The Hindu Business Line : An exercise in make-believe

THE Independent South Asia Commission on Poverty Alleviation has done it again. In its second report, the body — set up under the auspices of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) — has proposed that the region bring forward its targets for halving poverty by five years, that is, from the UN's Millennium Development Goal set for 2015 to 2010. As a resolve, the new task set for the economies of the region cannot but be uplifting, but the basic problem is whether the ground realities will permit such "progress".

Indeed, there is one very strong point of view which holds that the Commission has probably made the same error of judgement for the second time — of going ahead with chalking out a programme of poverty alleviation without considering in detail the scope of actual success in implementation allowed by prevailing ground conditions.

To recount the past a bit: The 1991 Colombo SAARC summit set up the Commission, which placed before the 1993 Dhaka summit a document outlining steps to combat poverty in the region. SAARC leaders considered the report (the first by the Commission) and set 2002 as the date by when poverty in South Asia "would not just be alleviated but eliminated" from the region.

However, and not surprisingly, not much was achieved in the period in question. According to one view, this was the result of relative inaction "at the national level to honour this commitment", neither was "any attempt made at SAARC summits" to account for the progress made, or the lack of it, in this area.

The Commission's second report will have to be seen against this background, the one clear conceptual "big leap" coming in the form of abandonment of the possibility of "eliminating" poverty from South Asia, the sole focus being on "alleviation". The second noteworthy feature of the latest report is that the Commission has seen scope for optimism in that it has thought it fit to bring forward the UN goal set for 2015 to 2010 which, taken by itself, is an important comment on the success or otherwise of the efforts being currently made in the SAARC region to combat poverty.

Now what do the Millennium Goals stipulate because it is only by appreciating what these specific objectives are that one can really grasp the magnitude of the Commission's ambition. The first UN goal (to be attained by 2015) is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Specifically, the target is to reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day and to reduce also by half the proportion of those "who suffer from hunger". The second goal is to achieve universal primary education, that is, to ensure that all boys and girls "complete a full course" of primary schooling. The third is to promote gender equality and empower women; more specifically, eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.

The fourth goal is reduction in child mortality, that is, a reduction by two-thirds the mortality rate among children under five. The fifth is to improve maternal health, or reduce by three-quarters the maternal mortality ratio. The sixth goal is to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; more particularly, halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, and halt and begin a reversal of the incidence of malaria and other diseases. The seventh is to ensure environmental sustainability, that is, integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes, reverse the loss of environmental resources, reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, and achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers by 2020. The eighth Millennium Development goal is complex in that it deals with the forging of a global partnership, one element of which that is relevant to the Independent South Asia Commission for Poverty Alleviation being "a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction" at the national level.

Further, the UN goal includes effective national measures to deal comprehensively with the debt problems of poor countries so as to make debt sustainable in the long run. There is also the stipulation to develop "decent and productive work for youth".

The UN's poverty-reduction goals indicate the hugeness and complexity of the task which the international community has taken upon itself to accomplish by 2015. The relevant point here is to underscore the fact that all this has been brought forward by five years by the Commission, the inference being that the entire work will have to be telescoped within a much shorter time frame. The issue is: Will this be possible, specially in view of the fact that the "delivery system" in the economies concerned (that is, the SAARC members) is not of a very high order.

True, the Commission has admitted that the bringing forward of the poverty-alleviation programme may be "over-ambitious". The question to ask here is: What is the over-riding merit of this "over-ambition", so much so that, despite acknowledging it to be the case, the Commission has found no alternative but to go through with the recommendation? Indeed, the Commission has said that halving poverty in South Asia by 2010 "would be an important step towards alleviating world poverty by a significant degree". There can be no quarrel with this statement as such, but the Commission's report can be described as being unrealistic in its implementation-schedule if it has not suggested concrete administrative measures through which its poverty-alleviation programme can be translated into meaningful action.

Among other things, the report says that the South Asian countries "present a paradox in the pessimism of macro trends and the rich tapestry of `best practices' that cut across sectors and regions" and that "though translating priorities and targets is primarily a matter for national action, there is scope for regional initiatives".

But what precisely are these initiatives? Six have been suggested — the preparation of a South Asian data base on poverty-alleviation "best practices", a regional co-operation programme on dissemination and promotion of rural technology, and a review of laws and policies that affect the livelihood of the poor.

Clearly, given the scale and magnitude of the projected task in hand, it will perhaps be safe to suggest that while the Commission's report may be an interesting addition to the literature on poverty-combating measures in the poor countries, it will probably not lead to much meaningful change at the grassroots level because of reasons which, though not new, have developed deep roots in the societies of the economies concerned.

In fact, the factors standing in the way of rapid progress can be tackled only with patience and sustained determination not least because of the democratic form of government which holds sway in the largest and most vibrant countries of the region.

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