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| Tuesday, 2 December 2003 |
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Eye-opener for SAARC leaders Asia watch by by Lynn Ockersz By a very striking co-incidence, Nepalese Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa, current chairperson of SAARC, was in Colombo a couple of days back at a time when an Asian Development Bank overview on the World Development Report 2004, which focuses on a number of salient poverty issues, was out.
While the Nepalese Premier was reportedly on a tour of the region with the aim of facilitating the revival of the formal SAARC process, with a Heads of State level summit due to be had in Islamabad next month, the main thrust of the Report that governments are falling short of their pressing obligations especially towards the poor of the world, shouldn't go unnoticed. SAARC is, of course, a multi-dimensional exercise in regional cooperation but relieving the chronic poverty of South Asia is, no doubt, its principal policy objective. Therefore, the World Development Report 2004, couldn't have come to the attention of the world at a more opportune moment, for, the formal SAARC process is now on the verge of being resumed after being in limbo for a considerable period of time, having proved a victim of the region's turbulent inter-state politics over the past few years. Hopefully, the disclosures of the Report on the lassitude of Governments in particularly this part of the world in regard to poverty alleviation, would prompt SAARC member states to take fresh cognisance of their duties towards the poor and help redouble their efforts towards evolving practicable, cooperative poverty alleviation strategies. Two important findings of the Report are particularly relevant to South Asian states. One is that although governments devote a third of their budgets to health and education, very little of it is spent on the needs of the poor as regards health and education. Secondly, those who are expected to deliver these services to the poor are caught up in a system whose "incentives" for provision of services are terribly weak. For instance, corruption and political patronage are described as a way of life among these agents of the State charged with taking essential services to the poor. Besides, the service delivery system is weakly monitored by the centre and its regulations apathetically enforced. For instance, it was pointed out that highly trained doctors show a marked reluctance to serve in rural areas. Even if they do, the monitoring system's weaknesses are such that errant health personnel are rarely nabbed and punished. It is our hope that these disclosures would alert SAARC states to their duties towards the teeming millions of South Asia's poor. This is a prime moral obligation SAARC governments cannot afford to ignore any further if they are to live up to the trust vested in them by the region's peoples. Besides, hunger and poverty provide the most fertile ground for bloody conflict and rebellion - Sri Lanka and Nepal being cases in point. Thus far, SAARC fora have provided very few positive, concrete results as regards poverty alleviation. The charge cannot be ignored that pomp and ceremony rather than hard, result-oriented thinking on resolving the region's problems have dominated the most publicised of SAARC fora. Even at this late hour, concrete efforts must be made to alleviate poverty by these states, if some progress is to be made in the direction of democratic development. It is also relevant that we see through the bauble of globalization. Despite the phenomenal popularity of the latter, poverty is relentlessly on the rise in South Asia. The grand slogan of globalization as an equalizer, it should be realized, is now a huge myth. It cannot be a substitute for concrete, poverty-alleviation efforts which empower people and grant them relative self-sufficiency. |
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