Famine in far-west Nepal

Famine-hit people from Sappata village in Bajura district who came to the Nepal Food Corporation depot at Kolti in the district Sunday in search for rice look dejected after the depot stocks ran out before their turn came. Thousands of people in 11 VDCs in northern Bajura are facing food shortage. (Source: The Kathmandu Post)

Many rural areas which are not connected with vital infrastructures for development, including roads, are facing severe food shortages. These are the same regions where incidence of poverty is also the highest. The people depend on subsidized food supply from the state and aid agencies like the WFP.

More here. Rising food prices coupled with short supply, famine, and rising fuel prices have been crippling food supply in the remote areas. Earlier, the WFP predicted that one-third of the population (about 10 million) would starve if similar situation persist long. The WFP needs more aid and funds to effectively reach these people. Where is all the donor money going or are the donors becoming stingy this year?

The acute food crisis has been looming in at least 11 VDCs in north-eastern Bajura district, leaving thousands of villagers in a state of famine.

Thousands of locals gathered at Kolti food depot for foodgrains. However, some 6,000 quintal foodgrain that the depot received had already been distributed.

And this is very sad for the people who are not only poor but chronic poor:

"Ultimately we will have to die since there is no food in the depot and our meager production has already finished," said Rana BK, a local from Sapta village.  Dhansure BK of Sapta-9, who reached the Kolti depot for food, said, "I am not sure whether my children will be alive when I return home with food."

A local NGO distributed 40 kilograms of rice one month ago under the aegis of World Food Program. However, the people have almost finished up that small quantity of food stuff by now.

Some three weeks ago, hundreds of women had gathered at the District Development Committee (DDC) and threatened to commit suicide consuming poison en masse unless they were provided food at the earliest.

But the political parties settled such a grave issue by providing just 25,000 rupees as relief amount to each VDCs.  Similarly, the remote Kalikot district has also witnessed food scarcity. 

There is a shortage of foodgrain in the north-west Patala area in the district. Locals said that the damage to crops from hailstone in April was the major cause of the looming food crisis in the area.

Political response to solve this problem has been so-so. The leaders too busy bickering on restructuring the state at a time when one-third of the population is going hungry. But, what more can we expect from a virtually bankrupt state? The donors( World Bank, IMF, WFO, UNDP, FAO) should release more immediate funds to tackle this problem. Starvation and hunger is going to wash away the progress Nepal made in poverty reduction in the last decade.

 

Chronic Poverty Report 2008-09

The Chronic Poverty Research Center is publishing the Chronic Poverty Report 2008-09 tomorrow. Earlier version of the report had focused on identifying five main traps that underpin chronic poverty- insecurity, limited citizenship, spatial disadvantage, social discrimination and poor work opportunities and outlined key policy responses to these traps. This new report focuses on the possible solutions to the traps. Here is a piece about what to expect in the report:

We argue that the development of a ‘just social compact’ between citizens and states must be the focus for poverty eradication. Development actors can nurture such a compact through social protection, public services, effective anti-discrimination action, gender empowerment, economic growth and fiscal policy, and the management of migration and urbanisation processes.

To show the human face behind the statistics and policies, we intertwine the life stories of seven chronically poor people from across Asia and Africa into the report. The descriptions of the lives of Angel, Moses, Txab, Vuyiswa, Bakyt, and Maymana and Mofizul, help the reader to better appreciate the complex and varied causes of chronic poverty.

Most people in chronic poverty strive and work to improve their livelihoods, and to create a better future for their children, in difficult circumstances. They need real commitment matched by actions and resources, to support their efforts and overcome the obstacles that trap them in poverty.

We argue that tackling chronic poverty is the global priority of our time and that eradicating poverty by 2025 is a feasible goal – if national governments and international organisations are willing to make the necessary political commitments and resource allocations.

It is our hope that this report will inspire deeper reflection on how to tackle chronic poverty effectively and – most of all – will stimulate action to make it happen.

Here is more from ODI blog:

The new Chronic Poverty Report asserts that better social contracts can be moulded. It stresses that economic growth is critical. Growth lifts people out of poverty, and provide the revenues to invest in human development, including such services as health, education, water and sanitation that are critical to interrupting inter-generational poverty, and enable the poorest  to participate more effectively in the global economy. Such revenues enable states to invest in social protection – critical to address the livelihood insecurity trap, but also to address discrimination, as Mexico’s Progresa (now ‘Opportunidades’) scheme has shown. Supporting the world’s most fragile states to develop better social contracts is at least as worthy a focus for the international community as climate change.

Note that chronic poverty is slightly different from poverty (informally, the former is a sub-set of the latter). The chronic poor are those who experience significant depravation over many years and/or whose depravation is inter-generational (duration is important). Here is more.

There are an estimated 320 to 445 million people trapped in chronic poverty. Also, 18-24% of South Africa's population, 25% of Ethiopia's population, and 22-33% of India's population are in chronic poverty.

Adam Smith's new monument

Here is a picture of the first public monument to 'father of economics' Adam Smith. The statue was unveiled in Edhinburgh by Nobel Laureate in economics Vernon Smith. More here.

Globalization necessiates greater government intervention

The UN calls for greater government intervention to moderate the severe, unavoidable economic swings and inequalities brought about by increasing globalization. More here from the Washington Post:

Pointing to food riots in dozens of poor countries whipsawed by soaring prices for wheat and other staples, and to the rising income inequality that has become a too-common feature of economies in the developed world, the report says that no one is immune from the sometimes cruel consequences of global economic forces. But governments should do more, both individually and collectively, to protect people from their harshest impacts, it says.

The U.N.'s 2008 World Economic and Social Survey calls for greater regulation of international capital flows, more generous foreign aid and perhaps the guarantee of a minimum income to the world's poorest residents. Domestically, countries should do more to cushion their citizens against economic changes that have left them less secure. In poor countries, the insecurity can take the form of hunger and food shortages; in developed nations it often means stagnating wages and growing income inequality.

"Markets cannot be left to their own devices in respect of delivering appropriate and desired levels of economic security," the report says.

Global competition, which erodes the security of businesses, unstable capital flows, which crimp investment and growth, and food shortages are sometimes viewed as beyond the ability of governments to control. But the report says that is the wrong response. What is needed, it says, is "more active policy responses to help communities better manage these new risks."

The U.N. report calls for a range of interventions to provide support, including greater public investment in agriculture for poor countries and "a better balance of economic and social policies." It also said that even during economic booms governments should remain mindful of the downturns that can strike quickly, and set aside money to deal with them

Markets are good (probably the best system we can have) but we need to realize that it is imperfect and while it takes on the path to perfection, many more lives might be ruined if not intervened by the government or some other powerful bodies. Download the full report here (Sustaining Growth and Sharing Prosperity).

Some useful figures from the report:

Interventions for improving livelihoods in SSA

Intervention in the water sector is needed because its access (and cleanliness) has direct relationship with poverty rates and poverty incidence. Here is a report (Water and the Rural Poor: Interventions for Improving Livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa) from the FAO. This form of intervention works because it is context-specific and is a livelihood-centered approach to poverty reduction in rural areas. Experimentation with these kinds of programs have been usually successful.

The report argues that the likelihood of implementing successful interventions in the water sector varies according to the main sources of livelihood of rural populations, dictated in large part by the predominant farming systems, themselves closely related to agro-ecological conditions. Understanding the geographical distribution of the rural poor and their relation to livelihood zones therefore helps in designing intervention strategies to improve water management and increase both the resilience and productivity of agriculture, as well as agricultural incomes.

The report proposes a method for identifying the locations where water constraints are a major factor in determining poverty and where interventions can be made that would take large numbers of poor farmers out of poverty. It identifies and maps 13 major "livelihood zones" in SSA, each of which offers distinct opportunities for livelihood sustenance and development, has different agro-ecological conditions, and shows different angles for water-related investments for poverty reduction.

The report stresses that the choice of interventions at different scales should be taken from a non-prescriptive menu of appropriate options and based on an understanding of the particular context and target group.

The report concludes by discussing a set of typical water intervention options, and analyses their range of application and potential for poverty reduction according to the various livelihood zones. Six categories of possible interventions are discussed in view of their poverty-reduction potential:

• better management of soil moisture in rainfed areas
• investment in water harvesting and small storage
• small-scale community-based irrigation schemes
• improved water access and control for peri-urban agriculture
• development of water supply to meet multiple water uses
• an environmentally-aware system of improved water access for livestock in arid and semi-arid areas.

Most Powerful Development NGOs in the world

This is a ranking from FP magazine:

1. Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC)... major operations in microcredit and poverty alleviation
2. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (major operations in improving global health, eradicating poverty, improving American education)
3. World Vision (major operations in food aid and emergency assistance)
4. Oxfam International (major operations in poverty alleviation and debt relief)
5. Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres)...major operations in establishing healthcare services in poor countries and providing emergency medical care

I am pretty much surprised that a NGO from Bangladesh is the most powerful development NGO in the world (or may be I have not heard about its good deeds!). A little bio about BRAC:

Founded in 1972 to assist refugees after Bangladesh’s war of liberation, BRAC, formerly the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, is the world’s largest nongovernmental organization. It boasts a $4.6 billion portfolio in microloans, an army of healthcare volunteers providing care to 80 million Bangladeshis, and a network of 52,000 schools serving 1.5 million students. As one of Bangladesh’s largest single employers, BRAC is often referred to as a minigovernment, responsible in part for many of the country’s economic and health gains. It is estimated that, coupled with a government immunization drive, the organization’s antidiarrhea efforts in rural Bangladesh have helped cut child mortality for children under 5 from 25 to 7 percent over the past three decades. Its contraception drives and pioneering microlending have also been credited with lowering fertility rates and reducing poverty. Inspired by these results, BRAC recently extended its programs to sub-Saharan Africa and Afghanistan.

Corruption in water sector

From Transparency International's Global Corruption Report 2008:

Water crisis is undeniable and the corruption challenge it faces is urgent. More than 1 billion people worldwide have no guaranteed access to water and more than 2 billion are without adequate sanitation.

When corruption is part of the equation, the consequences for development and poverty reduction are dire. Corruption can increase the cost of connecting a household to a water network by more than 30 percent, raising the price tag for achieving the Millennium Development Goals for water and sanitation by a staggering US $48 billion.

Corruption in the water sector casts a wide and destructive net. Households pay with their health, as poor quality or non-existent water supplies increase their vulnerability to deadly diseases: in developing countries 80 percent of health problems can be linked to inadequate water and sanitation.

Corruption opens water policies to manipulation by powerful stakeholders. Bid-rigging and kick-backs inflate the cost of water infrastructure, bribery and embezzlement divert irrigation water away from small farmers and drain irrigation budgets. Corruption leads to unchecked water pollution and overuse, putting water supplies at risk – today and for future generations.

So what's the implication for the Nepalese economy? Note that water sector is one of the most easy breeding grounds for corrupt officials. Here is an article from The Kathmandu Post:

Nepal's development hangs on the proper utilization of its water resource. Water is the only resource that is abundantly available in Nepal and it is the resource that has less been under utilized. With around 77 percent of the population having access to some basic drinking water facilities and 46 percent having sanitary services; 49 percent served by electricity and 68 percent of the land having some access to irrigation facility, the potentiality for realising water sector is immense. If these figures are mind boggling, how about 78,000 Nepali children, including 50,000 girls, engaged in fetching water? Besides economics, fighting corruption in water sector is also a moral issue.

With so much leakage in the supply of electricity and drinking water, combating corruption in water sector is a huge challenge for Nepal. Due to corruption, waste and inefficiency, we have the most expensive supply of electricity and water.