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General Musharraf has solemnly committed
himself to poverty alleviation and elimination of Islam from
politics. Interestingly, the more the General runs away from
Islam, the more we find real solutions to almost all of our
problems in Islam. Poverty is presented as a problem that has
never been successfully addressed. In fact, it is not that poverty
has yet to be understood; it is because the right approach has not
been applied.
The roots of poverty are not in the community at the grassroots
level. Poverty is essentially a socio-political product of the
systems imposed from the top, at national and international
levels. For instance, the roots of poverty are in the system under
which millions of rupees from the public funds are being spent on
referendum but a government office, just 100 meters from the Chief
Executive Secretariat in Islamabad, cannot afford to mail a letter
due to shortage of fund. Like many other government departments,
this department has been notified not to utilize more than 37
percent of its allocated budget. As more and more people rise
against the tyrannical capitalist systems in the developed world,
we are fast embracing the same defunct systems.
The Capitalist Formula
The capitalist formula is about import liberalization, i.e. to
free up trade, let all imports in, and then the competition will
make developing industries more competitive with developed
industries. The IMF demands of a country in trouble to earn more
and spend less. "Earn more," means export more, devote
resources to export production and not to production for local
needs. "Spend less," means cut budgets, cut state
expenditures, make bank credit scarce and expensive.
General Musharraf is following this formula. It's the common
man who is hurt because prices go up; food subsidies are
abolished; transport becomes more expensive; electricity, gas, and
other basic services go up; and then education, and health budgets
practically disappear. All this doesn't hurt the elites much
because they can afford private services. The idea that all
countries can find a niche and something to export more easily and
at less cost than others doesn't work because there are already
monopolies and the debtor countries are now exporting abnormally
high amounts of goods.
We rush for export because we won't get any money unless we
follow the instructions. So, several dozen countries at once have
to export the same limited range of goods in competition. As a
result, the price goes down, we try to export even more and there
is the most terrific glut and slump in commodity prices. This of
course is the recipe for disaster. But the IMF insists everyone
can profit from a comparative advantage. For that, we have to be
able to diversify our economy, which requires more money. There's
no spare cash. So prices get lower and lower, and the little that
is earned goes into debt service. There isn't any new investment,
and it's just a complete never-ending downward spiral.
The capitalist dictated solutions for poverty alleviation are
simply to moderate the pain, not to let anyone off the hook. The
problem is that even if all the debt were written off, the poor
wouldn't automatically benefit from debt relief because there is
so much power in the hands of the elite, who maintain the status
quo at national levels. Undoubtedly, mismanagement and
misallocation
of funds are the two main causes of poverty in countries like
Pakistan, where the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer
with each passing day.
Structural adjustment programs are often beneficial to local
elites, providing them with such advantages as rock-bottom wages
and opportunities for buy-ups of privatised companies; they are
happy to cooperate. The wholesale poverty alleviation programs
only sustain the predicament. A rethinking of poverty alleviation
strategies is needed without any dictation of solutions from
abroad. As long as the root causes of poverty at the upper levels
remain intact, poverty cannot be solved using one blanket approach,
providing everyone with soft loans. The international donor
community, including the World Bank and Asian Development Bank
continue showering people with micro-credit expecting them to
recover and show an increased consumption rate.
The international donor community is generally insensitive to
the context of our poverty problems and continues to judge the
situation according to the macroeconomic management --which speaks
only about fiscal and monetary policies whose instruments,
ultimately, are loans and interest, or as recently happened some
donors (Swiss) are directly providing funds to political parties (ANP
in NWFP, Bugti Group in Baluchistan, ML (Q) in Punjab and MQM in
Sindh) for development without any clear criteria and against to
devolution of power plan, the elected members would be watching,
whereas the unelected members of other parties would be
undertaking community development schemes. This is absolutely
incomprehensible and unprecedented political bribery.
This means that we need to rethink our strategy in poverty
alleviation, we need to study and develop the potential to
overcome our poverty, which seems to have expanded as well as
deepened, because of the
1. Lack of a comprehensive approach;
2.
Following donor's agenda without its relevance to the local
conditions;
3. High social, political and economic inequality, and
4. High inflation relative to rise in income for fixed income
groups.
Micro-credit Based Approach
The lately embraced, micro-credit based approach is considered
as the final solution. This is akin to gagging the poor with a few
thousand rupees and leaving the exploitative systems intact for
perpetuating poverty. Being Muslims, our poverty alleviation
strategies cannot be alienated from our ideological moorings. Like
every other problem, we are looking for secular solutions to the
poverty problem while the Islamic way of life is a constitutional
requirement under Article 31 of the Constitution of Pakistan.
We need to understand the epistemological significance of
poverty as defined and understood in Islam:
Faqir (poorest of the
poor) and
Miskeen (whose legitimate needs exceed his means) are
the two basic classifications of poor in Islam.
Contrary to the
interest based cosmetic approach, the Islamic way of poverty
alleviation focuses on developing human resource (tadreeb) and
providing relevant job opportunity. The institutions identified
for financial assistance to the poor are assistance (Kifalah) by:
the nearest kith and kin; the neighbours under neighbourhood
rights; others in the form of mandatory charity like Zakat; and
through temporary and permanent endowments. Moreover, an Islamic
State is bound to provide sustenance to its citizens irrespective
of their religion. The State meets this responsibility by
collection of Zakat, other emergent charities and raising taxes.
The enormity of such relief to the poor under Islam cannot be
disputed. Instead of taking religion out of our public life, if we
focus on integrating Islamic principles in our daily life, the
social response to poverty, irrespective of the involvement of the
State, would be far more supportive than all the donated funds
together.
Zakat and Bait-ul-Mal
Zakat and Bait-ul-Mal are the two institutions, which,
if used properly, can address the problem of poverty to a great
extent. The institution of Bait-ul-Mal has tremendous potential
for reaching the poor and helping them to escape the poverty trap
without engaging in the curse of micro-credit. An assessment of
both Zakat and Bait-ul-Mal in terms of their mis-utilization and
rehabilitative contribution is urgently required.
The importance of Islamic arrangements for poverty alleviation
lies in the fact that the poor cannot afford loans at 20-25%
interest rate, which either make them defaulters or the staff of
concerned organizations get involved in corruption by showing
funds reserved for other purposes as recovery of the micro-credit.
More than 70 per cent rural population depend mainly on
agriculture. The land tenure system is a colonial legacy. India
addressed this problem in the initial few years, but the impact of
land reforms in Pakistan, introduced on three occasions, has been
less than structural. Instead of addicting more and more poor to
micro-credit with no significant change in their poverty status,
it is better for an authoritative regime, like Musharraf's, to
introduce revolutionary land reforms and address the poverty
problem on long-term basis.
Instead of purely relying on interest-based loans, programs
like Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund and Khushhali Bank need to
look into the Islamic ways, like Mudariba, Musharika, Khumus, etc
for supporting the needy. The work opportunities through mega
projects as described by the General in every speech are not going
to address the suffering of millions living in remote regions,
where cottage or rural industries need to be promoted on priority
basis.
Pakistan introduced Zakat and Ushr ordinance in 1980. The
collection of Ushr, a percentage of land produce, has not been
very satisfactory because it is being done through the Land
Revenue Administration which, as a legacy of the colonial days, is
not tuned to such a revolutionary concept of an Islamic welfare
State. However, if the legislation is enforced in letter and
spirit, poverty will find no spawning grounds and the poor and the
needy will be integrated with the rest of the society. There is
also a need to introduce a representative system for the
collection and utilization of Zakat. The new decentralized local
government system can play a vital role in local collection and
disbursement to the local poor. This would build social cohesion
as well.
The ongoing poverty alleviation measures show that despite the
fact that markets do not eliminate poverty, because they tend to
move new wealth away from poor communities, most NGOs and the
government follow the capitalist market doctrines. They secure
dividends by concentrating investments in relatively favourable
environments. The poorest people in the poorest places have thus
disappeared in practice - if not in ideology and publicity - from
NGO net-works and government programs, almost as surely as they
vanished from private marketing surveys and business plans.
Without coming back to Islam for finding solutions to our
problems, we may never achieve the lofty goals that we set for
ourselves - whether they are in the field of poverty alleviation
or any other aspect of our collective and individual lives. The
problem is that we are not ready to even give it a thought because
the pockets in which we have put our hands for survival are
leading us in exactly the opposite direction.
Concluded
April 21, 2002
Note: I have written the above lines from my
personal experience as a development specialist, working for
poverty alleviation and rural development for the last 12 years. I
have come to the conclusion, after getting the opportunity to lead
the organization (Integrated Regional Support Programme--IRSP) as
the Executive Director and experimenting different approaches with
different communities. Wherever we worked on the Islamic
principles of Mudariba and Musharika etc, we found the output and
relationship more successful without any apparent reason -- its
just the blessing of Islam.
Abid Ullah Jan is a columnist for The Statesman,
The Nation, and the Pakistan Observer (Pakistan). He is also
sub-editor for the Tribune International (Sydney, Australia), and
is the Executive Director of the Integrated Regional Support
Programme (IRSP).
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