Hossain Zillur Rahman, leading expert on poverty, in an interview with Shazia Omar, Head of the Poverty Tracker division of mPower Social -- a technology firm that works with development agencies -- on April 30 at PPRC, said: “Technology is a must, if we want to create processes that are effective at managing at scale.” The two met to discuss the future of the extreme poor and I was lucky to observe.
While the government has over 100 safety net programs, according to the Planning Commission, data suggests that a large proportion of poor and vulnerable households do not have any access to these programs. The average benefit of safety net programs is low and, in many cases, are falling in real terms.
There is considerable leakage of allocated funds and a significant percentage of household beneficiaries are non-poor. Consequently, the impact on poverty-reduction from the amount of money spent in these programs is much less than is possible with a better social protection system.
In recognition of these concerns, the government of Bangladesh embarked on the formulation of a comprehensive National Social Protection Strategy (NSPS), later renamed National Social Security Strategy (NSSS), that seeks to 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 more narrow safety net concept to include employment policies and social insurance to address the emerging needs of a middle-income Bangladesh by 2021 and onward.
Shazia asked about the status of the national social security strategy.
“As far as I know, the General Economics Division of the Planning Commission has made a presentation to the Honourable Prime Minister on the matter and that was a key milestone to cross,” said Zillur Rahman. He also said he believes that this is a positive step towards integrating the various small programs into a more co-ordinated, life cycle-sensitive, protection program.
Shazia asked about the budget that was going to come with the policy reform.
“The finance ministry is talking about higher allocations of social protection, health and education, but formally I don’t think that has been announced,” Mr Rahman replied.
In order for the government to properly forecast the budgetary needs for social security, stronger MIS are needed. Most ministries with social security programs are now scrambling to develop strong Management and Information Systems that will help them link their program needs with the finance ministry’s budget.
The National Social Security Strategy online draft includes, in section 3.6.2 -- using New Technologies for Managing Information and Monitoring Schemes. The tech-savvy head was then curious about the role of technology as recommended within the actual policy.
“The idea of using technology in general is becoming popular. Most ministries are thinking how to incorporate ICT into their program delivery and monitoring models. To be fair, the government’s sustained campaign and rigorous efforts to improve our country’s ICT infrastructure has helped a great deal.
Now we need some specific examples of ICT at work to really implement technology to strengthen our programs. Programs that are effectively using ICT to address the challenges of targeting, implementation, delivery, and monitoring of impacts should showcase these, so that winning technologies can be scaled up,” said Zillur Rahman.
In December 2013, Zillur Rahman, Shazia, numerous poverty experts, and citizens of Bangladesh launched a Manifesto for the Extreme Poor, which demanded the eradication of extreme poverty by 2021.
This civil society document was endorsed by over 200 major donors, NGOs, private sector companies, and the government itself. The three recommended actions, a national scale graduation program, social protection reform, and pro-poor policies.
Shazia wanted to know about the first recommended action: The national scale program meant to link the extreme poor to the market.
“The Manifesto for the Extreme Poor created a lot of buy-in and has led to some positive results, such as a background paper for the 7th Five Year Plan on the Eradication of Extreme Poverty, but as yet, there is no consensus on rolling out a national graduation program,” Mr Rahman stated. “Policy-makers are rather focused on scaling up several social welfare programs instead of just one specific program. But some groups are getting left out, like the fishermen in the South. Targeting the right people, achieving scale, efficiency, transparency, and impact will be challenges.”
He then referred to the highly successful program Bolsa Familia of Brazil: “Bolsa Familia, in a way, was an amalgamation of several pre-existing programs. Essentially earlier programs were re-packaged into a new format, which could be scaled up massively.” It’s no secret that the welfare program played a huge role in President Luiz Ińacio Lula Da Silva’s re-election victory in 2006.
Bangladesh has a very good prospect of achieving zero extreme poverty within a realistic time-frame, if not by the 50th birthday of the nation.
The prime minister of Bangladesh is also quite invested in such a goal. For the eradication of extreme poverty to become an enduring legacy, the task at hand is to be even bolder in using the successful program experience and enabling ICT achievements to scale up the required efforts with graduation as the central goal.
Above all, this will require political will, budgets, and the innovative use of technology and implementation strategies. The country then will truly be on the way to a fully inclusive middle-income nation.
