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Chronic Poverty in Bangladesh: Tales of Ascent, Descent, Marginality and Persistence

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Chronic Poverty in Bangladesh: Tales of Ascent, Descent, Marginality and Persistence Draft circulated for comments Chronic Poverty in Bangladesh: Tales of Ascent, Descent, Marginality and Persistence The State of the Poorest 2004/2005 Edited by Binayak Sen David Hulme Contributors Imtiaz Ahmad Naila Kabeer Zulfiqar Ali Iqbal Alam Khan Sharifa Begum Imran Matin Omar Haider Chowdhury Binayak Sen David Hulme Quazi Shahabuddin Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), Dhaka, Bangladesh And Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC) Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM) University of Manchester, Manchester, UK May 2004 Table of Contents Chapter 1: Contextualising the Poorest: Chronic and Extreme Poverty 1-12 1.1 Questions and Concerns 1 1.2 Persistent Themes 5 1.3 Not by Growth Alone: Rethinking the Poverty Agenda 7 1.4 Structure of Report 9 Chapter 2: A Passage to Modernity: From ‘Test Case’ to Growth and 13-20 Democracy 2.1 The Dark Side of Beginnings 13 2.2 From “Test Case” to “Medium Human Development” League 15 2.3 Themes of Ascent, Discovery and Transition 19 Chapter 3: Trends in Poverty and Social Indicators: The 1990s and Beyond 21-24 3.1 Trends in Income-Poverty 21 3.2 Trends in Human Poverty Index 22 3.3 Poverty Trends after 2000 23 3.4 Inequality Matters 27 3.5 Trends in Social MDGs by Poverty Status 30 Chapter 4: Chronic Poverty in Bangladesh: Insights from Household Survey 49-74 Data 4.1 Defining and Measuring Chronic Poverty 50 4.2 Severity and Chronicity 51 4.3 The Incidence of Chronic Income-Poverty 52 4.4 Drivers of Escape and Descent 54 4.5 Mobile and Immobile Chronic Poor 57 4.6 Chronic Poverty and Social MDGs 60 Chapter 5: Social Marginalisation and Chronic Poverty: Voices and Silences 75-84 5.1 Exploring Concerns of the Poorest: The Relevance of Life-Histories 75 5.2 Selected Findings from Life-Histories of the Poorest 78 Chapter 6: Transformative Structures and Transmission Mechanisms: The 85-122 “Insecurity” Dimension of Chronic Poverty 6.1 Extreme Food Insecurity, Deprivation and Disparity 85 6.2 Child Malnutrition and Chronic Poverty 86 6.3 Shocks, Traumas and Chronic Poverty 89 6.4 Unsustainable Livelihood and Chronic Poverty 93 6.5 Violence and Insecurity 97 6.6 Mastanocracy, Violence and Chronic Poverty: Issues and Concerns 100 Chapter 7: Transformative Structures and Transmission Mechanisms: The 123-150 “Opportunity” Dimension of Chronic Poverty 7.1 Women's Agency and Chronic Poverty 123 7.2 Human Capital and Chronic Poverty 129 7.3 Financial Services for the Chronic Poor 131 7.4 Markets, Mobility and Chronic Poverty 138 Chapter 8: The Heart of Remoteness: Spatial Disparity, Adverse Geography and 151-182 Chronic Poverty 8.1 Spatial Disparity in Social Progress 151 8.2 Mapping Distress Pockets 159 8.3 Unfavourable Agricultural Environments 164 Chapter 9: Policies and Institutions for Attacking Chronic Poverty187-194 183-192 9.1 Discussion of the Major Findings 185 9.2 “Fair Share” of Benefits: The Centrality of the Distribution Question 186 9.3 Outlining a Framework for Assault on Chronic Poverty 189 ii Acknowledgement The preparation of the Report would not have been possible without the support and contributions from a number of individuals and organizations. The study team is particularly grateful for the close collaboration of the Chronic Poverty Research Centre (CPRC), Institute of Development Policy and Management (IDPM), University of Manchester, UK. The team is also grateful to the Department for International Development (DFID) Bangladesh for providing funds for the study. Contributors A number of background papers were prepared on various thematic issues related to chronic poverty. The report drew upon the materials contained in these background papers. The report was prepared by a team consisting of Imtiaz Ahmed (input to chapter 6); Zulfiqar Ali (inputs to chapters 3, 4, 6 and 8); Sharifa Begum (inputs to chapters 6 and 7); Omar Haider Chowdhury (input to chapter 9); David Hulme (inputs to the "overview” and chapter 9); Naila Kabeer (input to chapter 5); Iqbal Alam Khan (input to chapter 6), Imran Matin (input to chapter 7), Binayak Sen (inputs to the most chapters of the report); and Quazi Shahabuddin (input to chapter 8). All the background papers have been placed in the PRCPB website www.prcpb-bids.org. Binayak Sen was in charge for the coordination of the overall project. Editorial work was done by Binayak Sen and David Hulme. Reviewers The team benefited greatly from useful comments and suggestions of a number of reviewers and discussants too numerous to list. These included, among others, Bob Baulch, IDS, Sussex and Karen Moore, CPRC, University of Manchester, UK. In particular, the team would like to express its gratitude to the participants of the workshop held in September 2003 where the findings of the background papers were presented and discussed at a great length. Research Assistance and Administrative Support The team would like to thank Shanker Chandra Saha, Abdul Hakim, Manik Lal Bose, Ishtiuq Hossain, and Ashabul Hoque of BIDS for providing necessary research, computing and secretarial assistance for the preparation of the report. The team is especially grateful to Monoranjan Bagchi and Md. Golam Rabbani for collecting the life-histories of the poor. The team would also like to thank Karen Morgan Tallents of CPRC for her support to the study. Disclaimer While thanks go to all the contributors for their support, the team takes the full and sole responsibility of any errors and omissions. The team also assumes of full responsibility for the opinions expressed in the report. iii Five Odes to Otherness Here is thy footstool and there rest thy feet where live the poorest, and lowliest, and lost. When I try to bow to thee, my obeisance cannot reach down to the depth where thy feet rest among the poorest, and lowliest, and lost. Pride can never approach to where thou walkest in the close of the humble among the poorest, and lowliest, and lost. My heart can never find its way to where thou keepest company with the companionless among the poorest, and lowliest, and lost. Rabindranath Tagore (1910): Gitanjali (Song Offerings) The key question is how to get about regaining our lost position. What must we do to stand up and be counted as worthy daughters of our country? To start with, we need to take a firm resolve that in our daily life we shall be on an equal footing with men, and that we must have intense self-confidence not to feel a burden to any man. We will do whatever we have to do to gain equality with men. If the means to our attaining independence is through our ability to earn our living, then we must do so. From office workers to lawyers, and magistrates, even judges—we shall get entry to all jobs and professions, presently the privileged precincts of men. Perhaps fifty years down the road we may see a woman installed as Viceroy, thus elevating the status of all women. Why should we not have access to gainful employment? What do we lack? Are we not able-bodied, and endowed with intelligence? In fact, why should we not employ the labour and energy that we expend on domestic chores in our “husbands’ homes” to run our own enterprises? Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1904): Strijatir Abanati (Deterioration in the Situation of Women) (Trans. by Bharati Ray 2002) The space, at once empty and populated, of all those words without a language which allow the person who lends an ear to hear a muffled voice from below history, the stubborn murmuring of a language which seems to speak quite by itself, without a speaking subject and without an interlocutor, huddled in on itself, a lump in its throat, breaking down before it has achieved any formulation and lapsing back into the silence from which it was never separated. Michel Foucault (1961): Madness and Civilization (Trans. by D. Macey 1994) The two principles of justice are as follows: Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties…Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. John Rawls (1993): Political Liberalism What is clearly left out of this un-historical historiography is the politics of the people. For parallel to the domain of elite politics there existed throughout the colonial period another domain of [South Asian] politics in which the principal actor were not the dominant groups of the indigenous society or the colonial authorities but the subaltern classes and groups constituting the mass of the labouring population and intermediate strata in town— that is, the people. This was an autonomous domain, for it neither originated from elite politics nor did its existence depend on the latter. Ranajit Guha (1982): Subaltern Studies I. Writings on South Asian History and Society iv Chapter 1 Contextualising the Poorest: Chronic and Extreme Poverty We have for over a century been dragged by the preposterous West behind its chariot, choked by dust, defeated by noise, humbled by our own helplessness, and overwhelmed by the speed…If we ever ventured to ask `progress towards what, and progress for whom’, it was considered oriental to entertain such doubts about the absoluteness of progress. Rabindranath Tagore (1941): On Rural Reconstruction 1.1 Questions and Concerns The aim of this introduction is simply to try to let a beginning disclose itself, if in no more than the barest outline. A beginning, true to itself, has to begin with questions.
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