Three ways to impact the MDGs

Minar Pimple is the Regional Director of Asia-Pacific, United Nations Millennium Campaign. Minar is an expert on poverty reduction, governance and accountability with particular expertise in human rights, sustainable development and land rights/ownership. Earlier, he was the Deputy Director for Asia, United Nations Millennium Campaign. He founded Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA) - a non-governmental organisation, at the age of 23.

OneWorld South Asia: At the press conference on Monday you expressed a certain level of disappointment

Minar Pimple: I think that the Indian academia is a thriving community. It is very important that academia gets involved to highlight the issues of MDGs from both perspectives, in terms of gaps and deficits, and also in terms of achievements. The role of academia is to produce case studies etc. that pinpoint those actions that steer progress in the right direction, document them and catalyse ideas on how they can be scaled up; also the studies need to identify what is going wrong and how it can be corrected.

They can contribute by expanding the MDG debate beyond the government and civil society through creation of an independent voice with evidence-based research. This would be a great contribution in the remaining five years for the accelerated achievement of MDGs. Hence, the premier institutions in India have to play an important role - universities, research institutions, not only at the national level but also at the level of states (at the provincial level). Since many of the MDGs have to be achieved at the provincial level, they are the responsibility of the provincial or the state governments. From this perspective, engaging academia and encouraging them to undertake positive and concrete research on the ground is very useful and very much desired.

OWSA: The importance of women's empowerment was highlighted at the press conference. How do you see the role of women in terms of meeting the Millennium Development Goals?

Minar: If you look at all eight Development Goals, they are all interconnected, interdependent, and one of the cross cutting themes is gender equality and women's empowerment. If women are empowered, if women are literate, there is very clear evidence from various researchers all over the world that it would have a positive impact on reduction of maternal mortality, infant and child mortality, and it would help in education on the issue of child nutrition. So women’s empowerment is one process by which a number of other MDGs could be facilitated. That is why women’s empowerment is one of the key building blocks towards achievement MDGs.

Second, if we really want to build an equitable world where women are involved in decision-making, then engaging women in all decision-making processes - as elected representatives, as high officials in the governmental departments, as members of line ministries of health and education - is essential. It is already evident that women leaders, through the 50 percent reservation in local panchayats, have performed really well in key issues like accessibility to potable water because these are the issues that affect women. Those local bodies have seen positive changes in terms of maternal mortality and focus on education because women feel empowered to play a monitoring role of government services and its delivery. Women’s empowerment is thus a critical kind of precondition towards achieving MDGs in their fullest sense.

OWSA: Can you recommend three things citizens of the Asia-Pacific can do to effectively participate in the campaign?

Minar: The three things that all the citizens need to really engage in are: firstly, the citizens that are already better-off in each of our societies have to become conscious, that for resilience, for the sustainability of development processes, we need to bring those who are marginalized, who are excluded, who haven’t gotten the benefits of development, on board. The middle and the upper-middle classes have to become aware and support the entitlements of the poor. That is one very critical element.

The people who have entitlements, the ones who should be benefiting from the Millennium Development Goals, those people have to start engaging in the process of monitoring their entitlements - whether the policies and the budgets, which are formulated at the central government level or at the state government level, whether those are actually translating into real quality goods and services like education, water or health, on the ground. This is something which people themselves can monitor.

The third critical point is that all citizens should hold political representatives - whether it is members of parliament or members of legislative assemblies - accountable to what they deliver on MDGs. These are three very critical ways in which citizens can engage in the UN Millennium Campaign, and we are actually working with all these sectors to get them on board with the Millennium Campaign.

OWSA: What is the most meaningful geographical unit to measure progress towards the Millennium Development Goals?

Minar: In the case of India, the most meaningful geographical unit for the urban sector is the ward and in case of the rural sector, it is the Panchayat. But beyond that, in terms of policymaking, in terms of budget distribution, it is a district. And in case of the urban sector it would be the municipalities. These are in fact the two most critical, because that is where 60 to 70 percent of the Millennium Development Goals are delivered. Primary education, health, water, sanitation, all these are the responsibilities of the local governments. Hence, the local government unit is the critical unit to be engaged.

Unfortunately, because the devolution process that began in India under the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments has not been fully functional, these units are left out of that engagement process; the discussion about MDGs is still at the level of the federal or central government. Localization of MDGs - empowering local government units towards the delivery of MDGs - is a critical pathway for accelerated achievement of MDGs in the next five years.

OWSA: What are the major steps the United Nations Millennium Campaign is taking to prepare for the upcoming September Summit?

Minar: For the upcoming September Summit we are focusing on three critical issues. One is encouraging all governments to go to the summit, between the 20th and 22nd of September, with breakthrough national plans for achieving MDGs. Rich countries’ governments should have breakthrough nationals plans addressing the delivery of goal eight, the issue of ODA, debt cancellation and on the issue of making trade fair for developing countries. For poorer countries, and developing countries like India, breakthrough plans should focus on how they will bridge the gaps that they have in their respective countries towards MDGs.

Secondly and critically, is the whole issue of bringing in the inequality discourse as part of the MDG discourse, because when you look at MDGs at national aggregates, it hides the realities in case of say women, in India in relation to dalits, in relation to Scheduled Tribes, in relation to nomadic tribes, in relation to the Muslim minority.

These are the groups where the concentration of poverty, where the concentration of illiteracy, where the concentration of disease and inaccessible potable water and poor sanitation is. So if you do not bring in the whole issue of disparity and inequality as part of the Millennium Development Goals, you will have national averages which will claim success but which will hide the real face of poverty. So that is the second point which we are focusing on and we want inequality recognised as part of the outcome document of the Summit.

The third outcome that we are looking for and pushing all governments and all citizens’ campaigns to focus on is accountability. There are two levels of accountability: one is accountability of the rich countries to the poor countries, in terms of them delivering on quality and quantity of aid, them undertaking debt cancellation, them undertaking fairer practices in trade which would mean the European Community and United States reducing their agricultural subsidies so that agricultural produce from developing countries can reach those markets. The developing countries can then have trade as a way out of poverty as far as they are concerned.

The second level of accountability is the governments in the poor and developing countries being accountable to their citizens. That is where I talk about citizens monitoring their entitlements on the ground. These two levels of accountability will ensure that the global compact that is the Millennium Development Goals will be truly enforceable by peer pressure across 192 nation states who are members of the United Nations. I am pretty confident that if the Summit outcomes are forward looking, and if they are concentrated on what has worked in the last ten years, how they can be scaled up, and how they can be replicated in other countries, we will see a much greater positive impact in the next five years.