In this background, it is interesting to point out that out of the seven main goals and 14 sub-goals, 12 have been categorized as likely and potentially likely achievable. Halving the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day, reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds, reducing maternal mortality ratio by three quarters, halting and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, halting and reversing the incidence of malaria and other major diseases, and halving the proportion of population without sustainable access to improved water source have been categorized as likely.
Halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, ensuring children everywhere – boys and girls – complete primary schooling and eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005 and in all levels of education no later than 2015, achieving universal access to treatment to HIV/AIDS for all those who need it, and reversing loss of forest have been considered to be potentially likely achievable.
Only full productive employment and decent work, achieving universal heath access to reproductive health, and halving proportion of population without sustainable access to improved sanitation are categorized as unachievable.
Thus, one of the important features of the report is that it has covered employment as well. On the whole, the progress reported indicates that Nepal has emerged as one of the out-performers in the aforementioned areas. The likely or potential progress reported in areas like poverty reduction, health services, education, hunger, gender disparity and HIV/AIDS gives a similar impression. Implicitly, this means that unlike ongoing political economy arguments, the customary polices and other related initiatives are in the right direction. Truly, in the areas like health and education, some good progresses have been made at least at the aggregate level as various survey and other secondary data indicate. But, in view of a worse situation in the areas of hunger and food security, gender disparity in tertiary education and universal access to the treatment of HIV/AIDS, the potential achievements in these areas, contrary to the claims, are unlikely. More importantly, when gender aspect added by remoteness, caste and ethnicity dimensions are brought into the fore, then the accompanying equity and distribution-based portrait would be entirely different.
As an offshoot of these, if the progress report is assessed in terms of likely achievable and not-achievable goals on the one hand and completely different scenarios provided by macroeconomic data and other reports on the other, many inconsistencies are found.
Even ignoring the most dubious reduced poverty estimates at 25.4 percent, as to why there was no reference to the US dollar at 1.25 per day desirable to cover the rising cost of living is not understandable. As is well known, there is a growing international debate on the need of increased assistance to LDCs after a big jump in food and petroleum prices in the global market after 2006 followed by the financial crisis leading to very adverse poverty and income distribution implications. Nepal is particularly a sufferer of rising prices in general and food prices in particular. The report gives an indication that it has had no effect on poverty and other related indicators.
The report also gives an impression that there is no link between employment, hunger, poverty and other goals. As the report also indicates, based on the labor force survey of 2008, out of the labor force 15 years and above, almost 32 percent lack full employment. Additionally, if the structural character of the labor market is examined, it is found that almost 94 percent of the labor force is informally employed without guarantee of minimum wages and job or social security. Similarly, without-pay type self-employment ratio is fairly high. Disguised unemployment is another serious problem. All these have direct impact on decent employment. Their wider ramification on poverty and MDGs has been hardly touched upon. In addition, as the report also indicates, now 40 districts have turned into food deficit districts indicating access to food and affordability emerging as a grave problem with the potential of wider ramifications on achieving MDGs.
Amidst these, international reports on Nepal indicate worsening situation in some related fronts. This is true in case of failed state-related indicators, corruption indices and parameters linked to business and investment environment, among others.
If some comparison with countries like China and India is made, very divergent and less convincing trends are noticeable. China from the early 1990s registered almost 10 percent growth rate and has surpassed that in recent years. It has more than 50 percent domestic savings and almost 40 percent gross investment rate in addition to the world’s largest foreign investment. Even in tertiary education, gender ratio is one. Share of rural population with access to improved sanitation surpassed 60 percent in 2006 itself. Gini coefficient as of 2006 was 0.33. It has massive, well-targeted social development and poverty reduction programs.
India is also picking up rapidly. It is now approaching growth rate of 9 percent. In the 1990s, the growth rate was 6 percent, which rose to 7.4 percent on an average during 2000 to 2006. The saving rate is about 40 percent accompanied by almost the same rate of investment. As of 2005, Gini coefficient was 0.325. In 2006, gender parity ratio in tertiary education was 0.7.
On the other hand, Nepal’s historical growth rate is 4 percent with downward trends in recent years. Domestic saving is at 8 percent to 9 percent with almost 31.89 percent gross investment in which only 21.29 percent is gross fixed investment. The Gini coefficient has increased to 0.46, which is extremely high. Amidst these non-comparable trends, poverty reduction has been very fast in Nepal as per recent estimates. It reduced by 16.6 percent (from 1996 to 2009) in 13 years from 42 percent to 25.4 percent. In India, it took 17 years (from 1988 to 2005) to reduce poverty by 11.4 percent from 38.9 to 27.5 percent. Still, the controversy on underestimation is continuing there. In China, it took 15 years (from 1990 to 2005) to reduce poverty by 17 percent from 22.2 percent to 5.2 percent.
With extremely adverse initial conditions in addition to poorer macroeconomic settings, how poverty and other related indicators have moved more positively than in these countries needs more scrutiny. If contribution is attributed primarily to the remittances and their trickle-down effect, this may still not be to the extent as claimed by the progress report. Either way, there is a need for more coherent assessment accompanied by distinguishing the role of remittances more candidly. This will enable in making honest interpretations, which can be followed by evolving a more appropriate policy course that could be both effective and sustainable.
This column will appear every alternate Wednesday.
Related story
Nepal has made notable progress on child and maternal health un...
