The fight against poverty
The least protected need the most help. Photo: Munir Uz Zaman/ Drik News
POVERTY is a major issue of concern among the development thinkers worldwide. The different forums of the UN, the World Bank/IMF and the international aid and development desks of the governments of the rich nations traditionally dedicate a certain percentage of their national budgets to mitigation of poverty, especially in the less and least developed countries. In addition to this, numerous aid agencies and non-governmental bodies banking on private donations have long been engaged in poverty alleviation activities all in the poverty-prone regions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Church, too, invests considerable fund and effort in the same pursuit. Meanwhile, before the economic crash swept across the globe, the very rich nations were talking of committing huge amounts of funds to eradicate poverty once and for all from Africa and the other worst poverty-stricken parts of the world. However, the tone of that aggressive campaign appears to have died down in the aftermath of the global financial meltdown. But the apparent waning of the aggressive altruism evinced by the very rich nations ahead of the financial crash aside, endeavours at fighting poverty are continuing full steam ahead here and elsewhere in the world. Traditionally, Bangladesh has been a recipient nation, as it is one of the least developed countries on earth. Obviously, it has been in the donor nations' list of prospective beneficiaries. They and the relevant aid-giving bodies have been providing aid to the cause of removing poverty from Bangladesh. Over about the last four decades since Bangladesh's creation, they have put in billions of dollars through various government and non-government programmes to this end. But considering the size of their financial involvement in the cause, the extent of success is hardly enviable. That makes the critical observer to question the efficacy of the entire effort at fighting poverty in Bangladesh. In fact, poverty alleviation activities have become a fully-fledged industry, though its real achievements in terms of delivery of the goods remain a big question mark. It is not just through the aid money that resources are flowing into the economy to address poverty. Business and industry have also undergone significant developments creating fresh job opportunities for the unemployed. These are in turn expanding the market for new goods. New job opportunities are being created. A section of the poor are definitely getting its benefit from jobs as well as self-employment opportunities thus generated. But then the question remains as to why poverty is still the number one problem of the country, and why have we to be perennially doomed to the status of a least developed economy. There are no end of debates about the very question of poverty and the approaches to alleviation. And along with these debates, there are also the different theories and the models. The various government and non-governmental agencies are pursuing those in practice. But poverty still remains, as it were, the most incomprehensible problem before the development thinkers and the practitioners of its various theories and models. To Irene Khan, the former secretary general of Amnesty International, poverty is not purely an abstract, economic issue. On the contrary, she considers it as an issue related to human rights. She thinks if the poor are empowered enough, they would be able to take their own decision on how to lift themselves out of the trap of poverty. In her book titled, "The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights," she asserts that deprivation, insecurity exclusion and powerlessness that characterise a poor person's life have their origin in the denial of human rights they are entitled to. So, according to her, the first thing to do is to empower the poor person and enable her/him to assert that right. This is no doubt a novel way to approach the complicated question of poverty. She identifies this critical component of the whole gamut of issues that constitute poverty and stresses that it should be taken into account before devising a proper strategy to fight poverty effectively. But in the same breath she also admits that there is yet another social scourge, corruption, which eats into the nation's resources. Who are the most corrupt elements in society? It is the elites who are engaged in this corruptive practice and they are, to a large measure, responsible for depriving the poor of their due share of the national resources. But the social elites do not only steal a nation's resources through corruption, they also own the assets and create new assets using their social power. In the process, they dispossess the poor of whatever small assets they have and exploit others who work for them in the fields, factories and different workplaces run by them. The upshot of it is that the vicious cycle of pauperisation prevails and further intensifies in society. There is really no mystery in it. If truth be told, it is this particular aspect of poverty that should have been at the focus of all the discourses on this seemingly difficult subject. For no one will ever hand the poor their right as a gift. It is an issue of who holds the power to lord it over others. The owning classes, who make the elite, will not just surrender their power to the poor without a fight. Here the state has a big role to play. But does modern state, even the democratic one, ensure that right of the poor? The struggle for poverty alleviation, therefore, cannot be separated from the poor people's political struggle for political power. That is the way to establish their rights, both human and economic. And it is the organised poor, who are also the empowered. The state, the most democratic one included, listens only to the voice of the powerful in society. So, until and unless the poor have their political rights and organisational power, the task of poverty alleviation will remain a pipe dream and an exercise in futility. Will the poverty thinkers also allocate a part of their energy to this side of the apparently intractable problem of poverty alleviation? Syed Fattahul Alim is the Senior Journalist.
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