Focus on Poverty Alleviation

Chairman of the Interim Election Government Khil Raj Regmi has urged one and all to lay more focus on poverty alleviation in the entire South Asian region for uplifting the living standard of the people in the region as a large number of people live in abject poverty. Inaugurating a two-day regional symposium on “Best Practices in Poverty Alleviation in South Asia” in Kathmandu the other day, Chairman Regmi said that common initiatives of all the countries of South Asia were necessary to fight poverty and other problems of the people that include unemployment, food insecurity and low investment in social sectors like education and health. South Asia is a region with the largest number of the world’s poor people. Although poverty alleviation has been the common initiative of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), its goals have not been achieved yet. This situation demands more result-oriented plans and actions to free the people of South Asia from abject poverty.

As far as Nepal is concerned, it is a poor country with about 25 per cent of the people living in poverty. Poverty alleviation has, thus, become the single most priority of Nepal. Due to its focus on poverty alleviation programmes, Nepal has made significant progress in this sector. Until two decades back, almost half of Nepal’s population was under poverty. Now poverty has been brought down to 25 per cent, which is attributed to the success of the anti-poverty strategy of the government. Despite this, much still needs to be done in order to make poverty history. Poverty is a state when people are deprived of the basic means to sustain their life and ensure their healthy growth and development. Poverty is a situation that breeds many other social and economic problems. Poverty is, thus, attributed to all problems in the country, and all social and economic programmes must be linked with the poverty alleviations strategy.

Serious efforts to attack poverty and uplift the social and economic condition of the Nepalese people have been marred by a paucity of resources. Yet as part of the overall initiative to eradicate poverty, the government has been trying to identity the number of the absolute poor and has accordingly launched programmes for raising the income and uplifting the social and economic status of the people. As Nepal’s entire efforts are directed towards eliminating poverty, Nepal can soon hope to free its people from their sub-human living conditions and ensure them with the minimum needs to lead a dignified life. This achievement can be accelerated with the common and collective initiative of all the countries of the region.