Bangladesh's success in poverty alleviation_. By @firozgazi 2022

Source: Canva
News of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) official recognition of the country's laudable achievement in reducing poverty, published in the newspaper on June 14, almost disappeared in the wake of the ruling coalition's collapse in the four city corporation elections held the next day. However, I firmly believe that recognizing that success will be considered 'amazing' to the whole world. The world's most populous country has achieved the most important first of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations in the fight against hunger and poverty, two years ahead of time in 2015. The news is undoubtedly a joy for development thinkers.

I want to remind the readers that the eight MDGs or Medium Term Development Goals were adopted at the 2000 Annual Session of the UN General Assembly, the first of which was to reduce the poverty rate of Bangladesh below the poverty line from 1990 to 29 percent in 2015 by 29 percent. Bangladesh is one of the only 20 countries globally that is on the right track to achieving this goal. Therefore, Food Minister Abdur Razzak received the diploma on June 18 on behalf of the Prime Minister from the ceremony organized by the FAO to award diplomas to those 20 countries. Since Bangladesh has achieved the target of 29 percent in 2013, it is expected that the population living below the poverty line in this country will be brought down to less than 25 percent in 2015.

As a student of economics, from a theoretical point of view, I consider the problem of poverty to be an integral part of the existing system of production and distribution of society (relations of production) and the pattern of social and political power. My firm position is that our social, economic, and political 'system' is constantly creating and re-creating poverty. My book, The Poverty Discourse and Participatory Action Research in Bangladesh, was published in 2009 by the Research Institute, based on field research and theoretical research. My research explains that poverty is created and recreated in this country through 12 significant processes. We will be discussing the most important techniques as well as fields. The primary source of poverty and regeneration in this country is the agricultural sector. The agricultural sector operates mainly through the following processes:

1. Reduction of agricultural holdings through fragmentation of land ownership;

2. Severe outbreaks of landlessness;

3. Disinvestment and marginalization of small and marginal farmers;

4. The accumulation of land ownership in the hands of absentee landowners and the consequent increase in sharecropping in the land tenure system;

5. Failure of farmers to get fair price due to violence of intermediaries like brokers, supervisors, moneylenders, wholesalers in the marketing of agricultural products;

6. The indebtedness of the peasantry and the continued violence of the moneylender system;

7. Floods, river erosion, cyclones, waterlogging, salinity, disruption of farmer's horses, cattle, goats, poultry, household goods, and agricultural production due to Kalbaishakhi;

8. Problems of non-subsistence farming due to increased marketing of agricultural inputs.
   Despite the demands of the times to tackle the process of creating poverty in the agricultural sector in these countries like West Bengal and Kerala in India by adopting appropriate agricultural reform and land reform policies, no government has taken action. However, as the present government has taken several agriculture and farmer-friendly steps, significant dynamics have been created in the country's agricultural sector. We have achieved self-sufficiency in paddy production. The growth of vegetable and fish production is also satisfactory. The prices of food grains are under control. A significant amount of progress has been made in attaining nutrition security and food safety for the rural populace. This is evident in the speed of progress in the process of reducing rural poverty. Even the poverty of the working poor in urban areas has been accelerated.
   The role of remittances sent by migrant Bangladeshis is significant in poverty reduction. It is estimated that between six million and one million people in the country have now migrated abroad. 90-95% of these expatriate Bangladeshis are poorly educated, less skilled rural youth engaged in low-wage work abroad. However, to meet the needs of wife-son-daughter, mother-father, siblings, and relatives and improve the family's quality of life, a large proportion of their low income is regularly sent to the country through various channels. In the last financial year, the inflow of remittances through legal channels exceeded দশ 14.2 billion; this year, it will exceed ১৫ 15 billion. Apart from this, the number of goods and foreign exchange flowing directly to the expatriates coming in the hundi-process and coming to the country could be another six billion to eight billion dollars. As a result, more than ২০ 20 billion in foreign remittances are being added to the economy each year, both legally and illegally, driving the country's economic growth. If the country's rich people had not smuggled billions of dollars of capital abroad every year and had reduced the incidence of corruption and looting in the economy, the growth rate of the country's GDP and GNI would have already exceeded 6 percent. (GNI GNI is amount of GDP plus net transfer of funds). Net remittance is the difference between remittances coming from abroad and remittances sent from abroad. Expatriate remittances are contributing almost equally to the success of the agricultural sector in accelerating the pace of poverty reduction in the country.
   Growth in clothing and knitwear industries has been a factor in this. About 80 percent of the total export income of Bangladesh is earned from this sector. Importing machinery, materials, and accessories for this sector is about ১১ 11 billion. Therefore, Bangladesh's net export income from this sector is not more than 10 billion dollars. (As such, the human resources export sector is the country's primary source of export income.) Nevertheless, the readymade garment industry continues to contribute to reducing poverty by employing about 4 million workers. It can be said that this sector has started a social revolution in the country by employing the women of the poorest families of the people.
   Professor Muhammad Yunus's groundbreaking invention of 'micro-credit' continues to be a catalyst for another ongoing revolution in accelerating the poverty alleviation of rural women in this country. Most of the thousands of NGOs in this country have been playing the role of microfinance institutions for the rural lower class people for two decades. The interest rate on microcredit is higher than the interest rate on commercial banks and is, therefore, a widely used weapon of criticism among microfinance critics. But the interest rate on microcredit should be compared with the interest rate of moneylenders, not with the interest rate of commercial banks. Admittedly, despite the various shortcomings and limitations of microfinance, borrowers who do not waste money on loans can lift their families out of poverty through the proper use of loans, with about 28-30 percent of their earning investments. So trivializing microcredit is just speculation.

Source: Canva
To help the poorest sections of the population struggle for their lives and livelihoods, a portion of the country's government expenditure is allocated for counterfeit social security programs.The total number of these programs is around 90. The government claims that the number of individuals is about two and a quarter crore. Most of these programs do little in making the life of the poor acceptable. It also encourages several productive and income-generating activities, which positively affect poverty alleviation.
Obeying. It is time to make the social security net program more effective through evaluation and research.
In addition to identifying the factors that have played a significant role in the success of the people of this country in achieving poverty alleviation, we would like to mention a view to highlighting the significant causes of poverty. The growing income and wealth distribution inequality is called the twin brother of poverty. In a society where measures to increase inequality are strengthened, poverty alleviation is difficult. Despite the average per capita GDP of the United States being ৮ 48,000, 16 percent of the American people live below the poverty line due to growing inequality. In 2008, the proportion was 11 percent. But President Barack Obama has claimed that another 6 percent of Americans have fallen below the poverty line in the last six years due to the ongoing recession and widening inequality of income and wealth distribution.
Just because of the disparity in income and distribution of wealth, the vast majority of the people in Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Nicaragua, and Ecuador, the countries rich in natural resources in Latin America, have recently fallen below the poverty line! Elected left-wing governments in those countries have dramatically strengthened the poverty reduction process over the past decade by implementing strategies to achieve "inequitable growth" with a people's mandate. Venezuela's Hugo Chভvez, Brazil's Lula de Silva, Nicaragua's Ortega, and Bolivia's Morales are now on the list of successful politicians in the fight against poverty. Each of them has been able to use the country's resources to improve the living standards of the people of the country by weakening the processes of poverty creation and regeneration of the people of their respective countries.
These processes continue to create inequality and poverty in this country as well. View list:

1. Nurture discriminatory education system in the education sector,

2. Marketing of health care and expansion of discriminatory treatment;

3. Monopolization of the banking system by the rich;

4. Maintaining the anti-people character of government revenue and expenditure;

5. The ravages of political and bureaucratic corruption; And

6. Corruption with foreign loans and aid. This country must adopt an 'inequitable growth' strategy to accelerate poverty alleviation.

Dr. Moinul Islam: Professor, Department of Economics, University of Chittagong and former President, Bangladesh Economic Society.

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