Poverty is a cross-border phenomenon and India could learn from the experiences of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said in a meeting with Farzana Raja, chairperson of BISP, on Tuesday.
Kumar said BISP was a commendable initiative aiming at poverty alleviation and women empowerment.
Various interventions, including those in health and education sectors, have been introduced to uplift the living standards of under-privileged segments of society and India wants to learn from the experiences and success of the BISP, he added.
Farzana Raja said Pakistan and India face similar issues in the social sector that ought to be resolved by working together, she said. She said that one-window operation was one of the prime factors of the success of BISP as it had reduced the non-developmental expenditures tremendously.
Under BISP, the federal government has issued ATM/debit cards to the poor to receive financial aid and gain access to various welfare schemes. The programme was also used to provide aid to the flood victims.
PTI reception
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan on Tuesday said that good-governance was good politics and his government would restore the law and order situation across the country within 90 days.
He expressed these views at a reception hosted for Nitish Kumar at his Bani Gala residence. Senior PTI leaders including Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, Shafqat Mahmood, Jahangir Tareen, Khursheed Kasuri, Naeemul Haq and others were also present.
Nitish Kumar, on the occasion, said that his government had restored law and order in Bihar through better coordination between the executive and judiciary. He said speedy justice could restore the confidence of the general public in democratic process.
He said his government ensured protection to the state witnesses and posted data of the criminals and mafia groups on the websites for general public and government officials. Sustainable policies coupled with determination of the state, could yield better results, he added.
Imran Khan said that Pakistan should benefit from successful experiences of the Bihar state government.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 14th, 2012.
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@Arshad: "BISP is a wicked program designed to exploit poverty of the people by bribing as many poor voters with govt money named after ruling party’s most controversial leader, as are required to get the party’s candidate elected in that constituency. " Direct interventions are desirable when there is such widespread poverty as exists in our subcontinent. There are successful examples of this throughout te world including Brazil. The way it is implemented in Pakistan has been certified as being relatively free from corruption - so that too is a very good thing.The one aspect of the program that PTI criticizes is that the they recommend the program should be made conditional by tying it to some desirable metric such as sending the kids to school or getting them vaccinated etc. This makes sense in heory but in reality all 'conditions' have to be verified by a human and this becomes the basis of corruption. IF you want to keep a program corruption free in India and Pakistan, you have to minimise case by case decisions taken by humans.
Also bear in mind that the money that goes towards BISP is a small fraction of what goes towards electricity subsidy to rich industrialists and AC users.
Finally, I agree that it should not have been named after an individual. Sadly Congress in India also has a habbit of naming things after Nehru/Indira/Rajiv. I would like to point out that Imran was not free from this also in how SKMH was named - clearly a wonderful institution. After all this was not his personal money. IT is the Pakistanis that donated and continue to donate to generate the funds for this hospital.
wht a statement does anybody similarity between this statement and osama bin ladin's statement that helped bush to win second term.
@Indian friends here: I think Indian internet users are overly critical of Mr Kumar. Why?
Vikram, you must also protest against this foul practice.
BISP is bad program? please add some details, I thought giving debit cards to target-population will cut the middle man out of the equation. Debit cards will give a proper paper trail, its a good idea.
Nitish Kumar's visit to Pakistan is same old tactics by politicians to garner vote (minority vote in India). Trying to restore his now eroded credibility among minority vote. This visit wont help him in election.
Arshad, naming programs after leaders of the ruling party is ingrained in the other side of the border as well.
Mr. Kumar is no economist. Unsurprisingly, in India just like in Pakistan, the politicians have no idea how to spur growth and the ones that do are not allowed to undertake the necessary reforms. Welfare programs like BISP, although necessary for helping some people, should not be used as primary tools for generating growth. If such a policy was successful, the world's most economic powers would be communist countries (yes china is communist but not so much in their economics because that is pretty free market). Since we can see all the most developed countries are free market driven economies, thats what governments should try to achieve. The PML government has better sense of economic policy making than the PPP government. Thats not to say the PML government has much sense, just more than the PPP guys.
@M.Ahmer Ali: I agree with you in this assertion that the BISP is in fact indebting Pakistan more than it is helping but Nitish kumar is prtaising the beneficiary identification process and the fact that the benefits are provided within one package. However, there is nothing new in this because one of our former ministers Mr Mani Shankar Iyer has been saying this for a very long time- that India shoud repackage all the benefit scheme in a way that they all can be more effective, but such is Indian politics that Nitish will not listen to anything sensible from a fellow countryman because he happens to belong to an opposite political party. However, please do not think that we in India are deluded in any way by Nitish Kumar's praises to Pakistan's current establishment because we all know that 'Mr 10%' is now 'Mr 90%' ...
I would rather welcome any such learnings from each other. There are schemes that have worked well in India and something that Pakistan can learn and vice versa.
Nitish is a CM of one of the most backword states in India and has done well by providing good governance. Bihar today is one of the fastest growing states in India.
A program targeted to help poorest of the poor is better than none or making more bombs. Spending country's resources on the poor masses irrespective of which part of Pakistan they belong cannot be evil. However, those who support the expenses only on the huge defense forces and WMD would hate to see it being wasted on the poor citizens. Bihar is not much different from many parts of Pakistan and it can benefit from our experience just like the micro banking loans program is used not just in Bangladesh but other countries. However out hateful hearts and minds are not going to open up to any new idea no matter how good it is.
BISP is a wicked program designed to exploit poverty of the people by bribing as many poor voters with govt money named after ruling party's most controversial leader, as are required to get the party's candidate elected in that constituency. Does the Bihar CM want to follow such Machiavellian wicked concept?
Indian leadership keep it in your view and never forget it that the PPP government got huge loans on high markups from IMF and other international financial institutions and indebted the country very badly would you like to get huge loans from IMF and other international financial institutions on high markups to start such this type of program like BISP in Pakistan?????