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The goal: a poverty-free South Asia

Kim Hak-Su

The region needs an unswerving commitment to create a poverty-free world in which all its citizens would lead a productive and meaningful life.

I WAS recently in Kathmandu. An old friend of mine invited me to join him in his morning walk. As we were walking, I saw the morning sun rise above the Himalayas, an incredibly beautiful sight. Something told me I was watching the rise of South Asia.

I have been an observer of South Asia's development scene for several decades. On many occasions, I expressed my frustration to my South Asian friends at the opportunities lost and the promise unfulfilled. Things began to change from the early 1990s when the region embarked on ambitious reform programmes. The slumbering humanity began to stir.

Today, the region is a dynamic part of the global economy. Almost all the South Asian economies are posting robust economic growth. Investments and trade are surging ahead. An increasing number of middle class consumers has created a huge market for just about every product and service. The world has noticed the opportunities in South Asia, and droves of foreign investors have flocked to its shores.

Many paradoxes

But it is a region that fascinates as well as perplexes me the most. No other region offers so many puzzles and so many paradoxes as South Asia does. In the midst of rising prosperity on the back of an average 7 per cent growth rate, there are some 400 million people who live below $1 a day and barely eke out a living. Gleaming office blocks, smart gated communities, and luxurious hotels and resorts coexist with slums and decaying roads and bridges. Bullock-driven carts compete with combine harvesters for space on narrow rural roads. Its world-class scientists, doctors, and engineers help other nations increase their wealth. It produces Nobel laureates effortlessly. Yet, it is home to hundreds of millions of illiterate people, trapped in low productivity and meagre income. It produces more foodgrains than it consumes but it has the highest number of malnourished children in the world with more than 300 million people suffering from chronic hunger. An unacceptably large number of women die every year during childbirth and from complications arising during pregnancies. Conservative estimates put that number at more than 200,000 deaths a year. The proportion of deliveries attended by skilled health personnel remains the lowest in the world and has only increased slightly between 1990 and 2004. Around 4 million children die each year before reaching the age of 5. Discrimination against women is endemic, and deeply rooted in its legal system and social ethos.

Why does South Asia offer this stark dichotomy? A comprehensive answer is beyond this opinion piece. At best, the answer is buried in South Asia's history, politics, culture, religion, and geography. Its geographical vastness, cultural diversity, and economic and political realities provide some clue to the problems it faces but the same factors make it horrendously difficult to come to grips with the solutions.

The good news is that the policy makers and other stakeholders in South Asia have come together to overcome these difficulties and create a new South Asia that would be free of poverty, hunger, and gender discrimination. The governments and the people of South Asia are determined to reclaim their true place in history and become a vibrant, prosperous, and peaceful part of the global community. This determination found its concrete expression when all the seven South Asian nations participated actively in crafting and adopting the Millennium Declaration in September 2000 and committed themselves to achieving the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

Some quick results have followed. Income poverty has virtually disappeared from Bhutan and Maldives. Pakistan has seen a dramatic reduction in income poverty from 48 per cent in 1990 to 13 percent in 1998. In India, the incidence of poverty has dropped from 42 per cent in 1990 to 35 percent in 2001, and more recent data provide grounds for greater optimism.

Bangladesh and several other countries have made good progress in reducing gender disparities in primary and secondary education. Sri Lanka, with its impressive record of social indicators, has shown what can be achieved if policy makers remain focussed on pursuing developmental goals.

The overarching challenge before us — policy makers, media, private sector, NGOs, academia, and the United Nations system as a whole — is to consolidate these achievements and push forward in our collective effort to fight against poverty, hunger, malnutrition, and gender discrimination. This overarching challenge provided the backdrop to the recently concluded South Asia MDG Forum. Held in Kathmandu on October 11 and 12, 2006, it was inaugurated by the Finance Minister of Nepal and attended by more than 100 participants from seven South Asian countries. High ranking policy makers and the representatives of media, private sector, NGOs, and academia deliberated for two days on some of the critical challenges facing the region and adopted the South Asia Action Plan for Achieving the MDGs.

The Action Plan identifies several key actions to be taken by all stakeholders. Within a time frame of two to five years, the Action Plan called for increased investments in rural infrastructure; increased public investments in providing safe drinking water and improved sanitation; compulsory and free education up to secondary level; targeted interventions to reduce malnutrition and child and maternal mortality; legal protection against gender discrimination; inclusion of socially vulnerable groups in the development process through affirmative actions; strengthened regional cooperation for free flow of life-saving drugs and medicines; promotion of inter-country migration; and the establishment of a disaster management fund.

I truly believe that the South Asia MDG Forum has succeeded in identifying the critical areas where urgent action is needed. All that South Asia needs is an unswerving commitment to create a poverty-free world in which all its citizens would lead a productive and meaningful life they so richly deserve. South Asia with its vibrant civil society, a socially conscious media, judicial activism, an entrepreneurial private sector, academic excellence, and above all, a people imbued with deep commitment to social justice, human freedom, and peace is poised to turn a leaf in its history. — Courtesy: U.N. Information Centre, New Delhi.

[The author is U.N. Under-Secretary General and Executive Secretary, UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP).]

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