SOCIAL INVESTMENT AND POVERTY REDUCTION IN BANGLADESH

By Sadeq Khan, Financial Times, March 26, 2005

Unnoticed in the limelight of national politics and the media, a quiet social revolution has been taking place in Bangladesh. The Millennium Development Goals: Bangladesh Progress Report, jointly prepared by the UN and the Government of Bangladesh and published in February 2005, notes how Bangladesh is steadily keeping on track in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals.

For Bangladesh, the goals include lowering poverty rate to 29.4 percent, a 100 percent universal primary education, reduction of child mortality to 50 per thousand live births, improvement of maternal health to 143 or less fatalities in hundred thousand natal conditions, and ensuring environmental sustainability by 20 percent, by the year 2015.

The Report found that the pace of poverty reduction, which registered an average of 9.2 percent in the decade of 1991 to 2000, had picked up since Bangladesh entered the first decade of the new millennium with poverty level at 49.8% of the population. In related fields of human development, the report showed that enrolment rate at primary schools including those of various denomination rose to 82.7 percent in 2003 compared to 73.7 percent in 1992.

The child mortality rate fell to 82 per 1000 live births compared to 151 in 1990. In the last decade of the second millennium, maternal mortality per hundred thousand births had already come down from 570 to 320. Environmental sustainability went up by 1.2 percent as the proportion of forest cover of land mass increased from 9 to 10.2 percent.

A World Bank report on attaining the MDGs in Bangladesh was published about the same time. It said, Bangladesh achieved considerable success in lowering population growth, fostering women's empowerment, reducing aid dependence, achieving success in human development and attaining effective disaster management capacity.

"Not many countries at Bangladesh level of income can list so many of these achievements. Especially in the light of Bangladesh's dismal record at development during the 1970s and 1980s, this is a remarkable success."

Latest government statistics show that Bangladesh has a total of 73,540 primary schools, including 3225 community schools, 1792 unregistered private schools, 2477 English-medium Kindergartens, 3443 Madrassah (religious) schools, 3574 Madrassah-run primary schools, and 301 informal schools run by Non-government Organisations.

The enrolment target of 16.8 million (8.6 million male and 8.2 million female) has already been surpassed, total enrolment figure reaching 17.2 million. The gross enrolment rate is 97.3 percent.

Latest rate of completion of primary education is 68%. At the secondary level, enrolment rate has increased by average 7.4 percent annually from 28 percent in 1990 to 52.8 percent in 2002.

Indeed, education has been placed as the center piece of human development programme in Bangladesh under the overall strategy of poverty reduction, with public health including population planning, nutrition and sanitation as immediate concerns in poverty alleviation.

Government policy seeks to harness resources of the private sector for investing in healthcare and employ the available quantum of public resource to ensure equity in access to pure water supply, sanitation and healthcare for the poor, reduce morbidity and mortality, and improve nutritional status, especially for women and children.

Such lateral objectives have been combined in certain education sector programmes like school lunch programme to reduce incidence of malnutrition as well as encourage completion of primary education. Food for Education and Cash for Education programmes have been similarly designed with multiple objectives of vulnerable group development and reduction of school dropouts amongst children of needy households.

An estimated 5.5 million pupils get benefit from these programmes. Female Secondary Education Stipend Programmes have been introduced to increase and retain female students in higher grades of education, to discourage early marriage, and to increase the likelihood of employment or self-employment of young educated females.

Similar composite programmes under the over-all strategy of poverty reduction have been undertaken, for instance, in Housing policy in terms of resettlement of slum dwellers and encouraging vertical instead of horizontal expansion of house-building, apart from access to house-building loan facilities for urban and rural households of low income group.

A comprehensive Disaster Management Programme has been chalked out with special emphasis on relief and rehabilitation of extremely poor vulnerable groups and food security for short-term or longer-term internal refugees and migrant workers. Indeed, extreme poverty has been reduced in Bangladesh from 28 percent in 1990 to 19 percent in 2002, and hunger almost cut out.

Social Safety-net Programmes have been undertaken keeping in mind special disadvantaged groups, tribal communities, disabled persons, disaster-prone geographical areas and gender dimensions. A National Food and Nutrition Policy has been adopted, so far mainly geared towards maintaining a balance between aggregate supply and total demand in any part of the country by appropriate market interventions, apart from vulnerable group feeding programmes.

Income-generation for the fair sex is being actively pursued as a state policy by encouraging at all levels women's entrepreneurship, women's employment, reserved women's representation in local governments, and in general participation of women in socio-economic activities, including marketing of home products and handicrafts.

Particular gains in women's empowerment have been obtained by ensuring women's special access to birth control measures and micro-credit facilities, apart from expansion of women's education, formal and informal, and skill development.

Micro-credit in general has become the most visible anti-poverty instrument in Bangladesh, with both government and non-government organisations and financial institutions active in the field. Rolling funds of micro-credit have significantly increased liquidity in rural commerce, and up-scaling of micro-credit levels are now being sought to increase rural productivity and expand internal consumption.

On the other hand, Rural Infra-structure Development Programmes are designed to provide food-based safety net cover for vulnerable communities, and cash for public works are provided by Rural Maintenance Programmes involving destitute women, abandoned by husbands or with disabled husbands.

Finally, to make governance work for the poor, participatory processes in development planning and micro-governance agendas at local government levels are being pursued. In addition, micro-level access to justice, regulatory support to informal and unorganised sectors of the economy, and measures to prevent income erosion threats to the poor from misapplication of power and social insecurity are being particularly monitored by government and non-government agencies of social service.

Indeed, social investments are providing radical inputs and adding significant momentum to the economic drive of Bangladesh.