AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

104 BERNICE CAMPOS ROLDAN
just in accumulating cash but also in collectivizing people in low-income
settlements:
Once a community-based savings and loans group generates, spends
and manages funds, it develops the capacity to articulate its members’
priorities. It learns to negotiate for resources and support… The savings
group also becomes better organized in defending the interests of its
members – as in, for instance, fighting a threat of eviction… In the case
studies from India and South Africa, the savings groups became the engines
of the community organizations and their federations. (Anzorena
et al., 1998: 174)
TARGETING WOMEN, BUT WHO TAKES THE CREDIT?
Since the 1990s, there has been a rise in targeting, following the general
shift from food price subsidies to credit programs. Coverage has narrowed
from universal benefits to targeted transfers. Devereaux (1999:
61) defines targeting as ‘any mechanism for identifying eligible (“needy”)
individuals and screening out the ineligible (“non-needy”) for purposes
of transferring resources, typically by defining eligibility criteria’. Coverage,
meanwhile, is ‘the proportion of a (total or eligible) population that
is actually reached by an intervention’. Targeting is intended to reduce
the number of the poor and improve the situation of the poorest, and
also ensure the efficiency, sustainability and inclusiveness of the intervention.
It is a mechanism riddled with problems: complex definitions of poverty
entail high costs of assessment, and cut-off points are essentially
subjective. Given the poor’s risk-averse and survivalist attitude, they
would benefit by not revealing their real income, so even detailed targeting
processes can be prone to leakages (defined as transfers to the nonneedy).
There are also trade-offs between diligence and bureaucratic
costs: Devereaux (1999: 69-70) cites the GAPVU case of individual assessment
in Mozambique where administrative and monitoring costs
took up 15 percent of the program budget; estimated losses to ineligible
claimants and corrupt officials was at 50 percent. Finally, there are political
costs: beneficiaries of well-targeted poverty alleviation programs ‘are
often quite weak politically and may lack the clout to sustain the programs...
Benefits meant exclusively for the poor often end up being poor
benefits’ (Sen, 1995: 14, in Devereaux, 1999: 62). Devereaux concludes