Empowering the poor

In Islamabad yesterday, the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) wrapped up its two-day moot on research and learning on poverty reduction strategies, with the aim to complete the knowledge-to-action cycle that PPAF’s CEO Qazi Isa is famously passionate about.

A host of interesting findings and questions were raised during the two-day conference, details of which would be a tad difficult to summarise in this little space. However, since the PPAF is looking for inputs from relevant stakeholders with the aim of translating them into implementable strategies, here are our two cents in so far as community development is concerned. First is the question of sustainability. According to a study presented by Kate Vyborny, Hamna Ahmed et al, almost half of the Third Tier Organisations (TTOs) report that they receive some funding from their Partner Organisations (PO) to conduct their activities.

For those who do not follow PPAF’s work very closely, it is pertinent to point out that the organisation supports the process of empowering the poor through two types of institutions. The first is ‘institutions for the poor’ which are called ‘partner organisations’ and the second is ‘institutions of the poor’ which are called ‘community institutions.’ The latter comes in three tiers, namely the (i) First Tier Organisations, (ii) Second Tier Organisations, which are formed by clustering community organisations at village level, and (iii) Third Tier Level Organisations (TTO), which are formed through federating village organisations at a Union Council/appropriate level.

The question, therefore, is what percentage of the funding needs of TTOs is met by POs and first/second tier community organisations. It is quite understandable that these community organisations are of the poor, hence, it may be naive to expect that they would have all the money in the world to finance their activities. But research needs to be done to find out whether activities that require smaller outlay – within the budget line of TTO members or the community it represents – are funded by the TTOs or not.

Arguably, if a community sees value in a certain activity and the amount needed to be spent on that activity is within their budget line, then TTOs should be using their own resources. Community development should ideally be bottom up, and the direction in which the funds flow speaks volumes about the direction of the development process.

Second is the question of representation. In Pakistan, whether it is a case of federal/provincial legislatures or business chambers/associations, the office bearers are mostly dominated by a small clique of families and friends. A visit to business chambers/associations shows quite too well how one single family has been the president of the body year after year across the decades.

Apparently, in the case of TTOs such is not the case. BR Research was told that in 20 percent of the cases, the office bearers of the existing TTOs were found to be comprised of family members or close friends. However, that is just a snapshot picture of a particular point in time. It would be prudent to find out if the same family continues to dominate the TTO over its period of existence.

Third is the question of rights. According to the researchers cited above, a bulk of TTOs’ activities surrounded human and legal rights issues. These, we are told, concentrate around rights within a marriage, or labour rights, etcetera. There is little focus on political rights or rights of a citizen against the state, guaranteed by the government, or how to peacefully demand those rights.

In many developing countries, the advent of democracy has yielded room for poverty-related institutions at various levels to debate, discuss, comment on, and critique governments’ poverty policy and also have access to government itself. Can it be said about Pakistan?

Perhaps in recognition of this, last year the PPAF signed an agreement with Law and Justice Commission of Pakistan (LJCP) to reduce the legal exclusion of Pakistan’s poorest and the most vulnerable segment, with a pilot in Rajanpur. In a recent interview with BR Research, Isa said PPAF believes that people should know their rights and responsibilities under the constitution.

This is a step in the right direction since merely having ‘the right policies’ is not enough, since pro-poor policies will only be implemented if the dominant political structures and processes favour their introduction, which is not the case in Pakistan as of now.

The poor tend to be politically weak in the first place, creating an opposite vicious circle in which the interests of the poor are ignored and policies embed and enhance social cleavages. Therefore, we hope that PPAF’s programme with LJCP will not only make the poor aware of their constitutional rights as citizens but also how to peacefully demand those rights forcing various big and small cogs of the government to work for the benefit of the poor.