OneWorld.net (U.S.)

South Asia still has nearly 400 million poor people in a population of 1.42 billion. Although, on the criteria of purchasing power parity (PPP) of US$ 1 a day, the scale of poverty has come down from 51.3 per cent to 31.3 per cent in 2001, the challenges to overcome poverty are so enormous that the efforts being made to alleviate poverty are far from being equal to the task. Poverty is not just endemic, but it is increasingly concentrated in the lagging regions.

In absolute numbers the people living under the poverty line are, on $2 per day criterion, more than 80 per cent of the population in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, 73.6 per cent in Pakistan and 41.6 per cent in Sri Lanka. Such a large scale of poverty still persists despite a higher growth rate in recent years and large remittances ($22 billion in 2004-5) from non-resident nationals that mitigated balance of payment crisis and current account deficit.

Employment has remained stagnant while wages have fallen, despite higher growth rates. For instance, despite high growth rates in India during the 1990s, the rate of employment growth remained as low as one per cent, the gap in income distribution widened and reduction in poverty was far less than the growth rate. The fiscal stabilisation policies and macroeconomic structural reforms undertaken by the countries of the region have in fact not helped substantial reduction in poverty in the medium term. Neglect of social sectors for too long and ignoring poor, especially women, in economic development have resulted in higher rates of illiteracy and dismal health conditions in the countries of South Asia, except for Sri Lanka and Maldives.

South Asia is the only region in the world that spends less than $30 per person on healthcare -- which is two-thirds of what sub-Saharan Africa spends and 11 per cent of what Latin America and Caribbean spent on health in the same year. About half the children under the age of five are malnourished in South Asia as compared to 28 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa and only seven per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean. South Asia's share of undernourished people of the world is 40 per cent (300 million). Except for Sri Lanka and Maldives, all other SAARC countries are among the bottom quartile in Human Development Index, or marginally above it. In the human poverty index (HPI), except for Sri Lanka and Maldives, other countries of the region have higher level of human deprivations.

Similarly, in education the situation remains as worse as in healthcare. The youth literacy rate in South Asia was 72 per cent in 2003, which is close to sub-Saharan Africa. It was 50 per cent in Bangladesh, 53 per cent in Bhutan, 76 per cent in India, 99 per cent in Maldives, 73 per cent in Nepal, 64 per cent in Pakistan and 95 per cent in Sri Lanka. As on HDI and health indicators, women are discriminated against on all counts and parameters, including education and job opportunities. According to the UNDP Human Development Report 2005, the gender-related development index (GDI) value was 0.75 for Sri Lanka, 0.59 for India and 0.51 for Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.

The most glaring aspect of poverty is that it is increasingly concentrated in the regions that have been left behind in the course of an unequal development and growth. The phrase 'two India(s)' exemplifies this difference in regional development outcomes. In 2002-2003, all-India per capita GDP was $480; the poorest seven states (accounting for 55 per cent of the population) had a per-capita national income that was two-thirds the national average, while in the richest seven states (33 per cent of the population) per-capita GDP was nearly double that of the poorest seven states.

In the two largest and poorest northern states (Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, 25 per cent of total population) per-capita GDP was less than half the national average and only a third of the richest seven states. The four southern states, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu (21 per cent of the total population), at an average, enjoyed more than twice the GDP per capita of the quarter of the population concentrated in the two poorest northern states.

With an average GDP growth rate of five per cent, the southern states are galloping ahead of the poorest but populous northern states with the growth rate of only two per cent. Consequently, the poverty gap between the poorest northern states and the better off southern states has doubled: there are 35 per cent poor in the north and 18 per cent in the south. The same is true about Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal, where regional disparities have not been mitigated. This growing inequality is often reflective of the domination of one ethnic/caste group or the other who then perpetuates the system of its dominance by various discriminatory means. Many of India's lagging states, such as Bihar and UP, Balochistan and NWFP in Pakistan, northern and northeastern regions of Sri Lanka explain this unequal development.

Not only that the funds allocation for primary healthcare, education and poverty eradication are too scarce, as compared to the huge sums being spent on non-productive expenditure, they are also wasted through inefficient and corrupt practices. While South Asia spends one of the highest percentages of its revenues and GDP on defence, administration and security, it spends the least in the world on social sectors. Human security, food security, right to work, education, health and decent living are far from being addressed appropriately. The poor are seen as a liability, not as an active part of the solution. They are, at best, placed at the mercy of the providence of the rich or some handouts by the government.

The development paradigm being pursued by the countries of the region is premised on a massive differentiation of income and accumulation of capital, power, resources, credit, development projects, means of production and markets in a few hands. The destiny of the poor is left to the trickle-down effect of the accumulation and concentration of the capital in the hands of the most privileged. Increasing automation, mechanisation, computerisation and modernisation are biased against labour-intensive technologies resulting in higher rates of unemployment or lower rates of labour absorption in terms of capital investment. The structures of GDP growth, erosion of traditional means of living, mechanisation of agriculture on which the bulk of population lived, over-crowding of cities, neglect of human resource development, illiteracy, lack of health services, discrimination against women and marginalized communities, unequal development, regional disparities, over-centralisation, bad governance and corruption all have contributed to the vast incidence of poverty.

Although South Asia has experienced an impressive economic growth during the last decade projects a latest World Bank Report on South Asia. However, the assumption that higher growth rate will automatically result in reduction of poverty has not been validated by the ground realities. Not every pattern of development and growth model, as currently prevalent in the region, has helped alleviate the sufferings of the largest mass of poor in our part of the world. The poverty in both relative and absolute terms has perpetuated. According to the WB report, South Asia could bring down poverty to less than ten per cent in the next 10 years, if it succeeded in accelerating its annual growth rate to 10 per cent. The economists differ that higher growth rates do not necessarily translate into poverty reduction and macro-economic reforms have in fact increased the gulf between the rich and the poor in all countries of the region.

In the past decade, economic growth has resulted in a growing gap between the rich and the poor, which will put a break on the prospects of growth as well. As inter and intra state conflicts, corruption and high fiscal deficits are likely to adversely affect growth, without increasing investment, productivity, efficiency, improved human resources, good governance, much improved human and physical infrastructures, greater priority to empowering and enabling poor though their own organisations and giving top preference to backward regions and women, neither will high growth sustain, nor will poverty go down. The issues related to poverty are all-sided and can't be tackled in isolation. A who-list strategy has to be evolved to empower have-nots, especially the women, by directly providing them with the means of income, education, healthcare, skills and resources and, above all, by breaking the anti-poor power nexus at all levels.

Dr Ponna Wignaraja and Dr Akmal Hussain rightly argue in 'Poverty and South Asia', one of the 14 volumes of South Asian Studies published by South Asian Policy Analysis (SAPANA) Network, for an alternative paradigm of sustainable development and a who-list approach to empower the poor and break with the local power nexus of the elite and bureaucracy that continues to marginalise the poor. In fact governance, devolution and sustainable development of the poor are closely interlinked.

A pro-poor growth strategy not only warrants higher investment, reduced incremental capital output ratios, increased employment elasticity, but also increased efficiency, transparency and devolution that break the nexus of the powerful and create the countervailing power of the poor through their autonomous collective organisations at the grassroots level. This strategy must focus on the structural factors behind poverty and ensure better access of the poor to resources, credit, markets, skills, information, labour, land, means of livelihood, agricultural inputs and outputs and pro-active participation in the development process as the major stakeholders and masters of their destiny.

Source: The News More