Why Social Protection is Not Enough to Effectively Address Poverty Reduction in Pakistan

Pakistan is behind many other countries in the Asia region in reducing poverty. Dedicated poverty reduction Programmes so far were mainly done by NGOs using livelihood and microfinance approaches and since 2008 through the Benazir Income Support Programme’s cash transfer scheme. Recently, the office of the Prime Minister established Ehsaas Strategy which combines the various poverty reduction and social protection approaches in the country under one Programme. This paper argues that a stronger focus on effective income generating poverty reduction Programmes would be needed to make poverty reduction more successful.

Ex-Post Evaluation of Resettlement of People Displaced by Multi - Purpose Water Resource Development Projects: A Case Study of Tarbela Dam Affectees, Pakistan

Environmental and socio-cultural considerations have often been ignored or neglected in development projects in developing countries which resulted in the deterioration of environment and disruption of socio-cultural fabric. One man’s folly is another man’s fortune. The far reaching impacts of water resources development projects, no doubt makes the nation prosperous, but those who sacrifice are usually deprived of. The areas submerged and the inhabitants dislocated with numerous reminiscences and cultural ties are obviously ignored and tempted with negligible amount of compensation , which is, in no way can bring back their social associations. Researchers did a lot, covering the technical aspects of Tarbela dam and talked high on the replacement of land to the affectees but turned deaf ear to the psychological and sociological shocks which the affectees are still suffering in. They are still remembering earlier glories of their ancestral lives and the attachment which a native may realize for his birth place. How one can forget the places where one played and the rills one enjoyed. They felt the project had problems with adequately compensating and resettling the affectees. The present study is an evaluation study to bring out the socio- cultural and environmental impacts of Tarbela Dam affectees. Major hypotheses of the research were; resettlement policies were not efficiently designed and there was inconsistency in the implementation of resettlement program so the project has adversely impacted the family linkage, socio- economic conditions and local traditional values of the affectees. Primary data was collected through field survey. Site visits and detailed discussions with local people and the officials of the various line departments were also made to get in depth understanding of the problems. Field data was analyzed through a statistical package SPSS.PC. In order to test the hypothesis various tests were applied. Chi-square tests were applied to find out relationship between the variables. Association between variables was found by P-value. To find out the strength of association / effect size between independent and dependent variables, Phi, Kendall’s tau-b and Spearman Correlation tests were applied. All these results of the research support the hypothesis and conclude that the project has adversely impacted the socio-cultural and psychological conditions of the affectees that need to be properly addressed. In the light of this research some suitable measures are proposed for the elimination or amelioration of such impacts for future projects. This will be helpful to pave the way for sustainable development.