ISLAMABAD - The South Asian poor are finding it difficult to cope with the emerging intricacies of market economy and remained non-beneficiary from the opportunities provided by the globalisation owing to the inequitable access to wealth, Knowledge and unequal participation in market and unjust governance, remarked renowned economist Prof Rehman Sobhan here.

Chairman Centre for Policy Dialogue, Bangladesh, Prof Rehman delivered lecture on “Democratising Development: Responding to the Challenges of Globalisation in South Asia, at the platform of Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Centre here on Tuesday.

Telling major reason of the inability, he argued that the representative institutions tend to be monopolised by the affluent and socially powerful groups who then use their electoral offices for enhancing wealth and to thereby perpetuate hold over power.

“In such a discriminatory environment, the benefits of democracy remain the privilege of elite,” he added.

He asserted that the structural reforms in the areas of productive assets, markets, human development and governance were required to provide a level playing field for all the actors.

Commenting on globalisation process, he said that the nature of globalisation is not just in itself. “The inequitable working of global markets and the undemocratic structuring of the global institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO indicate that the international system, in its prevailing incarnation, is not poor friendly, he added.

“Dealing with inequalities of globalisation, the South Asian countries must democratise the development process so that the disempowered and resource poor people can directly benefited from the opportunities created by the market,” he commented.

He also proposed policy recommendations for structural reforms. In agrarian sector, he proposed to transform tenancy rights into ownership, redistribution of ownership of uncultivated land and correcting injustice in the system of land administration.

He demanded empowerment of the rural poor so that they collectively participate in accessing agriculture inputs and marketing of their products.

He observed that opaque budgetary practices make it impossible to identify the share of the budget directly reaching the poor or estimating the outcomes on the circumstances of the poor.

“The instruments of fiscal policy in South Asia are usually not designed to address the concerns of poor. It must be recognised that fiscal systems can also be redesigned to do more than provide incentives for business enterprises and relief to the poor”, he added.

In his concluding remarks Dr Sobhan hoped that the articulated ideas would encourage more substantive work and public debate on the need for direction of structural changes across South Asia which may encourage rethinking among policymakers as well as some forward looking international institutions.

He said that these ideas need to reach beyond the formal institutions of the state to both political and civil society.

SHAHBAZ RANA

ISLAMABAD: Arguing that the globalisation has not benefited poor, former chair of the world renowned Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, Prof Dr Rehman Sobhan has said corporatising the community based organisations (CBOs) will provide access to the poor and marginalised communities to modern markets.

He said the globalisation and the modern markets had bypassed the poor as active actors in markets who could use this to their advantage. As a result of the changes in the global market, the rural economy of countries like Bangladesh has undergone a transformation, with major part of rural household incomes in South Asia generated from non-farm activities.Prof Sobhan is Chairman Centre for Policy Dialogue, Dhaka (Bangladesh) and is a former Chair of the Grameen Bank. The Akhter Hameed Khan Resource Centre (AHKRC), in association with the Rural Support Network invited Professor Sobhan to deliver his paper on ‘Democratising Development: Responding to the Challenges of Globalisation in South Asia.’Prof Sobhan lecture emphasised the importance of need to build on the tradition of promoting self-reliance amongst poor communities to link them effectively to the globalisation process, which was bypassing the poor.

He was of the view that opportunities provided by Globalisation were not easily accessible to farmers and their sphere of operation remained largely in the informal sector. “Formal institutions that enable people’s participation in the market-place tend to be monopolised by the rural affluent and socially powerful, who use their electoral offices to enhance their wealth and perpetuate their power hold,” he said, adding, “In such an inequitable environment, the benefits of democracy remain the privilege of the elite.”

He said a strategy to coping with the inequities of Globalisation must be devised so that the disempowered and resource poor could directly participate in the opportunities created by the modern markets. South Asia has a strong self-help tradition and local NGOs as well as CBOs need to transform into social corporations of the poor. There is thus a critical need to invest in market-based institutions of the poor (e.g. those of collective marketing), if the poor are to participate effectively in Globalisation process. NGOs can play a useful role by supporting such institutions, he said.

Dr Sobhan said corporatising the CBOs would provide legal foundation for collective action to enable these bodies to access credit and enter into contractual relationships with international organisations.

Such corporate entities of the poor, he said could operate in the market place and could generate income to self-sustain, rather than limiting themselves to survive as savings and loan associations.

“NGOs need to move out of the service delivery mode and their excessive dependence on donor funding,” he added while citing the example of BRAC in Bangladesh, which sustained 60 percent of its costs by managing corporate enterprises that linked the poor to markets. The RSPs of Pakistan and other NGOs have similar potential that they need to build on.

Mohsin Babbar