The Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh provides equal opportunities for all citizens, and the government is committed to implementing this -- while being mindful that this is a long-term responsibility and continued efforts are necessary.
This commitment is reflected in the Perspective Plan of Bangladesh 2010-2021 which envisioned Bangladesh to be a middle-income country by 2021, where poverty would be drastically reduced, citizens would be able to meet every basic need, and development would be on fast-track with an accelerated rate of economic growth.
On our way to materialize this vision, Bangladesh is justifiably proud of its progress in reducing poverty through the social protection and inclusion of its more marginalized people.
The positive contribution of safety-net schemes to work towards poverty-reduction is laudable, but there are many issues and challenges that lie ahead.
First, there are too many programs spread too thin, owing to limited resources.
Second, there are too many ministries/divisions involved in administrating the safety-net programs, thereby increasing administrative costs and making program coordination a tough challenge.
Third, the schemes are not always strategically designed to anticipate the various life-cycle risks.
Consequently, a large proportion of the poor and vulnerable population is missed out of the safety-net coverage. Another issue is the low coverage of the urban poor. A major implication of these gaps in the present safety-net system is the low-net impact on poverty reduction. Thus, while participation in these programs is progressive, it displays large inclusion errors which have increased year by year.
Social protection programs suffer from significant leakages: Resources allocated may be diverted from their intended use, poor program design and implementation may cause part of the transfer to leak to non-poor beneficiaries, benefits might not reach the intended beneficiaries and get lost or captured by program officials along the way, etc.
The last problem has been found to increase with the number of intermediaries involved in the benefits delivery process. Also, benefit amounts may also be less than stipulated because of unauthorized payments by the beneficiary to program officials.
Inadequacy of resources and competing demand from infrastructure limited the government’s ability to increase the spending on social protection. The spending level remained constant at around 2% of our GDP. Some progress was made in reducing leakage by the conversion of food-based programs to cash-based. Progress was also made in streamlining the employment programs and improving the monitoring and evaluation of individual schemes. The government, however, recognizes the need for a redesign of the social protection system.
In recognition of these concerns, the government should immediately streamline and strengthen the existing safety-net programs with a view to achieving better results from money spent and to broaden the scope of social protection from the narrower safety-net concept.
It should be recognized that a well-designed and effective social protection system will help lower income inequality and contribute to higher growth by strengthening human resource development.
There is a need for a policy which is inclusive of the whole population irrespective of race, religion, profession, location, or ethnicity. It should seek to modernize our social security by combining tax-funded safety-net programs with contributory social insurance and employment regulations to protect the workers.
Such reforms will be instrumental in eliminating leakages, improving targeting, increasing the average value of the transfers, lowering the risks faced by the poor and vulnerable population, reducing poverty, reducing income inequality, and building social capital.
In the long-term, the objective should be to move towards a social security system that is available to all Bangladeshis who are in need of support, providing them with a guaranteed minimum income but also a comprehensive safety-net for those who suffer shocks and crises that may push them into poverty.
Disaster-risk reduction and management for ensuring social security of vulnerable people is also an integral element of socio-economic development strategy as Bangladesh is among the most disaster-affected countries.
Establishing equal opportunities for women in all sections of the society with the objective of integrating them better into the social and economic sphere is also a major challenge.
The government should focus on the importance of overall social welfare and security for the poor and vulnerable who may not be always equipped to fully benefit from our market economy.
Tanvir Ahmad is an urban planner.
