DEVELOPMENT-SOUTH ASIA: Corruption Halts Social Wellbeing Of Poor

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Sep 14 1999 (IPS) - A U.N-supported study on human development in South Asia has slammed governments for corruption, an inefficient bureaucracy and discrimination of women, and says the region is one of the worst governed in the world.

“South Asia has a history of democratic institutions but studies show that the democracy that is practiced here is not at all conducive to the welfare of the people,” Khadija Haq of the Islamabad-based Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre (HDC) told reporters in Colombo Tuesday.

She was speaking at the launch of the 1999 Human Development report for South Asia prepared by the HDC and supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The HDC is the brainchild of Khadija’s late husband, Mahbub ul Haq, economist and former Finance and Planning Minister of Pakistan. Haq, who died last year, was the architect of the UNDP’s Human Development Report launched in 1990.

This year’s South Asia report titled ‘The Crisis of Governance’ deals with a range of issues like poverty, corruption, governance, economies, military spending, gender discrimination and social injustice.

It says that the region remained divided between the hopes of the rich and the despair of the poor in which the richest one- fifth earned almost 40 percent of the region’s income and the poorest one-fifth “makes do with less than 10 percent”.

“… where today begins the struggle of survival for 115 million poverty-ridden destitutes, and tomorrow threatens the future of 395 million illiterate adults; where women are often denied basic human rights; and minorities continue to struggle against prejudice and discrimination. At the threshold of the 21st century this is the South Asia that we live in,” the report noted.

Peter Witham, UNDP resident representative in Sri Lanka, said the Haq-guided Human Development Reports have had a tremendous impact in the world and revolutionised the way the UN system approaches development.

“There has been an enormous impact on development arising out of these reports,” he said.

South Asia, the report says, was facing a crisis of governance which, if left unchecked, could halt the region’s democratic progress and economic social well being of its teeming millions.

It spoke of the nuclear crisis in Pakistan and India; weak coalition governments in India and Sri Lanka that are unable to guarantee a full term in office; political demonstrations and strikes that force Bangladesh to regularly shut down and urban chaos from the streets of Karachi to the war-ravaged Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka.

“All the nations face the pernicious evils of endemic corruption, social exclusion and inefficient civil services which plague them uniformly.”

Income disparities in South Asia were one of the largest in the world with women suffering the most. The report said South Asia had emerged as one of the most poorly governed regions in the world with exclusion of the voiceless majority, unstable political regimes and poor economic management.

“The systems of governance have become unresponsive and irrelevant to the needs and concerns of the people,” it said.

In many South Asian states, democracy was fast turning into an empty ritual with elections being the only bridge between the state and society, the report said while noting that voter interest was also fast fading.

The report said that while trade taxes, overall budget deficits, military spending as a percentage of combined health and education expenditures have declined and foreign investment has risen, only one percent paid taxes. Capital expenditure had fallen, while the number of non-performing loans was rising and the black economy was around 25-35 percent of GDP.

Though South Asia has undertaken structural adjustments in recent years, the burden of adjustment fell on the poor with social and development expenditures being slashed.

Deprivation made South Asia an ideal breeding ground for crime and violence, it said. Besides being ravaged by a 17-year long civil war, Sri Lanka had the region’s highest rate of murders and armed robberies with nine murders and 20 armed robberies per 100,000 people.

Bangladesh recorded the region’s highest rate of car thefts and rapes per 100,000 people while India witnessed 23,000 dowry

deaths since 1994.

“With life so insecure and liberty so vulnerable, South Asia is in need of a new compact between people and the state,” the report said reflecting on the large number of battles between competing interests pitting caste against caste, race against race.

The UN-backed report also dealt at length on corruption saying the evidence from South Asia was stark.

“If corruption levels in India were reduced to those in the Scandinavian countries, investment rates could increase annually by 12 percent and the GDP growth rate by almost 1.5 percent. If Bangladesh were to improve the integrity of its bureaucracy to Uruguay’s level, its yearly GDP growth could rise. And if Pakistan were to reduce corruption to the Singapore level, its annual per capital GDP over the period 1960-1985 could have been much higher.”

The report said that corruption in South Asia was unique because it led to promotion not prison and a flight of capital while resulting in massive human deprivation and even more extreme income inequalities.

HDC president Haq said that next year’s report would focus on gender and disparities.

“South Asia is the most gender-insensitive region in the world and has failed women and children in all social aspects – education, health or politics. Previous reports have raised these issues but the situation seems to get worse,” she warned.

Haq said the HDC planned to present a comprehensive analysis on the gender issue with inputs from gender experts in the region. “We are looking at the whole gender question in South Asia – where we were then and where we are now,” she noted.