RURAL BANGLADESH - PreventionWeb

Water & Sanitation: Up to 97% of rural Bangladesh households continue to rely
overwhelmingly on tube wells as their primary source of drinking water. The exception is
the Chittagong Hill Tracts, where fewer than half of the population have access to tube well
water and access to clean potable water remains problematic. Household sanitation
behaviour varies widely by socioeconomic class. Most vulnerable households (56%) do not
use latrines while non-vulnerable households rely either on a pit latrine (54%) or a flush
toilet (37%).
Social Capital: The stock of social capital that households can use depends on the strength
of the network or connections they build. Access to social capital enables households to
secure resources and opportunities. Household memberships in organizations working at the
community level are low in the study area, where fewer than half of all households have
pursued membership in any organization. Not surprisingly, the proportion of vulnerable or
invisible poor households with memberships in any organization is substantially lower than
the proportion of non-vulnerable households. Nearly one fourth of all households pursue
memberships in NGOs and Community Based Organizations (CBOs). Most of the NGOs
and CBOs work on micro finance. On the contrary extremely poor households generally do
not qualify for micro credit due to lack of collateral. Hence, a substantial proportion of
households from each of the two better-off categories participate in NGO/CBO activities.
The Government safety net programmes like VGD and RMP have also failed to adequately
target the extreme poor. The findings of the study indicated that of all the households
participating in the safety net programmes sixty-seven percent were from the bottom two
groups; hence, thirty-three percent of the households do not qualify for the programmes. In
the study area approximately seven percent of the surveyed households were found to be
beneficiaries of the VGD programme. Fifty-nine percent, of these VGD beneficiary
households belonged to the invisible poor and vulnerable groups. Participation of the better
off groups that is the non-vulnerable and on the edge households in VGD programme was
higher in Coastal and CHT areas respectively. Though this study was not precisely designed
for a robust assessment of safety net programmes like VGD, RMP and others, the important
point that came out from the findings is that a substantial proportion of the better off
households participate in a programme particularly meant for the extreme poor or invisible
poor 2 . The major problem here is apparently not with the geographic targeting but rather
with the beneficiary selection process, which is plagued by political, social, and perhaps
financial influence at the union level. Understanding that the VGD beneficiary selection
process has in the past resulted in substantial inclusion errors 3 , WFP in its new country
programme for 2007-2010 has expended considerable effort aimed at improving the
targeting and selection process.
Food Security: Most households in the sample appear to be food secure. It should be noted
that study data was collected during a relatively favourable time (i.e., within two months of a
major harvest for most localities). Eighty percent of all households, including virtually all of
the non-vulnerable and on-the-edge households and more than eight out of every ten
vulnerable households, regularly consume three meals per day. On the other hand, less than
2 A recent (2006) study on “Relative Efficacy of Food and Cash Transfers” by IFPRI & WFP showed that 65%
of the VGD beneficiary households belong to the lowest 30% expenditure deciles/groups. WFP’s 2006
monitoring findings on VGD estimated that 18% of the VGD card holders do not qualify for the programme.
3 Inclusion of non-deserving participants/beneficiaries in a programme is termed as inclusion error.
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