Poverty Alleviation

POVERTY ALLEVIATION: POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES

Presented By: Sanjay Timilsina
XII ’B’ DAY
Roll no. 33

POVERTY ALLEVIATION: POSSIBILITIES AND CHALLENGES
INTRODUCTION Attempts to define poverty cannot do justice to the reality of its experience. However, as understood by the general public, poverty refers to the condition of not having the means to afford basic human needs such as healthy and hygienic food, shelter, clothing, quality education and necessary health services. In other words, Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, having fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom. Poverty is a call to action, a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence and to live as human. If we define poverty in terms of relativity, absolute poverty is when a person is living on less than 1.25 U.S. Dollars in a day whereas relative poverty is based on social context, so it is a measure of inequality of income. According to sociologists, there are two different types of poverty, situational and generational. Situational poverty occurs when a family suffers a negative change in finances due to an illness, job loss, or other temporary event. Living in situational poverty usually has minimal lasting effects. Generational poverty, however, is a persistent and long term struggle that occurs when two or more generations of the same family are living in poverty. Generational poverty is thought by many to be one of the most difficult long term effects of poverty to fix.
CAUSES OF POVERTY
Poverty is an exceptionally complicated social phenomenon, and trying to discover its causes is equally complicated. The stereotypic explanation persists that the poor cause their own poverty. Some theorists have accused the poor of having little concern for the future and preferring to “live for the moment”; others have accused them of engaging in self-defeating behavior. Still other theorists have characterized the poor as fatalists, resigning themselves to a culture of poverty in which nothing can be done to change their economic outcomes. In this culture of poverty, which passes from generation to generation, the poor feels negative, inferior, passive, hopeless, and powerless. Primary factors that may lead to poverty are mentioned below:
• Overpopulation, the situation of having large number of people with too few resources and too little space, is closely associated with poverty.
• Exploitation by local leaders in various forms: loans, interest, crop sharing, wage labor rate, work burden etc.
• The limited property inherited by a father is distributed among offspring, which in turn is distributed among the brothers. This tradition of transferring property has raised the degree of fragmentation of farms and contributed in increasing poverty in the rural areas.
• Large family size as against the limited access to food and income.
• Lack of access to resources like land and capital which can be very instrumental to alleviating poverty.
• Structure of National Income Distribution rigidly centralized in the urban city and few percent high ranked people.
• Laziness is also considered a major reason for being poor.
• Regardless of financial status, people are also obliged to observe certain cultural practices during birth, death, marriage and other festivals. Such social pressures force them to take loans even at a high interest rate, and once they get into debt they find themselves in the vicious circle of poverty.
• Uneven distribution of natural resources, like feudalistic land system, also plays a key role in poverty.
• Lack of education and thus employment opportunities.
EFFECTS OF POVERTY
Poverty carries multiple effects in various sectors of the economy. Poverty leads to several consequences and some of them are very long lasting. Besides financial uncertainty, the poor people are likely to be exposed to series of negative events and “bad luck” including illness, depression, eviction, job loss, criminal victimization and family death. The major effects of poverty are mentioned below;
• Fragmentation of the society and polarization into rich and poor. So, there will be a problem and conflict, which destroys social harmony and development.
• Migration from rural to urban areas which in turn creates other several problems in national economy.
• Human trafficking or prostitution is a related issue to poverty. This is just another form of modern slavery.
• Lack of proper and timely access to education and health services.
• Increasing rate of criminal activities and thus insecurity in the society.
• Fall in debt for very long period of time even for several generations in some cases.
• Abuse by those who are in power.
MEASURING POVERTY
• Measuring poverty at national level
A common method used to measure poverty is based on incomes or consumption levels. A person is considered poor if his or her consumption or income level falls below some minimum level necessary to meet basic needs. This minimum level is usually called the "poverty line". What is necessary to satisfy basic needs varies across time and societies. Therefore, poverty lines vary in time and place, and each country uses lines which are appropriate to its level of development, social norms and values. In Nepal an average of Rs. 76,695 per year is assumed as national poverty line according to Nepal Living Standard Survey 2003/04.

• Measuring poverty at global level
When estimating poverty worldwide, the same reference poverty line has to be used, and expressed in a common unit across countries. Therefore, for the purpose of global aggregation and comparison, the World Bank uses reference lines set at $1 and $2 per day (more precisely $1.08 and $2.15 in 1993 Purchasing Power Parity terms). It has been estimated that in 2001, 1.1 billion people had consumption levels below $1 a day and 2.7 billion lived on less than $2 a day. These figures are lower than earlier estimates, indicating that some progress has taken place, but they still remain too high in terms of human suffering, and much more remains to be done.
GLOBAL POVERTY TRENDS
Based on World Bank figures which are used for official global poverty statistics, the number of people living below the international poverty line of $1.25 per day fell from 1.8 billion to 1.4 billion between 1990 and 2005. China accounted for 465 million of this reduction, implying that poverty has increased elsewhere over this period. In sub-Saharan Africa, the increase was 100 million. However, expressing global poverty as a percentage reverses the trend due to the rising global population. For example, extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa has fallen slightly from 57% to 51% between 1990 and 2005. The wealth of our new millennium has tended to increase inequality rather than reduce poverty. UNDP has reported that, in 2005, the richest 500 people in the world earned more than the poorest 416 million people.
POVERTY IN NEPAL
Poverty is one of the most pressing problems in Nepal. Assuming an average of Rs.76,695 as the national poverty line according to Nepal Living Standard Survey (NLSS), 2003/04 around 30.85 percent of the population is still found to be below the poverty line. According to the same survey, in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), which is calculated on the basis of an income of One US dollar a day, the internationally adopted measurement standard of the by the World Bank, around 24.1 percent population is found to be living below the said poverty level.

According to the Nepal Living Standard Survey (NLSS,2003/04), there is an unequal distribution of poverty in the dimensions of caste/ethnicity, regional and occupational level. Among those under the poverty line, 67.0 percent are engaged in agro-based employment and 11 percent are agricultural labourers. This indicates that 78 percent of the total poor have made agriculture sector their prime means of employment.

Among the various caste/ethnicity, the percentage of poor is 46 percent among Dalits, 44 percent among Hill ethnic groups, 41 percent among Muslims, 35 percent among Terai ethnic groups and 31 percent among other minority groups are below poverty line. Similarly, 40 percent of Newars, 18 percent of Brahmin/Chhetri and 21 percent of the Middle class in the Terai population live below poverty line. Out of the total poor, 29.4 percent of populations live in rural areas of Mid and Eastern hills. The percentage of Rural Poor is 23.6 percent in Western Hills, 23.5 percent in Eastern Terai, 18.9 percent in Western Terai, and 4.7 percent live in urban areas. Similarly, it is assumed that 7.5 percent live in High Mountainous Region, 47.1 percent in the Hills, and 45.4 percent in the Terai out of the total poor.

Poverty in Nepal does not mean starvation, in fact far more people die from malnutrition than from starvation. Poverty in Nepal means lack of education; it means lack of infrastructure, no roads or electricity. Nepalese rural people are poor due to lack of access to resources, productive land, roads to obtain agriculture inputs and to sell agriculture products. Going back again to the NLSS 2003/04, the main reasons for the decline in poverty rate are remittance income, fast growing urbanization, increase in average wage in the agriculture sector, and increase in the number of economically active population. During FY 1995/96, percentage of urban population below poverty line was 21.6 percent which fell relatively sharply to 9.6 percent by 2003/04, but in the same period the population below poverty line in rural areas decreased to 34.4 percent from 43.3 percent.

CAN POVERTY BE ALLEVIATED?

Poverty is a very complicated social phenomenon and a burning issue of the present day. In order to accelerate the pace of development, poverty should be alleviated from the society. But “can poverty be alleviated?” The answer to this question can be given by putting different logics but the fact is that only the absolute poverty can be alleviated and not the relative poverty. Our goal is to alleviate the absolute poverty and for this all the concerned authorities should take some revolutionary steps so that poverty, the curse for the poor, can be alleviated. Some of the major steps that can be implemented in this campaign are:
• The poor people should be identified so that the goal can be achieved at minimum time and cost.
• The concerned parties stepping forward for poverty alleviation should understand that distributing money to poor people will not make them rich but giving them skill oriented trainings will help a lot to uplift their economic status.
• The government should give proper platform for the poor and introduce such programs by which the poor people will be benefitted in long term rather than short term.
• The compulsory provision of investing certain percentage out of the profit should be made for the large profit earning organizations and financial institutions.
• Easy access to education should be made available to poor people which helps them to find the way out to poverty themselves.
• Such programs should be implemented which gives motivation to poor people so that they themselves will be able to get rid of the vicious circle of poverty.

CHALLENGES IN POVERTY ALLEVIATION CAMPAIGN

Poverty alleviation is not an easy task. It takes long time to achieve the remarkable goal. In the process of poverty alleviation campaign, several obstacles may arise which may cause the failure of the campaign. Some of the major obstacles are:
• Corruption and abuse of authority.
• Benefit taken by so called poor rather than actual poor people.
• Lack of proper coordination among the government and other institutions involved in poverty alleviation campaign.
• Campaigners not able to reach to every poor people as they are scattered in almost all hooks and corners of the country.
• Habit of saying more and doing less of the campaigners.
• The “live for the moment” habit of the poor.

CONCLUSION

After these discussions, what we can conclude is that poverty cannot be limited in definitions. It is the burning problem of the present day especially of the developing countries like Nepal and other underdeveloped countries. Poverty leads to very miserable and long term effects. It is a must to alleviate poverty from the world in order to accelerate the pace of development of human civilization. If all the concerned authorities stepped forward cooperatively and the poor people also behaved positively, the absolute poverty can be alleviated. Though there are some obstacles in this campaign, it is our duty to overcome those challenges and move further. Otherwise the poor people and their forthcoming generations will again have the trademark of ‘poverty’ in their forehead.