Asia Times: South Asia slammed in UN study



	September 16, 1999	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

South Asia slammed in UN study
By Feizal Samath

COLOMBO - A UN-supported study on human development in South Asia has slammed governments for corruption, an inefficient bureaucracy and discrimination of women, and says the region is one of the worst governed in the world.

''South Asia has a history of democratic institutions, but studies show that the democracy that is practiced here is not at all conducive to the welfare of the people,'' Khadija Haq of the Islamabad-based Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Center (HDC) told reporters in Colombo Tuesday. The 1999 Human Development Report for South Asia was prepared by the HDC and supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

This year's South Asia report, titled ''The Crisis of Governance'', deals with a range of issues like poverty, corruption, governance, economies, military spending, gender discrimination and social injustice.

It says that the region remains divided between the hopes of the rich and the despair of the poor. In South Asia, the richest one-fifth earn almost 40 percent of the region's income and the poorest fifth ''makes do with less than 10 percent''.

''[T]oday begins the struggle of survival for 115 million poverty-ridden destitutes, and tomorrow threatens the future of 395 million illiterate adults; where women are often denied basic human rights; and minorities continue to struggle against prejudice and discrimination. At the threshold of the 21st century this is the South Asia that we live in,'' the report noted.

Income disparities in South Asia were one of the largest in the world with women suffering the most. The report said South Asia had emerged as one of the most poorly governed regions in the world with exclusion of the voiceless majority, unstable political regimes and poor economic management.

South Asia is facing a crisis of governance which, if left unchecked, could halt the region's democratic progress and economic social well being of its teeming millions. It spoke of the nuclear crisis in Pakistan and India; weak coalition governments in India and Sri Lanka that are unable to guarantee a full term in office; political demonstrations and strikes that force Bangladesh to regularly shut down and urban chaos from the streets of Karachi to the war-ravaged Jaffna peninsula in northern Sri Lanka.

''All the nations face the pernicious evils of endemic corruption, social exclusion and inefficient civil services which plague them uniformly,'' the report noted. ''The systems of governance have become unresponsive and irrelevant to the needs and concerns of the people.''

In many South Asian states, democracy was fast turning into an empty ritual with elections being the only bridge between the state and society, the report lamented, while noting that voter interest was also fading fast.

The report said that while trade taxes, overall budget deficits, military spending as a percentage of combined health and education expenditures have declined and foreign investment has risen, only one percent paid taxes. Capital expenditure had fallen, while the number of non-performing loans was rising and the black economy was around 25-35 percent of GDP.

Though South Asia has undertaken structural adjustments in recent years, the burden of adjustment fell on the poor with social and development expenditures being slashed.

Deprivation makes South Asia an ideal breeding ground for crime and violence, the report noted. Besides being ravaged by a 17-year long civil war, Sri Lanka had the region's highest rate of murders and armed robberies with nine murders and 20 armed robberies per 100,000 people. Bangladesh recorded the region's highest rate of car thefts and rapes per 100,000 people while India witnessed 23,000 dowry deaths since 1994.

''With life so insecure and liberty so vulnerable, South Asia is in need of a new compact between people and the state,'' the report said reflecting on the large number of battles between competing interests pitting caste against caste, race against race.

The UN-backed report also dealt at length on corruption saying the evidence from South Asia was stark. ''If corruption levels in India were reduced to those in the Scandinavian countries, investment rates could increase annually by 12 percent and the GDP growth rate by almost 1.5 percent. If Bangladesh were to improve the integrity of its bureaucracy to Uruguay's level, its yearly GDP growth could rise. And if Pakistan were to reduce corruption to the Singapore level, its annual per capital GDP over the period 1960-1985 could have been much higher.''

The report said that corruption in South Asia was unique because it led to promotion not prison and a flight of capital while resulting in massive human deprivation and even more extreme income inequalities.

(Inter Press Service)

asian sex gazette