Mulk calls to increase social security in rural areas

Magic of microfinance, reliance on the social capital of the people and real hard work was needed to increase social security in rural areas.
NWFP caretaker Chief Minister Shamsul Mulk stated this on Monday while opening the tenth three-day development conference hosted by the Sustainable Policy Development Institute (SDPI), an internationally recognised think-tank.
Shamsul Mulk, is also the Chairman of SDPI's Board of Governors. Besides Pakistan, 40-delegates from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka are attending the conference. These delegates meet annually to share research findings for improving quality of life in countries of the region.
Speaking at the inaugural session, Mulk said poverty reduction programmes would be meaningful with real progress to help present day destablised South Asian societies to prepare for the challenges of the 21st century.
He said, without throwing up "innovative" solutions must be based on "local expertise that have survived generations of development," it would merely become an exercise in chanting mantras about reducing poverty.
'South Asia needed sustainable solutions to the problems of disaster management, environmental degradation, gender equality, illiteracy, insecurity, mortality, morbidity, poverty, which are common in the region, including Pakistan.' He also suggested that the solutions proposed by delegates must have multi-disciplinary approach, which are now badly needed to bridge the gulf between research and policy.
Chairman, National Rural Support Programme (NRSP), Shoaib Sultan, who also spoke in the session, elaborated his method of developing an area first relied on consulting the people about the priority required in an area, and also by making them responsible for carrying out the task. We find that hundreds of people come forward in each area to assume leadership and responsibility.
A pre-ordained blue print could never do the work, he said, and in this regard he narrated dozen examples of areas and places where local people wrote success stories in their villages because the method used "social capital" of the local people.
Shoaib quoted the example of village across the river on the Silk Route. He had to reach the village in a basket, because there was no bridge. This village was isolated without electricity, hospital, or school. Today, the same village had installed an indigenous hydel plant for producing electricity, and also had hospitals, clinics, schools, and other modern day gadgets, through self-help.
Shoaib Sultan paid tributes to his venerable teacher the late Akhtar Hameed Khan many times, who had taught how to improve the lot of poor societies, and how the establishment of support organisation, organised in such areas, would depend on the involvement of general members, not merely on executive officers.
Involving influential people at the top of the support organisations would mean disaster for the development project, as amply illustrated in the study of Indian Panchayat Committees, made prior to Independence.
In his welcome address, DPI acting executive director Dr Abdul Qayyum Sulehri, said his organisation provides research based policy advice to the government and civil societies of South Asia on sustainable development issues.
He complained that although the government had asked the SDPI to complete National Development Strategy, contribute technical in-put to health issues for Vision 2030, ad for domestic preparedness for service liberalisation, trade policy and laws related to farmers, and in formulating pro-poor agricultural initiatives, yet the institution was being starved of funds for research.
In the working session on development initiative and poverty environment nexus Aneel Salman described how micro financing in the field of cellular phones led by Gramin Bank was empowering BD women.