POVERTY IN BANGLADESH
1950-1960 union with West-Pakistan
The union with West-Pakistan had been an unhappy one, both politically and economically. The central government left hardly any room for independent action by the local East-Pakistan government and there was a considerable outflow of resources from East to West, though at a reduced rate at the end of the 1960s.
The East did not receive a fair share of the foreign aid Pakistan received. Though from an economic point of view it might have been justified to concentrate resources on West- Pakistan because of its better economic prospects, in terms of equitable development and polical wisdom it certainly was not. To many people in East-Pakistan it felt as a time of exploitation by West-Pakistan.
At the beginning of the 1950s regional incomes in the West were about 20% higher than in the East, increasing to more than 30% ten years later. At the end of the 1960s per capita income in the West was estimated at twice that of the East.
At independence Bangladesh was an overwhelmingly agricultural society with rice as the main foodcrop and jute the most important cash crop. The industrial base of the country was very poor. The contribution of agriculture to GDP was almost 60% while that of large and medium industry was around 4%.
In the rural economy land was the most important earning asset but due to the high population density it was also extremely scarce. In 1960 35% of rural households were classified as functionally landless (owning less than 0.5 acres), increasing to more than 45% in 1970. Another 30% were classified as marginal landowners (owning 0.5 - 2.5 acres). Therefore, the majority of rural households depended for their subsistence on various other sources of income, agricultural as well as non-agricultural. Among agriculture were renting in land through tenancy arrangements, as agricultural labourers, homestead vegetable gardening, livestock keeping and fishing. Outside agriculture cottage industries were important, for example handloom weaving but also beedi making (traditional cigarettes). In the 1970’s there were an estimated 100,000 handloom enterprises with 350,000 full and parttime workers.
1970-1980 Bangladesh Independence 1971
After becoming independent in december 1971 the prospects for development of the new nation looked all but promising. Plagued by constant food shortages and recurrent famines, devastating floods and cyclones, a high population density and high population growth, a weak government and administration, Bangladesh seemed like a permanent disaster to the rest of the world.
The majority of people survived on a diet of a minimal amount of rice and consumption of pulses and animal products, mainly fish, was totally inadequate. 80% of the population was illiterate. Child mortality was high with a quarter of children dying before the age of 5. In addition, the War of Independence had resluted in substantial war damage. Of fixed physical investment an estimated half was affected wich led to a reduction in productive capacity and there were losses in food production and destruction of housing.
The country had insufficient capacity to generate resources for development while maintaining minimum consumption levels and was therefore highly dependend on funding by foreign donors.
1980 - 1990
In the 1980’s there was a growing concern felt amongst donors about the lack of improvement in the poverty situation in the country. This let an informal group of bilateral donors, the so called likeminded (Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and
Sweden) to support local research into the poverty situation in rural Bangladesh: Rural Poverty in Bangladesh by the Universities Research Centre (January 1986) and ReThinking Rural Poverty by the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (January 1992).
Although lack of good data and different methodological approaches made it not easy to come to reliable conclusions about the trends in rural poverty, the following emerged. Based on per capita expenditure in 1963/64 44% of the rural population was classified as poor, increasing to 71% in 1973/74, to 65% in 1981/82 and further declining to 50% in 1983/84, 41% in 1985/86, 44% in 1988/89 (a year of severe flooding) and 38% in 1989/90.
The bulk of the poor households belong to the landpoor category. For households with no cultivated land the incidence of poverty was 78%, for households with marginal landholdings the incidence was 71%.Taking an intake of less than 2112 calories as poverty line 55% of the rural poor lived in absolute poverty in 1989/90, of which half were hardcore poor and half moderately poor.
Another finding was that the average food intake had continuously declined from the early 1960’s to the early 1980’s and by 1990 had slightly increased.
Read more