This is likely to be largely window-dressing. Having accepted the basic framework of donors, the so-called ‘home-grown’ strategy of our finance minister has, not unsurprisingly, already started receiving international funds for implementation.
The strategy has such serious defects that it invites rejection by citizens. Since a critique of the strategy has been published previously, these gross deficiencies do not need to be repeated here.
Recently, donors asked provinces to prepare their “own” poverty reduction strategies. As a part of broad consultations between the government and civil society, the Sindh Regional Plan Organisation (SRPO) recently brought together officials, academics, and activists. Since the provincial government continues to take and defend arbitrary actions that increase, rather than reduce, poverty — as in the Lyari Expressway — it remains to be seen how serious the government is, and can be.
Nevertheless, the consultation led us to think of some fundamentals, of which the government needed to be reminded. This need reflects the experience of many that “vision without action is a daydream, but action without vision is a nightmare.” This note sketches out our position, in the hope that it will call forth a public debate on an urgent issue. Paraphrasing the familiar wisdom, a war on poverty is too serious to be left to the generals, left alone their lieutenants.
There is currently much public debate on the constitutional amendments that are likely to be thrust upon the nation by the regime. It seems to us that much of this energy should be reallocated to more fundamental issues. Then the debate could move away from publicly trivial aspects of redistributing power and privileges among the elites, towards the steps necessary for fulfilling the various dimensions of a social contract that does, or should, define Pakistan.
To tackle the immense and increasing poverty, discussion should revolve around the institutional rearrangements necessary for citizens to realise and secure fundamental economic and social and social rights. Such changes would require, first, that specific organs of the state be given the authority and responsibility to implement the comprehensive social contract that is implicit and explicit in the constitution. Second, that public representatives be made accountable for enactment and implementation of necessary laws, rules, and regulations. Third, that judicial, administrative and legislative mechanisms be created to block all legal and policy initiatives that directly or indirectly obstruct the realisation of fundamental economic and social rights.
Judicial reforms are necessary because courts have done little to suggest that they accept the responsibility for positive actions in support of the fundamental rights contained in the principles of the constitution. We believe these are more important issues for public debate and mobilisation, than about the distribution of powers between the President and the Prime Minister or Parliament, or about the tacit or explicit powers of the uniformed as against those of the uninformed.
Approach: Fulfilling rights to social justice is the central goal in whatever the government does. This asks for no more than substantive adherence to the national constitution (such as articles 3, 37, 38) and to international conventional conventions and laws (such as the UN Conventions on Social, Cultural and Economic Rights; the ILO Declaration of Principles), which define development as sustained realization of an expanded range of rights.
Hence, poverty impacts should be mainstreamed rather than dealt with separately and therefore, in danger of being sacrificed whenever convenient to “higher” or “broader” objectives or imperatives of religion, security, integration, modernization, progress, growth, globalisation or whatever else.
Poverty reduction therefore, requires both a reduction in the intensity of specific aspects of deprivation — such as water, food, shelter, and education as well as in the absolute number of poor citizens.
The approach requires a recognition and understanding of basic facts, as well as a corresponding willingness to action. Some consequences are spelled out below:
* Poverty is a structural issue of severe inequity in assets and yields, opportunities and rewards.
The analysis of poverty eradication should go forward from counting deficits of individuals and households towards reforming social, economic and political systems, systems, that systematically result in the grow and acute deprivation of millions of citizens.
In the face of gross inequity, countervailing power should be provided by the government so that the muscle of market and other mafias can be countered politically and socially, in order that the poor gain from additional skills and other assets. The strategy should recognize that rapid growth will not solve the problem unless similar emphasis is placed upon redistribution of assets. Agrarian reforms are an example of required structural change.
In fact, the rapid growth of earlier years can neither be repeated in level or in the accompanying equity which reduced poverty. Safety nets should then be seen as a failure to do right by the many, rather than applauded as necessary to achieve economic progress for the few.
Guiding principles:
* Decent work is acknowledged as a right, deserving active state intervention. The Government is correct in emphasizing expanding employment But it is no less important to acknowledge the need for decent work.
Hence, universalisation and enforcement — in all sectors and all forms of work — of minimum wages and social security is essential. Even child labour cannot be meaningfully addressed as long as adults, specially women, are denied decent incomes. Since the state continues to retract from subsidized public provision of basic services, wages and social security have become even more important to poverty reduction.
Forced labour should be seen as a major obstacle to poverty reduction in Sindh, through the abuse and exploitation of bonded haris in particular. It is painfully distressing to observe a citizen of Sindh, the Attorney General Makhdoom Ali Khan, actively opposing the HRCP petition for mitigating the plight of bonded haris.
* Institutional reforms will emphasise equity and priorities through local control over resources.
The government has an obligation to facilitate and nurture mobilization of the poor, as enabling their own voices to be heard, and listened to, in design and implementation of all government programmes. Political devolution to communities is the requirement of the day, which goes much beyond the administrative decentralization to local government envisaged by government.
Such devolution will require the provision of as secure and adequate a fiscal base to the local government as the provincial government expects for itself vis a vis the federal government. Sindh is right to protest against the squander and plunder of Islamabad. But obtaining and retaining a more equitable share of resources, will deserve public support only when the same principles of fairness and equity apply within Sindh.
Of course, such devolution does not mean that local mafias are to be nurtured - both the federal and provincial governments cannot absolve themselves of the responsibility to protect and secure fundamental rights of citizens.
* Public provision is not a bane a bane and Privatisation is not a panacea. Subsidies are being increasingly decreased on the pretext of fiscal stringency. But there is little evidence of substantive substitutes as targeted assistance, or serious attempts at blocking major leakages into elite coffers.
Downsizing should be recognized as what it really is — managerial failure in the public sector which makes scapegoats of workers. Jobs are to be protected rather than specific workers. Instead of retrenchment, public investment is needed to make public sector workers more productive to offer more and better services.
Much of privatization is nothing more than a thinly disguised transfer of resources from corruption to windfall profits. A case in point is the proposed privatization of the KWSB.
Targeted subsidies are necessary. For example, until universal primary education is achieved, higher levels of education should receive reduced subsidies. If the government is fiscally distressed, then cross subsidies are obviously available.
Unless moral deficits of state and society are addressed, fiscal problems will remain a convenient way to avoid substantive and sustained reduction in poverty.
How does government minimize irrelevant expenditures on internal and external security for guarding privileges of the elites?
Government should reverse the enormous adverse impact of reliance on indirect taxes, that not only result in excessive burdens on the poor but also have the perverse result of subsidizing the non-poor.
* Natural resources are to be seen as crucial to livelihoods of the poor. The depredation of marine fishery stocks by commercial interests, exacerbated by the federal Deep Sea Fishing Policy, is an illustration of systematically depriving poorer fisher folk of their livelihoods. Failure to enforce the seasonal ban in the name of the poor is short sighted at best, and mockery of the poverty strategy.
The failure to ensure adequate water to the delta for sustaining marine and inland fisheries and even for minimal drinking water to fisher folk communities is an enormous scandal. Making Punjab the scapegoat is irrelevant since the diversion of water from the delta has been present even in year of plenty of water, and continues even when Sindh gets extra water in times of drought.
The Chotiari Reservoir is another example where the government fails to acknowledge the crucial role played by natural resources for the poor - both landless sharecroppers and herders will be arbitrarily and permanently deprived by grazing grounds.
* Concerted action is necessary to advance women’s rights.
In attacking any dimension of poverty, it should be ensured that women and girls gain more than men and boys until all existing differences are removed.
Special attention is necessary to reduce deprivation in the public sphere, including rights to security in public spaces. No false references to culture or religion can be allowed to demean and diminish the lives of poor women.
* Poverty will not be increased on any pretext.
At the very minimum, expropriation and extortion should cease. Mistreatment and maltreatment of females, including discrimination, in private and public spheres should cease.
All mega projects such as the Lyari Expressway, or even the mid-level Chotiari Reservoir project should be immediately suspended until public hearings establish their necessity and feasibility, including prompt and adequate compensation for actively minimized and unavoidable adverse impacts, The Sindh government simply cannot be absolve itself of responsibility merely because projects are federal initiatives or federally funded.
Reassurances of fair play by government and federal agencies are dubious because they continue to be based upon discretion rather than law. Those affected by the Lyari Expressway are unlikely to be treated justly in the absence of sincere application of the Land acquisition Act, as amended by the Shariat Court. Compliance with the obligatory provisions of the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act, and adherence to the National Resettlement Policy, would further strengthen the claims of affected persons, especially the labour dispossessed of livelihoods because shops and factories are torn down.
Corporate agriculture is a sure way of increasing pauperization of the rural poor. Even if the federal government reverses its policy of exempting agriculture from labour laws, labour displacement is unavoidable in the profits-biased intensive mechanization.
* Donor funding remains a curse.
The experience and critique of the Social Action Programme, as of countless other donor led programmes, are vivid illustrations of why neither Sindh nor the country can progress until donors reform themselves. There is no evidence to suggest that donor reforms are taking place.
The ADB proposal for Korangi wastewater collection and disposal is a local example of donor sponsored boondoggle (now hopefully shelved).
The tendency to provide funds without ensuring a clear increase in effective use of existing resources is simply an invitation to plunder and squander.
For a more recent illustration, the ADB Access to Justice Programme is simply a drama quite an expensive one at that. Its obsession with market-friendly justice would have been more palatable had it even referred to the need for protecting the rights of labour in employment contracts.
Whether it is a federal or provincial strategy for poverty reduction, the need remains to begin with fundamentals in the preparation of a strategy. The basic questions include: why do millions of citizens remain poor and destitute? Why is poverty increasing in both intensity and magnitude? Will it suffice to do something for the poor? Or is it essential to work with the poor?
The manner in which the government, and the civil society, answers these questions will determine the strategy and its relevance. A distinction between macro, meso and micro interventions, and capacities, is quite crucial. Furthermore, innovation is central, in that goals remain the same but strategies are adaptable to changing circumstances.
Given the twin constraints of overbearing donors and an oppressive federal government, perhaps the only thing that the Sindh government can presently do is to put a brake on poverty. Even that would be a singular achievement in view of the extremely high incidence of poverty in the province.
At first consultation, the government suggested that participants reflect on the need for a Poverty Watch as an independent, though possibly joint, forum for monitoring government and donors. Coming from the bureaucracy itself, the suggestion is particularly commendable. As we think about how the civil society may contribute to the process, a quotation (from Geof Wood, desperately seeking security) is an apt reminder to recognize that since deprivation is socially generated, the solution to poverty also must lie in social action:
“The rhetoric of international organizations, the prescriptions of aid agencies and the hand wrenching of charity organizations fail by and large to engage with the subtleties of structural conditions, comprising power and inequality, and the constraints they place on human agency. The wealthy, anywhere, are implicated in the reproduction of poverty.”