Tsunami a setback to millenium development
The tsunami would impede the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in affected countries including Sri Lanka. As an outcome of the many UN summits that were held in the 1990s, the UN established 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These were: eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; attainment of universal primary education; reduction of child mortality; reduction of gender inequality; improvement of maternal health; eradication of AIDS and other infectious diseases; environmental sustainability and establishing global partnerships. These goals were made into specific regional and national goals.

In Sri Lanka's case some of the goals, had been nearly attained before the dawn of the millennium, others remained to be realised. The tsunami would impact adversely on the attainment of the MDG in affected countries including Sri Lanka as it is the poorer sections of the population have been hit hardest by the tsunami.

The impact of the tsunami on the poor will be a set back not only the goal of poverty reduction but would hamper all the other MDGs as well. It was mainly the poor who lost their livelihoods and it is their betterment that has been setback. The reconstruction of their houses may be manageable but the larger task of restoring their livelihood would be critical for the attainment of the MDGs.

There is a strong connection between hunger and poverty. Poverty is the key factor affecting hunger and in turn hunger debilitates the population and affects the capacity for income earning. It is a vicious cycle that has to be broken. The tsunami put more people into hunger. Their being fed and sustained is vital to ensure their livelihood. Just as much as poverty results in hunger, hunger leads to poverty. Amartya Sen has argued that the elimination of starvation preceded an increase in food supply in China.

Impliedly this contributed to production and productivity increases. The large number of children orphaned or with a single parent poses difficulties to achieve the MDG goal of education for all. That in turn will affect the other goals as well. There is a need to set special goals and recommend programmes that would ensure that the children left behind and their health and education looked after.

The orphaned children must be taken care of so that they are not excluded in the MDGs. One critically important step would be to strengthen institutions to deliver and monitor services for the poor. Decentralisation is essential, yet in Sri Lanka it brings risks due to greater politicisation at local levels.

One way of making decentralization effective would be to involve proven community organizations to build local capacity for both deliveryand monitoring of services. The use of social capital especially for improvement of rural infrastructure, improvements in the quality of education and in enhancing gender equality could be an important strategy for achieving the MDGs. Social capital could play an even more significant role than governments and also contribute to improving the efficiency of state investments in education and health in particular. The effective community actions during the tsunami disaster bears ample evidence of this. The limitations in the use of social capital have been due to the lack of organization and direction for the mobilisation of social capital.

The MDG should not be national goals. The regional disparities are such that sub-national goals are essential to make the MDGs meaningful to the people left behind. Regional disparities and pockets of poverty and social underdevelopment are masked by national statistics. The progress at national level should be achieved by regional disparities being reduced.

Therefore sub national goals should be set and progress monitored. The advances in Sri Lanka's social development in the past were very much due to better gender equality, especially in education. This was the basis for further improvements in education and health. Without gender equality countries cannot achieve their full economic and social development potential, unless women play their vital roles in caring for children, educating them and ensuring their health and nutrition.

There is clear evidence that gender equality, especially gender equality in education, is a vital lever for child development and social development. There are pockets of severe gender inequality in Sri Lanka that must be transformed to achieve MDGs. The goals of literacy and education have been virtually achieved in Sri Lanka. Yet the goals should attempt to go beyond literacy, primary education and schooling. This is especially so as no longer are there employment opportunities for those with literacy and primary education.

Therefore for the poor to attain the goal of rising above poverty, educational opportunities such as in foreign languages, skills development and information technology are needed. The lack of such facilities in remote areas is a reason for the continued high unemployment, low incomes and poverty that defy the achievement of the range of MDGs. The quality of education has to be improved. Having schools of very low quality would not achieve much. Qualitative goals should be set so that quantitative goal realization is not misleading.

Economic growth alone will not achieve the MDGs.Yet economic growth is essential to ensure the achievement and sustainability of social goals. The East Asian experience illustrates how rapid growth with redistribution policies reduced poverty and helped improve social development. The South Asian experience, on the other hand, is illustrative of both inadequate growth to reduce poverty and a lack of appropriate policies to pass on the growth to the poor and for social development goals. The economic growth strategy should focus on rural infrastructure development and adopt pro-poor policies such as support for rural industry and rural infrastructure development. The government must recognise that they are faced with an additional hurdle to achieve the MDGs and so redouble their efforts and target the tsunami-affected regions of the country.

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