By IPS Correspondents
KATHMANDU, Mar 8 2004 (IPS)

Fifty-five-year-old Santa Bahadur Majhi moved to Kathmandu from a remote village in Ramechhap district in eastern Nepal in 2000, the same year world leaders pledged to halve world’s poverty by 2015.

But four years on, the farmer-turned-rickshaw-puller’s plight has not become any better despite pledges by Nepal’s government to pay more attention to easing poverty.

“I came here with hopes that I would earn lots of money, become rich and send my kids to school,” Majhi said as he scanned the empty street of Kathmandu’s tourist district, Thamel, for passengers one afternoon. “But it is not so easy. Life is more difficult here.”

In Nepal’s bustling capital, the breadwinner of his family of five has to compete with younger rickshaw-pullers. His average daily income is less than one U.S. dollar.

Going back to his mountain village in Ramechhap is not any better an option either. “The terrain is rugged and one has to till the terrace-farms and work really hard to make a living,” he said. “Besides, people like us don’t own much land to till.”

Majhi is just one among the nearly 40 percent of Nepal’s 23 million people who earn less than a dollar a day – what government officials and development experts call absolute poverty.

Across South Asia, there are 500 million poor people like Majhi, out of the subcontinent’s 1.2 billion people. South Asia has the world’s largest concentration of the poor who live on less than a dollar a day.

These statistics make the goal of halving poverty in South Asia by 2015- a key goal in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the world’s governments – a daunting task, a fact highlighted in an early March meeting here of policymakers and officials from the Asia-Pacific.

Development experts urged South Asian governments to strive to meet the MDG goals, which include halving the proportion of the poor and the hungry by 2015, as heads of state of 149 countries pledged in September 2000.

Other goals for South Asia include achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and women empowerment, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and ensuring environmental sustainability.

According to a South Asian report on the MDGs, the region’s gross national income per capita at 460 dollars remains far behind that of developed countries, but it still has made significant progress in the past decade.

Since 1990, the subcontinent has experienced rapid Gross Domestic Product growth of an average 5.5 percent a year, a trend that the United Nations says has helped reduce poverty substantially.

India, the biggest and most populous country in the region, for one, has reduced its poverty rate by five to 10 percent since 1990.

Most other countries, too, have registered a significant reduction in poverty over the period except for Pakistan, where poverty incidence has stagnated at around 33 percent, according to U.N. figures.

Also, mortality in children under five in South Asia has fallen substantially since 1990 – from 129 to 99 per 1,000 – especially in Bangladesh – 144 to 77, per 1,000.

However, challenges remain in key areas as child malnutrition, maternal mortality, and gender balance in education and health. Nearly half of the region’s children under the age of five are malnourished and youth illiteracy – 23 percent for males and 39 percent for females – is high.

The resurgence of tuberculosis and the threat of HIV/AIDS are other areas of concern.

But South Asian leaders at a summit in January reiterated that poverty alleviation would be the “overarching goal” of member countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and approved a road map for poverty alleviation.

The leaders also signed the historic SAARC Social Charter, which officials say reflects many of the priorities identified by the Millennium Summit where the MDGs were set.

Thus far, India is already above target and in terms of statistics, the region as a whole is close to achieving the goals, according to officials.

“The overall performance is mixed,” SAARC secretary-general Q Rahim said at the meeting held late February at the SAARC Secretariat here.”But our main challenge is to reduce poverty and hunger, improve maternal health, reduce infant mortality.”

Experts add that for countries to meet the MDG goals, they have to be incorporated as top-priority goals.

“There is this real need to incorporate the goals and targets under the MDGs into (the respective governments’) periodic plans,” said Yubaraj Khatiwada, a member of Nepal’s National Planning Commission.

Forging partnerships with bilateral and multilateral donor agencies, and ensuring constant monitoring of development programmes were the other recommendations made at the gathering.

“Next step, after doing national reporting, is to help all the people understand the goals and targets,” said Erna Witoelar, the U.N. special ambassador for MDGs for Asia and the Pacific. Most importantly, “at the national and district levels, we need to change the way we are doing governance”.

But just outside the meeting venue, the SAARC Secretariat, not many Nepalis could see a link between the high-level meeting with their own lives.

“I know that there was a big meeting going on inside the huge premises,” said Majhi, the rickshaw-puller, as he puffed a cigarette and waited for passengers. ”I don’t think such meetings help us much. All big shots gather and eat a lot, there’s nothing for us. I think they should find some other ways to help us out.”

His clothes tattered and his eyes lost in the horizon, Majhi says he did not know anything about MDGs, the United Nations or SAARC.

Carefully listening to him telling his story were two homeless children, 12-year-old Raju Pariyar and 13-year-old Ram. When two western tourists come by, the two began tagging along. In broken English, one of them said: “Give me ten rupees, Sir. I am hungry!”

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