Poverty Alleviation Strategy Essay

Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity e realwhere. It is a grouch and unrivalled of the worst curses and miseries that a kind can face. According to Homer. This , this is misery The last, the worst that man can feel. Poverty can be measured either in absolute terms, for example, the number of those who cannot afford to a greater extent than two pairs of shoes, or in relative terms, for example, the number of the wretchedest ten sh ar of house holds. In either sense it is a concept, which is defined randomly .Poverty exists not only because incomes are low, only if in addition because the necessitate of ertain low income households are high. Poverty has more belongingss, which include sparing, political, complaisant, environmental and adult male dimensions. In sparing terms a county, a region or a household is low when the per capita income of purchasing power of a pitiable country or household is below a certain borderline standard, there are low medical care and health facilities, productivity is very low and there is illiteracy.In political terms a country, a regionor a group of people are poor when they do not have a voice in the community or dependent on other more than powerful groups or individuals in order to express their consume rights and hoices. In mixer terms scantiness in a country a region o a household breeds all types of complaisantly unacceptable behaviors like drug addiction, crime, position, rage ad terrorism in a family or in a community, These factors degrade human self respect, moral and kindly values of the fraternity as a whole and as a result more and more people in the community become intolerantand rude towards severally other in their day to day life.In environmental dimension, meagerness destroys the living environment not only of those who live in distress but of all other human beings as well as non-human iving things that depend on the same resources and ecosystem on which those living in paup erization depend and survive. People living in indigence cannot change their behaviors slow because of want of resources, knolwledge about their own surroundings and education. Thus by destroying their own living environment, the poor in actuallyity are destroying their own resources on which they survive in the long run.Poverty in its human dimension is the most important of all, because poor people live in conditions that are miserable, conditions in which some members of their family die of hunger, ailment of famine. Poverty in tis human dimension exists, when a child is down with a curable disease and the parents have to take a decision whether to take the child to a doctor and buy expensive medicines or purchase other essentials of day by day use.It exists when parents of a child sell their child into slavery or prostitutionbecause of lack of resources to feed or care for that child and when regime institutes fail to encourage the rights of the poor. Poverty has e coale sced as the most important issue for Pakistan. Poverty redressal requires frugal emersion accompanied by an improvement in approach path to social services. The reason that economic egress has failed to trickle down to the poor in Pakistan is the slow improvement in social indicators Economic growth and social sector instruction are interdependent as one reinforces the other.In fact economic growth is necessary for penury reduction but need reduction itself is necessary for sustained growth. The estimates ot scantness are not consistent in Pakistan. According to caloric base calories per person), the incidence of poverty declined sharply from 46. 5 pct in 1969-70 to 17. 3percent in 1987-88. However , poverty increased significantly in 1990s ising from 17. 3 percent in 1987-88 to 22. 4 percent in 1992-93 and further to 31 percent in 1996-97. The recent estimates suggest that poverty ahs further increased from 32. percent in 1998-99 to 33. 50 percent in 1999-2000. This shows that the incidence of poverty has increased in 19990s. similar trends have been observed in the case of urban and out overturnish poverty. The main reasons for increase in poverty during 1990s can be attributed to the relatively lower rate of economic growth, rising unemployment, stagnant real wages, declining flow of workers remittances and bad overnance. In addition to the factors mentioned supra the high population growth also puts pressure on the merge social services thereby causing social distress.Painting a broad picture of third world poverty is not enough. onward anyone can formulate effective policies and programmes to attack poverty at its source, one needs some specific knowledge of poverty groupsand their economic characteristics, It is not sufficient simply to focus on raising growth rate of Gross National Product in the expectation or desire that this national income growth will trickle down to mprove levels of living for the very poor.On the contrary many observer s argue that direct attack on poverty by meat of poverty focused policies and plans can be more effective and one cannot attack poverty directly without luxuriant knowledge of its location, extent and characteristics. National Economic development is central to succeeder in poverty alleviation. But poverty is an outcome of more than economic processes. It is an outcome of economic, social and political processes. To attack poverty requires action at local , national and global levels.The following actions are equired to be interpreted y poor people, government, private sector and civil society organizations. ontogenesis is essential for expanding economic opportunities for the poor. The question is how to achieve rapid, sustainable and pro-poor growth. A production line environmental conducive to private investment and technological innovation is necessary, as is political and social st expertnessto invite public and private investments. The poor should be empowered in the true sense.Empowerment means enhancing the capacity of the poor to influence the states institutions that affects their lives by trengthening their participation in political process, and local decision-making. It also means removing the barriers political, legal and social that work against particular groups and building the assets of poor people to enable them to engageeffectively in markets. Enhancing security for poor people which means reducing their vulnerability to such risks as ill health, economic shocks and inseparable disasters and helping them cope with adverse shocks when they occur.The ultimate cause of the poor diffusion of personal incomes in most third world countries s the unequal and highly concentrate patterns of asset ownership (wealth). The principal reason why less than 20 percent of their population receives over 50 percent of the national income is that this 20 percent probably owns ad controls over 90 percent of the productive and monetary resources, espec ially physical capital and land but also financial capital (stock and bonds) and human capital in the form of better education.It follows that perhaps more important line of form _or_ system of government to reduce povertyand inequality is to focus directly on reducing the concentrated control of ssets , the unequal distribution ot power, unequal access to education and income earning opportunities. Policies to put on progressive rates of direct levyation on income especially at the highest levels are, what are most needed in this area of redistribution activity. Unfortunately, in many developing countries the rich do not show a big part of their income and assets.Further , they often also have the power and ability to avoid paying taxes without the fear of government. Pakistan is facing twin challenges of reviving growth and reducing poverty. This requires rapid conomic growth keeping in view the factors answerable for slow growth and rising poverty, the government has formula ted a spatiotemporal economic revival programmed aimed at reviving economic growth and social development. The government has adopted a multi-pronged approach to promote pro-poor economic growth and reduce poverty.Engendering growth by correcting macroeconomic imbalances and stabilizing the economy has been make the central pillar of the governments economic revival program. The government has adopted a sound macroeconomic framework aimed at some(prenominal) stabilizing the economy and stimulating growth. It comprises five building blocks namely tax reforms, expenditure management, prudent monetary policy, external adjustment and debt management. Implementing broad based governance reforms are essential ingredients of he governments poverty alleviation schema.Without governance reforms thee enormous tasks of reviving growth and reducing poverty cannot be addressed. Sagging growth and rising poverty are in partresults of the poor performance of the government institutions in Pakis tan. In fact, poverty in Pakistan is not merely an outcome of economic ills but also a result of mis-governance over the past years. The main element of reforms are devolvement of power at grass roots level, civil services reforms, access to Justice and financial transparency.The care principle of Pakistan poverty alleviation strategy is to empower the people and to create greater opportunities for increasing real income by improving access to productive assets mainly housing, land an reference book. Access to credit is the surest way of empowering thepoor and improving their income generating opportunities. In addition to the already existing financial intuition, thegovernment has now established the Khushhali argot or Micro Finance Bank for the provision of micro credit to poor communities.The effects of sluggish economic growth are clearly reflected in Pakistans performance in the social sectors, Human development is essential for attracting investment and generating the capac ity for approaching sustainable growth. pakistans progress on almost every social indictor e. g. education, health and nutrition is poor as compared with that of other developing countries. In order to address this situation, the government has prepared comprehensive human development strategies aimed at the effective utilization of the available resource s hrough change institutional mechanisms.