The struggle to beat poverty
Shahid Alam takes a cynical look at a study on the poor
However one may like to look at the situation with rose-tinted glasses, or however one may juggle with statistics and cleverly concocted spin to make the glass look just a bit more than half full at present, and not too far off from being full, even overflowing, the stark reality is that over half the population of Bangladesh lives below the poverty line, and this country does not seem like breaking out of the relatively less developed syndrome for the foreseeable future, say fifty years on. This last bit, in all probability, will draw some indignant remonstrations, but, unless I am proven otherwise, and I sincerely hope I am, I will stick to my guns and remain a cynic. The research study under review, however, ends on an optimistic note about Bangladesh's struggle to beat poverty in the reasonably near future. The authors, led by Alistair Orr, a British agricultural economist, state their research objective to have been to "answer one question, namely, how households graduated from poverty." Having taken the position that quantitative methods would be inadequate to get a convincing answer, they have adopted a qualitative approach, one that is based on using household case studies, in the hope of making "graduation and its relationship with other changes in the rural economy more understandable." Their effort has been a qualified success. The authors adopt an interesting perspective. They question the efficacy of poverty elimination programmes that usually target those who are already living below the poverty line. Rather, they raise this question, which is at the heart of their construct on the graduation process: "Why should these programmes target only those who were poor today (sic) and ignore those who might be poor tomorrow?" A cursory review of the literature has revealed the most likely answer, one that is full of cynicism about the Bangladeshi character: "…there has been a tendency to criminalize the process of graduation by focusing on cases where the transition from poverty was achieved through corruption, violence, or repression. Graduation was represented as moral suicide, a Faustian bargain where economic salvation had an unacceptable price. From this point of view, graduation was simply the reverse side of impoverishment and not a subject for serious study, still less for celebration." The research study in three villages belonging to Comilla, Bogra and Barisal, three districts generously separated in distance from each other, reveals that graduation has, after all, not been a Faustian bargain, but the small sample size also precludes one from asserting that, indeed, this conclusion is applicable to the whole of Bangladesh. In fact, another study might very well show that there exists more than the token case of graduation through committing moral suicide in more than one village. For the record, the book does refer to a couple of such cases, but they were used as mere incidences to highlight the exploitative behaviour among the poor themselves, as much as what they perceive to be the key ingredients of successful graduation: the blending of economic, social and psychological variables. Their conceptual model of graduation involves the 'hard' elements of household structure, livelihood strategies, savings, and the 'soft' elements of shared vision, support, and skills of a person graduating and his/her family. In concrete terms, to the villagers, graduation from poverty is linked with natural capital (owning, rather than renting or mortgaging-in, land), physical capital (owning cows, better housing), financial capital (managing without loans), human capital (educating at least some of their children), livelihood strategies (reduced reliance on day-labour, regular income from outside agriculture), and outcomes (household food security, less stress, reduced workload for women). The significant point to note is that the villagers' perspective is in consonance with, as well as supportive of, the authors' contention that, "The main exit route from poverty was no longer through land but through the non-farm economy." However, the authors are quick to point out that "demand for land will continue to grow despite its declining importance as a source of income." That can partly be explained by a particularly important psychological mindset of the individual villager: "Status, as much as the returns from agriculture, was the real motive behind many land purchases." In the process of conducting their study, the authors discuss the impact of microfinance on poverty, and conclude that it has been limited in the graduation process. "Micro-credit helped households move up from extreme poverty, but was not seen as a major reason for upward mobility from moderate poverty." Orr, et al are at pains to point out that microfinance has inbuilt limitations as a graduation tool. Some borrowers they found to be mere channels for other, more affluent households which did not qualify for loans, while some households that could not be classified as poor also received microfinance. Therefore, microfinance is not the answer to the process of graduation. Again, this contention could be challenged by microfinance protagonists. The authors spend much time on the subject of rice and its impact on poverty decline. In their view, "The challenge was no longer how to prevent poverty increasing but how to accelerate poverty decline." The introduction of new rice technology has contributed signally to speeding up poverty decline. Rice production has burgeoned significantly since the 1960s, leading to falling prices, which, in turn, have freed resources for investment in education, healthcare, and in non-farm jobs. Thus, new rice technology has had a momentous impact on the economics of graduation. Orr, et al, depict the rising tide of consumerism manifested in the process of graduation: desire for, and acquisition of, furniture, textiles, ornaments, and electronic goods. They also believe that Bangladesh will eliminate poverty within 45 years from now. We will just have to wait and see, and hope it materializes! However, their drawing of parallel to the condition of village life in present-day Bangladesh and that of life in rural England in the 1960s, if accurate, and then concluding that Bangladesh would develop along that line could be misleading if another set of parallelism is resorted to. The economic development of then East Pakistan was at around the same stage as that of South Korea and Thailand in the early 1960s. And South Korea is now considered an advanced economy, Thailand is on the way towards becoming a middle income country and look where Bangladesh stands! And the characterization of Dhaka as "one of Asia's mega-cities." Glitzy mega-slum would probably describe our capital better! Pathways from Poverty: The Process of Graduation in Rural Bangladesh is a useful addition to the literature on development issues relating to Bangladesh.
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