The Hindu Business Line : Good governance key to fighting poverty

Recently in BeijingExperts from around the world gathered at a recent brainstorming in Beijing to explore ways to fight global poverty and hunger asserted that more attention ought to be paid to political core issues.

Obviously, countries have to take charge of their own future. Handholding can only be for a short period of time, not forever. Governments have to work towards overcoming conflicts, instability and other root causes of poverty. Governance plays a critical role in addressing social and economic problems of people. Many of the poor countries typically have too much government and too little governance.

Good governance reflects transparency in decision-making and implementation, accountability and protection of rights. Fiscal policies (tax regime) are important for ensuring a more equitable distribution of income and wealth without compromising growth opportunities. Similarly, sound macro-economic policies as also trade policies encourage growth, while helping reduce the skew in income distribution.

These are broad policy parameters that need attention. But the policy design itself will have to vary depending on the facts and circumstances of each country . Numerous projects are going on around the world aimed at poverty alleviation. These projects are most desirable and necessary. But their impact is largely regional, and circumscribed by limitations of financial and human resources. So, while projects are important per se, they can seldom substitute strong governance and local initiatives. While discussing sequencing and prioritising, an expert said that in taking action for the world’s poor and hungry “we are dealing with complex policy challenges; it is not a set of projects”.

Pro-poor tech

What are the policy priorities for the pro-poor technology? Because there is empirical evidence that income growth benefits those just below the poverty line while progress is slowest for the poorest, it is absolutely necessary to target additional research and technology to resource-poor areas where many of the poor live.

Technology can potentially deliver immense benefits to the poor. In particular, use of information technology can help the poor identify livelihood or market opportunities. Improved access to IT is the way forward. Falling technology costs should provide an impetus to quick adoption.

Most of the poor earn their livelihood through agriculture. Their productivity levels are considerably low; and access to markets limited. An increase in crop productivity through improved management of inputs — by strengthening the input (seeds, fertilisers, agro-chemicals) delivery system — scientific water management, education to adopt sound pre- and post-harvest practices and timely delivery of adequate credit as also greater investment in agriculture research is called for.

IT can be used to deliver price and market information to growers. Together with requisite rural infrastructure (warehouses, access roads, cold chains), access to market information has the potential to transform humble growers into savvy traders. However, incomes and markets alone are not enough. Health and nutrition are priorities. A majority of the poor suffer from malnutrition or under-nutrition.

Women and children are the worst affected. The dictum ‘healthy mind in a healthy body’ is most relevant to the poor. Programmes for early child nutrition (schemes such as midday meals in schools), interventions (such as conditional cash transfers) and micronutrients can go a long way in fighting nutrition insecurity. Health services for the poor have to be affordable, accessible and appropriate. There are options available for social security and social protection. One can start with the existing institutions. As funding is critical for developmental programmes, strengthening tax collection and expanding the tax base may be necessary.

Flow of information among target beneficiaries of welfare schemes is necessary. A move toward comprehensive health insurance coverage will go a long way in securing health related contingencies. According to experts, we need to think comprehensively across institutions -markets, micro-finance, insurance and services. It is also possible to draw global lessons including from high-income countries.

The next step in fighting poverty and hunger is the effective implementation of action. Choose an appropriate scale for implementation and a process to scale-up the operations. A broad-based political support for action is a must. Actions have to commence at the local level.

Ideally, the community should be involved for which community organisations have to be promoted. One of the ways of implementing developmental programmes is through public-private partnership. PPP model has worked well in many situations including commercial ventures.