Combating the root causes to Poverty
According to UNDP's 1997 Human Development Report, the country that has successfully alarmed the whole world with six nuclear thunderclaps, declared emergency in the state, suspended human rights, frozen foreign currency accounts, called the public for further tightening its belt, and further increased the defence budget has 35 million people living in absolute poverty and is ranked 139th on the Human Development Index (HDI) of 175 countries - well behind states like Cuba, Congo and Vietnam. And according to Transparency International 1996 reports, the most corrupt country was judged to be Nigeria, followed by Pakistan. Undoubtedly, economic stagnation, slow employment growth, increased defence spending and many more factors are responsible for creating and threatening further increase in poverty at the grassroots. But still there are some root causes that need to be addressed if we are really interested in poverty reduction in Pakistan.
Pakistan is one of the few unfortunate countries where comparison of the Human Poverty Index with Human Development Index reveals sharp contrast, which signals that the development is not working well for poverty reduction. This difference shows that the development is not pro-poor - there is an unequal distribution of progress and wealth. There social economic and political in equalities which leads to high moral poverty of the "haves" and high income and human poverty of the "have nots." Moral poverty of the political leaders and some bureaucrats and government officials increases poverty in many ways. Most directly it diverts resources to the "haves," who can afford to plan, bribe, steal and save, and away from the "have nots," who cannot.
Economic development has been pursued under governments which, for all their political differences, share in common a deep hostility to the principles of democracy and accountability. Moral bankruptcy at the mid level government machinery doesn't affect the "have nots" as much as the decay of morality at the top most level because eradication of poverty needs creation of a policy environment that promotes pro-poor growth, and development of instruments to improve the processes for peace building, conflict resolution and prevention, as well as ensuring access of the poor to the critical economic assets of land, credit, education, health and housing. Can we expect any such positive undertaking to overcome the daunting poverty from our political leaders? Absolutely not. We cannot take heart from what our political leaders have been doing over the last five decades.
Poverty alleviation programmes are going on in Pakistan since a long time and new programmes, like Punjab Rural Support Programme and government's poverty alleviation fund, have been introduced. Generally two factors dictate the prospects of success in such cases. First, accelerated economic growth in the country and second, increased investment in human development which is the precondition for converting growth in to poverty reduction. Growth with equity holds key to poverty reduction but our experience shows the plunder of our precious resources by our so-called leaders on the one hand and our growth leading only to continued poverty and widening inequalities on the other.
These widening inequalities are the root causes of poverty in Pakistan. And most of our poverty reduction programmes are not addressing the root causes. We have experienced that growth has made the poor worse off. Poor communities have been the victims of growth. In some cases they have been displaced by commercial investors and in other those living in remote areas have been bypassed by whatever little growth we have enjoyed. Wealthier people and regions have benefited more than their poorer counterparts and as a result the inequalities have widened.
Little can we see from all the efforts directed at poverty alleviation that would help us chalk out policies, which are needed for enabling poor people to participate in the growth process though the creation of opportunities. One of the reasons that Pakistan has failed to sustain growth, or to convert growth into poverty reduction is that we have failed to make the human development investments required. Where growth has occurred, it has trickled down to the poor at an abysmally slow pace due to lack of proper policies and strategies.
For economic success to take place, social foundations must be prepared before the economic growth begins. The prerequisite of a solid social foundation are improved level of literacy and advances in public health. And these are the areas which can not be adequately addressed by the poverty alleviation programmes due to lack of resources and a major focus on credit programmes. This keeps the poor not only at distance from sharing more equitably in the benefits of growth but also holds them from contributing through improved productivity and adaptability.
As a result the gap between "haves" and "have nots" widens. Systematic plunder and exploitation of national resources continues and no effort is made to integrate social and economic policies. Poverty alleviation programmes are doing what they can. But to combat the root causes of poverty we need to make investment in human capital an integral part of growth oriented economic policy. The focus should not be just on provision of services, but on enhancing the access of poor people to these services.
According to UNDP's statistics, fifty years have gone over us; but 45% of our population still lives without any basic health service; 62.9% is deprived of education and knowledge; 26% without safe water, and 53% without proper and adequate sanitation facilities. Real per capita GDP of the poorest 20% is $907, while for the richest 20% it is $4,288. As a result 12% of our fellow countrymen live on less than $1 a day. Thanks to our sullen resistance to change our course and the cold sluggishness of our character. In this situation we go for rural development programmes aimed at poverty alleviation, keeping in mind that our training and credit programmes will take our poor from their wretched poverty. Of course it would, but to what extent?
According to Oxfam international: "Where most of East Asia scores far more highly than other developing regions is in converting growth into poverty reduction and human development. This is precisely because economic growth has been combined with a high degree of equity in the distribution of income and - more importantly - access to opportunities of production, health and education."
Is there any concerted effort in offing from the poverty alleviation programmes in Pakistan to thoroughly invest in education, and greater redistribution of rewards from the market, based on the redistribution o assets and endowments in favour of poor?
Would we be able to eradicate the root causes of the poverty in Pakistan? The answer can be found in the fact that access to land, credit and marketing infrastructure are the key factors for enabling the rural poor to produce and invest their way out of poverty. Do we have any redistributive reforms in offing that would help to unleash the productive potential of the poor? Of course not. Are our regulation of foreign investment and industrial policy geared toward employment creation and improved productivity? Definitely not. Without such reforms and coherent policy formulation at macro level, we would industrialise and experience growth, but without significantly reducing poverty.
Compare to the ever increasing statistics of people living in absolute poverty, we have some poverty alleviation programmes at very small scale, investing in human capital at the micro level. What we are missing, however, are macro-level political and economic reforms and a strong social policy aimed at promoting education, employment, public health and growth. Our liberalised economy has lead to inequitable distribution of productive assets and the exclusion of poor from its benefits. Similarly, highly inequitable patterns of land ownership have contributed to high level of poverty which has in turn reduced the resources available for social investment. The question again is: Are our poverty alleviation efforts directed at combating the root causes of poverty - the social, political and economic in equalities? The answer seems to be a resounding "NO."
The reason is simple. There are too may vested interests at stake. We can not contain poverty by protecting vested interests and failing to redistribute social and economic opportunities to the poor. They are the ones who would always suffer from the lowest growth and the greatest instability. If we failed to correct the present course, we would soon be facing the horrible condition of Southern Sudan and Ethiopia. A good system of checks and balances for improved transparency and accountability can be developed and established only if our intellectuals put half as much pressure as it did to force the government into exploding the nuclear device.
The right course.
We know exactly how many poor are living among us. We know what is our future as a nation if we keep on following the same course of neglect and postponement. The question is: Why are we accepting disorder of the soul and state as a daily routine? The routine acceptance of exploitation, as if it were a hairstyle or musical trend, is a menace of the first magnitude. All of us can list the wrongs and wrongdoers but no one comes up with an exact answer to the consuming private appetite and oppressive political power which makes the rich richer and the poor close to starvation.
We need a change at the top -- carried out from the bottom -- for combating the root causes of poverty: for ending social, economic and political inequalities. Good and bad trickles down with an honest and clean leadership at the top. Half of the corrupt practices will cease out of the fear of accountability and punishment. We need restoration of an ideal eternal order which has been violated as a result of our defying the norms - the real nature of things. We have assumed that norms are no better than the pompous fabrications of our ancestors, got up to serve the interest of a fraction or an age, and thus have challenged the principles of personal and social order. We must now learn wisdom only through the ongoing agony.
This is the idea for political and economic reforms, which is required on the basis of traditional ethical principles. It is the question of promoting an action which is morally necessary and which is revolutionary, insofar as it is destined to avert an unreformable system. Nations who are facing moral poverty at the top and economic poverty at the bottom can restore themselves only through a deepening of their own traditions and by criticising the historical order from the vantage point of an ideal order.
There will never be a genuine political reforms aimed at ending social and economic inequalities in this country until there is a moral revolution, as income poverty is only one form of deprivation. It is closely related to other forms of deprivation in areas such as health and education Our poor and disadvantaged have gained no share in the production and distribution of wealth and they have gained nothing from the social policies.
Why do we need reforms and how are they linked to poverty? During his retirement years, John Adams was fond of saying that the war of independence didn't constitute the true American revolution. The war, he said, was only a consequence. The real revolution began 15 years before a shot was ever fired as an "intellectual and moral revolution in the minds and hearts of the people."
The very same can be said of the Civil War. It in its own way was a political revolution, but was a consequence of a more fundamental revolution in the moral sentiments of the American people. Reforms would help us avoid a violent revolution like Indonesia, where according to a BBC documentary "the people suddenly realised that they are living with too many poor living among them."
For instance, the 1932 election of FDR and the implementation of the New Deal were only a consequence of a more profound intellectual understanding for reforms that had been taking place in American universities and schools during the preceding thirty or forty years. Four preconditions must be met for such kind of reforms through peaceful revolution. First, an explicit purpose, i.e., bringing transparency and real accountability, starting from the top. Second, students, general public and intellectuals must believe in what they are doing. Third, and what is most important, a moral revolution in the minds of the people. And finally, the election results must have to be duplicated time and again for fruitful results.
The question arises: For eradicating the root causes of poverty, is anything of this kind is happening in Pakistan? In fact, it always ought to be the moral imagination which creates political doctrines, and not the political doctrines which seduce the moral imagination. Many intellectuals are pointing to the moral decay at the top in Pakistan, and public is raising the same question in different words that Who will bell the cat? Which means that a major chunk of Pakistani public is willing and the situation is ripe to renounce the status quo and say good bye to reliance on the realm of politics for genuine change. Some others still don't know if there as a credible alternative to the present situation.
Of course we have an alternative and that is an awareness and revolution in the minds and hearts of the Pakistani public to combat the root causes of poverty through combating moral corruption at the top as well as at the bottom and paving the way for real social, political and economic reforms. That will not happen as a consequence of poverty alleviation programmes or political victories. Indeed, it's the other way around. There will never be a political and social revolution in this country until there has been a moral revolution and that will not happen until there has been an intellectual revolution in our universities through research forums and other private organisations specifically created for the purpose of eradicating poverty through combating its root causes. Mass awareness through advocacy would play a vital role in this regard.
The solution.
Serious national revolutions are usually about politics, government, privilege, unresponsiveness, equal opportunities and anger. This is exactly what is simmering - and periodically boiling - here in Pakistan. Revolutions can be renewing without being violent. Even an election can be a revolution when it brings sweeping change in politics, ideology, and the nature of ruling establishment. The most serious precondition, however, is willingness and urge of the people - which ultimately becomes a collective prayer of that nation to God. The ringing question is: Who will take the responsibility?
In fact, we need forums, organisations, research centres and institutions for the public to join, talk, listen and argue. We need to make them formidable opponents of the exploiters. They are the impetus for any seismic change for the better. Such forums are need of the hour for undefined and absolutely unaffiliated people. There are thousands of NGOs working in the land for health, education, poverty alleviation. Why should there not be organisations for fighting the root cause of all these evils - the moral poverty of the people at the helms of affairs, as none of the social development and poverty alleviation programmes can be sustainable without a stable political system run by reliable leaders.
We need such forums - think tanks - for a clear-eyed understanding of prevailing circumstances which is necessary in order to change things. Rehabilitating this state of mock democracy requires citizens to devote themselves to challenging the status quo, disrupting the existing contours of power and opening the way for renewal. Such forums are needed to advocate for social and economic reforms, as economic growth alone is insufficient condition for advancing human development. Equally important are policies and a system for the distribution of growth. The ultimate task, however, is even more difficult than that: building something new that creates the institutional basis for politics as a shared enterprise. As a system for dividing the economic cake between different groups in the society - for instance between rich and poor, or between men and women. And all such policies and system have a critical bearing on poverty reduction.
The bottom line is that we do not have homogeneous society with all people living with the same social and economic status. Therefore, the effective policy packages for poverty eradication can only come in the shape of "growth through redistribution." Unless the vast amount of wealth and land is not redistributed through proper and non-violent reform, creating little wealth with micro-credit programmes on the foundation of highly unequal social and economic structures in the vague hope that the poor will ultimately benefit and get out of the poverty's vicious cycle will never materialise. According to Oxfam International experience: "The more effective strategy is to create an environment for poverty reduction and growth by redistributing assets and opportunities to the poor, enabling them to produce their way out of poverty."
This renewal, if it occurs, will not come from books. A democratic insurgency, a moral revolution does not begin with ideas, as intellectuals presume, or even with great political leaders who seize the moment. It originates among the ordinary people who find the will to engage themselves with their surrounding reality and question the conflict between what they are told and what they see and experience. For this the civil society and people will need to be empowered. Efforts in the field of health, sanitation, primary education and poverty eradication do not help unless the communities are sensitised by the proposed forums and organisations.
Of course, the press is playing an effective role at the moment, but we need forums at university level for research and at community level for engaging the people in "democratic conversation" with one another, asking questions that may lead them to action against the root causes of poverty. The random anger visibly accumulating in so many sectors of the society can be therapeutic, but only in a limited sense. The moral problem at the top requires hard work from the citizens who have been taught to be passive consumers in politics. It means people must learn once again to come together and develop their own understanding of events, free of slogans and propaganda. It requires them to take the daring step of assuming some personal responsibility for self-government.
We need to establish apolitical forums and organisations against corruption at the top, and foreign donors would certainly assist us in this regard because all the development aid is useless as long as we have corrupt leaders, power hungry policy makers and greedy landlords and businessmen occupying the positions of highest authority. Such organisations have to expose not only the boundless prosperity and adventure, throwing off new wealth and dispersing it widely (which has allowed the political system to avoid confronting questions of hierarchy and class and race, the inequalities of poverty and plenty, the privileges embedded in the political order) but also the weak linkage between growth and poverty reduction. Such organisations are needed to highlight that progress toward poverty reduction has stagnated in the 1990s, while the absolute number of poor people in the region has continued to increase, advocate policies for dealing with these problems.
We have human rights organisations but none has tackled the question of abrogation of our "rights" in a proper perspective of moral bankruptcy of our "haves." Like Brazil, for instance, none of the poverty alleviation or human rights organisations has conducted any study to present that for every dollar generated in growth the poorest 10 per cent of the population receives less than one cent, while the wealthiest 10% of the population receives 50 cents. If we could find out, the result will be more shocking than what we came to know about Brazil. Denial of such rights in addition to whatever physical or financial discomfort it may bring to the individual peasant or high school student, creates a mental state of victimisation. The victims have kept their side of the bargain, have accepted their lot. But such organisations must help them realise that the world is not without rules - must prepare them for the time when the web of implicit promises - that have so far hold the society together - begins to unravel.
Such organisations are necessary to channelise the process of change and placing equity and poverty reduction at the heart of government policy. The proposed organisations would be there to make sure that the impending revolution is not without content --, i.e., countrywide violence and destruction, unaccompanied by profound social change. These organisations have to work side by side with the existing poverty alleviation programmes so as to give the poor awareness about their social and political rights. A poor with a credit cheque of few thousand rupees can not be declared empowered in real sense as long as he has no understanding of his social, economic and political rights and the ability to rightly exercise them.
We must reinvigorate them who - either from complacency of despair, inertia or ignorance - are leaving the work of civic engagement to others. We must change the trend of too many of us expecting someone else to carry all water. We have to engage the disengaged and disenchanted for social, political and economic reforms that would lead us to combat the root causes of poverty. The existing poverty alleviation programmes shall take some of the responsibility and new organisations shall be formed to help the government devise policies for redistribution of productive assets and public investment in favour of the poor. We need more citizens who grasp the nature of power and who have the will and skill to exercise it for achieving more equitable pattern of income distribution. The nation must be awakened from its costly slumber. It must march to a better drum -- one of concern and intelligence.
Economically, managerially and intellectually capable citizens are needed to come forward, establish such organisations and forums at university and community level to let the nation know that they need a parable for themselves - a story of national purpose that faces the present realities of rape and plunder by our countrymen at the helms of affairs maturely but does not sacrifice the country's youthful idealism and inventiveness and self-confidence. East Asia demonstrates the potential of a new development and poverty reduction paradigm. Creating wealth on the foundation of highly unequal social and economic structures in the vague hope that the poor will ultimately benefit, has been tried, tested and failed as a poverty reduction strategy. If Pakistanis set out to reform the systems that have enslaved them and rehabilitate their democracy, they may discover new development vistas where no one has ever been before.
Nunc auctor bibendum eros. Maecenas porta accumsan mauris.
Manager
Nunc auctor bibendum eros. Maecenas porta accumsan mauris.
Staff
Nunc auctor bibendum eros. Maecenas porta accumsan mauris.
Staff 2
Nunc auctor bibendum eros. Maecenas porta accumsan mauris.