Local think-tank Unnayan Onneshan has said the current anti-poverty strategies have failed to understand the social dimensions of poverty and power imbalances between different classes.
The research organisation in a recent book titled ‘Measuring Multidimensionality: State of Poverty in Bangladesh 2013’ said the rate of poverty reduction was slowing down in recent years.
The UO said, ‘The inequality has a greater impact on poverty reduction since under the perfect equality condition, the human development index and the inequality-adjusted HDI are equal.’
It said that the country was experiencing social exclusion on the basis of ethnicity, descent, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age, disability, and region.
‘Central framework seems to promote dominant neo-liberal policies which have questionable effects on people’s lives and the institutions have failed to address the power imbalances that exist between different classes,’ it said.
The Unnayan Onneshan found that the rate of poverty among the widowed, divorced and separated people had decreased at a lowered rate from 59.7 per cent in 1995-96 to 33.9 per cent in 2010 with an annual rate of 2.88 per cent.
The incidence of poverty among zero landowners reduced from 58.2 per cent in 1995-96 to 35.4 per cent in 2010 with an annual rate of 2.61 per cent.
The incidence of poverty among uneducated household heads dropped from 67.0 per cent in 1995-96 to 42.8 per cent in 2010 with an annual rate of 3.2 per cent whereas the incidence of poverty at national level decreased to 25.1 per cent in 2010 from 48.0 per cent in 1995-96 with an annual rate of 2.4 per cent.
The Unnayan Onneshan has proposed a set of indicators based on new five fundamental principles of rights, equality, justice, sustainability and partnership for development through historic responsibility for a zero-poverty post-2015 development framework.
-With New Age input
