Public Provision of Social Security: The Challenge in South Asia

Abstract

The prevalence of widespread poverty and deprivation in South Asian countries points towards the need to adopt a wider concept of social security that would include both promotional and protective social security. This article advocates this view against the backdrop of the coverage and financing of existing social security programmes and points to the inadequacies of these measures in attaining the objectives of higher economic growth and the eradication of poverty. A character istic feature of current social security programmes in South Asian economies is that they are designed in a conceptual vacuum and are implemented mainly as wel fare measures. The emphasis is on promotional measures and even within that cat egory, on poverty alleviation programmes. A balanced provision of promotional and protective social security measures is not evident in any country. Some esti mates of the resource requirements for providing such balanced social security suggest that the cumulative cost of essential human investment over the period 1995-2010 would be over 4-5 per cent of GDP. Such allocation of resources towards the wider connotation of social security is essential for the South Asian countries to reap the benefits of the linkages between social attainments and eco nomic growth, a la East Asia.