Persistence of poverty and underdevelopment are twin problems being encountered currently by most developing countries. The situation on this account is particularly worse in Afghanistan. Virtual war-like situation during the past four decades dealt serious setbacks to its social, cultural, economic, and political institutions. Insecurity, instability, fragile political situation, weak governance, and poor public administration continue to aggravate these problems. Social and economic scenario in the country is marked by slow and volatile economic growth, unusual high unemployment, deplorable basic civic amenities including water, high level of illiteracy and poor quality of human resources, unusual high level of disability, morbidity and mortality particularly infant mortality, poor plight of women, and other marginalized segments (such as Kuchi a nomadic tribe) of the society, and widespread prevalence of chronic poverty and vulnerability (Kantor and Pain 2010; Jolliffe 2010; Pain 2012). Afghan economy and its people seem to have been virtually trapped into a vicious circle of underdevelopment, conflict, and high risk and vulnerability to poverty with no feasible breakthrough in the near future (Kantor and Pain 2011; Pain 2012). The country is in a highly precarious situation in terms of Human Resource Development as it ranks 171 among the 188 countries in the world in 2014 (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2015). In fact, the international community made serious efforts to reconstruct war-torn Afghanistan and a massive inflow of reconstruction and humanitarian aid has landed in the country since 2001 to build its war-torn economy and maintenance of peace. However, the crisis is far away from over. The year 2012 saw a resurgence of violence and killing on both sides of civilian population (Crawford 2015). Since 2001, international donors donated huge funds for reconstruction, renovation, and rehabilitation of the fragile and conflict-torn Afghanistan. These developmental and security initiatives are expected to make a significant contribution in mitigation of low level of living and poverty in the country. In this background, the present book is dedicated to explore the various dimensions of vulnerability to poverty in Afghanistan.
The nature, depth, and severity of poverty differ considerably across developed and developing countries but the basic issues remain the same. The fundamental starting issues before researchers, both in developed and developing countries are: What are the most suitable yardsticks to measure poverty? What are the nature, extent, depth, and severity of Poverty? What are the trends and tendencies of poverty? Who are the poor? Who are vulnerable to poverty? Where do they live and what do they do? How to identify them? Why are some people trapped in a low level of living and poverty while others living under similar circumstances enjoy decent standards? What constrains the poorâs upward mobility on the income ladder? To what extent are external shocks responsible for the plight of the poor? How do people cope with shocks and poverty? How to reach poor with what policy options to enable them to meet their basic necessities of life? What are the theoretical arguments? And what are the empirical evidences on different dimensions of these key issues? All these basic inquiries are equally relevant to poverty and vulnerability of people in Afghanistan. However, addressing all these issues in a single book like the present one is not feasible. Nevertheless, the present study is devoted to explore the main issues about poverty in Afghanistan. In order to explore the various dimensions of poverty in Afghanistan in a proper perspective, it would be rewarding to visit the theories related with poverty and critically examine the current economic and political scenario in the country. Some scholars from different background examined the problem of poverty from different perspectives. The main perspectives are: economic, sociological, psychological, and political. Elaboration of the theory of all these perspectives here is neither feasible nor desirable. A brief review of the economic theory of poverty is as follows.
1.1 Economic Theory of Poverty: A Review
The aim of this section of literature is to analyse the prevailing divergent perspectives on poverty in the form of theories pertaining to different Economic schools of thought, ranging from the Classical/Neo-Classical , Neo-liberal/Keynesian to Marxist and finally wide-ranging, eclectic theories of social exclusion and social capital . The economic review presented here draws heavily from the Sanchez-Martinez and Davis (2014). Past literature on the causes and responses to poverty largely focuses on the concept of absolute poverty especially in the developing countries with comparatively less focus on relative poverty. In addition, the literature on poverty mainly delves upon the assumptions and theoretical underpinnings constituting the Neo-classical school of thought.
Before analysing the different theories relating to poverty, it is of utmost importance to provide an overview of the different definitions of poverty that are used by various schools of thought since they are integral to the examination of the corresponding views regarding the responses to poverty propagated by such different theories (Sanchez-Martinez and Davis 2014). Historically, Adam Smith has defined poverty as âthe inability to purchase necessities required by nature or customâ where emphasis is given to both social and economic aspects of poverty, i.e. absolute and relative measures (Smith 1776). However, Karl Marx mainly focused on poverty as a context-specific and relative phenomenon prevailing in the society. Among the contemporary literature, Sen (1983) has made one of the most significant contributions to study the concept of poverty in the context of deprivations and capabilities of individuals. However, the most staple definition of poverty that is used commonly by various scholars is given by the World Bank according to which a person is considered poor if his or her consumption or income level falls below the âpoverty line â that represents some minimum level necessary to meet the basic needs (Chen and Ravallion 2008). The concept of poverty line is based upon a monetary approach of measuring and aggregating the level of poverty. However, the World Bank (2004) has also defined poverty as a multidimensional concept referring to it as the lack of basic amenities, low levels of health, education, security, and opportunities. In addition, the European Comission (2004) has also defined poverty as a society-specific concept where deprivations of individuals are measured along the lines of acceptable standards of living prevailing in the society thus highlighting the role of social exclusion and marginalization of the poor.
An analysis of the diverse economic perspectives relating to the causes and responses to cope with poverty can be divided into four broad categories, namely (i) The Classical Theory, (ii) Neo-Classical Theory, (iii) Neo-liberal/Keynesian Theory and (iv) Eclectic theories of Social Exclusion . The former two theories are commonly referred to as the âorthodoxâ approaches which initiated the formal analysis of poverty in the nineteenth century, while the latter two theories emerged as a response or criticism of assumptions, hypotheses, and remedies provided by the former theories (Sanchez-Martinez and Davis 2014).
1.1.1 Classical Theory
This school of thought firmly believed and propagated the free and automatic functioning of market forces under a âLaissez-faireâ policy regime whereby any disturbance to the market system shall get self-corrected. Exchanges taking place in the market are considered efficient where each factor of production gets remunerated equal to its marginal productivity, i.e. wages paid to individuals reflect their respective productivities in the economic system. Hence, poverty (lower wages or income) in this context is a consequence of âpoor individual choicesâ made by themselves. As a policy prescription, the Classical emphasized on policies aimed at raising the productivity of such deprived individuals, for them to join and compete in the labour market. On the other hand, state intervention to alleviate poverty in the form of various welfare programmes has been considered as a source of economic inefficiency that disrupts the structure of incentives functioning in the market. In the light of these observations, one can discuss different approaches that come under the ambit of the Classical school of thought on poverty.
(a) Behavioural/decision-based theory: According to this approach, the state of poverty is a result of an individualâs own economic choices, such as lack of self-motivation, industriousness, work ethics, attainment of low levels of education, and will to imbibe new skills in the labour market. Therefore, it is not the failure of the market rather the shortcomings in the effort and capabilities of the individuals that lead them towards the poverty/welfare trap (Townsend 1979). In such a case, the preferred policy is to provide âcharityâ based assistance to the poor segments of the population contrary to alternative efforts such as giving subsidies because this shall create disincentives for the individuals to make efforts to come outside their state of destitution. Hence it is advisable for the government to follow development policies such as providing education rather than poverty alleviation policies (Blank 2003).
(b) The âsub-cultureâ of poverty: This view propagates that âpoverty begets povertyâ by creating a vicious cycle of poverty trap . That is, âpoverty, in short, is a way of life, remarkably stable and persistent, passed down from generation to generation along family linesâ (Townsend 1979). The poor sections of the society create their own âsub-cultureâ characterized by poor economic choices that are self-perpetuating.
1.1.2 Neo-classical Theory
The advent of Neo-classical tradition is associated with Alfred Marshall. Poverty is considered to be directly generated by the initial unequal endowments that determine the productivity of respective individuals such as talent, skills, and capital. Market failures such as externalities, moral hazard, and adverse selection as well as incomplete information are also viewed as aggravators of poverty (Davis 2007). Based on this line of thought, there exist different views regarding the causes of poverty and the strategies to alleviate it and are discussed hereby.
(a) The Monetary Approach : In this, poverty is defined in terms of two main variables namely consumption and income that are used as units of measurement of poverty. This approach is along the lines of the Neo-classical trad...