--By Madhukar SJB Rana

 

The name Professor Rehman Shoban entered my mind as early as 1974 when the Late King Birendra instructed Laxmi Lal Shrestha, and myself, to visit Bangladesh to carry out a survey on trade and transit facilities and prospects for Nepal. It resulted in the Nepal-Bangladesh bilateral treaties of transit and trade in1976. Most bureaucrats and journalists we encountered would speak glowingly of Professor Rehman Shoban as the economic architect of the Bangla revolution and independence.

 

They would point out that, although Bengalis were politically marginalized and felt humiliated for the crass loss of their linguistic and cultural identity in Pakistan, they were afraid that with no entrepreneurial heritage and know-how in economic management they would be worse off as an independent nation. It was Professor Shoban who opened their eyes to the gross exploitation by West Pakistan through the most unfavourable terms of trade meted out to them as an enclave economy.

 

 I first met Rehman Shoban in 1977 when Dr Tarlok Singh mooted the idea of South Asian economic cooperation and mobilised think tanks in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka to collaborate in regional research. Ever since I have admired the passion with which he encourages a strong and dynamic South Asia to play its due role in global affairs; and have learned much from his research and analysis on development-- not least, ever-impressed by his power of oratory when addressing seminars and conferences.

 

 If Tarlok Singh is the Father (academic) of SARC and President General Ziaur Rahman is the Father of SAARC, I would describe Rehman Shoban as the Maha Guru of South Asia because it was he, first and foremost, who began to 'think regionally and act nationally' in the true spirit of regionalism. This book is a veritable 'tour de force'.

 

 The central thesis of the book is that poverty and income inequality in South Asia are caused structurally by the social order, which tends to exclude the poor from access to equality of opportunity and participation in the market and the wider development process. They are said to be victims of 'structural injustice', which he defines as "the inequitable distribution of opportunities between the rich and poor". Sadly, it is stressed that no government in South Asia has adopted measures for structural change in the social order:

  

"Five if not 15 years from now landless labour will still be working on subsistence wage on the NREGS in the villages of India while Mumbai and Delhi will have developed into facsimiles of Madrid and Chicago".

 

What are the parameters that entrap the poor in exclusion?  They are, according to Rehman Shoban, (1) unequal access to productive assets-- land, water; (2) unequal participation in markets-- information, supply chains, storage, credit; (3) unequal access to human development-- education, technology, health care;and (4) unjust governance-- disenfranchisement from political and judicial processes and high transaction costs.

 

Professor Shoban argues at length about why past policies and strategies (e.g. The World Bank's PRSP strategy, UNDP's MDG strategy, and IMF's SAP) have not been able to alleviate poverty- never mind its eradication. These strategies fail to grapple with the need for structural change in society. No amount of market-oriented interventions will wipe poverty from the face of South Asia while ignoring the underlying injustices that lie behind these markets.

 

In fact, he underscores, that to visualise poverty as income deprivation and thus seek ways and means to intervene to raise people above a certain poverty line ($1.25 per day) will actually lead to misguided policies for poverty eradication. No matter how high the growth rate it will have the same consequences, he asserts.

 

He also believes that the Tiger economies of South  East Asia can not be models for strategic replication, because such interventions fail to include the poor with access to opportunities for jobs, health care, education and assets available to the rich. He underscores that we must move away from the usual visualization of poverty as income deprivation. Societies having more and more people living above a given poverty threshold is not tantamount to removing the injustice of poverty. In fact, he stresses loudly and clearly that it could really mislead policy prescriptions by complacency and misguidance.

 

Rehman Shoban not only seeks a political economic agenda of reforms, but he seeks incremental, pragmatic interventions rather than radical reforms also. He is fully aware of the need to maximize the participation of all stakeholders in order to deepen democracy and promote non-violent social transformation in societies as pluralistic as those in South Asia.

 

For enhancing access to land he calls for strict implementation of land ceiling laws; tenancy reforms; eradication of corruption in land administration offices; redistribution of government-owned land, water bodies and forest land; and organizing the landless.

 

For enhancing access to markets he would support the eradication of monopoly control over the supply chain by middle men who have strong links with the political process (exactly why they oppose the entry of the likes of Walmart); promotion of cooperatives; inculcating commercial spirit into NGOs to promote social business and social entrepreneurship.

 

For enhancing access to quality education he recommends the common school system; much more investment in the education sector to deliver quality education. He advises decontrol by unions as well as greater accountability to parents as well as more public private partnership in the sector with more skills' content in a curriculum driven by labour market forces of supply and demand.

 

Professor Shoban provides an extensive agenda for action, as it were, for national planners, sector programmers and project analysts to engineer changes in the social order suited to national and local realities. Much of the examples are drawn from the  rich innovations in South Asia ( Grameen Bank; BRAC; C.K. Prahalad's fortune at the bottom of the pyramid; Arvind Eye Care; SEWA; Khuda ki Basti; Amul; AKRSP; etc). Examples from the US, Japan and Europe are also covered.

 

 The first ISCPA was set up by the SAARC Summit, under the overall leadership of  President Premadasa of Sri Lanka and chaired by the former Nepalese Prime Minister K P Bhattarai,  produced a landmark Report, Meeting the Challenge (2002). As with ISCPA, the author does not reject outright the strategies being pursued by  donor agencies. Simply, like the ICSPA, he too hopes they will 'walk on two legs by not excluding the poor and MSMEs from the globalization process. The ISCPA called for a pro-poor development strategy beginning with a new Social Contract between the poor and the State. It was to be based on their massive social mobilization through formations of organizations of the poor to access local governments and countervail the power of the rich to move South Asia from representative democracy to participatory democracy.

 

 The author seeks a greater role for the private sector in the development process just as he seeks far more market-orientation by NGOs to tap the vast entrepreneurial spirit lying dormant amid the poor for their self-reliant empowerment. He recommends the scaling up of the myriad of world-famed innovations carried out by the civil societies of South Asia in the spirit of people public-private partnerships for non-violent social transformations. In the social context of South Asia, Rehman Shoban believes that to promote inclusive development we need to, first and foremost, correct the historical injustices by empowering the excluded (women, Dalits, tribals, marginalised farmers and  the disabled).

 

 Perhaps in his next endeavour Professor Rehman Shoban will take up the issues of the institutional reforms required to deepen democracy and guarantee social justice for the excluded, hence  institutionalizing his policy agenda once adopted.

 

 As a treatise on political economy one underlines the vital role of institutions without which policies and strategies get waylaid in the morass of populism nourished by money and muscle power,  prevalent features  of South Asian democracies. Professor Sohban ignores the Social, Political and Economic Corruption as primary causes of poverty and social injustice. In doing so, the book misses out on the desired role of the law, the judiciary and the criminal justice system for the empowerment of the poor and preservation of the rule of law. The rise of the  Gandhian Anna Hazare and the Aam Admi Party led by Arvind Kejriwal in India is a new phenomenon that gives a  new meaning to what democracy and social justice in South Asia should be about.

 

Former Finance Minister Rana is Professor at South Asian Institute of Management (SAIM).