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ASIA is home to 520 million hungry and a hub of 600 million poor people. With extreme land scarcity and rising landlessness, rural Asia should normally be reeling under pervasive poverty. But empirical evidence does not seem to lend support to the prevailing pessimism.

As a result of triggered growth and transformation, the incidence of people living in poverty has fallen from more than 50% in the mid-seventies to 18% in 2004, and the incidence of hunger has almost halved from more than 30% to 16%. If the current trend continues, as foreseen by researchers, it will create a dramatically transformed Asia contributing roughly to 42% of global GDP by 2015. In fact, Asia will have tremendous influence on world agriculture soon.

Should Asians then celebrate the outcome? To answer to that, recently, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) jointly organised a high-level policy forum on: "Agricultural and Rural Development for Reducing Poverty and Hunger in Asia: In Pursuit of Inclusive and Sustainable Growth." We present below some observations from that forum.

Developments and drivers

Agriculture is depicted as the driver of growth and poverty reduction -- nay, the linchpin of rural livelihoods in Asia. The classic example of this comes from China and India (even Bangladesh) witnessing the largest reduction in poverty in tandem with highest growth in agricultural income.

However, in South Asia, agricultural growth was driven more by productivity gains -- a result of the green revolution, science and technology. In other places (e.g. China), policy reforms played the pivotal role, although the early inducement to increased income came from the green revolution effects.

Either way, increased agricultural growth and income helped in four principal ways: children's education for more remunerative jobs, migration, and pursuance of non-farming activities.

Non-farming activities account for more than half of the rural household income. Engagement of poor households in rural trade, transport, services, remittances, and small-scale manufacturing helped in poverty reduction. Finally, the falling prices of staple grains increased real income of the poor segments to positively affect their exchange entitlements of food.

Besides, public investment in rural areas augmented agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction. Spending on research and development (R&D) paid the highest premium, followed by that on roads and education. These had more impact on poverty reduction than the spending on anti-poverty programs -- fraught with inefficiency in targeting and misuse of funds.



Asia's agonies

But, all that glitters is not gold for some who lie far away from the poverty fence. The rate of progress was neither uniform nor inclusive across Asia. There are ample examples on this score, but we bring only a few to the fore.

As Akhter U.Ahmed and others of IFPRI note: in 1990, about half of Asia's poor lived in South Asia, 40% in East Asia, 9% in Southeast Asia, and only 0.3% in Middle East and Central Asia. Today, almost three-quarters of the poor live in South Asia, 21% in East Asia, and 5% in Southeast Asia.

There are, in fact, many "Asias" today, with East and Southeast Asia leading and South Asia lagging behind. More painfully perhaps, those lying near the poverty line performed far better than those far down the line. That is, growth in rural areas failed to grip the poorest of the poor, embracing mostly landless and illiterate households with high dependency ratio. No less disappointing is the growing inequality among rural-rural and rural-urban households.

Another syndrome is the non-inclusive character of the growth process itself -- imposing an adverse impact through different channels. For example, in India, half of the poor are found in just three states, and the most disadvantageous regions often suffer from poor agro-ecological conditions and limited market access; there are the "walking poor" who remain too far away from modern transport or roads to sell goods or access health and education services.

Again, while rural Asia marched forward some sections of the population faced marginalisation. Consider the caste system in India, which excludes the scheduled castes from reaping the rewards of the resurgence in rural areas. In Bangladesh and India, the tribal people are trailing far behind. So is the case in mountainous regions in Southeast Asia (as in Vietnam and Laos). Admittedly, government policies are afoot in these countries to mitigate the miseries of the "minorities," but they are not powerful enough to make a dent.

What about women -- the other half of the glass? In some areas, NGOs and government initiatives attempted to empower poor women economically and socially, but it still seems to be a dream. In many countries, women continue to be treated as "bread eaters" (not as "bread winners") despite the fact that, given equal opportunities and access to resources as men, they are no less efficient as their counterparts. On an empirical plane, economic growth and nutritional status of children have been positively related to the improvement of the position of women in the household. But woes await women due to socio-economic and cultural constraints in many Asian rural setting.

Non-inclusion also comes from the missing voices of the poor, and adds to their vulnerability and powerlessness. Voicelessness deprives them of the power to influence decisions affecting their lives, negotiate better terms of trade, interact on equal terms with generally stronger market intermediaries, and make governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) accountable to them.



In pursuit of inclusive growth

By and large, rural Asia could fare better had the growth been inclusive, and it is not that the excluded ones lost access and entitlements individually or collectively. Worse to come, the economies of this region substantially suffered due to lower national output and hence lower standard of living of its population. Growth could become burdensome if not backed by proper distribution. Non-inclusiveness also bred political tensions and ignited political instability in the region.

Therefore, celebration is not the cup of tea for Asian policy makers who will have to grapple with burdensome growth even more in the future. To arrest that, the pathways out of rural poverty should have the following attributes: the poor should have access to the growth-path, pathways should be sustainable economically, politically, and environmentally, and stability (political and macro-economic), especially less volatility, in rice prices.

Abdul Bayes is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.