No
one desires to be poor. No one is poor
by choice. Poverty is the creation of system
and circumstance. It challenges the governance to re-engineer the system and
circumstance that leaves no one in the pursuit of happiness for all.
The US President Lyndon B. Johnson (1964) rightly said: “Very often a lack of job and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to provide a fair chance to develop capacities, in a lack of right education and training, medical care and housing, decent communities in which to live and bring up children....Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.”
For poverty eradication, the economic growth must occur but it must not create disparity in income distribution.
The only asset the poor own is human asset. Together they constitute labor pool comprising workers of varying ages, genders, skills, and health.
Notably it is the imperfection in economic policy that creates and perpetuates poverty and invariably excludes poor from the development impact.
The causes of poverty are country specific and therefore tailor made solutions have to found. The generic approaches and experiences can be shared but solutions have to be specific.
Truly poverty is inseparably linked to lack of skills, capital and social connections. Policy makers attempting to achieve high economic growth tend to overlook poor letting pockets of poverty prevail amid sufficiency.
It should be noted that poverty eradication cannot be accomplished with anti-poverty programs alone. Long term and permanent solution to poverty requires democratic participation, and bold and pragmatic outlook in economic structures.
Primarily the poverty reduction endeavor will have to ensure capacity, access to resources, opportunities to escape poverty and social safety net.
Regular review of economic policies is necessary to remove the structural barriers that prevent poor from escaping poverty.
Capitalizing on the human asset the poor owns, building skills through targeted investment in human resource development will provide opportunity to escape poverty. It requires public investment policy on human resource development to benefit the poor.
It is overtly known that poverty reduction requires supportive laws and poverty focused economic measures backed up by technical and enterprise management training, access to credit and natural resources, community organizations, cooperatives, market information, and considerations for women.
There is no dearth of experts but the success has always been determined by the extent to which these known strategies are translated into action in national context and executed successfully.
Rural poverty has been tackled broadly with investment on access road, irrigation, mechanization, technology, training and extension services, and credit and market support.
The other strategies overtly overlooked are structural support to price, tax measures, capital investment support and subsidies, information dissemination, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and disaster preparedness to which poor are more vulnerable needs added impetus.
Financial institutions have gained sufficient experience in lending credit to poor. The financial institutions needs to be incentivized for improving access to credit and strengthening the capacities to deliver credit to people living in poverty. The cost of legal, regulatory and governance of credit scheme for poor have to be born as public investment on social well being of poor.
Employment assistance is being provided to those in search of jobs. Greater efforts are being made in trying to provide jobs rather than trying to create jobs. The balance between the two needs to be struck and ascertain that greater effort is actually made in creating the jobs.
In poverty reduction, employability is far more important issue than employment per se. Pragmatically unemployment should be looked at from the angle of employability of people looking for job.
Unemployment is not a big worry as compared to the issue of employability. When employability is low, no matter how much employment assistance is given, the issue of unemployment continues to prevail.
The relation between unemployment and employability is like the relation between seed and soil. One without the other there shall be no fruit.
The root cause of unemployment is low employability.
Employability has its bearing on quality of education, the degree of integration of skill development in the conventional certificating education systems, adequacy of TVET, the link between education system and TVET, and the coordination and balance in investment between the two.
Once the employability of every job seeker is sufficiently augmented, the appropriately remunerated and freely chosen employment come into play. It is possible by ensuring access to technologies through capital investment support, credit at affordable interest rate, and institutional and market support.
The US President Lyndon B. Johnson (1964) rightly said: “Very often a lack of job and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to provide a fair chance to develop capacities, in a lack of right education and training, medical care and housing, decent communities in which to live and bring up children....Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.”
For poverty eradication, the economic growth must occur but it must not create disparity in income distribution.
The only asset the poor own is human asset. Together they constitute labor pool comprising workers of varying ages, genders, skills, and health.
Notably it is the imperfection in economic policy that creates and perpetuates poverty and invariably excludes poor from the development impact.
The causes of poverty are country specific and therefore tailor made solutions have to found. The generic approaches and experiences can be shared but solutions have to be specific.
Truly poverty is inseparably linked to lack of skills, capital and social connections. Policy makers attempting to achieve high economic growth tend to overlook poor letting pockets of poverty prevail amid sufficiency.
It should be noted that poverty eradication cannot be accomplished with anti-poverty programs alone. Long term and permanent solution to poverty requires democratic participation, and bold and pragmatic outlook in economic structures.
Primarily the poverty reduction endeavor will have to ensure capacity, access to resources, opportunities to escape poverty and social safety net.
Regular review of economic policies is necessary to remove the structural barriers that prevent poor from escaping poverty.
Capitalizing on the human asset the poor owns, building skills through targeted investment in human resource development will provide opportunity to escape poverty. It requires public investment policy on human resource development to benefit the poor.
It is overtly known that poverty reduction requires supportive laws and poverty focused economic measures backed up by technical and enterprise management training, access to credit and natural resources, community organizations, cooperatives, market information, and considerations for women.
There is no dearth of experts but the success has always been determined by the extent to which these known strategies are translated into action in national context and executed successfully.
Rural poverty has been tackled broadly with investment on access road, irrigation, mechanization, technology, training and extension services, and credit and market support.
The other strategies overtly overlooked are structural support to price, tax measures, capital investment support and subsidies, information dissemination, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and disaster preparedness to which poor are more vulnerable needs added impetus.
Financial institutions have gained sufficient experience in lending credit to poor. The financial institutions needs to be incentivized for improving access to credit and strengthening the capacities to deliver credit to people living in poverty. The cost of legal, regulatory and governance of credit scheme for poor have to be born as public investment on social well being of poor.
Employment assistance is being provided to those in search of jobs. Greater efforts are being made in trying to provide jobs rather than trying to create jobs. The balance between the two needs to be struck and ascertain that greater effort is actually made in creating the jobs.
In poverty reduction, employability is far more important issue than employment per se. Pragmatically unemployment should be looked at from the angle of employability of people looking for job.
Unemployment is not a big worry as compared to the issue of employability. When employability is low, no matter how much employment assistance is given, the issue of unemployment continues to prevail.
The relation between unemployment and employability is like the relation between seed and soil. One without the other there shall be no fruit.
The root cause of unemployment is low employability.
Employability has its bearing on quality of education, the degree of integration of skill development in the conventional certificating education systems, adequacy of TVET, the link between education system and TVET, and the coordination and balance in investment between the two.
Once the employability of every job seeker is sufficiently augmented, the appropriately remunerated and freely chosen employment come into play. It is possible by ensuring access to technologies through capital investment support, credit at affordable interest rate, and institutional and market support.
In
the next step comes the necessity of social safety nets that requires inter
alia the appropriate insurance policy, and continuing education and retraining
to continuously augmenting employability.
Continuing education and training are imperatives to rightly respond to poverty and unemployment in the changing economic environment.
Transcending all these steps, a strong research base is essential for identifying skill gap, providing effective counseling services, employment assistance, advisory services and support to young entrepreneurs, and for identifying institutional and processes that discriminate and impede employment opportunities and poverty reduction.
Continuing education and training are imperatives to rightly respond to poverty and unemployment in the changing economic environment.
Transcending all these steps, a strong research base is essential for identifying skill gap, providing effective counseling services, employment assistance, advisory services and support to young entrepreneurs, and for identifying institutional and processes that discriminate and impede employment opportunities and poverty reduction.
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