I have been trying to find real answer of following questions who has
invented poverty? Who define poverty? And how poverty ridden groups or
individuals feel about poverty? Poverty is neither an idea nor a substance but
its presence in any idea and substance make the state of affair challenging.
Recently, I went through quite insightful article entitled “Rethinking Poverty
Alleviation: A “Poverties” Approach, written by Edward R Carr (http://www.edwardrcarr.com/index.html).
Defining poverty has been a matter of debate since the day the concept was
identified in the human civilization. Although, the changes in understanding
and dealing the poverty alleviation mechanism has somewhat made the concept
lucid but has also opened many windows of opportunity to address the ‘causes of
and solution to the challenges that threaten human well being.’ The article
thoroughly objects the preconceived notions and its influence in defining,
measuring and structuring poverty and poverty alleviation program. Although,
the article decries about the poverty as singular universal problem and also
rejects the idea of poverty alleviation program which are structured on this
basis. The article considers that the main reason behind the failure of the
“Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers” by the IMF and World Bank in 1999, was the
approach and its implementation techniques. Treating the poverty as singular
and universal problem was not a good approach and the economic orthodoxy of IMF
and World Bank was unable to provide space to loan seeking nations to challenge
them.
Despite the critical stand on poverty and poverty alleviation, the
article somewhat has avoided accepting the fact of dealing poverty is not
simply an easy issue or playing with jargon. This article asserts that the
limitation in visioning poverty in the context of the practice of poverty
alleviation unable to address the causes and challenges at the local. In
reality, the poverty alleviation works under the top down paradigm rather
integrating with the real causes of the poverty. This happens because the poverty
is seen as singular, universal problem. The involvement of local knowledge and
social participation is one of the important aspects to address this problem
effectively, but learning shows that this initiative also faces challenge going
beyond the advocacy parameter in poverty alleviation program.
Elaborated Essence:
Generally, the main thrust is to critically evaluate the preconceived
notion and definition of poverty and how this notion and definition destroy the
process of addressing poverty at local level with local strategy. The article
underlines three ways under which the possibility to ensure the efficacy of
poverty reduction intervention. Firstly, the contextual norms of understanding
to deal with poverty should be integrated with the contemporary poverty
reduction approach. Secondly, the causes of poverty are universally defined,
which broadly structured the poverty alleviation approach, overlooking the
local context is significant reason of failure in understanding the phenomenon
of poverty. Finally, the potential of trade off and synergies disappears as the
poverty is conceived as “singular problem with universal causes.” The author
justifies the approach to reduce poverty should go beyond the singular
conceptualization of poverty, and suggests that the “poverties” approach would
allow us to rethink the development goals and its strategy, without disturbing
the existing or ongoing efforts on the singular conceptualization.
According to the article, the effort in defining and measuring poverty under
the eight heading such as the sphere of concerns, definition at broader
perspective, identification of its objective and subjective nature,
justification in drawing poverty lines, units of measurement, dealing
multidimensionality, time and causal explanation of poverty are also neither
able to recognize the social participation (read local voice) nor able to
conceive the poverty as ‘the product of locally unique problems’. The author
shows his objection towards conceptualizing the poverty solution in broader
perspective of the “growth” (Sach; 2005) or ‘access to capita’ (De Soto 200).
However, he asserts that this nature of manifestation of poverty itself
increases the chances of failure for the poverty reduction intervention at
local level.
He criticizes the sectoral approach of current poverty reduction
intervention, in which, the issues of fertility, education, income and
environmental quality mere a kind of manifestation of poverty. The article
identifies the potential of the integrative approach as a best practice because
one sector reform creates tension with the other sector as ‘education reform
vs. market reform vs. environmental protection’. The lack of interlinkages with
the different sectoral reforms creates more problem than solution in reducing
poverty. The author lucidly asserts that ‘without addressing the local
multidimensionality of what we call poverty, our intervention may cause more
hardship than they alleviate’.
The article cites the number of studies which identified the challenges
related the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). The sheer objective of
this initiative was to identify the diverse perspective in building project of
poverty alleviation and development behest of the IMF and World Bank. However,
the article agrees that the PRSPs were intended to underline the solution of
poverty by either involving or identifying its local context through the
‘common sense’ application, besides this objective, the initiative was about to
identify the alternative to the economic policies of the World Bank and IMF.
Even the financial institutions studies show that the objective of PRSPs was
not at all in practice at the national level discussion and in production of
the paper. The article simply identifies that countries were not able to take
risk of avoiding financial recourse to challenge the existing norms of the
institutions.
This is also to be noted here that the solution to address the poverty
was largely evolved and developed away from the locality, where the project was
meant to be implemented. Even the local partners (the national governments) did
not want to disqualify for the debt relief and access to loan from these
institutions. The motivation among the nations to submit the PRSPs was to
demonstrate nation’s ability or need towards financial resources. However, the
author blames that the economic orthodoxy of these institutions basically
motivated nations to avoid challenging it in their nation’s PRPS. The article
convincingly criticizes the PRSPs approach for encouraging Ghana to produce
certain crops, which was conceived as incremental effects in increasing Ghana’s
domestic food security and export earnings.
However, this approach was unable to recognize the gender relationship
in cropping the identified crop and also the power relationship in social
context with the economic activities in Ghana. Resultantly, the approach
yielded more harm than the poverty reduction at local level. Even land reform
intervention in second phase of PRSPs in Ghana was miserably failed to
integrate the real social issues in relation with the land holdings and its
access among women in Ghana.
This article articulates the meaning of ‘poverty to poverties’ as a
transformation in the process of conceptualizing the development and poverty.
Broadly, the sectoral approach has been significantly underlined as result of
the failure of the singular universal definition of poverty. This articulation
embraces the idea of heterogeneity and diversity in the nature of poverty,
which are seen as corrective step in measuring and identifying poverty.
However, the article accepts that the transformative articulation is not mean
to reject the idea of existing norms and measurements, but promotes this as an
approach to overcome the existing limitations in dealing with development and
poverty alleviation.
Although, the author cautiously categories that the definitional and
operationalization aspect of ‘poverties’ are not quite away from ‘poverty’, but
an approach to recognize the localized version of challenges and solutions,
which somewhat close to reality about the understanding and dealing poverty. He
agrees that the localized version of poverty and its challenges in his argument
as to reinforce the Chamber’s approach to examine ‘who defines problems and its
solution? And who benefits from this definition?’ However, the author
highlights the value of local knowledge and its application as an additional
advantage in building viable strategy to deal the ‘poverties’ and this would
generate a sense of belongingness with the local people and good for the
general well being.
Throughout the article emphasizes the concept of legitimacy and values.
In the ‘poverties’ approach, the concept of legitimacy is seen as the
combination of local knowledge and power structure, a critical force for the
outcomes of any poverty alleviation intervention. Meanwhile, the challenge of
generalization is treated an opportunity to facilitate the new framework, which
would be able to reproduces PRSPs once again to guide the national development
policy. However, the reproduction of PRSPs would not replicate the sectoral
approach but focus to integrate the social, economic and environmental
processes within the country, which contributes the well being outcomes.
Secondly, the ‘poverties’ approach would orient the PRSPs to focus on the local
strategies and their significance in dealing with the prevailing inequalities
at local level. In last, the article rejects the process of identifying the
broader indicators of development through the survey and baseline analysis,
because this process of building indicators is also reinforced the poverty as
singular universal problem.
Ideal Type:
The article aptly fit into the category of ‘ideal type’, which
fascinates the interpretation of existing norms and values. In this article,
the significance of locality and grassroots approach are presented as the last
resort to address the poverty effectively. In fact, the article sees the
concept of knowledge as a structured body not as process of continuous
learning. The social participation is also the prototype of diversity and
heterogeneity, but the challenge to build consensus among the group is also
daunting task.
Additionally, the article avoids accepting the inevitability of social
change as potent force for expanding the local knowledge base. As the knowledge
base is changed, the social structure is developed around the “mechanical
solidarity”, which encourages the specialized set of information and practice
in the society. In the contemporary society, the sectoral approach is also
based on the previous learning from the poverty reduction program. The
education reform enables the local to utilize the available resources
effectively rather than starting conflict with market reform. Although, the
conflict is also normal phenomenon even at the grassroots level, while the
article projects the conflict as pathological subject.
The subject of poverty has been critically developed in this article
but, on the one hand, the article criticizes the role of powerful theories and
institutions in spreading the preconceived notion of poverty and its approach,
while on the other hand, the article itself recognizes the domination of power
in Ghana’s social structure a reason of failure of PRSPs. The relationship
between knowledge and power is unavoidable; therefore, the sectoral approach in
dealing poverty is not simply avoiding the integrated mechanism but also
addressing the issue of poverty as multidimensional and
multidisciplinary.
In Last:
The social
participation and local knowledge do not exist as combined entity at local
level. There are various dimensions within the social structure in locality.
The failure of many approaches in reducing poverty is not merely a reason of
avoiding the local knowledge and its participation but the nature of poverty
itself a challenge since a long period of time. However, the poverty to
poverties has also been recognized in many poverty reduction approaches, while
the local level power holding and sharing is still a challenge for
strengthening social participation at local level. In last, the substance in
the article promotes new opportunity for advocacy and rights based approach to
deal the poverty as the causal effect of failed policies and approaches. This
correlates the power of social participation in strengthening the capacity of
local institutions.
