Rural Antipoverty Programs

ANTIPOVERTY PROGRAMS are government-sup-ported policies aimed at reducing poverty within society. Rural antipoverty programs are the same but are aimed specifically at reducing poverty in rural areas, which have particular problems with respect to poverty. Governments may also work with international aid donors and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), secular or faith-based.

Since the nature of rural areas varies significantly from country to country, the type and scope of rural program that may prove effective also vary. However, it is possible to state that rural areas share the general characteristics of scarce infrastructure, lower population density and markets, and lower incomes resulting from reliance on low value-added agricultural products. There may also be social costs involved in living in rural areas resulting from isolation and social deprivation.

Conversely, some societies are able to produce intricate social networks in rural areas that unite people in villages and rural communities and enable them to withstand external shocks. An additional issue to consider is that many regions will have a majority of ethnic minority people who may have difficulty in communicating with or receiving sympathy from the state authorities and from the dominant ethnic group. In some cases, predatory government administrations have used poverty-increasing policies in some areas in order to punish or impoverish groups.

Local projects necessitate local answers to poverty reduction. Awareness of specific types of foodstuffs, fertilizers, and other inputs is essential to the creation of a successful project, as is the need for proper data collection, monitoring, and postproject evaluation. This most commonly means that local people's knowledge is required as an integral part of the poverty reduction strategy. Unfortunately, local people's voices are often lost when experts arrive from the capital or descend from overseas with internationally designed research instruments using a vocabulary and discourse with little or no connection to the people for whose ostensible benefit experts are working. Consequently, many projects fail.

In many parts of the world, people living in rural areas rely upon subsistence agriculture, which involves very small or no cash exchanges. People grow crops and husband animals, supplemented perhaps by fishing, hunting, and gathering fruits and vegetables for alternative sources of protein. They are customarily unable to build anything other than a nominal surplus of goods or money to deal with a sudden shortage or requirement for resources. An environmental problem, consequently, can result very suddenly in outbreaks of famine affecting hundreds or thousands of people.

For example, the River Mekong in the Isaan region of northeastern Thailand is subject to flooding, and the remainder of the region, much of which rests on a large salt pan, is subject to droughts because of the unpredictable nature of the monsoon rains on which agriculture depends. In either case, farmers lose their harvest and, customarily, are required to borrow money from the local rice merchant, which, since they are able to acquire very little surplus, generally means they are entering into long-term indebtedness, which makes their position vulnerable to abuse.

Historically, heads of households were able to sell family members into temporary or even permanent slavery to pay off such debts. This system is no longer legal but, in its place, agents exist who will facilitate entry into the sex industry or into human trafficking. Suitable antipoverty programs in this case, therefore, will focus on both the provision of short-term emergency assistance to ensure good health and the longer-term provision of government welfare to alleviate indebtedness. Government ownership of debt should at least prevent exploitation of debtors, even if it is no easier for the poor to repay what they owe.

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