A paradigm, according to Kuhn the great philosopher of modern science,
is a framework of thought within which questions are posed and answers
pursued. When the problem addressed by an existing paradigm cannot be
overcome by the analysis and forms of action associated with that paradigm,
then it becomes obsolete and is transcended by a new paradigm. In my research
for the UNDP, National Human Development Report over the last three years,
I have proposed that the prevailing paradigm of poverty may have become
obsolete and it is time to replace it with a new one. The essential flaw
in the prevalent poverty paradigm is that the issue of power is systematically
excluded from both the understanding of poverty as well as policies for
overcoming it.
The poor in Pakistan cannot simply be seen (as much of the literature
does) as free individuals suffering from merely adverse “resource
endowments”, and making choices in more or less “free markets”.
It is such a paradigm, which induces the government to think that all
it needs to do to reduce poverty is to allocate more resources to the
poor or to the local governments who are supposed to ‘represent’
them. Similarly some of the large NGOs operating in many different districts
pursue poverty alleviation by trying to provide micro credit to the poor.
Increased resources by the government or micro credit by NGOs may be a
necessary but is not a sufficient condition for overcoming poverty.
By contrast one can propose an alternative paradigm within which one can
understand poverty occurring when the individual household in a fragmented
community is locked into a nexus of power that systematically perpetuates
poverty. Within such a paradigm it is possible to understand a fact that
eludes the conventional paradigm: The poor face markets, state institutions
and local structures of power that discriminate against the poor and deprive
them of a large proportion of their actual and potential incomes. This
is documented for the first time on the basis of new survey data in the
just published National Human Development Report. The data set is new
simply because the underlying questions have not been asked before. Some
of the questions one has raised are: How do distorted markets for inputs
and outputs of goods and services result in the loss of the actual or
potential income of the poor? If this is indeed the case then what is
the magnitude of the income loss? How do local structures of power with
respect to landlords, local administrative officials, and institutions
for the provision of health, credit and dispute resolution deprive the
poor of their income, assets and the fruits of their labour?
Most studies on poverty in Pakistan have examined the problem simply in
terms of measuring the number of people below certain poverty lines. However
if poverty is to be overcome what is required is to understand the processes
of poverty creation and to identify the points of intervention in the
poverty process through which the poor can be enabled to overcome poverty
on a sustainable basis. That is what one has attempted to do in the Report.
The new survey evidence shows that the poor lose as much as one-third
of their income due to unequal access over input and output markets and
extortions by the local administration. For example, as much as 51% of
the extremely poor tenants, borrow money from the landlord. The leverage
of power available to the landlord on the basis of tenants’ dependence
for both operation of the land and loans from the landlord, enables the
latter to appropriate the only resource which the poor have, namely their
own labour. The evidence shows for example that of those tenants who borrow
from the landlord as many as 57.4% work on the landlord’s owner
cultivated portion of the land without any wages at all, and 14% work
for a daily wage of only Rs.28/- which is substantially below the market
wage rate for unskilled labour. Similarly the extremely poor sections
of the rural population when they are locked into a dispute related with
land, water or theft, are forced to spend as much as Rs.18,333/- in trying
to resolve the dispute through local structures of power and yet only
38.5% of the disputes get resolved. Since the expenditure on dispute resolution
by the extremely poor is more than their annual income, involvement in
disputes means borrowing money and getting into a debt trap.
The evidence shows that health is a major trigger that pushes people into
poverty and the poor into deeper poverty. As many as 65% of the poor were
ill at the time of the interview and lost as much as three months of the
year to illness. Given the inadequacy of the government’s health
facilities as many as 85% of the poor go to private allopathic medical
practitioners for treatment. The expenditures on such treatment are so
high that poor households are obliged to borrow mostly from informal sources
to finance the medical expenses of their families. Consequently they gradually
lose whatever few assets they have (such as farm animals) and being unable
to earn a livelihood for long periods due to illness, they are then forced
to borrow money even for food expenses. Access over good quality health
services is also a question not just of money but also of power and influence
to get hold of a proper doctor or a hospital bed.
Thus the analysis and evidence within this new poverty paradigm suggest
that the key to overcoming poverty is to empower the poor to get better
access over markets, governance, and the institutions that provide public
services such as health care, education and justice. Empowerment in this
specific sense means establishing autonomous community based organizations
of the poor at the local level. These organizations would be quite distinct
from the “village organizations” set up by large cross-district
NGOs.
My work on both institution building for the poor and action research
over the last two decades, shows that overcoming poverty means empowering
the poor to acquire greater control over their use of productive resources
including their own labour, and keeping their incomes and savings in their
own hands. It means enabling the poor to get organized and have institutionalized
access over public resources and participation in the design and implementation
of poverty alleviation projects. Overcoming poverty means shifting the
location of the poor in the local power structures from being victims
to active subjects in achieving equitable access over markets, and over
institutions providing credit, health and education services. This will
require facilitating the emergence of autonomous organizations of the
poor and enabling them to achieve an institutionalized linkage with various
tiers of local government. Attempts at poverty reduction without empowering
the poor in this specific sense, will merely perpetuate poverty.
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