and provided them with an opportunity to the payments union preceded economic co-oper- look critically at nearly half a century of South ation. The mobilization of external resources is Asian development experience. The Report necessary both for poverty eradication as well contained three messages and one recommenas for industrialization and building South Asia’s dation to the heads of state: technological capabilities. Trade co-operation was not supposed to end with the signing of a Problem and setting framework agreement - the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement (SAPTA). The Report - Poverty in the region in the year 1991, based urged that since the opening up of regional trade on the conventional ‘poverty line’ estimates in will help expand production and employment in most countries, was between 330 to 440 million, all countries, bring down costs of living and and likely to be nearer the upper figure. help reap the benefits of a larger technology- - The structural adjustment policies, which led mass market, there should be reductions accompany the open-economy-industrialization across the board of tariff and non-tariff barriers strategy currently being adopted by most SAA RC within five years and a move towards a larger countries, are likely to put further strains on the regional free trade area. The Trade Chambers poor, particularly in the shorter term. and the SAARC Federations of these Chambers - The conclusion is inescapable that the magnishould vigorously pursue trade within the tude and complexity of the problem of poverty in South Asia is staggering. When coupled with region. The Independent South Asian Commission the multifaceted crisis currently facing South on Poverty Alleviation which was established Asian countries, the problem is becoming at the 1991 Colombo SAARC Summit, was a unmanageable. It not only puts democracy at major innovation within SAARC. The members risk, but also poses a threat to the very fabric of the Commission, though appointed by of South Asian societies. SAARC heads of state, functioned independently. There were scholars and government Inadequacy of past development officials, as well as representatives of NGOs interventions and organizations of the poor - all South Asians. The terms of reference required the members - The conventional development interventions of the Commission to diagnose clearly what went over the pastfifty years, have resulted in a growth wrong with past attempts at poverty alleviation, rate too low to have an impact on the levels draw the positive lessons from the ground where of living and human development of the large the poor have been mobilized to contribute to number of poor. Though South Asia has achieconomic growth and human development and, eved an average growth rate of 3.1 per cent over zyx zyx zyxw zyxwvutsrqponm @ UNESCO 1996. zyxwvut zyxwvutsr zyxwvut zy zyxwvuts zyxwvut Poverty eradication in South Asia the past ten years, while several other regions in the South have had negative growth, such growth has failed to ‘trickle down’ or to be administratively redistributed to the poor, except in a limited manner. - Mere continuation of the conventional development pattern with marginal variations, greater efficiency in achieving these limited gains, and ad hoc consultation with the poor in the name of participation will not be adequate to reverse the process of poverty reproduction. The sheer magnitude and complexity of the task should not be underestimated. Learning from the ground of poverty in South Asia will require a major political approach in which social mobilization and empowerment of the poor play a critical role. - In the past ten to fifteen years, a sufJicient body of new experience has matured at the microlevel in the South Asian countries, to demonstrate that where the poor participate as subjects and not as objects of the development process it is possible to generate growth, human developments and equity, not as mutually exclusive tradeoffs but as complementary elements in the same process.2 An in-depth analysis made of the hundreds of participatory processes on the ground in South Asia confirm that the poor have contributed to growth and human development simultaneously under varying socio-political circumstances. - In this process of social mobilization, organizations of the poor and new kinds of sensitive support mechanisms would implement the strategic options. The sensitive support mechanisms could be varied, e.g. non-governmental organizations, banks for the poor, co-operatives and even decentralized government agencies working with new values and n o r m . The state would provide the enabling policy framework, resources and devolve power to the poor. - The eradication The recommendation: a pro-poor perspective and social mobilization 209 premise for action is a pattern of development which initially moves on two fronts: (a) The open-economy industrialization front, and (b) The poverty alleviation front. These two parallel strategic thrusts, having longerand shorter-term time frames can be harmonized as the two processes evolve. At the Dhaka SAARC Summit in 1993, the heads of state, again by consensus, approved this strategy for eradicating poverty by the year 2002, which came to be known as the ‘Consensus on poverty eradication in South Asia’. At the 1995 SAARC Summit in New Delhi, the political commitment to poverty eradication in a reasonable time frame was restated and the Ministers of Finance/Planning were requested to formulate an implementation strategy for this decision, based on an action plan which the Summit had also e n d o r ~ e d . ~ The underlying development paradigm: eradicate poverty first and accelerate the growth rate as a by-product The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries thus have a new ‘paradigm’ to offer. This paradigm has been built up in response to this region’s efforts to meet the ‘challenge of poverty’ and is based on the lessons of experience on the ground. It is not an attempt at a priori theorizing. The challenge of poverty in this region is quite serious: the region consists of about one-fifth of the total population of the world, of which about 40 per cent is below the poverty line. About one-third of the total population in this region is unemployed. Social unrest arising from the existing incidence of poverty and unemployment is already quite high. If this society disintegrates, it is likely to destabilize not only South Asia but the whole world. Let us first find out what this SAARC paradigm has to say. Then we shall explain why we call it ‘a new development paradigm’. First, in the context of the contemporary SAARC countries (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Maldives), z zyxwvu - The perspective which should inform these new premises for action should be unambiguously pro-poor and culturally relevant. The new 0UNESCO 1996. 210 zyxwvutsrqp zy Shaikh Maqsood Ali and Susil Sirivardana the new paradigm insists that we set our thinking ‘right’. Previously, we thought we had to raise the rate of growth first, in order to reduce poverty in the subsequent period through a ‘trickle down process’. Under the new paradigm, this ‘wisdom’ is questioned. In South Asia, we have tried to raise the growth rate for several decades. We have so far failed in this effort primarily because our savings rate (as percentage of GDP) has been inadequate relative to our investment needs. We have also tried the alternative solution of breaking the vicious cycle of poverty by raising the quantity of foreign assistance to complement our low domestic savings, but instead of raising the growth rate, we have mostly raised our debt burden and sharpened some contradictions within our societies in the process. Can we explain our conduct to the next generation? Is there any guarantee that we would do better in the future, if we pursue the same process with greater rigour and ‘efficiency’? The new paradigm tells us that since we have so far failed to reduce poverty by accelerating the growth rate first, let us now try another approach: eradicate poverty first and see if it can push us to a higher growth path as a byproduct. The economic process suggested in the new paradigm is: been termed ‘sensitive support’ from the government. (d) The sensitive support network that the new paradigm advocates has many components, most important of which is ‘credit intervention’ followed by (i) access to other resources; (ii) innovative procedures to make the market ‘friendly to the poor’ (usually the conventional market is ‘unfriendly’ to the poor - it raises the prices of inputs without raising the price of output, particularly when subsidies are withdrawn under the pretext of structural adjustment reform without adequate homework); (iii) promotion of gender equality (usually poor women are more efficient, particularly as savers); and (iv) increased investment in human resources development (particularly in education and health). zyxwvutsr (a) Recognize that the poor, by and large, are ‘efficient’. They are not only surviving but also contributing substantially and creatively to the GDP growth in our countries with very little income in their hands. If they had more income and assets, they could presumably contribute more. (b) The ‘efficiency’ of the poor increases further when they can be organized. Organizations of the poor open up the chances of bringing their creativity into the mainstream of development. More specifically, they give them the ability to borrow money without collateral, generate self-employment and, at the same time, initiate a dynamic process of capital accumulation through increased savings and increased investment. (c) With the savings constraints substantially broken, poverty reduction via the generation of self-employment increases investment, income and savings. To sustain this momentum, however, the process needs what has The above economic process can then be reinforced by a new political and social process. The ‘political process’ would have the following ingredients: (a) There has to be increased ‘devolution of decision-making powers’ in favour of the poor, particularly in areas which concern them most. The poor should be encouraged to identify their problems, prepare projects/programmes and consolidate these into bottom-up programmes/plans. The government officials have to be trained, where needed, to act as catalysts1 facilitators (but not as the ‘benevolent guardians’ which is at present the case). (b) The ‘right of the poor to basic needs’ has to be recognized along with their ‘rights to resources, information and justice’. The right to basic needs has been included in the ‘constitutions’ in some countries of this region but without the right to resources and information, the poor will not have the means to generate self-employment. Without self-employment, they will have to depend mostly on ‘safety nets’ of the government/NGOs for meeting their basic needs. As far as the efficient poor are concerned, they do not need safety nets; they need resources to stand on their own feet through their dynamic accumulation process. The above political process has to be complemented by a social process. The ‘social process’ would imply that poverty, employment z zyxwvu zyxwvutsrqpo 0UNESCO 1996. Poverty eradication in South Asia zyxwvut 211 Child tied with rope to post while mother works, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1994 Harriet and social disintegration (if any) would be attacked at the grassroots through community organization. Once a community organizes, individuals become ‘responsible’ to help each other. This social process can be supported by a ‘new value system’ that complements the conventional ‘competitive spirit’ of the individual and the nation with the obligation of ‘sharing and earning’. This value teaches the individual that his own welfare is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the development of the nation. He has to be ‘responsible’ for the welfare of his fellow citizens. Previously most of us thought that this was a desirable objective but not a practicable one. The rational individual earns money for his own consumption, not to give it to others in chanty. The new development paradigm teaches us that this value system emanates dynamically wherever there are successful cases of poverty alleviation through social mobilization. And, further, it enhances, not reduces, economic growth. Logan/Network/Rapho zyxw So the SAARC paradigm has not only an economic but also a political and social dimension. They reinforce each other. The integration of the values of sharing and caring through the dynamic of community organization shows that it is possible to bring ‘ethics’ into both economics and politics. This in turn leads the society to greater social cohesion. This process of integration of economics, politics and social development is yet to be found in conventional economics. So we call the SAARC prescriptions for development ‘a new development paradigm’, that shows how we may reduce poverty to achieve growth with greater social integration. Another way of stating this is to say that through this paradigm the objectives of growth, human development, and greater equity could be achieved as part of the same process, and need not be trade-offs. We have given only a very brief description of the main ingredients of the new paradigm. It needs a lot more fleshing out. This is part of 212 zyxwvutsrq zy zyxwvuts zyxw Shaikh Maqsood Ali and Susil Sirivardana the future action research agenda and learning process. Towards strategic thinking and implementation: the Sri Lankan and Bangladesh cases For implementation purposes, critical elements at the national level were: adjusted in pursuit of the open-economy industrialization strategy. Some are attempting to further decentralize the process of development decision-making, some are placing greater emphasis on social development, and still others are attempting to further increase the delivery of inputs to the poor more efficiently, streamline the administrative redistribution machinery and food systems, and introduce safety nets. A few have recently begun to initiate bolder new programmes of social mobilization, which fall broadly within a new pattern of development, that enable the poor to contribute to growth and human development and also assert the right to resources intended for them. A deeper analysis shows that some of the positive experiences, which are still partial or very fragmented, can be built upon and given greater coherence through a pro-poor plan and social mobilization, as recommended in the Poverty Commission Report. Two such illustrative case profiles and ‘fast track’ implementation possibilities are set out below. (1) Hard core poverty needs to be eradicated from all countries in South Asia by the year 2002 AD. (2) Each SAARC country, therefore, should prepare a time-bound action programme to achieve the above objective. (3) The strategy of the action programme would be based explicitly on social mobilization, a process that organizes the poor to bring their efficiency and creativity into the mainstream of development. (4) The poor themselves would play the dominant role for mobilizing themselves (through various innovative processes that the The Janasaviya Programme and procountry would have evolved particularly over poor initiatives in Sri Lanka: an the last three decades), but the government attempt to walk on two legs would give the necessary sensitive support to During the period 1989-1993, Sri Lanka piontheir endeavour. (5) The process would have to be harmon- eered a package of policy and strategy initiatives ized with the government’s structural adjust- in poverty alleviation and pro-poor planning, ment reform programme that is now being which merit serious attention. Overall, they constitute an attempt - perhaps the most implemented. (6) The process would be based signifi- determined and wide-ranging by a South Asian cantly on the development of labour intensive state at that time - at simultaneously walking agriculture and export industry to maximize the on two legs. It was the systemic crisis which proliferated in Sri Lanka during the last seven generation of productive employment. (7) The SAARC countries would exchange years of the decade of the 1980s, which information on the above experiments to their demanded such an innovative response. It would be no exaggeration to state that during this mutual advantage. (8) The heads of statedgovernment of each period Sri Lanka attempted a radical restructurSAARC country would give an account of the ing of its political, social and economic order. The years 1987-89 are a watershed in Sri progress made in the field of poverty alleviation Lanka’s post-independent process of democratic at the next SAARC Summit meeting. governance and development. During these For implementation purposes the ground years there were two separate insurgencies, both reality showed that in the past three to four led by youth,4 one in the south and the other years, all the countries in South Asia have been in the north. The southern insurgency was the tentatively attempting to adapt their overall second one, the first having been the historic development plans to ensure that social polariz- April Insurrection of 1971. The crisis embraced ation and poverty reproduction are not exacer- a spectrum of political and economic issues. bated, as their economies are liberalized and On the economic side should be noted the zyxwvut 0 UNESCO 1996 z zyxwvut zyxw zyxwvutsr 213 Poverty eradication in South Asia insensitive, mechanistic and imitative manner in which the country liberalized the economy in 1977 - being the first country in South Asia to do so. The results of rapid structural adjustment were indeed mixed: on the positive side there were rises in exports, huge quantities of foreign aid, an upsurge of the private sector, a sharp drop in unemployment from 24 per cent in 1976/ 77 to 12 per cent in 1981/82, with growth of nearly 6 per cent during 1978-84 compared with only 2.9 per cent in 1970-77; while on the negative side consumer prices rose by over 200 per cent between 1977 and 1984, real wages deteriorated, income distribution got more skewed, purchasing power of the poor declined, and school drop-outs i n ~ r e a s e d But . ~ interestingly, hidden within the layers of crisis are the seeds of radical new thinking and practice. This new practice derived from a concrete attempt to radically reformulate housing policy from ‘provider-based’ housing to ‘people-based’ and ‘support-based’ housing in 1983-84. This encounter with housing by people proved to be extremely productive in terms of lessons learnt about participatory development. The result was the ‘Million Houses Programme’ (1984-89), where the poor house-building families became subjects and owners of their endogenous process, or the ‘national mainstream’. Government withdrew completely from the building business and became an active supporter in the housebuilding capacities of the urban and rural poor. This breakthrough resulted in a leap of learning which led to the theoretical clarification contained in A n Action Programme on Poverty Alleviation through People- based Development,6 and thereafter to its wider articulation in the New Vision, New Deal document which was published in late 1988 and served as President Premadasa’s election manifesto. What is innovative about the manifesto is the fact that the primacy of the people, especially the poor, had been made a cornerstone of post-1989 development thinking. In other words, together with the lead Janasaviya Programme (the National Poverty Alleviation Programme) and a whole constellation of supporting people-intensive, pro-poor, programme processes in housing, local level development, agricultural development, micro-enterprises, health etc., the commitment to the participatory development paradigm was made quite explicit. The Janasaviya framework Janasaviya or ‘the strength-creativity-capacity of the people’ was both the name of the national poverty alleviation programme begun in 1989, and also a much larger framework of participatory development (the paradigm) and social mobilization (the central methodology). This was primarily value-based and an explicit departure from business-as-usual and conventional top-down development. Hence, it was a dramatic break from the past. The Janasaviya Programme had to pass many searing tests before it was legitimized, the biggest being the verdict of the revolting southern insurgents. The Programme was launched at the height of the insurgency. Deeply conscious of its vulnerability vis-a-vis the insurgents, the Programme took the offensive by seizing the moral high ground. In six pithy principles and statements of values, it tried to project its radically altered perspective: (1) Trust the people, especially the poor. (2) The people decide and do: others support them. (3) The poor must be separately organized. (4) Always do what is just and right. (5) A countrywide process of learning by doing. (6) All procedures to be open and transparent. The programme successfully managed to totally depoliticize implementation and minimize bureaucratic domination. On the contrary, it sought to invite all those who were morally and personally committed to fighting poverty the literate and socially conscious youth were very much a part of this constituency - to come forward and assume responsibility for selfmanaging what was essentially designed as a people’s process. This premise was tested on the ground before long, namely in the vexed issue of identifying the poor. Here again, breaking from past practice, the Programme innovated by getting the whole community to select their own poor through an iterative process of open public meetings and public lists, prepared by the community itself on the basis of instantly and directly applicable local criteria (e.g. number of productive trees, extent of crops cultivated, animals and assets owned, gender status, zyxwvuts ~ 0 UNESCO 1996. zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVU 214 zyxwvutsrq zy other visible indices of deprivation). In spite of the condition of civil strife in the countryside, the numbers fell by about35 per cent during the first year, and remained so through subsequent years. The rethinking had paid off amidst civil strife, a harder and more equitable identification was realized. The programme consisted of two streams of support. First was a human development component of Rs 1458 (US$29) per month, distributed through the local co-operative outlets, and which was basically a basket of food plus living essentials offered in return for productive work for the self-improvement of the family and their asset base. This support was for a fixed 24-month period, during which the family was expected to mobilize itself for selfdevelopment. The provision of support made it compulsory for the family to put in twenty days of labour, whose benefit was to be for themselves. Also, the Rs 1458 came in three parts: two of Rs 500 (US$ 10) each per fortnight and a third of Rs 458 (US$ 9). The idea was that the family was invited to voluntarily save the Rs 458. The second stream of support was an investment component, whereby commercial banks extended credit up to Rs 25000 (US$ 500) in the first instance, if and when the family applied for a loan with a creditworthy project. As at November 1993, the Programme’ had covered 99 Divisions or areas (out of a total of 301 in the country), comprising a total of 455,132 ultra-poor families. The total expenditure by the state (excluding bank loans) was Rs 12,650 million (US$ 253 million). Of the above total families, 238,889 had taken bank loans to the value of Rs 1314 million (US$ 26.2 million). Total voluntary savings to the credit of the families was Rs 2163 million (US$ 43.2 million). Repayment rates varied from 30 per cent in weak areas to 95 per cent in good areas. The quantity of private and community assets acquired through the food goods for twenty days work programme, was astonishing. Private assets were primarily in the form of upgraded or new houses and upgraded or new toilets. Community assets formed a spectrum ranging from agricultural wells and drinking wells to community centres, preschools, improved roads, canals and playgrounds. This social infrastructure has been 0 UNESCO 19% Shaikh Maqsood Ali and Susil Sirivardana valued at an estimated Rs 1139 million (US$ 27.7 million) for 145,456 private units and Rs 455 million (US$9 million) for community assets. The other key feature of the Programme was its social mobilization process,8 which comprised awareness raising, small and large group formation, building up organizations of the poor, and the numerous other psycho-social aspects of human development and self-management, where the poor and in particular poor women overcame their lack of identity. In fact, as the Programme expanded from year to year, this was the aspect that suffered from a paucity of trainers. Hence, the results were uneven and fitful. Where there were good trainers, the mobilization was quickly internalized, made meaningful in terms of people’s own lives and their alienation and delusions were overcome. Where there were no trainers or where they were weak, there was no mobilization commensurate to the need. However, as a result of the large scale of the Programme, certain features of mobilization became normative. Small groups were universal. Larger organizations were being formed. All of them had huge sums of money saved. By and large, a sound process of selforganization had begun to emerge. zyxw Pro-poor planning - beyond the Janasaviya Programme Janasaviya catalysed a much larger frame of development thinking, which went beyond the specific Programme described above. Some of these like the 1.5 Million Houses Programme were direct outcomes of the New Vision, New Deal manifesto. Many others emerged from the more general perspective. Among them are the Divisional Secretariat attempt at administrative restructuring, devolution and decentralization, the attempt at labour intensive (especially young female labour) Garment Factories Programme located at the periphery, the innovative subcontracting oriented Free Trade Zone at Koggala, the Janasaviya Trust Fund, which was a new type of bank for the poor with World Bank assistance, a Community Water Supply and Sanitation Project, also with World Bank assistance and the experiment in people-intensive local level development called the Janasaviya 15,000 Projects Programme. All these were based on a restructured and revalued set of z zyxwvu zyxwvut zyxw Poverty eradication in South Asia mainly pro-poor assumptions, which were aimed at complementing, linking up or balancing with the mainline export-oriented open economy industrialization process. All of them were predicated on a new people-centred value frame, with participatory planning and social mobilization as core methodologies. Coherence, incoherence and disarray On reflection, the trajectory of the overall process at putting in place a second macro micro strategy leg at the core of the national development strategy, presents a pattern ranging from coherence to incoherence to disarray, during the less than five-year period of its heyday. The period lasted only as long as its proclaimed architect and protector was alive. For no sooner had President Premadara died, on 1 May 1993, than the pro-poor and alternativist parts of the vision and practice, which was fundamentally political, began to be rapidly reversed for lack of conviction and sensitive support. But the reversal antedates President Premadasa’s demise. Sri Lanka as a society, especially its elite, turned its back on the new social and economic thinking as soon as the insurgency was overcome in late 1989. As things began to return to normal, memories of the recent crisis receded, and, most seriously, so did any residual sensitivity to what the crisis was trying to tell this society about imperatives for change. All the vibrant messages about revitalizing democracy, especially at the grassroots base, empowering the poor, generating a new accumulation and wealth-creating process by the poor and the less poor, the immense possibilities of new participatory forms of governance and decentralized development administration, the numerous opportunities available for raising productivity in agriculture and forestry, were repudiated. Interestingly, there was a distinctive constituency that did learn and that did strengthen itself from the new pro-poor dispensation. This was made of the poor rural and urban communities. Soon, they felt the impact of the new national policy thrust, the expanded space opened up for them, and they exerted all their energies to benefit from it. As a result, there was much spontaneous and sympathetic communication and self-mobilization activity, which tried in one way or another, to relate to the 215 new pro-poor niches opening up throughout the country. Task force for preparation of poverty allevation plan and an action programme in Bangladeshg In accordance with the Dhaka Declaration and the Consensus on Poverty Eradication, the Government of Bangladesh set up a task force for the preparation of a poverty alleviation plan and an action programme with a convener and four members, two from government and two from the private voluntary organizations. So far the task force has undertaken the following steps. (1) It has commissioned ‘successful’ poverty alleviation case studies and projects from both government ministries or agencies and NGOs that may be recommended for diffusion in consultation with the concerned agencies or NGOs. (2) It is trying to get an independent agency, the Implementation Monitoring Evaluation Division (IMED) of the Ministry of Planning, Government of Bangladesh, to post-evaluate these projects so that their sustainability and dynamism can be verified as and when necessary. A TA project for strengthening the capacity of IMED and also of the line ministries, is being used to undertake this task. (3) In the meantime, the task force prepared (in January 1994) a draft outline of the proposed Poverty Alleviation Plan and circulated it for comments. On the basis of the comments received, a paper was prepared for the cabinet sub-committee for SAARC. The cabinet sub-committee instructed the task force to get a portfolio of investment projects prepared for the poor. This has accelerated the actions taken under (1) above. (4) The task force prepared a country paper for Bangladesh for the first meeting of SAARC Finance Ministers at Dhaka on poverty alleviation held in July 1994. This meeting was primarily arranged to ensure the availability of adequate funds for poverty alleviation action programmes in each SAARC country from their respective governments. The meeting recommended that: zyxwvu zyxwvutsrq 0 UNESCO 19% zyxw 216 zyxwvutsrqp zyx (a) the secretaries of the social sectors in each SAARC country would meet every year to consolidate their demand for resources for poverty alleviation action programmes and would process these through the relevant Ministry of Finance; (b) the secretaries of Ministries of Finance/ Planning of the SAARC countries would meet once a year to ensure that adequate funds are made available to alleviate hard core poverty in the region by the year 2002 AD, as stipulated in the Dhaka Declaration; (c) the Ministers of Finance/Planning of the SAARC countries would follow up this meeting once every year to give their support to the process; and (d) finally, this would be followed up by evaluation of the progress made at the Summit meeting of the SAARC heads of states or government. In Bangladesh, as mentioned above, the successful projects or programmes are being collected from the various line ministries and agencies and efforts are being made to evaluate them to find out their eligibility for wider diffusion. Simultaneously, the NGOs have been requested to (a) indicate their successful projects; (b) give their programmes for the replication of these successful projects/programmes; (c) give their requirements of government funds, if needed, with suggested modality for accountability for these funds; and (d) indicate areas where they would like to collaborate with the poverty alleviation projects or programmes of the government ministries or agencies with suggestions of the methods for such collaborations. Simultaneously, efforts are being made to identify areas of co-operation or collaboration from the line ministries or agencies in those poverty alleviation efforts where they need the support of the NGOs. It is interesting to note that to institutionalize this process of government collaboration with the NGOs, the government has set up an organization known as the Palli-Karma Shahayak Foundation (PKSF) which receives lump sum funds from the government to distribute it among the NGOs that require these funds for their poverty alleviation programmes. By now it has distributed funds to over 90 NGOs covering over 100,000 loanees Shaikh Maqsood Ali and Susil Sirivardana with a record of over 90 per cent recovery. It is now demanding more funds from the government to carry out its increasing responsibility. However, large NGOs in Bangladesh (some of them are mega-NGOs) have been getting their funds mainly from external sources. These NGOs include the Grameen Bank and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC).’O At the micro-level, government has taken two more steps to stimulate the poverty alleviation programme. First, there is an effort in the Ministry of Planning to restructure the planning process itself with the focus on what has come to be known as ‘participatory planning’. The Planning Commission is trying to finalize the framework of this plan in about a year’s time. Second, the government has decided to form ‘village institutions in Bangladesh that would be actively involved in the preparation of the bottom-up process of planning in line with the above endeavour (of participatory planning)’. It is presumed that other SAARC countries have also prepared their action programmes/ plans for poverty alleviation through social mobilization in accordance with the direction of the Dhaka Declaration. These experiences are likely to be exchanged in the next meeting of the SAARC Finance/Planning Ministers. l 1 zy zyx The South Asian experience and the implementation of the UN Social Summit declaration on poverty With the above background, we now turn to the question, what input the SAARC countries can give to the follow-up of the Social Development Summit as a region, on the three basic issues: poverty, unemployment and social disintegration. From our discussion we suggest the following. (1) Political commitment to eradicate poverty in South Asia within a time bound frame. The follow-up of the World Summit on Social Development may note that among the various regional co-operations and associations, South Asia stands distinct in one respect: its leaders have collectively committed themselves to eradicate poverty within a specific time frame (1993-2002). Can the other regional co-oper- z zyxwvut zyxwvutsrqpon 0 UNESCO 19%. Poverty eradication in South Asia zyxwvut 217 ations and associations that are still facing the essential component for growth. In a responsible problem of acute poverty, make a similar declar- society it is also an ‘end in itself‘. We recommend that each country prepare ation or commitment at the highest political a separate plan or programme for dealing with level? (2) Social mobilization as ‘the strategy’ for the problems of poverty, unemployment and poverty eradication. The next important input social disintegration, within a time-bound plan is that South Asia believes that among the three of action with focus on social mobilization that: issues of poverty, unemployment and social dis(i) recognizes the efficiency of the poor; integration, it is poverty alleviation that requires (ii) recognizes the rights of the poor to the utmost attention and if the ‘poverty’ problem can be attacked and solved in a ‘particular’ way, resources and information along with the rights the related issue of unemployment and social to basic needs; and (iii) tries to integrate this efficiency and disintegration can be tackled with relative ease. (3) A n action programme for implementing the rights of the poor in the mainstream of the ‘new development paradigm’. The above development process. recommendations would have to be reflected in At a regional level, a modality should be a specific programme. There would be an Action Plan for Poverty Eradication aimed at amelior- developed for the exchange of information at ation of the ‘hard core poor’ within a time- regular intervals through the relevant UN agencies with particular focus on the innovative bound plan. It may be noted that the SAARC poverty mechanisms used in the different regions for plan welcomes the process of conscientization implementing the time-bound poverty eradiand empowerment of the poor for securing their cation programme so that other regions may rights, particularly right to basic needs, including benefit from these. As the interaction develops right to resources, information, justice and across the regions, particularly in the South, it security. It also envisages the creation of a can transform itself into a solidarity movement, ‘responsible society’, where ‘power elites’ recog- as recommended in the Report of the Internize their obligation to the poor. This is a part Governmental Council of UNESCO’s Manageof the human development in relation to the ment of Social Transformation (MOST) Propower elite. It indicates that in a civil society gramme held in Paris in June 1995.’* poverty eradication is usually justified as an zyxw zyx zy Notes 1. Report of the Independent Group on South Asian Cooperation (IGSAC), September 1991, ‘SAARC: Moving Towards Core Areas of Co-operation’. The Report drew heavily on the lessons from the ground, published in the studies, prepared under the auspices of the UN University South Asian Perspectives Programme (listed in Annex I) and other such synthesis studies by South Asian scholars. 2. P. Wignaraja, 1990, Women, Poverty and Resources, New DelhiDTewbury Park/London: Sage 0 UNESCO 19% Publications; P. Wignaraja, A. Hussain, H. Sethi and G. Wignaraja, 1991, Participatory Development: Learning from South Asia, Karachi/Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3. The Report of the Independent South Asian Commission on Poverty Alleviation has used the term ‘poverty eradication in a tenyear time frame’ to mean eradicating of the worst forms of dehumanizing poverty in a tenyear period, leaving only residual numbers of poor to be carried by charity, social welfare and safety nets, until they also can be brought into the mainstream of development. zy zyx 4. Sessional Paper 1 of 1990, The Report of the Presidential Commission on Youth, aptly documents the steps leading to the crisis of confidence. 5. The negative impacts have been concretely analysed in Sri Lanka: the social impact of economic policies during the last decade. Colombo: UNICEF, 1985. 6. Published as Sessional Paper No. XI1 of 1988. 218 z zyxwvutsrqp Shaikh Maqsood Ali and Susil Sirivardana 7. All figures from October 1989 to September 1993 and November 1993, Janasaviya Programme Databook of Performance, Colombo: Janasaviya Commissioner’s Department. 8. S. Sirivardana, 1992, Reflections on empowerment of the poor in the Janasaviya Programme, Colombo: IRED. 9. See Report to the First SAARC FinancetPlanning Ministers Meeting, 1994, Bangladesh Country Paper on Poverty Alleviation, Dhaka: in Planning Commission. 10. The Grameen Bank recently set up a Grameen Trust Fund to multiply the ‘Grameen’ process of micro level financial institutions within Bangladesh, as well as in other SAARC countries like Nepal. The World Bank has contributed US$ 2 million to the Trust. See Women, Poverty and Resources, pp. 229-230, for full reference. See also: A. Fugelsang and D. Chandler, Dale, 1986, Participation as what we can learn from rhe Grameen Bank, Oslo: NORAD; A. Rahaman, ‘Development responses to natural disaster’, Participatory development: learning from South Asia; C.H. Lovell, 1992, Breaking the cycle of poverty - the BRAC strategy, Kumarian Press. 11. At the 1995 SAARC Summit in New Delhi, the heads of state approved the framework of an action plan for consideration at the next meeting of SAARC Finance and Planning Ministers to be held before the end of 1995. zyxwvu zy 12. See: Report of the Second Session of the Intergovernmental Council of the Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST); and P. Wignaraja, New social movements in South empowering the people. zyxwvuts fQUNESCO 1996.