Eradicating poverty in Pakistan can be achieved, but only through a radical restructuring of the government machinery — a radical change in the mindset of policymakers— and a radical reallocation of resources in order to make the people themselves the principal authors of their own future. Such a change requires a vigorous, broad-based participatory dialogue and a committed leadership.

The government has recently prepared its Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP) to provide “a well-prioritized national strategy for poverty reduction, human development and gender equality.” However, we propose a people-centred development approach, where people themselves will be the primary actors for eradicating hunger and poverty, and other entities, including the government and non-government organizations, will be in supporting roles.

Reading the document one would feel that it is not a strategy document, rather it is an academic document. It could be better titled as: “All You Wanted to Know about Poverty”. An executive in charge of national poverty reduction will have very little use of this document in taking decisions. Every ministry of the government can continue to do whatever they have been doing before this document was prepared, still no one can point accusing fingers at them by saying that they are out of step with the PRS.

For poverty to be eradicated and prosperity achieved, grassroots people — especially those who live in poverty and are disadvantaged — must be empowered to take responsibility for their own future. Women must be guaranteed equal opportunity to participate. Local government institutions must empower, mobilize and prepare them to do so. The role of the government in this approach is to deliver good governance and provide essential resources and services for creating an enabling environment so that the people can succeed in becoming the principal authors of their own future. The people-centred development approach obviously requires a paradigm shift — a shift from the entrenched mentality that development is basically a bureaucratic responsibility.

Alternative strategy: Many experts, civil society groups and stakeholders are highly critical of the November 2001 I-PRSP. They are critical not only of the preparatory process of the document and its ownership, but also of its contents. Even though the consultative process of the Interim-PRSP was hasty and incomplete, the voice of the people came through loud and clear. The recommendations in the Interim-PRSP, however, largely ignore the consensus of the people expressed during those consultations. Consequently, the Interim-PRSP has bundled together a bottom-up, people-centred consensus with a top-down, traditional programmatic approach that would merely perpetuate the status quo.

Weakness of the Interim-PRSP: The greatest weakness of the current PRSP is that it reaffirms and rests on the belief that proper macroeconomic policies lead to poverty reduction. The assumption of the proposed PRSP is that correctly designed macroeconomic fundamentals stimulate strong GDP growth, which contributes to increased employment and in turn to poverty eradication.

The worldwide experience of the past 30 years has shown this to be false — increased GDP has not led to significant reduction of poverty. In a society where large sections of the population live in poverty because of entrenched structural problems, this framework is totally inappropriate. Only microeconomic improvements — that is, only better incomes and enhanced human development for each individual family — result in broad-based economic progress, which in turn results in broad-based GDP growth.

It is true to say that it is the government that creates a sound macroeconomic environment to promote investment and avoid economic chaos, macroeconomic policy in reality has only indirect influence in a poverty reduction strategy. As such, placing major emphasis on macro policies puts the cart before the horse. Achieving a 7 per cent growth rate will not unleash the productivity and creativity of people in poverty.

However, unleashing their productivity will definitely achieve a 7 per cent growth rate or better. In other words — “trickle down”, which has not worked in ending hunger and poverty in the past, is not an acceptable strategy for the people. The alternative strategy must promote “production by the masses” along with mass production through increased investments.

Alternative: Based on long experience of working with the rural people living in poverty and on broad-based consultations with various stakeholders, we propose a 7-point strategy of radical reforms designed to unleash the creativity, and productivity of the impoverished in Pakistan, and at the same time to create an enabling environment for ensuring their success.

The proposed strategy, following the ideas of Asim Inam Osmani, a known consultant and others, emphasizes capabilities, entitlements, freedom and rights of individual agencies rather than the traditional approaches that focus primarily on income, growth and economic efficiency. The thrusts of the proposed strategy are as follows:

Empowering the people: Experiences from Pakistan and abroad clearly show that those who are in poverty must be empowered and their capabilities enhanced so that they can become the principle authors of their own future in order to end hunger and poverty in a sustainable way. This will obviously require concrete initiatives to motivate and mobilize people and transform their mindsets of dependency and recognition.

Gender inequality: Women bear primary responsibility for health, education, nutrition and — increasingly, family income — yet are still systematically deprived of their basic rights of equal opportunities for health, education, nutrition and voice in decision-making. There must be an increased recognition and investment in the vital and central role of women in the social, economic and political development of Pakistan.

Local government: Local government institutions, especially of the lowest echelon, must become the conduits for participatory democracy at the grassroots. They must be the focal point for empowering, mobilizing and transforming people for achieving lives free from hunger and poverty. Government resources, power, authority and accountability must be transferred to locally accountable bodies to expand and meet the entitlements of individuals so that an enabling environment is created for them to succeed. Non-governmental organizations also need to coordinate their work with such local bodies.

Good governance: Governance is not a sideshow — it is in reality the anchor of all development activities. An environment that tolerates graft, corruption and hooliganism at all levels of government wastes resources, undermines good governance, and ultimately subverts the democratic process. Governance failures create a predatory environment and penalize those belonging to the lower strata.

Equity and opportunities: Income inequality and inequalities of opportunities have been widening in our country over the years. The rich are getting increasingly richer, and are commanding greater share of our national wealth. Thus, for a poverty reduction strategy to be successful, a larger proportion of national resources must be channelled to people in poverty. They must also be given opportunities to earn more income. This can be achieved by giving them access to more training, reliable and universally available banking services, better flows of information and improved marketing opportunities.

Essential services: Although Pakistan, over the years has improved in the area of human development, the expansion of opportunities for education, health and other social services has not actually translated into an expansion of capabilities and consequently rapid reduction of poverty. This is because of the deterioration of quality coinciding with expansion of facilities. To remedy this, local government institutions must be equipped with the resources, training, authority and accountability to ensure that the priority needs voiced by the people — better quality health, education and public safety — can be met and their capabilities expanded.

Resources: Self-reliant development requires a shift in mindset away from always looking for more external resources to more appropriate and environmentally sustainable use of indigenous natural resources. Poverty eradication also requires better use of facilities and resources — including ports, water resources and infrastructure. A land reform programme must be initiated in order to streamline the ownership and enhance agricultural productivity.

Creation is suggested of a strong poverty monitoring outfit for continuous monitoring of poverty district by district. If something cannot be monitored continuously, it cannot be achieved within a timeframe, just like a multi-million dollar construction work —— you can finish it on time only because you monitor everything, every day.

It is therefore recommended that the government publicize the progress of poverty reduction in each district, listing them in order of merit, every six months. By doing that government will create occasions for districts to celebrate their achievements, express their disappointments (even anger) for their failure, and prepare themselves to catch up with others. Government can also encourage the business enterprises, social organisations to give awards and honours to persons, organisations, and institutions for their special contribution in achieving specific results. They may even announce competitions.

The concerned agencies should also identify programmes, organisations, institutions, ministries, agencies, policies, even persons, who have made negative contribution to poverty reduction during the past 15 years and they all should be graded according to their negative contribution.

By doing so, one could recommend that in the coming 15 years government provides all the support to assist the recognised “heroes” of the past so that they can contribute more, that government inspire others to follow their path, help generate more innovative ideas.

Simple task: In its basic form poverty eradication is a very simple task. We should never allow ourselves to be duped by the smart people to think that it is a complicated thing. It is not. First thing to remember is that poverty is not created by the poor people. It is created by the institutions and the policy environment created by the designers and managers of those institutions. There is nothing wrong with poor people. They can get out of poverty by themselves. All they need are opportunities. That’s what State must provide. They need opportunities for earning income. That’s all.

Wage employment: How does the state do it? Enhance the scope of wage employment. That’s why agriculture becomes so important in Pakistan. The more dynamic this sector becomes, the more wage opportunities are created for the poor. Of course, agriculture alone cannot provide all the employment that is needed. The more we rely exclusively on agriculture the more chances will be that agricultural wage will be reduced to mere pittance, because of over-supply of employment-seekers. That income will not be good enough for overcoming poverty.

That’s why we also need employment away from agriculture. Rural and urban industrial employment is the next option. We’ll have to create environment for more investment, and expansion of the existing industrial base. We need strong local government to create local investment opportunities.

Another option is overseas employment. Injection of income from remittances has played a vital role in giving a boost to rural economy and poverty reduction. While we are busy bragging about how remittances are helping economy in improving the foreign exchange reserve, we have paid very little attention to mobilizing these remittances for investments within the locality or within the country. Most of it is wasted away in hiking up the real estate value or extravagant expenses on social occasions. While we must put all our attention to ensure high growth in wage employment we must not forget that it is a slow process.

Open up borders: We need to open up borders with our neighbours. Our best future lies in opening up to our neighbours. We must convince our neighbours that it is also to their advantage to have free market arrangement with us. Our port facilities and road network should be built keeping in mind to serve our neighbours. This will be good for the entire region. We can bring prosperity to ourselves faster only if we are willing to share it with our neighbours.

Globalisation: Globalisation can help us overcome poverty quickly, if we can prepare our poor to participate in the globalized market. Most important thing is the participation. We must bring IT to the poor, to participate in and take advantage of globalisation. If we leave our poor at the mercy of the global forces without preparing them to ride on the tidal waves of globalisation, they’ll get drowned by the globalisation. Actions to be taken to reduce poverty by half by 2015 are well-known. Just pick the strategic ones and go for them with full force. Monitor them continuously. Publicise the results, applaud the districts which are moving ahead, nudge the ones falling behind. Most importantly —- give the citizens peace, personal safety and security, and clean governance. We’ll get there. Conclusion : Eradicating poverty in Pakistan can be achieved — but only through a radical restructuring of the government machinery — a radical change in the prevailing mindset of the policymakers — and a radical reallocation of resources in order to make the people themselves the principal authors of their own future. Such a dramatic change requires a vigorous, broad-based participatory dialogue and committed leadership — leadership with clear vision and daunting courage.