Version:
Mohammad Sheikh Kamaluddin Sharon.
Author and columnist.
Love could not be explained even by Keupeti, I am an insignificant human being. I am not saying that Cupit is not a man! I say, there is a lot of difference between his conscience and my conscience. However, I am very upset today. Maybe everyone’s mind is bad, it is very difficult to have a bad heart. Frustration starts from being over-demanded or better liked. Many times we get upset due to misunderstandings. Sadness is a very dear thing to many, as if it does not want to move away from them. So even if you want to keep yourself happy at this time, you cannot keep yourself happy.
I will die suddenly one day, I will not be the cause of anyone’s sadness.
The things that are desired from the mind, at one time become the cause of depression.
The nights of depression are too long. It’s better to say I’m fine than to explain why someone’s upset. Still, being good in the battle for survival is extremely difficult.
In the afternoon suddenly felt upset. I was wandering around different places after leaving my workplace. In the middle of the path I was walking along, there was a house I knew. Some of my acquaintances live in that house. I remembered one of them. Just in time, I started calculating whether to enter the house or not. I shook off all doubts and entered the house. Stepping up to enter the house, as soon as I entered the gate, I was shocked! This is a strange thing! Big people may be unhappy with millions of rupees. Some, some shed tears in deep solitude in the darkness of the night. But poor people are unhappy only because of lack of money. But they are not unhappy because of too much money, they are unhappy only because of the lack of some money to survive on pulses and rice.
As soon as I entered the gate, right in front of my eyes, a 16-17 year old girl was lying blocking the gate. He has a slim and fit body. Seeing me, a woman was fixing the girl’s clothes. I threw out my question to a few people. What happened to him? One said it hit the nail in the teeth. Why did this happen? In response to such question, the girl’s mother said: I asked to go to the office, not going to the office, then I asked her to leave the room, she came to the balcony and hit her head on the pillar of the balcony. Now unconscious. I said to the girl’s mother, the girl is lying on the ground in the cold, pick up the girl and put her to sleep at home. Hearing me say this, the teenage mother said: Lie down here, or let us die.
Poverty is a cruel curse. This curse eats away at people. Instead of advancing civilization, it sets back. It can reduce humanity to the level of animality. Burned alive by the sting of poverty and hunger, oblivious to justice and injustice, the human race plunged into sin and unknowingly proceeded on the path of self-destruction. The sense of humanity disappears due to this brutal poverty, violence spreads, and injustice spreads. A woman gives away her carefully cherished chastity, a man does not hesitate to sell a piece of his liver for children, even to kill. Poverty is like anemia. Money does for man what blood does for man’s body. Blood is the regulator of human body and life status. When anemia occurs, the human body becomes a home for various incurable diseases. Similarly, if there is a shortage of resources, people’s lives inevitably become stagnant.
Poverty is an economic condition when a person loses the ability to achieve a minimum standard of living and purchase the essentials of life due to low income. Cultural arbitrariness and aggression, population pressure, economic distress, social and political problems and natural calamities like floods , droughts , etc. create poverty .
A simple and unidimensional definition was used in Bangladesh to measure poverty in the 1980s. According to this definition, poverty is a level of food intake that does not provide the required amount of kilo-calories for energy storage. Estimates of the population living in poverty are prepared in several ways. First, by combining consumption habits and costs, a food list is identified that can provide a certain amount of nutrients, namely 2,112 kcal and 58 g of protein per person per day. Subsequently, households with per capita income less than 1.25 times the specified food expenditure are classified as middle class poor and households with per capita income less than 85% of the prescribed starting income are classified as extremely poor. Generally the above method was used to measure incidence and level of poverty in rural areas. The initial level of caloric intake in the poverty measure for urban areas was slightly higher than that for rural areas. However, the starting level of kilocalories per person has changed over time due to changing circumstances and policies. In this method, the data and information used for poverty estimation are taken from the Food Expenditure Determination Survey of Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.
According to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) estimates, 47.1% of the rural population live below the poverty line and 24.6% live below the extreme poverty line. On the other hand, 49.7% of urban areas live below the poverty line and 27.3% live below the extreme poverty line. The BBS used the Basic Needs Expenditure Mechanism in 1995 to measure the incidence and level of poverty. In this system, the poor are divided into poor and non-poor and 35.6% of the total population of the country is identified as non-poor and 53.1% as poor. Multidimensional measurement of poverty takes into account many qualitative factors or variables such as nutrition, health, sanitation, safety, housing facilities, potable water, education, life expectancy, rights to share and enjoy resources and institutional facilities and capacity to cope with or mitigate problems. is By adding these variables to the Human Resource Development Index (HDI) in 2000, Bangladesh was ranked 132nd. And according to the Human Development Index (HDI) published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in 2007-08, Bangladesh ranks 140th in the world in terms of quality of life. On the other hand, Bangladesh Economic Survey – 2009 report shows that 40% people live below the poverty line.
Bangladesh’s ongoing poverty is due to multiple factors, such as overpopulation pressure, limited natural resources per capita, distribution and utilization of resources, illiteracy, low per capita arable land and forests, poor health and sanitation, sanitation problems, environmental degradation, deforestation, overdependence on agriculture, Natural disasters, violence against women and deprivation of women and poor governance are responsible.
After the partition of India in 1947, the government of Pakistan followed a policy of favoritism towards East Pakistan. The government of Pakistan provides special patronage to the private sector in West Pakistan using the country’s resources. East Pakistan, on the other hand, was forced to depend on the public sector with minimal funding. Industrialization programs were carried out in West Pakistan with the proceeds of East Pakistan. And East Pakistan was kept entirely dependent on agriculture. As a result, the average income of an East Pakistani citizen in 1958 was 74% of that of a West Pakistani. Because of this, the poverty situation in East Pakistan continued and it engulfed post-independence Bangladesh as well. In 1985, the average per capita income of a Bangladeshi was only 40% of that of a Pakistani, 19% of a Thai, and only 7% of a South Korean.
There is another significant reason for Bangladesh’s long-term poverty situation. The number of people at the bottom of the income distribution 50, 100 or 150 years ago is much smaller today. In the 1830s the daily rate of agricultural wages was 6 kg of rice. In the 1880s it was slightly more than 5 kg. In the 1930s, an agricultural laborer could buy five and a half kilograms of coarse rice with his one day’s wages, which remains the same at the beginning of the 21st century. But for a farmer or agricultural laborer the balance in the terms of trade of industry and agriculture in the same economy is largely degraded. This proves that a person in the rural areas of Bangladesh is living in a worse condition than ever before.
Another reason for the suffering of the people of Bangladesh lies in the devastation of the 1971 liberation war. The nine-month-long war destroyed nearly one-third of Bangladesh’s total wealth, and the country’s economy suffered severe setbacks early on. With its own limited resources and foreign aid, Bangladesh has had to resettle 10 million refugees returning from India and 20 million people on its own from Pakistani devastation inside the country. Moreover, the global economic recession, rising prices of food, fuel, fertilizers, etc., and the growing deficit in the balance of trade seriously hit the economy of Bangladesh. In 1974, crop losses and a slowdown in foreign aid receipts pushed the country’s economy to a more fragile state. As a result, Bangladesh almost reached the brink of famine in 1974. As a result, the number of destitute people continued to rise and in 1975, about 83% of the country’s total population lived below the poverty line. The situation subsequently improved slightly and the number of people living below the poverty line fell to 74% in 1981-82. After that the poverty situation started to improve somewhat. After some time, the development of the country stagnated again and due to the terrible floods of 1987 and 1988, Bangladesh again faced socio-economic disaster. Post-floods in 1988-89, the country saw a bumper crop of food grains and some progress in economic growth. But in the next 2-3 years, there was no stable development in the country’s poverty situation.
In the 1990s, the people of the country suffered from abject poverty due to discriminatory distribution and imperfect utilization of land, lack of ownership of land and non-land resources by the poor, technical and engineering backwardness, discriminatory income distribution and political instability. With a per capita income of only US$423 (2005), Bangladesh is one of the poorest, densely populated and least developed countries in the world, with widespread poverty in both urban and rural areas. During the period 1990-2004, 41.3% of the total population earned less than $1 per day and 84% earned less than $2 per day. After 2004 there was no significant change in the situation but inequality and unemployment became more pronounced. The majority of Bangladesh’s population lives in rural areas, where income inequality and unemployment continue to rise. At constant 1963/64 prices, the Gini index of income distribution in rural and urban areas of Bangladesh in 1973/74 was 0.340 and 0.375 respectively. 0.362 and 0.365 in 1985/86 and 0.384 and 0.444 in 1995-96 respectively. In 2000, the poorest 10% of Bangladesh had a share of only 3.7% of national income or consumption, of which the poorest 20% had 8.6% and the richest 20% had 42.7% and the richest 10% had 27.9%. %.
The government of Bangladesh has been making efforts to eradicate poverty through rural development programs for a long time. Efforts related to poverty alleviation are multi-faceted, among them rural cooperative societies, credit system, irrigation system, fisheries and livestock development, establishment of industries in rural areas, area-based development, infrastructure development, various training programs etc. In order to improve the quality of life of the rural people, emphasis on rural development has been emphasized in all the five-year plans of the country adopted so far. ‘Bangladesh Rural Development Board’ is a large and powerful agency of the government in rural development. Rural Development Board is continuously implementing various programs for poverty alleviation. Among these programs are the formation of village-based cooperative societies and their patronage, human resource development, expanded irrigation schemes, infrastructure development, supply of agricultural inputs to increase agricultural production and employment generation for the rural poor. Among the other poverty alleviation programs already implemented by the government are Guchchagram (1988-93), Dustha Development Scheme (1990-92), Upazila Resource Development and Employment Scheme, Training related to silk production and development and providing assistance and sponsorship to self-employment initiatives.
Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Bangladesh Small and Cottage Industries Organization, Department of Social Welfare, Directorate of Women, Local Government Engineering Department, Directorate of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Department etc. government agencies are involved in poverty alleviation and their respective departmental poverty alleviation projects are under implementation. On the other hand, a large number of local and foreign NGOs are implementing various programs in the country to create employment opportunities for the poor women, small and marginal farmers, and unemployed youth through financial support and to alleviate poverty. Among NGOs heavily involved in poverty alleviation activities
Grameen Bank , BRAC , Asha, Prashika have already been appreciated at home and abroad for their activities. Among the government-sponsored agencies involved in poverty alleviation, the Self-Reliance Bangladesh Programme, a credit scheme for small farmers, is well known. In addition, the Rural Finance Experimental Project, the Bangladesh-Swiss Agricultural Project, and the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Development Project of the Norwegian Development Agency NORAD are particularly noteworthy among the poverty alleviation projects in Bangladesh funded by various donor organizations and local sources. Apart from the mentioned programs for poverty alleviation some other conventional programs are in operation. However, there is no reliable evidence of the contribution of these special purpose programs in poverty alleviation. The list of such programs includes food for work program (Kabikha), food for education (Shibikha), old age allowance, housing for the poor and homeless, supply of pesticides and seeds of high yielding varieties, VGD etc. The government is implementing various programs for the development and expansion of the non-agricultural sector with the aim of creating employment opportunities at an increased rate. As a result of all these single and integrated initiatives, the rights of the poor have been recognized to some extent and their social and economic awareness has increased and their empowerment is also taking place. However, the overall contribution of these traditional programs to the development of poverty is not significant. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), the national poverty rate was 47% in 1996, which has been reduced to 44.7% and 42% in 1999 and 2010, respectively. Dr. BIDS. Vinayek Sen said, between 2005-2010 poverty alleviation in Bangladesh went from 45.7% to 32.1% that is only 13.6% but nationally it is 8.5%. According to the recent Household Expenditures Survey (HEI), poverty alleviation has decreased by 4.25% annually on an average in Rajshahi and Khulna where the rate of decrease was 8.68% and 8.4% respectively but only in Dhaka it was 0.98%. So poverty alleviation in Bangladesh is still a challenge. Tackling poverty requires proper planning, state and political commitment and concentration, and above all efficient and coordinated practical initiatives and initiatives.
