Changing context of development: Role of CIRDAP

The CIRDAP overview paper noted the demographic trend of its member countries (CMCs) for the period 2003 to 2020 in which overall population growth is projected to increase from 2.02 billion to 2.52 billion, while the rural population may decline from 58 percent to 55 percent. This trend indicates the rapid growth of urban population, unless effective action taken to generate income and employment in the rural areas to check migration. This region attained high and sustained economic growth over the past few decades, in which the distribution of economic growth concentrated in a few countries, and territories within a country.

A cross-country overview of the basic socio-economic indicators showed that there has been a considerable gap in income, literacy and other basic indicators of development between rural and urban areas. As a result, this region holds over two-third of the world poor, of which over 75 percent live in the rural areas, especially in the rural areas of the South Asian countries.

Since 1990 social and human development emerged as key element of rural development. Hence, along with income generation, capacity development, social security and safety of vulnerable groups have also been emphasised. On institutional part, area specific problems and potentials required decentralised framework with a participatory mode. Institutional strengthening, empowerment and participation of the rural people continued to remain formidable challenges towards achieving equitable and sustained rural development. Despite several models of decentralisation practiced in Asian countries, an effective policy with local capacity building is yet to emerge. A concerted public policy action through both macro support and micro intervention is required to tackle numerous structural and institutional barriers impeding rural development. This involves the crucially important task of mainstreaming rural development and poverty alleviation efforts into the overall national development policies.

The paper identified some of the policy gaps to make agrarian reform and rural development inclusive, participatory and sustainable. Some emerging issues identified in the paper were, the need for a comprehensive policy package for agrarian structure and land relations for productive and sustainable utilisation of natural resources; mainstreaming rural development in the context of changing policy environment as well as capacity building of local governance to regulate, coordinate and sustain the development process at the local level; development of non-farm rural activities for creating employment and more earning opportunities for the poor; infrastructural support such as roads, communication, power, banking services required to utilise the maximum potential of land and water and improving farm productivity and profitability in agriculture; information and communication technology (ICT) to empower poor through access to information and knowledge about opportunity, technology and market. A classic example of the application of IT is the Grameen Telecom of Bangladesh which has been instrumental to empower rural woman, in particular.

Similarly, the paper also identified the socio-cultural concern such as integration of women in access to land, water and other natural resources; containing marginalisation of ethnic and indigenous communities and tribal groups; trade in agriculture, food, and agro-based products to make sustainable impact on poverty reduction; and tripartite alliance among GO-NGO and private sector for greater formal and informal interface and interaction among these bodies.

The conference accorded unanimous support for the need of agrarian reform and rural development in order to meet the World Food Summit targets and the Millennium Development Goals relating to poverty and hunger. The members recognised that achieving successful agrarian reforms and rural development is very challenging, with some members reporting success and, many identifying the difficulties. This reflects the great diversity of circumstances and experiences in designing and implementing agrarian reforms and rural development policies. It was unanimously agreed that the agrarian reforms and rural development are inter-dependent for equitable and sustainable development and that new visions and political will are crucial to deliver secure and equitable access to land and other natural resources to ensure it.

The conference appreciated the role of CIRDAP for the follow-up actions of the conference and recommend that FAO undertake a review of experiences of regional organisations that were originally established to support follow-up to WCARRD (e.g. CIRDAP, CIRD-Africa and others) and that lessons be drawn to contribute to realistic and appropriate follow-up for ICARRD. Members recommended that, based on this review, technical support should be provided to strengthen these regional organisations, to enable them to generate comprehensive knowledge at both national and regional levels, to facilitate inter-ministerial and inter-sectoral coordination on rural issues at the national level, and to support policy dialogue, cooperation, exchange of good practices, and monitoring at the regional level.

In fact, CIRDAP was established in 1979 as a part of the implementation strategy of the follow up actions of the WCARRD. The objectives of the centre were laid down as to assist national action, promote regional cooperation and act as a servicing institution for rural development. Over the past 26 years, CIRDAP tried to generate knowledge on various aspects of socio-economic development, which were, among others, poverty alleviation, gender concerns, institutional and infrastructure development, agrarian development, participatory approaches, government-NGO collaboration, local resource mobilisation, micro-credit, GIS, M&E mechanism, environment and natural resources development and food security. Such range of knowledge, along with capacity building trainings and exposure visits, helped its member countries to follow up the WCARRD action plan in their own policy context.

In the context of globalised-market-led-economy, there has been a serious concern that the basic issue of access to land and other productive resources by the poor and disadvantaged groups/communities has not been adequately addressed. On the contrary, the market has already taken agriculture sector under its commercial influence. Hence, there is a real danger that this sector, which is still the major employment provider, main contributor to the GDP and main export earner, may bypass the small and marginal farmers.

Indeed, in the existing skewed distribution of productive resources, the main beneficiaries of the agricultural development policies have been the large landowners, which, in turn, has further accentuated the income gap between the rich and the poor. Apart from the agrarian reforms measures, there could be several other rural development policy options to bridge the gap such as the development of organised capacity of small and marginal farmers to make agricultural product competitive with the emerging market forces, contributing to rural development, reducing poverty and income inequality.

In this context, CIRDAP could be a useful and effective institution at the regional level for generating knowledge in these emerging areas and also follow up ICARRD action plan in the areas of capacity building of rural development functionaries through training and exposure visits; revisiting important policy agendas of agrarian reform and rural development in the new economic context and policy environment; knowledge development in inclusive, participatory and sustainable rural development.

In order to achieve the mission, CIRDAP must be developed as a networking organisation, in order to take advantage of rich professional and institutional infrastructure of its link institutions in CMCs. Similarly, the policy bodies of CIRDAP such as the Technical Committee (TC) represented by the heads of CIRDAP link institutions, the Executive Committee (EC), represented by the Secretaries of the Ministries related to RD and the Governing Council represented by the ministers related to rural development in CMCs should be developed as a regional forum for policy dialogue to share rural development policies and experiences among CMCs.

Dr Paudyal is Director General of CIRDAP.