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Making the invisible visible

Santan Haque
By the time this piece has been published and circulated, the dust, leftovers, decorations and fanfare of Extreme Poverty Eradication Day will have been swept up and discarded. The grand announcements will have been made, oaths pledged, ideas shared and applause long faded. What comes after the microphones are stowed away and flashbulbs have been tamed is what really matters and what the event's theme making the invisible visible is all about. The argument for observing such a day seems rather baffling when one imagines every think tank, intergovernmental organisation and even the Bangladeshi Government is resigned to the fact that chronic and extreme poverty are inevitable, beyond our control or even a God-given curse. Then why, one might ask, spend large sums of money organising a conference in lavish surroundings with international and national dignitaries when such resources can be diverted to help the very people the conference hopes to address? It's rather simple: the extreme poor are seldom recognised by the political elite: government policies seldom, if ever, reach the economic bottom 10 percent of the population, and state safety net programmes fail to mitigate their poverty and often confuse them with
the moderate poor. There are a number of other reasons but essentially, high-profile events like this year's Extreme Poverty Eradication Day provide a platform to reach the highest levels of government and advocate for change.
On 17 October 1987, over 100,000 Parisians gathered to honour the victims of extreme poverty, violence and hunger. It was in this same city that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948 and UN member states proclaimed that poverty was a violation of human rights with the affirmation that all humanity was required to unite to fight this plague in all its guises. In 1992 this belief was institutionalised within the UN through a resolution adopted by the General Assembly which invited "all states to devote the day 117th October] to presenting and promoting, as appropriate in the national context, concrete activities with regard to the eradication of poverty and destitution". This resolution provides the space for intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations to assist states in undertaking the necessary activities to properly observe the day.
The purpose of such a day is not only to highlight the obvious truththat Bangladesh remains mired in institutionalised chronic povertybut also to look beyond dehumanising facts and stamp a human face on the extreme poverty faced by nearly 40 million Bangladeshis. The UN resolution, which
gave life to this day. accepted all the frailties of contemporary poverty reduction strategies and provided the space for state and non-state actors alike to promote and plan a road out of poverty.
A shift in donor attitudes and approaches over the past decade has resulted in new policies which include building government capacities and providing frameworks through which both state and non-state actors can dispense public goods. This has resulted in an improved governance framework for aid distribution and created a space where state and non-state organisations play a more cohesive role in the overall development agenda.
Bangladesh"s commitment to poverty reduction is highlighted by the government"s election manifesto, which emphasises the need to eliminate poverty & inequality and maintain economic stability over commodity price hikes.
Bangladesh is likewise committed to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted at the turn-of-the-century UN Millennium Declaration . The MDGs set targeted time bound and specific goals for extreme poverty reduction throughout the world. The first goal - popularly referred to as MDG 1 addresses the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger and remains the biggest challenge for the Government of Bangladesh.
For too long the political elite have
been indifferent to the needs and the policy requirements of the extreme poor. The failure of the state to provide public goods since independence led to the flourishing of non-governmental organisations and presently social businesses. The initiatives undertaken by these, and a range of other sectors, have failed to inspire the political elite to push for effective long term policies to lift the extreme poor out of poverty. Raising awareness among policy-makers, ensuring bureaucrats are provided with specific targets and charging state machinery with the necessity of tackling, extreme poverty head on is an absolute policy imperative for the Bangladeshi political elite.
Here a distinction must be made between the moderate poor and the extreme poor, who make up nearly 40 million people in Bangladesh. The popularity of micro-finance institutions to provide credit to the poor, much highlighted by the international accolades heaped on institutions like Grameen Bank, diverts attention from the failure of such institutions to reach the extreme poor. Not only does this highlight the frailties of the micro-credit scheme, it brings to light a fact that both civil society and government are ambivalent about admitting. The simple truth remains that a bank will only lend collateral-free loans to individuals with the greatest probability of repaying the loan ; the extreme poor, with no fixed assets
and intermittent income generating ability, fail to fulfil the banks" criteria for receiving such loans.
Bangladesh's second Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, Moving Ahead, identifies the effects of longstanding institutional frailties that have led to the widening economic divisions between urban and rural areas, rich and poor, east and west, and Bengalis and adivasis. The widening poverty gap between the eastern (Dhaka & Chittagong Divisions) and western regions (Barisal & Khulna Divisions) highlight historical deficiencies in developing human & infrastructural capacity
and the intransigence of the political elite to institutionalise effective social safety net programmes. A closer look at these widening gaps reveals various pockets of poverty located throughout Bangladesh: inhabitants of char areas, hill tracts, the coastal belt and indigenous populations throughout the country are continuous victims of extreme poverty.
For the full version of this article please read this month's Forum, available free with The Daily Star on November 2
Sanjan Haque is an Adviser at a project under the Ministry of Local Government & Rural Development (LGRD) supported by the Bntish Government and a member of the youth organisation Jagoree.