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September 7, 2003
Review: The poor and their poverty
JAITI BASU’S West Bengal, where teeming millions have had a nightmarish past of living in abject poverty, has recorded modest success at improving its lot, but Bangladesh, where reside its cousins, has not been that fortunate, a steady flow of foreign cash to its coffers notwithstanding.
Why does one part of the formerly conjoined land mass shows robust results in respect of alleviating the hardship of its state of being, but the other does not? The answer to this question obviously lies in the way the problem has been tackled in the two parts, one now a country, the other a state of India.
Ruhul Amin and Maurice St. Pierre, both sociologists by training, and associated with the Morgan State University, USA, set about probing this question further in their study Giving Voice to the Poor: Poverty Alleviation in West Bengal and Bangladesh.
Because the two put faith in the capability of leading political parties of a country to change the destiny of their people, they wonder why Bangladesh’s Awami League and the BNP have not thus far mounted any serious effort to turn the tide on poverty.
In sharp contrast, the Communist Party-Marxist (CPM) of Jaiti Basu made the target of banishing deprivation a key plank of its strategy in West Bengal. This is why, from 1978 to this day, this party rules the roost in the state, sweeping Panchayat, state and national elections without facing a major challenge.
The co-authors of this study have a clear bias in favour of the Awami League in whose cadres, they say, discipline has been honed during “years of repression” by the preceding governments. This, they contend, gives the party of Sheikh Hasina an opportunity to use its political power for the benefit of the poor and, in doing so, consolidate its own position among the rural people.
Although the types of reforms initiated by the CPM in West Bengal may be difficult to replicate in Bangladesh in their entirety, some elements can be used as models for it. Bangladesh can thus be spared the load of having to reinvent the wheel.
The book’s co-authors want the AL to undergo a radical overhaul if it is to emulate CPM’s example. Establishing student, youth, labour and peasant fronts at the thana and village level will do the trick. The party will then be able to attract the type of middle class organizers necessary to galvanize the country with regard to poverty alleviation.
Ideological commitment to the cause, appropriate political training and some incentives to these groups could result in the swelling of the rank and file. The party must not allow its workers or members to flout organizational standards or norms established by its central leadership.
This is what CPM did in West Bengal. Its strong commitment to poverty alleviation and its internal party discipline enabled it to prevent many CPM members, heading the Panchayats, from engaging in corrupt practices, since such practices would invite expulsion from the party and a related loss of status and privileges.
The Panchayat members and the CPM party members jointly implemented, supervised, and assessed poverty alleviation programmes. This joint supervision of the poverty alleviation funds and programmes served as an important means of curtailing corruption since it made programme expenditures transparent.
And this did not go without reward. CPM’s efforts to extend its organization into the countryside created opportunities for the emerging middle class. For instance, by expanding West Bengal’s educational system, the CPM opened up 12,000 schools and appointed 46,000 new teachers between 1977 and 1991. The new teachers were CPM party members or sympathizers and many of them were elected representatives to Panchayats.
Amin and St Pierre are not averse to seeing foreign aid flow into Bangladesh, as they maintain that it will supplement the within-country resources, particularly by providing new technologies. If foreign investment or aid is not received, then it will take a much longer time to bring about BD’s development, bedevilled as it is by a backlog of so many problems.
They cite the example of countries like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Germany which took foreign aid and welcomed foreign investment after the devastation and destruction of the second world war, and effectively used that money in bringing about their speedy recovery.
But they caution against hoping much from the work of foreign-based NGOs which, they say, siphon off the bulk of foreign aid by paying exorbitantly high salaries to their expatriate, host-country and foreign-based staff.
Then they also note some “serious inadequacies” in foreign donors’ work in a country like Bangladesh. The more foreign donor agencies pursue policies of the kind that fail to pay any serious attention to credible whistle-blowing, and, instead, prefer to rely on their self-serving local staff, the more their aid will be diverted to support personal enrichment, leaving little for the real benefits of the poor.
Giving Voice to the Poor: Poverty Alleviation in West Bengal and Bangladesh
By Ruhul Amin & Maurice
St. Pierre
The University Press, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Email: upl@bttb.net.bd Available at Oxford University Press,
Plot # 38, Sector 15, Korangi Industrial Area, Karachi
Tel: 111-693-673
Email: ouppak@theoffice.net Website:
www.oup.com.pk
ISBN 984 05 1598 5
124pp. Tk260
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