5.Empowering and Mobilizing the Poor AND STRENGTHENING GOVERNANCE
Poor groups must operate in partnership with local government, decentralized public service agencies and community based organizations to demand quality service and to mount appropriate community development initiatives. For this to come about, the poor need to be empowered and given a voice in the decision-making processes so that they can articulate their concerns and demand quality services. This requires that poor groups be effectively organized if they are to be heard by public policy makers. One of the important lessons of international experience in empowerment is that effective organization and mobilization of the poor needs to precede effective participation in the development process.
Governance is also closely related to the quality, accountability and effectiveness of public administration. A lack of clear delegation of administrative authority hampers attempts to improve implementation of local services and strengthen governance. The sensitivity of the political system to popular perceptions of poverty and inequality, and the impact of a literate and easily mobilized electorate, linked to deeply embedded patron-client relationships are tending to weaken autonomy and accountability in public administration. The pressures from the war and the ever-present terrorist threat are also difficult to contain and contrive to weaken judicial safeguards and administrative transparency.
International experience clearly demonstrates that better governance is both a cause and consequence of the economic growth process. Very bad governance practices clearly impede both growth and poverty reduction. Such practices must aggressively be reversed. But international experience also suggests that the growth of a broad-based middle class creates a powerful constituency for more effective Government within the framework of a democratic society. For Sri Lanka, one of the key poverty reduction challenges is to augment demand for better governance by aggressively reducing poverty and creating a large, politically informed and involved middle-income strata.
One of the most important questions, therefore, in empowering the poor is to find a way to reverse these trends and to support improved governance by strengthening accountability, transparency and the basic checks and balances in society. Fostering community-driven development, strengthening institutional governance, bringing government closer to the poor, enhancing the rule of law and empowering poor women are five of the main strategies for empowering the poor through systematically enhancing local governance. Special attention is required for socially excluded groups. Asset redistribution and assistance in social capital formation will be needed if they are to have a voice in public policy.
5.1Community-Driven Development
Empowerment must begin with efforts aimed at providing the poor with the assets and the voice necessary to tackle the problems that they perceive to be most relevant. Too often development efforts are mounted without due regard for the desires, aspirations and capacities of the communities that such initiatives are designed to assist. Too often development efforts ignore the importance of social capital in low-income communities. The tremendous variation in causes, capabilities and opportunities for poverty reduction at a local level are lost when blanket solutions are imposed on poor communities. Even “participatory” projects and programs can unintentionally contribute to dependency and passivity in the poor community.
Experience in Sri Lanka suggests that poor communities can effectively identify and overcome constraints to poverty reduction. With the participation of social animators and facilitators, a wide range of bottlenecks to poverty reduction have been addressed. This rich experience suggests that community-led development works best when community-based organizations actively participate in the choice of assistance, contribute directly to the capital investment, take responsibility for monitoring and guiding project activity and are vested with the responsibility for operating and maintaining project-delivered assets. In the future, a variety of community-led development initiatives must be mounted if the poor are to be “empowered” to chart their path out of poverty. Where the community and the private sector are able to perform these functions, the public sector institutions will be encouraged to reduce its role.
Social facilitation services are often needed to catalyze community-led development. During the past two decades, both the Government and several leading NGOs have trained and deployed thousands of animators and other individuals aimed at facilitating the empowerment of the poor. Extensive efforts have been made by various facilitators to identify and organize the poor, with the focus on assisting the poor to demand that their rights be respected and that they be provided services from Government and the private sector.
In the future, empowerment activities will need to shift from a “confrontational” to a more “collaborative” approach to community-led development. Alliances will need to be struck between those organizations that represent the poor with the representatives of local government, private enterprises and non-governmental organizations if opportunities to participate in the growth process are to be broadened, gaps in social protection filled and the special needs of the most vulnerable addressed. That poverty reduction is the best route to heal social and ethnic divides, and is in the long-term interest of all groups, should guide efforts towards a more collaborative and cooperative poor-community empowerment process.
5.2Decentralization and Governance Reform
Shifting the focus of authority from central to local government offers a promising route for empowering the poor. By tapping local knowledge, awareness and expertise, the poor, together with local governments and community organizations can tackle those problems that are of greatest immediate importance to them. Decentralization tends to produce more transparent government, which informs many people at local levels the amounts of money that are available for development.
Incomplete decentralization has resulted in high levels of complexity and fragmentation of the system, an unwieldy and inefficient system of financing, cumbersome and inequitable personnel management procedures, and complex and frequently conflicting parallel systems of administration in the provinces. The “transaction costs” of the system have been, and continue to be, high.
Decentralization can also inspire a more realistic popular understanding of what can and cannot be achieved by government. This is particularly important in many regions in which popular perceptions of “poverty” and social tensions are fueled not by minimum standards of income or consumption deprivation, but by the unequal distribution of opportunities and access to resources. Liberalization has heightened expectations, and the material benefits of a deregulated economy have raised the expectations of rural youth in particular. Urban life-styles are highly visible, but are largely unattainable for the extensive rural majority. Bringing government closer to constituents can help to realign popular expectations that Government can somehow bridge the village-Colombo lifestyle gap[1].
But decentralization, unto itself, is by no means a guarantee that poverty will be reduced. Decentralized public services are readily subject to capture by the local elite. Unless local government is obliged to operate in a transparent and accountable manner, decentralization may weaken the effectiveness of already existing public services.
Despite a move to devolved administration in 1987, Sri Lanka has not realized the full benefits of decentralization. The continued presence of Central Government in areas devolved to the provinces combined with the need for further governance reform has limited the degree to which high-quality and demand-driven public services are provided at a local level. The poor are probably the worst affected by incomplete decentralization because the process has exacerbated government current spending (instead of capital investment) undermined development and mobilization of local community organizations and had little impact on transparency or opportunities for consultation with local government[2].
The Government has tried to redress deficiencies in fiscal decentralization. Capital spending has been increased in the 1999 and fiscal 2000 budget and a greater share of resources previously channeled through line ministries are now disbursed directly to the provinces (using Province Specific Development Grants). New systems for awarding grants to local government are under consideration and a Commission on Local Government Reform has recommended changes to the electoral system under which locally elected officials will be responsible for specified constituencies.
Over time, local government institutions will need to be strengthened. Gradually, the Pradeshiya Sabhas should acquire full authority and accountability to allocate resources for local level development. As part of the decentralization process, Provincial government will require greater fiscal autonomy. This can be achieved by expanding their revenue-raising authority and by earmarking certain tax bases for local level expenditures. Fiscal equalization measures, based ideally on some form of needs-based revenue equalization formula, should be applied by central government to ensure that an adequate, minimal level, of local public services can be provided countrywide. Local governments should be encouraged to utilize annual allocations and expenditures of funds from various sources to divisions and districts to the greatest extent possible by establishing transparent and participatory planning, resource allocation, monitoring and evaluation processes at the local levels. In this regard, probably the most important first step would be the regular publication of local government revenues and expenditures. Only if the public is aware of the way in which local government funds are utilized can they demand improvement.
5.3Transforming Institutional Governance
International experience shows clearly that those institutions that are well governed are far more likely to be effective in poverty reduction than are those that are not[3]. Capacity is needed within government to establish appropriate policies and for an efficient and accountable public administration to carry them out. Recent findings suggest that one key role of aid projects is to support the creation of an effective public service. Where there is demand for change, the main rationale of aid projects must be support reforms of sector institutions and policies and demonstrate new ways of achieving development results[4].
Better institutional governance is required in a great variety of public sector institutions at the local and national government levels. In practice, this implies that standards of honesty, integrity and probity are set and adhered to; that legislative oversight is clearly established and practiced; that the institutions have well-defined systems of responsibility and accountability, base their operations on professional management systems and operate with adequate resources and suitable systems of institutional incentives. Public sector institutions need to have the capability to plan and set their policies in ways that are consistent with good governance practices. Towards this end, public institutions will be encouraged to prepare rolling business plans, introduce result-oriented monitoring systems and adopt performance appraisal systems. Well-designed reform programs can build effectively governed public institutions by helping with the experimentation, learning, dissemination of good practices and implementation of new approaches to service delivery.
Institutional governance reform must also be complemented by better macro-governance. Efforts to improve macro-governance will focus first on measures aimed at tightening financial accountability and increase public awareness of the consequences of waste, fraud and abuse of public funds. This involves a wide range of measures aimed at overcoming delays in procurement, strengthening departmental and agency-head internal controls and audits, improving the timeliness of public accounts, rigorously enforcing sanctions for delays and lapses in controls, enhancing financial transparency and augmenting the capability of the press to report on business and financial matters[5].
5.4 Making the Law Accessible to the Poor
Bringing the rule of law within the reach of the poor is another way of enhancing governance and empowering poor communities. The creation of mediation boards composed of community volunteers, under the supervision of the Ministry of Justice, have provided a legitimate, state-sanctioned way to solve local problems through negotiation and compromise. The adoption of alternative dispute resolution mechanisms reduces costs to the poor and has helped reduce the volume of work in the courts. Further efforts to broaden access to community-staffed mediation boards, together with efforts aimed at reducing the volume of work in the courts can help to strengthen the faith of the poor in the legal system, while easing the court delays that most often adversely affect the most vulnerable litigants.
5.5 Reversing Gender Discrimination
Compared to the rest of South Asia, Sri Lankan women are well-off, enjoying universal suffrage, high life expectancy, universal literacy and access to employment opportunities, unmatched in the rest of the sub-continent. Paradoxically, those segments of the economy dominated by female labour (tea, garments and migratory labour) were the main engines of economic growth in the 1990s. Still, gender discrimination exists and is associated with gender stereotyping in the labour force, wage discrimination, and the adverse effects of alcoholism and spousal abuse on women[6]. The Government is committed to mainstreaming gender considerations in all anti-poverty efforts, and to developing special public health programs in the areas of alcoholism and spousal abuse. This will require continued efforts to train staff in gender analysis and gender monitoring and evaluation, as well as a conscious effort to incorporate gender considerations in program and project design[7]. The primary emphasis in micro-finance and small-enterprise credit programs will be women’s groups. Community organizations can play an important role in sensitizing poor women, raising awareness, overturning prejudice, addressing social problems specific to particular sub-groups of the poor (e.g. alcoholism, violence in the home, dislocation), transforming attitudes and lobbying for change. The Government will also work with NGOs and community organizations to assist women’s groups build larger and more dynamic organizations that can give political voice to anti-discrimination measures.
5.6 Redistributing Capital to the Socially Excluded.
Social exclusion is a problem experienced by a number of distinct socio-ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, including:
- Victims of the Civil Conflict. Several hundred thousand families have been displaced from their homes; exposed to violence, loss of life and disability; subject to extended stays in welfare centers, and forced to bear the physical and emotional strains of the long-standing conflict. The 170,000 families in welfare centres, many of those recently resettled and large numbers residing in border villages have lost their private, public and social capital to the ethnic conflict. While the immediate imperative for these conflict victims is to address basic needs and restore access to essential services, the medium-term challenge is to heal ethnic tensions, rebuild social networks and provide access to economic opportunity.
- The Urban Ultra-Poor. The slum and shanty dwellers reportedly account for nearly 50% of the total population resident in Colombo City limits. Within this group, the ultra-poor are the homeless and those with extremely irregular earnings. Congested inner-city neighborhoods characterized by deteriorated old buildings are typically referred to as “slums” while new communities formed on encroached crown land along rivers, canal banks, railway tracts and beaches are known as “shanties”. Housing, sanitation and common amenities in both kinds of communities are extremely substandard except where improvements have been made under various upgrading programs. Certain types of illegal operations including prostitution, illicit brewing of alcohol, drugs and organized crime are known to exist in these communities. Often they have problems with law enforcement authorities. Due to lack of title to land in the case of shanties, the shanty-dwellers often have problems with the state and municipal administration.
- The Village Expansion Colonies. These settlements have been established under the Land Development Ordinance of 1935 in order to settle the landless poor from villages especially in the wet zone. Colonists tend to come from a category at the bottom of the economic ladder. They often share social characteristics, which tend to mark them off from the bulk of the villagers. The land, which is distributed, is almost always barren and often very hilly. Some of these colonies thus tend to be located in interior areas with poor roads and limited access to such services as shops, schools, buses and electricity.
- Social Outcasts. The absence of a rigid notion of untouchability and corresponding forms of social outcasting can be seen as a progressive element in Sri Lankan society. However, depressed caste communities do exist in parts of Sri Lanka. Often they have limited property ownership in part as a cumulative effect of being share tenants and bonded servants of high caste land-owning families. Youth from these communities have been attracted to underground political movements due to their experiences of injustice, discrimination and lack of dignity.
- Squatter Settlers and poor fishing communities. Squatter settlements in marginal farming systems are found mainly in remote dry zone areas such as Moneragala, Hambantota and the Kurunegala Districts. They are faced with environmental hazards, physical isolation, poor access to services and absence of strong community organizations. Some of these fishing communities are characterized by seasonal unemployment, identification with an occupation considered to be inappropriate by mainstream society, and behavioral patterns commanding less respect from the surrounding communities.
- Estate workers can be seen as ethnic enclaves essentially restricted to employment opportunities available in the estates, poor housing and sanitation, and substandard health and education facilities. The key problems faced by estate youth in accessing outside employment include lack of marketable skills, language difficulties, lack of contact outside the estate, absence of identity cards and birth certificates and other such constraints. Neither the state nor the private estate companies are providing the full range of social services available to other low-income communities.
The poverty in these communities is not merely due to lack of economic assets. Social marginalization, geographical isolation, powerlessness and an inability to access resources controlled by the state and the private sector often accompany the poor economic situation. These communities have chronic and multiple disadvantages in housing, infrastructure, health, education and other services, making it difficult for individual households to escape poverty on their own. Tied relations with non-institutional money lenders and traders, inability to access institutional credit and inability to utilize market mechanisms giving better terms of trade are further aspects of social marginalization affecting these communities[8].