Increasing poverty amidst increasing wealth
Increasing poverty amidst increasing wealthBy Editor
Monday February 25, 2008 [03:00]
The growth of our national economy instead of bringing comfort to the masses of our people, especially those who live in rural areas, is imposing additional burdens on them. How else can one explain the fact that rural poverty has increased from 78 per cent to 80 per cent despite the fact that we have been recording some economic growth?
But we should know that this country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless it’s a good place for all of us to live in. The true test of economic progress of a country is not the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few who live in urban areas, but the elevation of a people as a whole.
Our politicians, especially those in government today, have won elections on the strength of their promises for the development of our rural areas. They did well in the rural areas in the last elections because of such promises. But it’s now clear that they have not lived up to their promises, they have not carried them out. Some of them don’t even go to these rural areas anymore or they seldom do so. This is deception of the rural poor. Deception is always a pretty contemptible vice, but to deceive the poor is the meanest of all crimes. When they promised development to the rural poor, they meant their upliftment of their own personal living standards at the expense of the poor.
And now it doesn’t seem to be important to the rural poor what taxes are introduced and what amounts of money are raised therefrom. The budget seems to be introduced merely for raising barren taxes, but taxes should be fertile taxes, taxes that will bring forth fruit. We need taxes that will lift our rural poor from their poverty. It is rather shameful that at a time we are boasting of doing well economically, we should be allowing some of our citizens to die because of poverty. It is rather hard that some of our citizens should find their way to the gates of the tombs, bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns of poverty.
Clearly, there should be an agenda to include the rural population in our economic activities to reduce their poverty. The existence of such large numbers of poor people in our country should constitute an affront to all of us. A stable, permanent solution must be found to this poverty. Poverty is unacceptable as part of the human condition. The co-existence of pervasive poverty, with affluence of a much smaller segment of our population, is ethically unacceptable, economically inefficient and politically unsustainable.
We need to urgently do something to address the issue of rural poverty in a more permanent way. And unless the focus of the rural poverty discourse moves towards mainstreaming the issue of poverty through rethinking the design of development policy, poverty is likely to be perpetuated in this country as it was before. And mainstreaming poverty at policy level demands that the tired debate over the prioritisation of growth as the route to poverty eradication be put to rest. The relevant issue is to enhance the capacities of the rural poor to contribute to the process of growth by empowering them to participate on more equitable terms.
The eradication of rural poverty should remain central to the design of macro-policy reform rather than an afterthought. This demands a macro-policy agenda which is designed to enhance the capacity of the rural poor as producers, consumers and above all, as owners of wealth. The need for macro-policy designed to eliminate rural poverty is premised on the argument that poverty originates in the structural features of our society which can only be addressed at the macro-level. Policy intervention, designed to redesign the structural sources of rural poverty, bring into consideration issues of social, political as well as economic reform.
A decade ago, it used to be argued that rapid growth was the solution for eradicating poverty. A commitment to growth sustaining policy reforms backed by temporary safety nets for those who were possible victims of such growth was expected to reduce the proportion of those living in poverty. A decade later, we have all come to terms with the proposition that policy reforms were not enough to alleviate let alone eradicate poverty, especially rural poverty.
From the statistics given to us of rural poverty increasing from 78 per cent to 80 per cent when we are supposed to be making economic progress, we should realise that poverty is not likely to be eradicated in the near future without addressing structural issues, and its perpetuation is now threatening the very foundation of our nation. We need to address the structural issues concerning this poverty. We need to start focusing on issues such as access to assets, markets and institutions as the sources of rural poverty. The assumptions underlying this structuralist perspective on rural poverty recognises that neither targeting of development resources to the poor, nor the promotion of growth, are likely to resolve the problems of poverty. We say this because the poor are embedded in certain inherited structural arrangements such as insufficient access to productive assets as well as human resources, unequal capacity to participate in both domestic and global markets and undemocratic access to political power. These structural features of poverty reinforce each other to effectively exclude the poor from participating in the benefits from development or the opportunities provided by more open markets. In such a situation, even targeted programmes of poverty alleviation carry transaction costs due to institutional structures which mediate the delivery of resources to the poor.
It is, however, not enough to recognise the salience of structural issues in the rural poverty discourse without addressing the political economy which underlies the structural features of our society.
This poverty originates in the unequal command over both economic and political resources within our society and the unjust nature of our social order which perpetuates these inequities. We may term these inequalities structural injustice. Such injustice remains pervasive in most societies exposed to endemic poverty.
And within the prevailing property structures of our society, the rural poor remain disconnected from the more dynamic sectors of the market, particularly where there is scope for benefiting from the opportunities provided by globalisation.
However, a more serious problem facing the rural poor lies in the growing disparity in the quality of education which divides rural and urban areas. Today the principal inequity in our education sector is manifested in the growing divide between a better educated elite with access to private as well as foreign education and the poor who are condemned to remain captives within an insufficiently funded and poorly managed education system. Insufficient and inequitable access to healthcare is also compounding the inequities in education. This growing disparity between the health status of the elite and the poor is inherently unjust because it denies all citizens chances of living healthy lives and even to compete in the marketplace.
This inequitable and unjust social and economic universe is compounded by a system of unjust governance which discriminates against the poor and effectively disenfranchises them from the political benefits of a democratic process. The rural poor remain underserved by available public services. The poor are denied adequate access to representation in our system of governance from the local to the national level. Our representative institutions tend to be monopolised by the affluent and socially powerful who then use their electoral office to enhance their wealth and thereby perpetuate their hold on power. Therefore, if we are to make serious strides in eradicating poverty, we have to address the issues of expanding the ownership and control of the poor over productive assets, enhancing their access to a knowledge-based society, strengthening the capacity of the poor to compete in the marketplace, redesigning the budgetary policy to reach public resources to the poor, restructuring monetary policy to deliver credit and provide savings instruments to the poor, designing institutions for the poor and empowering the poor.
We cannot remain indifferent in the face of the tremendous social injustices existent in our country, which keep the majority of our people in dismal poverty, which in many cases becomes inhuman wretchedness. A deafening cry pours from the throats of million of men and women asking us for a liberation that reaches them from nowhere else.
Poverty, as a lack of the goods of this world necessary to live worthily as human beings, is in itself evil. The prophets denounce it as contrary to the will of the Lord and most of the time as the fruit of human injustice and sin.
Against this background, it will be necessary to emphasise strongly that the anguished condition of millions of the poor in our country places before us a challenge and a mission that we cannot sidestep and to which we must respond with a speed and boldness adequate to the urgency of the times.
We ought to sharpen the awareness of our duty of solidarity with the poor, to which charity leads us. This solidarity means that we make ours their problems and their struggles, that we know how to speak with them. This has to be concretised in criticism of injustice, in the struggle against the intolerable situation that a poor person often has to tolerate, in the willingness to dialogue with those responsible for that situation in order to make them understand their obligations.
We express our desire to be very close always to those who work in the self-denying situations with the poor in order that they will always feel our encouragement and know that we will not listen to parties interested in distorting their work.
Human advancement has to be the goal of our action on behalf of the poor and it must be carried out in such a manner that we respect their personal dignity and teach them to help themselves.
Labels: NEOLIBERALISM, POVERTY
posted by MrK @ 7:49 PM
1 Comments:
Here are real solutions to rural poverty:
1) Land Reform
Make sure every farmer has more than enough land to grow what he or she needs. I would like to see the creation of tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of medium sized farms, of 100 hectares. This is more than enough to give a family and income of $10,000 per year or more. It also provides for enough space for the farmers family to start agricultural businesses - dairy, horticulture, growing spices. The combination of more land and available income, will create a demand for farm equipment, repairs, and rural services - education, veterinary services, legal services, accounting services.
2) Education
Every district should have at least one college-equivalent vocational school, where people can learn practical skills that are necessary for a growing economy, as well as educate people for the construction industry.
3) Infrastructure
The government can create jobs, by spending a large part of the money from the mines on rehabilitation of roads and bridges, and especially relevant for both safety and agriculture, create a hydrological infrastructure that manages waterflow and storage.
With the totally preventable floods we have seen, it is clear that a lot of good can be done for relatively little money, if the government put together an effort to manage the country's water.
- seasonal rivers can be dammed, so that in times of heavy rainfall, water can be stored in small dams
- swales (narrow ditches of about half a meter deep and two meters wide) can be dug to make excess rainfall part of the groundwater table, by giving it much more time to be absorbed by the soil. Swales are a really low level of technology, that wouldn't take much training, and that could involve the chiefs and their people, and the national service and army. Swales will fill up several times in the year, and conserve water by adding it to groundwater and natural aquifers.
- Reforrestation
Not only do forrests absorb a lot of water, they can be used to reduce soil erosion, serve as a fuel, and special tree species like teak can be grown long term for a very high financial return. Right now the price of a large teak log is US$20,000. Wouldn't it be great that every time a child is born, a teak tree was planted, which could more than provide for the child's education by the time he or she reaches the age of 18. Every village could plant hardwood trees like that, as an investment.
- Hemp
Much maligned because it was a threat to the woodpulp/paper monopoly of William Randolph Hearst, hemp was once the miracle plant that provided sails and ropes for the world's navies, birdseed, clothes at a fraction of the inputs of cotton (the world's leading crop in the use of pesticides and fertilizers and other chemicals) and much more productive in pulp/fiber per hectare than forrest is. And completely renewable as a resource. And a great help in reclaiming poor soils for agriculture. One hectare of hemp produces $400 worth of fiber, twice the value of hectare of corn. Hemp as a fiber crop, can jumpstart all kinds of industries - clothes, cardboard to replace styrofoam containers, paper for newspapers, etc. What if the government mandated that all paper used in Zambia, and all disposable containers are made from hemp? No more imported cotton shirts, no more forrests cut down for newspapers. And every village could grow it. Just a thought.
The government could pay people $5,- per day (5 times the daily income for 70% of the population). At 365 days per year or $1825 per person per year, the government could employ 27,000 people for $50 million. Another $50 million to provide basic materials.
Those are just ballpark figures, but I think that if the ballpark figures are right, the actual experts could implement a policy around it.
If they were all put to work on infrastructure, Zambia could build farms, put it's water in order, rehabilitate roads, and put money from the mines into people's pockets.
Basically if we synergize Labour, Land and Capital, the basic building blocks of economics, we'd have ourselves an economy.
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