Daily Times

“I sold my kidney for eighty thousand rupees ten years ago to secure freedom of my entire family from debt-bondage. I am as poor today as my father was at the time of my birth. Like me, my children and their children will remain poor. This is our destiny!”

This anecdote tells the untold story of those millions of poverty-strickenwhose lives often metamorphose into numbers and colourful sloping curves on the multimedia screens before the policy makers.

This January Oxfam has reported that only eight individuals own as much wealth as collectively owned by the bottom half of the world population! We now live in a world of extremes. Such inequality can be acceptable only if the life chances of those who constitute the ‘bottom billion’ are also improved.

Like rest of the world, Pakistan has committed to ‘end poverty in all its forms through “Sustainable Development Goals” by 2030. The very feeling that this developing nation is just thirteen years away from the utopian dawn of poverty free age is enough to intoxicate senses. The suffering and trauma arising from social exclusion cannot be fathomed by any income measure of poverty.

In the specific context of Pakistan, before making any poverty alleviation policy, a fundamental shift in the way the society and policy makers conceptualise the issue of poverty is important. In a democratic state, it is the nature of the citizen-state social contract and the consequent citizenship rights which determine the contours of state policies. This is now globally acknowledged, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) makes provision of basic health, education, food and shelter as part of fundamental human rights. When the idea of citizenship is embedded in state policies, then the poverty alleviation becomes a matter of inalienable rights having an additional instrumental value of cultivating solidarity among the citizens and forging strong ties between citizens and state. The rights-based approach towards citizenship cannot allow the state to stand as a neutral bystander while the poor suffer at the mercy of destiny.

The power of citizen welfare can be imagined from the fact that it was not the military might of NATO but the protection of the poorwhich shielded Western Europe from the onslaught of communist expansionism.

The architects of our Constitution were perhaps not oblivious to the importance of citizenship rights. The Article 38 explicitly guarantees that state shall secure the well-being of the people and promises provision of necessities including food, clothing, housing, education and healthcare for all.

But in Pakistan, these constitutional provisions have never been able to make their presence felt. Due to the absence of proper cognizance of such rights and an elite capture of policy formulation, the poor are never able to draw a focus of policy attention stemming from their citizenship rights. The aid industry has also never highlighted this aspect. To development experts and the development economists, the poor appear as an object of disciplining concern.

Consequently, distributive justice could never become a preferred choice and the policy focus primarily remained on the promotion of economic growth without any pro-poor redistribution policy. In December 2003,Shaukat Aziz as Finance Minister wrote in the foreword of IMF-sponsored Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP),“We understand that it is a trade which will ensure a sustainable reduction in poverty.”

For a moment just imagine Hayek and Friedman led by Adam Smith, all the great proponents of the free market, as policy advisers. Even they would have shied away from suggesting such an over-simplistic reliance on trade as poverty reduction strategy. Like rest of the former colonies, South Asia has been part of global trade now for several centuries. But the poverty has been on the rise.

The citizenship rights of the poor members of a society can help forge a cohesive society where the wealthy contribute to the welfare of the least advantaged members of society as fellow citizens. The is the nature of such relations which has enabled the Scandinavian states to rank consistently high on all global indicators of social development, egalitarianism and well-being.

A revisited citizen-state relationship can give rise to a welfare nationalism. For making a start in the welfare nationalism policy makers need nothing which is not already provided in the Constitution.If we like to move with a nudge, then a recent international development provides that nudge.

In 2012, International Labor Conference recommended that all states should guarantee nationally defined minimum Social Protection Floors (SPFs) to every citizen to walk with dignity on that basic social floor. Basicguarantees include access to health care and an income security for children, the poor, the unemployed, the sick, the disabled and the old. This is what our constitution has already guaranteed. Pakistan can opt to make a modest beginning while guaranteeing just any one such floor.

I can imagine the spontaneous reaction of our Chicago school public finance boys. They will say ‘No, this is not possible’. Yes, indeed this is impossible if we continue to adhere to our existing notions of poverty alleviation as a residual function of market forces.

But fortunately, there has been a visible indication of a turn in policy towards poverty alleviation. Both the current and the previous governments have demonstrated a commitment to conditional cash transfers (CCTs) to poor women as a core component of the Benazir Income Support Program (BISP). The recently present government has started a phased initiative of health coverage for the poor. Probably in line with the recently emerged global redistribution trends, this shift indicates a possibility of a gradual move towards clear recognition of poverty reduction as a citizenship right.

The international commitments of Pakistan towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Social Protection Floors (SPFs) have opened an avenue of re-evaluation and redirection of state priorities. There is an option of gradual extension of the SPFs guarantees. Even if on a full-scale such rights are not immediately realisable, by mere existence such ‘rights’ can generate a positive moral force benefitting the poor.

The immediate dividend will be much needed cementing of the bond between the citizens and state. This will be the best thing which can ever happen to any state. The unshaken faith of citizens in the state is the most formidable defenceagainst any existentialist threat.

The writer is public sector social and development policy analyst