Sense & Insensibility
Cashing in on poverty, why not!
AN awful lot has been deliberated on and tons of papers have been photocopied in our never-ending search for the perfect strategy for poverty reduction. If you keep your eyes and ears open you will notice that it has become the fashionable subject to discuss during high-profile lunch and dinner where local and foreign elite try to discover the line that differentiates between poverty and non-poverty. In such discussions, the poor are merely percentages...60 percent...40 percent...and so on.
Thank God, we have poverty in our midst! It is the hottest selling item in the market. It brings money into the country -- an awful lot of money indeed. But does it ever go to the people who need it most? Nay, sir. It goes to those who talk about poverty...who write about poverty...who prepare documents on poverty. It has become the bread and butter of a number of people and organisations, therefore, if poverty is reduced it will spell disaster for them.
It also keeps a frighteningly large number of government, non-government, donor and UN officials engaged in all sorts of activities throughout the year. Slogans: Wage War on Poverty....We Shall Conquer Poverty... Keep Poverty Sealed in a Bottle....Turn the Poor into Human Resource....Give Them Goats.... Well, it has been going on for decades. It will go on for centuries. Meanwhile, Zorinas will continue to search for a morsel of food in roadside litters, and Begums will dine on lamb roast. Poverty is stuck on our fate as "Fate Accompli."
Poverty is a favourite pastime of the governments that come to power. It is something they can play around with. Successive governments in last 37 years had undertaken hundreds and hundreds of projects in the name of creating job/work for the poor. They had prepared volumes and volumes of project proposals pinpointing the problems and explaining the sure shot solutions in lucid language. Donors swallowed the bait and generously gave money for the implementation of those projects.
Their representatives came to Bangladesh and went around the project sites to see for themselves the progress of work. They ate muri and pitha made by the villagers and went back home to live happily ever after with the satisfaction of a work done well. But little could they guess that as soon as they had boarded the plane in Dhaka, the politicians (in power then) and bureaucrats (perennially in power) had started to jointly milk those projects for their own benefits.
Then came the NGOs of various hues and sizes with mind-boggling ideas about poverty reduction. They got hold of the incredulous Gofran mias and Zorinas in the villages and told them beautiful stories. They held uthan baithaks (courtyard meetings) with the villagers. Gofran mias and Zorinas began to see beautiful dreams after the NGO guys left. They began to go around in circles....having money...having no money....having money....having no money. So, we haven't seen Gofran mias and Zorinas living in a better home or eating well after ten years but we have seen those NGO guys buying flats in Gulshan, driving new jeeps and going to Singapore for treatment. Poverty reduction, indeed.
Now, can we really reduce poverty? Impossible proposition, unless we recognise the underlying problems. It is a fact that the population is increasing at a frightening pace and with that is increasing the number of poor in the country. In the rural areas and in the city slums every poor man fathers four children on an average. Hence, whatever strategy is taken today to find work or means of livelihood for the existing number of poor people, in another five years the number will increase and continue to increase. So, the plain and simple solution is to see that the number of poor people does not increase.
How to do that, you ask? Well, the first and foremost thing to do is to empower the poor people with the knowledge of the perils of multiplying without looking at the future. The future of the country, I mean. They cannot just go on procreating mindlessly and leave the burden on the state. That is downright irresponsible act and they have no right to do that. Yes, you heard it correct, no right.
Remember, as soon as a child is born, it becomes the responsibility of the state to ensure all its basic rights like food, shelter, health, education and protection. Now, that costs money and the irresponsible fathers have no matahbetha (headache) about it. Therefore, poor people should be made aware of these facts and be motivated to be more responsible. And the state authority will have to enforce it with the help of relevant laws. Hence, sure shot answer to poverty reduction is strict implementation of population control strategy among the poor segments.
It is incomprehensible why the governments and politicians never talk strongly or with conviction about population control through undertaking vigorous family planning measures. Somewhere, something stops them midway. They fear some kind of backlash from some quarters. Unless the fear is allayed we shall only see many more seminars and read many more documents on poverty reduction.
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