South Asia needs rural reforms to reduce poverty, says report

["Irfan Khan" <khania2@super.net.pk>]

[from UNDP Newsfront - 7 Feb]

South Asia needs rural reforms to reduce poverty, says report

Friday, 7 February 2003: South Asia, home to 1.4 billion people, 
needs to carry out major reforms in rural areas to achieve high 
levels of human development, according to Human Development in South 
Asia 2002: Agriculture and Rural Development 
[http://makeashorterlink.com/?E2D111263 ], a report launched in 
Kathmandu, Nepal, yesterday. 

South Asia has made substantial progress in agricultural production, 
but this has been "neither adequate nor equitable enough to reduce 
the region's huge backlog of poverty," said Farid Rahman, Acting 
President of the Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre 
[http://www.un.org.pk/hdc/hdcindex.htm ] in Islamabad, Pakistan, 
which prepared the report with support from UNDP. 

More than a third of the people in the region - 530 million - live in 
extreme poverty, surviving on less than US$1 a day. The report covers 
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. 
Agricultural development programmes have failed to benefit small 
landholders, who constitute the majority of the rural poor, noted Dr. 
Hari Krishna Upadhyaya, Chairman of the Centre for Environment and 
Agricultural Policy Research Extension and Development in Kathmandu. 
UNDP Resident Representative Henning Karcher pointed out that 
productivity of the agricultural sector and rural development are 
directly related to the targets of the first Millennium Development 
Goal [http://www.undp.org/mdg/ ], which include halving the 
proportion of people in extreme poverty and the proportion suffering 
from hunger between 1990 and 2015. 

The report calls women the "invisible and unrecognized backbone" of 
South Asian agriculture, yet in rural areas they remain hostage to 
backward, feudal traditions, it says. Women very rarely control 
assets, including land, which seriously reduces their ability to 
protect their basic rights and limits access to credit and support 
services. 

"Administrative structures have not shown adequate sensitivity to 
rural women's needs, and as a result, women's programmes are still 
peripheral," noted Mr. Karcher. 

Small farms should be the centre of the revival of agriculture and 
rural development, according to the study, and the incentive system 
that is provided to commercial farming should not be at the expense 
of the vast majority of the rural populace. 

The report recommends accelerated investment in agricultural 
research, technology, and infrastructure, including agricultural 
marketing and irrigation facilities. It also urges governments to 
create a legal framework to define property rights and speed land 
reform. 

For South Asian countries to benefit from globalization in 
agricultural trade, the report says, it is important that the "rich 
and prosperous proponents" of free trade in the North play a fairer 
game by eliminating large agricultural subsidies. 

For information on ordering the report please contact the Mahbub ul 
Haq Human Development Centre <kh@hdc.isb.sdnpk.org>. For further 
information, please contact Sangita Khadka <sangita.khadka@undp.org>, 
UNDP Nepal, or Trygve Olfarnes <trygve.olfarnes@undp.org>, UNDP 
Communications Office.