After the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, the world was mesmerized again for a couple of days during the MDG review summit this year.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are simply admired by many as they are quite straightforward, modest, practically measurable and, in presence of firm political commitment and global solidarity, quite easily achievable too!

The MDGs have been at the centre of development objectives in the developing world since they were framed in the year 2000 at the UN Millennium Summit. Almost all developing nations take into account of the MDGs when they are framing their domestic development policies. It is very likely that the pattern will continue for many more years.

On the other hand, the MDGs have served as the crux of cooperation that binds the developed and the developing world. In many instances, the MDGs have been used as bargaining tools in negotiations between the two worlds.

Interestingly, the MDGs are not aimed at the developing world only. The goal 8 requires the developed world to fulfill its promise of development assistance. So the MDGs are the tests both rich and the poor world will have to pass. So the victory over the MDGs will be equally shared by both developing and the developed world.

Rich countries have renewed their soft commitment to increase support in the developing world, but given the pervasive financial crisis at home, they will have to think of and find alternative sources for helping the poor. In absence of that, all the promises will go in vain again. In that sense, however, the review summit can be taken as a success as it gave space to alternative viewpoints of financing development in the developing world. 

EAST AFRICA: Community radio reaches refugees with HIV messages...

NGARA, 1 October 2010 (PlusNews) - 
An FM radio station broadcasting from the western Tanzanian town of Ngara is bringing vital HIV prevention information to thousands of Burundian and Rwandan refugees living in the region. A weekly 30-minute HIV-focused programme entitled, You and Me, Together We Can, is broadcast on Radio Kwizera to an estimated 90,000 refugees living in camps in northwestern Tanzania. Its coverage goes beyond the camps, reaching more than six million people in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Tanzania. "During our health broadcasts, there is real interaction with the people," said Father Damas Missanga, head of Radio Kwizera, which was founded in 1995 by the NGO Jesuit Refugee Service. "They call us and send SMS questions; we answer them on air." "Girls call in to tell us what is happening [such as] men who do not want to wear condoms," said Jean-Paul Basabose, the show's host. According to the station's editor-in-chief, Emmanuel Buhohela, the programme covers a raft of HIV prevention issues, reflecting the "social realities" of the refugee communities.
"We talk a lot about sex with [underage] girls," he said. "We tell pregnant women to go to a hospital to give birth because it is still very much the mentality that it must be done at home." The UN Refugee Agency has reported incidents of sexual exploitation of children in Tanzanian refugee camps.

Sorrows of Salt makers in India ...

After China and the USA, with an average annual production of about 18 million tonnes, India is the third largest salt producing country in the world. Of the total salt production of 260 million tonnes in the world, China accounts for 60 million tonnes and the US for 46 million tonnes. About 60 per cent of the global salt output is consumed by chemical industry, while 20 per cent goes for edible purposes and melting ice.

Salt is one of the essential items of human consumption. Current annual requirement of salt in India is estimated to be 6 million tonnes for edible use (including requirement of cattle) and 7 million tonnes for industrial use. Caustic soda, soda ash, chlorine, etc., are the major salt-based industries. Besides, about 1.5 million tonnes of salt is exported every year. The industry significantly earns foreign exchange to India. Private sector plays a dominant role contributing over 97% of the salt production, while the public sector contributes the rest. Co-operative sector contributes about 7% whereas the small-scale sector (less than 10 acres) accounts for nearly 30% of the total salt production in the country. Salt is Produced mainly in 6 states namely Gujarat, Rasasthan, Tamilnadu, Andrapradesh, Orissa and Karnataga.

Gujarat is the largest salt producing state in the country. Tamilnadu is the third largest salt producing state (till previous year Tamilnadu was the second largest). Tamilnadu contributes 30-35% of India's edible and industrial salt requirement, producing about 2.1 million tonnes. Tuticorin, Vedaraniyam and Marakkanam are three important salt producing clusters in the state. (Kelampakkam, Thiruporur, Adirampattinam,Ramanadapuram, Vayaloor and Kanyakumary are few other pockets where salt production is going on in smaller level)

The salt laborers are hard working, but still suffer in bad working and living conditions. In most cases, their basic identity of being a salt worker itself is denied. The primary stakeholder, the state, does not have a conscious approach to the suffering inflicted upon the salt workers. An assessment made by the Indian government’s Salt Commission on the livelihood conditions of Saltpan workers throughout the country states, “the salt workers are the poorest of the poor in the country”. In spite of all these findings, no specific step has been taken on their behalf so far. However, laborers employed by the private sector, public Sector, cooperatives are comparatively in a better position.

Due to various reasons, unfortunately, the condition of salt workers is still dismal in the country. Because of an intensive civil society intervention, on the direction of the High Court, Gujarat Government had formed a high-level empowerment committee for salt workers and had undertaken various meaningful efforts to improve the status of salt workers in Gujarat. Whereas, in other states, nothing has been significantly initiated.

Underlying Issues of small-scale salt workers in India

-Poor and fluctuating household income due to seasonality and calamities.

-Inadequate skills, inadequate access to state resources (including access to credit), no representation in decision making groups, Voiceless and somehow bonded working nature.

-Very poor working condition (no proper drinking water, no toilet facility, no shed for rest, no lights, no proper road, no first aid or health care facility, health hazards due to excessive heat in saltpan and no livelihood risk coverage)

-Poor living condition (living mostly in thatched shelters, poor sanitation, no proper drinking water, poor transport access, electricity etc.)

-Poor literacy level (Girl child school drop outs at 5th to 6th standard is very high among salt worker children. Because the women salt laborers, as they go to saltpans in very early (2-3am), the elder girl child is taking care of younger children, cooking and doing household works.

-Lack of awareness of their rights and inability to access government’s social safety net programs coupled with lack of appropriate forum and bargaining power.

-No proper information about salt laborers in the state, no priority to the salt workers in the policies and programs and etc.

Possible causes:

1. No collective strength or bargaining power

2. No or less skill

3. No or less proper state control on the industry

4. Discrimination on the basis of caste / gender, systematic hiding and denial of rights

Floods in Pakistan...

  

  

There is a joke that many say aptly describes Pakistan for her development and humanitarian donor nations, institutions and individuals. It goes:

One day an Angel brings the news of a frightening super cyclone in California to God. God sends the angel away saying, “The Americans know what to do. They will do it.”

Another group tells of an industrial chemical leak in Germany. God is not interested saying, “The Germans will work it out”.

There is also news of a devastating earthquake in Japan. God pays no attention saying, “They Japanese will innovate and continue.”

Then comes a junior angel carrying news of floods in Pakistan. God jumps up and orders all to follow him in aiding the disaster hit nation. The angels ask God what was so special about Pakistan that He was rushing to their aid!

“I have to. They will do nothing themselves for they have left everything at God’s will!”

And God is what most people had with them when the worst floods in history struck with a vengeance and lingered on for over two months with a cruel persistence!

The floods in Pakistan are far from over despite it being over two months since the disaster started with abnormal monsoon cloud bursts in Kashmir, Ladakh, north-western Pakistan and Afghanistan. Sadly, it is actually worsening for the most vulnerable among the 20 million people affected.

More than 10.5 million people are on the move on roads looking for refuge and shelter. A very small fraction of this population has so far found shelter in government facilities or temporary camps set-up by NGOs and international relief agencies. A majority of this displaced population has lived in open fields and without proper shelter, food, medicines or protection.

According to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, the inundations affected 20 million people, killing more than 1,800 and damaging 1.9 million homes. The losses helped push rice in Chicago to the highest level since May and boosted cotton to the most expensive in 15 years in New York.

“Losses to rice, cotton and sugar crops come to US$3.27 billion,” calculates Federal Agriculture Minister Nazar Muhammad Gondal. Wheat and rice are the two staples for Pakistan’s people, and the government and international relief agencies have found it hard to provide food for affected areas. The United Nations said damage to infrastructure may hurt farmers for years.

Most of the make-shift camps are without essential services and poorly managed. Government schools are used to camp displaced population and most of these buildings are already in dilapidated conditions and cannot house victims for a long time. The government and humanitarian agencies have not been able to set-up tent facilities, thus increasing risks of shocks and vulnerabilities.

The food, medicines, water, non-food items and temporary shelters provided by government, NGOs, philanthropists and international groups are far less than the demand. It is predicted that the trauma is still not over as more monsoon is predicted and will add more volume of water in the river system. Proving the local saying hardship seldom comes alone, the disaster of floods in Pakistan is not the only calamity that ails both state and society here. Floods are obviously the biggest natural disaster ever to hit this country. But for the people it comes to join another three disasters they have been trying to survive: Security, Governance and Environment.

 All three have a direct bearing and impact on the disaster brought by the biggest floods this country has ever seen. The size and scope of the floods disaster is so large that it affects everything in its wake. But as for the suffering of the flood-affected people of Pakistan, the three are inexorably intertwined and create the reality in which the weaker suffer more from floods with little hope of help but from God All Mighty!

Security is a big and continuous disaster in Pakistan. The ongoing war against Taliban and Al-Qaida in Pakistan added to the miseries of flood affected people as the state remained challenged and unavailable to help its citizens.

Monsoon floods started in Baluchistan on July 22 this year. Extreme Floods hit Kashmir, Skardu, Gilgit-Baltistan and Dir, Swat, Charsada, Nowshehra and Peshawar in the Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KPK) province, formerly known as the NWFP, on July 29. Ethnic violence erupted in Karachi on August 02 with 32 killed in a single day. The Commandant of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC) was killed along with his two gunmen and a civilian in a suicide attack close to his office on August 04 in his Peshawar office as 19 more were killed in Karachi.

Media coverage is one yard stick to measure how much resource security occupied versus rescue and relief for the disaster stricken poor people of the country. As floods ravaged the Kyber-Pakhtunkhawa and south Punjab, President Asif Ali Zardari was on his Euro tour. More than floods, it was the war against terror that kept him occupied in Europe. He told the French newspaper Le Monde that coalition forces were “losing the war against the Taliban” in Afghanistan. “The international community, to which Pakistan belongs to, is losing the war against the Taliban. This is above all because we have lost the battle to win hearts and minds,” he said, in published comments.

When Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, US Special Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, said on September 17 in Islamabad that the Government in Pakistan was not drowning in the floods though it was facing “unbelievably difficult circumstances,” he was showing the linkages between the first two and the third disaster blamed on human induced environmental changes .

And so did the United States President Barack Obama when he sent his condolences to the families of the victims of the devastating floods in Pakistan pledging support in Pakistan’s challenging relief and rescue effort. “Our relationship with Pakistan goes far beyond our shared commitment to fight extremists.

“The United States government stands ready to continue to assist Pakistani authorities address the difficult challenges posed by this natural disaster,” Michael Hammer, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said.

Little wonder, therefore, that United Kingdom, Germany, Saudi Arabia and America were the first rich nations to commit themselves to large flood donations within days of the disaster's strike. The United States has donated the most, at least $70 million, and has sent military helicopters to rescue stranded people and drop of food and water. Washington hopes the assistance will help improve its image in the country — however marginally — as it seeks its support in the battle against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.

Britain, Pakistan's former colonial ruler, was the second largest donor, pledging over $32 million. Other major donations included $13 million from Germany, $10 million from Australia, $5 million from Kuwait, $3.5 million from Japan and $3.3 million from Norway.

Pakistan's worst floods in recorded history spread throughout the country affecting 20 million people and

62,000 square miles (160,000 square kilometers) of land or one-fifth of the country. The flooding also devastated parts of northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, which has seen some of the fiercest fighting in Pakistan's war against Taliban insurgents. People in the Swat Valley - who had been trying to rebuild their lives following a massive military operation against the Taliban last year - have been particularly badly affected.

Once the floods recede, billions more dollars will be needed for reconstruction and getting people back to work in the already-poor nation of 170 million people. The International Monetary Fund has warned the floods could dent economic growth and fuel inflation. The scale of the disaster raises global concerns for the country pivotal to defeating al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The floods are already destabilizing Pakistan’s weak civilian government. Political chaos, affecting more than just Pakistan, is also likely to follow.

Governance compounded the natural disaster paralyzing institutions and systems. The disaster response not only manifested Pakistan’s administrative adequacy but also showed all that no system can function without organizational discipline and accountability.

There were two waves of floods in Pakistan. One was caused by extreme weather disturbances that brought the sudden flood calamity in NWFP. The worse was, however, the lingering mismanagement to save the crumbling infrastructure for water resources management on the Indus River. The greater tragedy had a human hand!

In the North-West, a massive cascade of waters, triggered by heavy monsoon rains starting on July 28, swept through the region, washing away homes, roads, bridges, crops and livestock. Yet the floods persist after two months despite the fact that the monsoon season in Pakistan has been over since the first week of September!

The Flood debacle in Sindh has unmasked the fragility of governance structure where individuals dominated the rules of business. An initial relief breach in Tori bund wreaked havoc in the province. Millions of people living in the upper half of Sindh from Kashmore to Dadu/Jamshoro had to pay the price through their misery.

There are 1600 miles (nearly 2400 km) of embankments (or levees or dykes), mostly made of earth or a mix of stones and earth, along the rivers in Punjab alone. They have been built to save cities and human settlements from the overflowing rivers. In Sindh, from Guddu barrage near the border of the Punjab up to Kotri, there is a wall of embankments along the Indus. But due to silt depositions and wear and tear of the levees, this protective wall has weakened. Massive corruption in the provincial irrigation departments and the pilferage of money is another cause why dykes breach when floods come.

As water rises in rivers, the embankment near the Kot Addu was breached by authorities to save the Taunsa Barrage because water level was rising above 1.1 million cusecs and the entire canal system from the Taunsa Barrage was at risk. The breach in the left marginal embankment created a parallel channel for the swollen Indus River. The resulting flood devastated dozens of towns like Dera Din Pannah, Kot Addu, Sinawan, Mehmood Kot, Gurmani, Qasba Gujrat, Qasba Ghazi Ghat and Khar Gharbi. An estimated 300,000 people were forced to flee for their lives as flood water waves as high as 14 feet ravaged through their, homes, villages and towns. The saddest thing about this was that people could have been told to leave but the flood warning system failed abjectly.

With a breach in the Kandhkot-Toori embankment near Hamid Malik village near Sukkur, floodwaters speedily ravaged Karampur, Ghauspur and other parts of the district, in addition to around 300 villages with a population of 300,000 people. A breach was created in Tori Bandh (dyke) near Jacobabad in the west towards Balochistan to save Jacobabad where the Americans run a rented Airforce base situated in Sindh for their war against terror. In district Jaffarabad, a surge in the floodwater level in Dera Allahyar, Usta Muhammad, Suhbatpur, Rojhan Jamali, Gandakha, Kot Magsi of district Jhal Magsi and some parts of district Nasirabad was observed thanks to this breach. Floodwaters level in Balochistan districts would not descend until the gap in Toori embankment was plugged, officials said.

The Balochistan government issued strong press statements protesting over the diversion of floodwater from Sindh. President Zardari and his ruling party in Sindh were accused of creating a ‘man-made disaster’ for the Baloch people. Chief Secretary Balochistan said if the water was allowed to pass through its natural channel; the evacuation  from such large area could have been avoided. Deputy Chairman Senate Jan Jamali demanded from the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take suo moto action on criminal diversion of floodwater towards Balochistan. Former prime minster Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali also protested loudly as his hometown in Baluchistan was also flooded.

"We are seeing the equivalent of a new disaster every few days in Pakistan", said Valerie Amos, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. "Yesterday, new breaches of the embankments of Manchhar Lake in Sindh flooded more villages. Millions of people have lost everything. Our task is to give people the help they need", she added.

Hundreds of victims blocked a major highway with stones and garbage near the hard-hit Sukkur area, complaining they were being treated like animals. Protester Kalu Mangiani said government officials only came to hand out food when media were present.

Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Abdullah Hussain Haroon has called for an inquiry into allegations that wealthy landowners diverted water into unprotected villages during the floods to save their own crops. There was evidence that landowners had allowed embankments to burst and to lead waters flowing away from their land, he said on BBC’s “Hard Talk” programme telecast on Thursday. “Over the years, one has seen with the lack of floods, those areas normally set aside for floods have come under irrigation of the powerful and rich,” Ambassador Haroon said.

Popular disaffection with the state has been a theme well-played by the media circus of Pakistan. Iniquitous land relations in Sindh and other rural areas, heavily hit by the floods will become a major source of public disenchantment with the state agencies. This is what prompted President Asif Ali Zardari on September 08 to declare reports on the alleged breaching of embankments were merely a fiction and only political actors were talking about the breaking of dykes.

The federal cabinet that met earlier in Islamabad failed even to get the finance minister despite an articulated need for allocation of funds in view of the unprecedented calamity. Accepting their lack of credibility on August 12, Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and leading oppossition party leader from Punjab Mian Nawaz Sharif declared join hands to establish a disaster management body to raise funds and to oversee relief and rehabilitation of the flood-affected people in a transparent manner. “A commission or board would be set up, which would open its own account for receipt of donations and contributions, oversee damage need assessment survey and ensure judicious distribution of assistance among the affected people,” said Gilani totally oblivious to the fact that he was telling his own government was not credible for donors.

The fight over handling the flood relief goods got complex as Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's four-member Flood Relief Assessment Committee for the Punjab was stopped from functioning. If this was not enough, media revealed that Army stopped the special committee notified by the Prime Minister and has impounded all their stores from Multan, Gilani's home town. On September 06, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani conceded in the Council of Common Interests meeting in Islamabad that aid was not coming to his government. This confirmed a fact that was already well known.

The UN agencies had already stepped up calls for donors to deliver on their pledges for Pakistan to prevent what UN chief Ban Ki-moon called on August 20 a “slow-motion tsunami” from wreaking further catastrophe. What the U.N. secretary-general Ban Ki-moon called a "slow-motion tsunami" is expected to leave a big scar on the national psyche, society, economy and geography. "The U.N. chief, who traveled to Pakistan to visit sites devastated by the disaster, said almost 20 million people need shelter, food and emergency care.”That is more than the entire population hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami, the Kashmir earthquake, Cyclone Nargis, and the earthquake in Haiti -- combined," he said. Make no mistake," he said. "This is a global disaster, a global challenge. It is one of the greatest tests of global solidarity in our times."

When Hyderabad city was inundated on August 21, the world had to do something to get aid to the people without involving the viciously fighting politicians and breathing on the necks Army. This is why the United Nations got to issue a second appeal to fund their Flood relief operations in Pakistan.

Just under two months since the onset of flooding, the United Nations and its partners have launched a revised Pakistan Floods Emergency Response Plan, which now appeals for US$2,006,525,183 to provide aid for up to 14 million people over a 12-month period. The appeal has 483 projects to be carried out by 15 United Nations bodies, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and 156 national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The appeal includes the earlier amount of $459.7 million, requested on 11 August. The initial appeal of $459 million is now 80% funded, making the unmet requirements for this emergency $1.6 billion.

Environmental issues come to fore when we appreciate the fact that the total volume of water in the Indus river water system was not exceptionally high at 1.1 million cusecs at its maximum. The river system could easily absorb this volume of water. Yet, the number of people suffering from the massive floods in Pakistan could exceed the combined total in three recent mega-disasters - the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake - the United Nations says.

Triggered by monsoon rains, the floods have torn through the country from its mountainous northwest, destroying hundreds of thousands of homes and an estimated 1.7 million acres (nearly 700,000 hectares) of farmland. In southern Pakistan, the River Indus is now more than 15 miles (25 kilometers) wide at some points — 25 times wider than during normal monsoon seasons.

The disaster happened because of a freak weather phenomenon resulting in unprecedented monsoon cloud bursts, massive deforestation in the catchment areas, unplanned settlements blocking rain torrents in the mountains and destruction of the riverine ecology. Mated to a weak water protection infrastructure, it was the underlying environmental causes that wreaked the flood havoc across the country.Rivers are drains of water from the body geography. Being one of the largest rivers of the world, the Indus should have been able to carry out excess water into the Arabian Sea. Why the river could not carry excess water is where human intervention – in terms of water resource planning and infrastructure development – played a villainous role for the people of Pakistan.

Since the Green Revolution and after the Indus Waters Treaty with India in 1960, more and more waters of the Indus River have been diverted in for irrigated agriculture. Many farmowners are resourceful enough to secure state support for building built levees or embankments on the river protecting their farms from flood waters. Not only in Pakistan, but indeed across South Asia, the local councils and the water resource planning authorities have supported such ‘straight-jacketing’ of rivers.

Pakistan’s disaster response system was found helpless in the face of floods. “The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and its provincial and district extensions were sent into a tailspin by the disaster being totally ineffective,” noted Naseer Memon, Chief Executive of a major NGO Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO). A resourceless Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) in Sindh could do nothing to help the province manage the biggest flood disaster ever to hit the lower Indus region. Punjab did not have any PDMA till recent days while those established in the other two provinces were found to be totally resource less. Memon calls them ‘Dead as Dodo’.

Lack of appropriate early warning system had been a major cause of otherwise preventable localized disasters. Timely warning is linchpin of any disaster response mechanism as it can assuage the impact to a considerable degree. Little wonder our shoddy disaster management machinery was soon on its knees as the disaster continued to meander through patchwork of dykes on both sides of mighty Indus.

Bereft of a flood management plan, confounded Punjab and Sindh governments had to follow the whim of meandering waters resulting in clumsy decision making. Thus, one can safely say that the floods were partly ‘anthropogenic’ in that they were caused by careless planning of water resources. It is the water infrastructure on the Indus River and its tributaries that is to blame for the scale of human impact of the floods in Pakistan.

Although in numbers of dead the disaster that has hit the nation is smaller than the Asian Tsunami, the scale of human suffering, particularly during the post-flood times, and the magnitude of the nearly impossible task of rebuilding innumerable livelihoods is far greater than the Tsunami.

No one could possibly predict and prevent the floods. It was by all measures an unusual natural event exacerbated by human folly in terms of Security, Governance and Environmental management.

Given the political imperative to “do something,” the conventional wisdom has been to pour money on the problem. For over a decade, Pakistan has had almost bottomless credit from the World Bank and other donors to cure its poor record of economic development. Sadly, the country has little to show for it. And it appears now that the Bank is once again prepared to pull out its checkbook-in spite of the fact that a recent report (large file size) conducted by the Bank’s own independent evaluation unit admits in painstaking detail the many failures of the Bank’s massive investments in Pakistan during the 1990s.

The World Bank has also seen it fit to link a US$6 billion package with improved governance. The WB cited Corruption, limited oversight and weak accountability as major challenges and sought improvements in economic governance, human development, infrastructure and security. Pakistan’s governance challenges are critical to mitigation of damages from the epic disaster. Else the overall social, natural and economic environment will also change. Limited oversight and weak accountability of public institutions are at the basis of a chaos calling itself a government. Pakistan’s development objectives depend on improved governance of the public sector.

However, dramatically ramping up assistance to Pakistan has little chance of working. Pakistan has received large packages of loans including the last one in 2006 for as much as US$6.5 billion. Will the money make a difference? Only if Pakistan’s leadership puts their house in order.

The Casino of Life : The odds of reducing inequality in a country like Bolivia

A s a visitor to La Paz in Bolivia I have been staying in a friendly hostel downtown. One week I happened to stumble onto a Casino night organised by the owners. It was all for fun and no real money was exchanged. Everyone received 250 fake bolivianos (fbs) worth of        chips. If you managed to do well and double your pot to 500 fbs then you could exchange them for a free drink.  I happened to be having dinner with some other travellers I had just met on a table which was destined for Black Jack. Now this was not like a real casino which to me can seem rather boring and somewhat lonely as players silently make bets and collect their winnings or losses. Instead the 10 players around our table had really gotten into the spirit of things and supported each other cheering and laughing through the whole game. Even the dealer was on our side. The positive atmosphere led to a bit of a winning streak for all of us. For a series of hands the dealer was beat. What was noticeable to me, however, was that those players who by the beginning of the winning streak had amassed more chips kept betting close to the maximum allowed of 50 fbs, while those with smaller pots would bet closer to the minimum of 5 fbs (with some exceptions) As we progressed through the winning streak, everyone's individual pot grew. Proportionaly to our own pot sizes we were all probably making roughly the same bets, lets say 5% of the total pot (and therefore drawing similar proportions of winnings back), yet the absolute difference between pot sizes of the relatively chip rich and the relatively chip poor kept growing. The pot size of those making small bets did not change much, while the lucky ones with larger bets and pot sizes steamed ahead. Even when the relatively chip poor increased their bets and thus winnings on a hand, this made little difference to the overall gap despite them increasing their pot by a larger proportion than the richer players. This got me thinking about the aim of many aid agencies and governments to reduce inequality and poverty through pro-poor growth in developing countries like Bolivia. What would this really mean and is it achievable? Or should we be focusing on different aims? Let me demonstrate what I mean with a simple thought experiment. Let's use the most ambitious scenario: To be pro-poor, growth needs to disproportionately benefit the poorest segments of the population and reduce absolute poverty. Let's assume a poor person earns around $600 (US) per year (or just above the national poverty line in Bolivia of $1.6 per day) and an average person earns around $5,000 per year (just above the Bolivian $4,454.99 national per capita GDP adjusted for PPP). The income gap is $4,400 per annum. Let’s assume that we have growth of overall 5%, but that it is pro-poor in that the poorest wages are increasing at 6% while the wages of the average person at 4%. After the first year it will look as follows: Year Poor income Middle Income Gap 0 $ 600 $ 5,000 $ 4,400 1 600*1.06 = $ 636 5000*1.04 = $ 5,200 $ 4,564 (+ 164) So the absolute income gap has increased by $164 per annum. What if the next year new and highly successful pro-poor policies were implemented and the poorest’s  wages grew at 12% and the better-off only 3%: Year Poor income Middle Income Gap 1 $ 636 $ 5,200 $ 4,564 2 636 * 1.12 = $ 712 5,200* 1.03 = $ 5,356 $ 4,644 (+ 80) So even in a really optimistic (and perhaps somewhat unrealistic) scenario, the income gap increased by $80 per annum, thus actually making the growth anti-poor. Imagine the figures if you compare the absolutely richest with the absolutely poorest. This begs the question whether pro-poor growth and income inequality reduction are compatible and complementary goals. Of course with both these case scenarios the standard of living of the poorest would have improved (assuming zero inflation), thus having a poverty reducing effect, while inequality has increased. Income inequality is thus clearly not telling the whole story. In fact, consumption inequality for Bolivia is much lower than income inequality (Gini 0.44 and 0.60 respectively) due to the fact that consumption in developing countries is less reliant on a formal wage than that in developed countries. A Gini of 0.44 is closer to the income inequality recorded for USA and thus paints a very different picture when being compared to Bolivia. This large difference in the Gini coefficient has been caused by simply changing the measure from income to consumption. This brings me back to my casino night experience. Towards the end of our Black Jack game roughly half of us had more than doubled our initial pot, thus qualifying for a free drink. We had exchanged the required 500 fbs and we used the rest to help get drinks for those who did not quite have enough. We then divided the left over chips equally between all of us and played out the rest of the game. The point here being that virtually everyone's pot did grow (income), but it did not determine who was able to get a free drink (consumption). In addition, having fun with the people around us and making new friends (our social capital) and sharing our wealth (collectively deciding to tax the rich to provide the same opportunities for the poorer in our group) in the end were the things that made up the whole experience. A person's income is not purely monetary or wage driven. Nor can inequality be easily measured purely from income statistics. Progressive taxation, non-cash government transfers (benefits), access to public services, opportunities in life (for a decent job, education, health services and so on), and human and social capital all play their part. In fact, depending on the country, even the total monetary income someone receives can include a large number of sources. For example wages, remittances and family support, government welfare payments, interest earnings on savings and investments and so on, all of which are rarely captured in wage and income statistics. Inequality and poverty depend on all these factors and are very relative. Lowering inequality through pro-poor growth has particularly been a focus of aid agencies in Bolivia. This article is not an attempt to say that lowering absolute income inequality is not an admirable goal. However, there needs to be a recognition that it may be difficult to achieve it in societies with relatively high levels of income inequality to begin with (as was demonstrated in the rather simplistic and stylised mathematical example above). Although attention has been paid to non-income dimensions of poverty, they have not yet been universally incorporated into growth and inequality measures. Where attempts have been made, Bolivia's progress looks much more positive. In the Casino of life, many other factors determine how equal a society is and increasing opportunities for all is perhaps a more important aim that needs to be recognised in.

The Sri Lankan saga of unrequited justice and freedom

     When it comes to socio-economic  development, Sri Lanka is taken as a remarkable example in south Asia. That development, however, is not equitable and neglects the Tamil minorities, says the Sri Lankan human rights activist, K.M. Rukshan Fernando.

Mr Fernando,head of Human Rights in Conflict programme- Law and Society Trust, Sri Lanka, has been working in the field of human rights, peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka for more than 13 years.

Global,South Development Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Manoj Kr. Bhusal recently met and interviewed him in Helsinki where he was invited as a guest speaker to a seminar on human rights, development and democracy. Some excerpts from the interview:

# Could you tell us a bit about yourself and the work you do in Sri Lanka?

 My name is Ruki. I have been working in the field of human rights, peace and reconciliation for about 13 years, primarily in Sri Lanka, but I have done some work at regional level in Asia. And the organization I work with now is Law and Society Trust. It’s a human rights organization based in Colombo, but we do a lot of work on advocacy, research, documentation, training and also protection.

# How is the current situation of human rights in Sri Lanka?

In compare to the war period, cases of human rights violations have decreased in number certainly, but still numerous cases of human rights violations can be witnessed in Sri Lanka every day. Attacks are targeted at people who are intolerant, dissent and critic of the ruling regime. You can see many political parties, politicians, human rights activists, journalists, lawyers, religious leaders, or even doctors who are critical of the current ruling regime and voice dissenting opinions being penalized, some have been killed, abducted, threatened, assaulted and we don’t see anything being done about these attacks. It’s quite clear that the government is behind some of these attacks although the government denies it. And even if the government isn’t responsible directly, the government hasn’t been able to stop it and it has not been able to identify, prosecute and convict those who are responsible for majority. I think on these accounts Sri Lank cannot qualify as a democracy.

# How do non-state agencies and the media respond to these situations?

Well the media has undergone a lot of threats and repressive measures. Many journalists have been killed; some have been abducted, threatened and assaulted. Media institutions have been burnt down and many very prominent, independent minded journalists have fled the country in fear. Because of these, there is a kind of self-censorship and the media by and large does not want to write critical things of the regime. So we cannot expect anything much from the media at the moment. Civil society organizations, including local and international groups, face a lot of restrictions. For example we can’t get permission to go into a lot of areas that the government says liberated already. So it’s a mystery! Why people have been allowed to settle in these areas? Why independent media, independent organizations are not allowed to go? It’s very difficult to access these people. And also the government is trying to bring a lot of laws to restrain NGOs. The Ministry of Defence is trying to register and regulate the NGOs particularly in the northern east.

Some foreign nationals have been very helpful in terms of humanitarian and human rights protection work and in last two months three of them have been deported though they had valid visas and permits. So it’s difficult for civil society organizations and media to operate right now in Sri Lanka. 

# Sri Lanka is taken quite as an example in south Asia in terms of development parameters.What do you think about that?

It is difficult to have any form of sustainable and genuine development if you don’t have basic freedom to express yourself, freedom of assembly and freedom of association. In absence of these freedoms, what you have is a development imposed by the central government with its power. It’s not a form of a participatory development and it will not respond to the needs of the people, when the people who are expected to be the beneficiaries of development and their own representatives are not able to participate in defining what kind of development is going to happen. Development without freedom is a farce.

# Do you see any better future for Sri Lanka in the days to come or it’s just bleak?

I think in the short term it’s very bleak and depressing. We might be stuck with this kind of a situation for some time. But I think there has to be collective outrage of ordinary citizens in Sri Lanka. It might come at a particular moment when citizens will say this is enough, we don’t tolerate more than this. And I think for that there is always a need of kind of support and backing from the international community. When I say international community, particularly, I am referring to people to people initiatives and also particular governments which are principled on human rights and international law. They should support the people of Sri Lanka in abuses of people who have dissenting views against the government.

But it is important to know the war itself was about three decades, thirty years, but the ethnic conflict is more than fifty years old. The grievances of the Tamil people who are minority in Sri Lanka are yet to be addressed. And sixteen months after the war, there are no signs that the grievance of the Tamil community is going to be addressed. There is no political solution in terms of restructuring of the state so that Tamils can share power. There is no signs that crucial issues of the Tamil community will be addressed, thousands of people who have been detained without any charges, some for more than ten years and also people who have gone missing for over number of years, particularly in the last four years since 2006, or even acknowledgement of the people who have been killed, death certificate issues, compensation for those killed and so on.

 # Does it mean that incidents of human rights violations are increasing rather than decreasing?

I think it’s difficult to say whether increasing or decreasing. There are times suddenly you think everything is okay, human rights violations have gone down; but suddenly they rise up again. For example in the last few weeks we have seen a lot of human rights violations in terms of particularly people who are forced at the tents of the government to seek more control of its power through amendment of the constitution. So people who printed a poster are detained right now. You thought that the violations are going down in terms of numbers, but suddenly you have a surge of new repressive measures. So it’s very difficult to say.

 # So can we still call Sri Lanka a democratic state?

Officially Sri Lanka is a democratic country and the constitution says the same. But I think an essential feature of democracy is tolerance and appreciation of dissenting views and opinions and also how you treat your minority communities not only the their search for more freedom and genuine participatory development.

# As far as I know there has been some international engagement in Sri Lanka in the past, for example Norway was negotiating peace talks, what do you think about that? Has international engagement proved to be helpful?

 The international community has tried to help to some extent, but what we have been very disappointed is particularly countries in Asia, countries in Africa and Latin America have been very reluctant to stand by the people of Sri Lanka in the hour of need. We found that it’s only a few Western countries that voice their concerns at the massive amount of human rights violations that is happening. Countries in Asia, including countries that have overcome dictatorship like the Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Thailand, these are all countries that have seen people’s movements overthrowing dictatorship. They are very silent or they even support the Sri Lankan’s repressive measures. It’s the same in Latin America. Countries like Argentina, Chile, El Salvador which have come through dictatorships and very difficult times, which have seen a lot of enforced disappearance happening, kept very quite. It’s rather unfortunate and disappointing that these countries are not spoken out.

What we would like to see more is countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America supporting people’s struggle for justice and peace in Sri Lanka.

# When we think of conflicts in south Asia, in many countries, it is deeply rooted in rampant poverty or poor socio-economic conditions. But in Sri Lanka it’s quite different, isn’t it?

Yes, conflict is Sri Lanka originated clearly on the basis of ethnicity. The Tamil community in Sri Lanka which is a minority in relation to the Singhalese. It’s predominantly a sense of domination based on ethnicity and religiosity that has brought about this conflict in Sri Lanka.

# Finally do you have any message to the international community who want to see a better Sri Lanka?

 Of course the main struggle has to be raised by Sri Lankan people, but I think international support is also very crucial. When you say international community, it’s very broad and vague. It could mean foreign governments, it could mean Western countries, Asian countries, African countries and it could also mean people to people solidarity initiatives. I think all these are important. People to people solidarity from countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America is very important. Support of multilateral and international organizations and the UN which have experience in human rights protection and working towards genuine protection of minorities is very crucial. We hope that the UN agencies can play a more proactive and principled role, as well as foreign governments, civil society, people’s groups and people’s solidarity initiatives can offer more principled and more proactive support to Sri Lankan people.