Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 13 (IANS) The countries of South Asia should join hands to launch a war on poverty in the region just as they have done with the war against terrorism, says Farzana Raza, Pakistan’s federal minister and chairperson of a flagship poverty alleviation scheme.

“We should launch a war against poverty and treat it in the same manner as we treat the war against terrorism,” Raza, chairperson of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), a position that carries ministerial rank, told IANS here in an interview.

“Just as the war against terror is not one country’s war, we have to fight collectively poverty in the region. We have moved from global village to universal family, built on principles of equality,” said Raza, a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly.

Raza was here to participate in the South Asia Forum, a Track 1.5 initiative that brought together government officials, businessmen, media and academics to generate “out of box ideas” for spurring greater regional economic integration and people-to-people contact in the region. Track 1.5 denotes informal dialogue and problem-solving formats with high ranking politicians and decision-makers.

She stressed that poverty is one of the root causes of insurgency by non-state actors and militants in the region. “It diverts resources and focus of the governments away from the welfare of the people and ends up increasing poverty,” she said.

“We want to see people of every country in the SAARC region to benefit from the South Asian integration. For this to succeed, we have to take along those people who are facing chronic and extreme poverty to enter a new century and era,” the 41-year-old legislator said.

Outlining key achievements of BISP, Raza underlined that the programme currently provides cash transfers to almost six million families and has contributed to women’s social and economic empowerment by making women the primary focus of BISP’s montly cash transfers and other benefits like life and health insurance and micro-finance.

“We have done a poverty census. We have collected data on 27 million families, which amounts to 45 million people. All SAARC countries should go in for poverty census. SAARC should launch a well-coordinated poverty reduction strategy,” she said.

Raza lauded India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) and said countries of the region should proactively learn from each other about their poverty reduction strategies.

The BISP got Rs.70 billion to provide cash assistance to five million families which constitutes almost 15 percent of the entire population in Pakistan. The programme aims at covering almost 40 percent of the population below the poverty line.

Pakistan has a population of around 170 million.

Ahead of the next South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in the Maldives Nov 10-11, Raza pushed for greater economic integration in South Asia and stressed that the regional forum should move beyond rhetoric to concrete time-bound programmes.

“We have to set time-frames and concrete goals rather than just talk. There should be thorough appraisal and performance evaluation. We have to have accountability,” she said.

Connecting hearts and minds is equally important for the South Asia dream to take wings, she said.

“Physical connectivity is just not enough. We need to have connectivity of minds and hearts and have better communication,” she added.

(Manish Chand can be contacted at manish.c@ians.in)