Reflections on Globescan Foundation and Oxfam New Publication, "Survey of the Poor in India," its Relevance to the UN Guiding Principles Project and to the Working Group's Current Focus on Remedy

The global business and human rights community now begins the build up to its 6th annual conclave the U.N. Forum for Business and Human Rights, overseen by the Human Rights Commission and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and operationalized within the mandate given to the Working Group for Business and Human Rights (see, e.g., here and here).

This year, the principal focus are remedies. To that extent, the international community continues it fascination with the state and the formal apparatus of government. It creates all sorts of very important and valuable ideas about the way to bridge the gap between the high concepts embedded in the project of business and human rights and the very pragmatic challenge of delivery of remedies through effective mechanisms. Add to that the complication of remedial valuation. What appears to be the most important mechanisms for the delivery of the most just forms of remedy to the individuals and institutions that drive the debate about, and fashion the structures for, business and human rights governance (public and private) may have only the slightest value to the people on whose behalf remedies are provided.Yet all of that may itself be an indulgence and speculation.  The global community is aware of its own agendas and the principles it seeks to advance; the poor know themselves as well.  But do they know each other, and if they did, do they share the same vision?

It thus makes sense, if the drivers of business and human rights mean what they say, to "speak" with the objects of all this effort. And that is what the Globescan Foundation and Oxfam International have begun to try to do. They have sought, in their own words from their Press Release, "to conduct the first-ever survey of the poor across the world." Their recently released Report: What India's Poor Have to Say About Poverty and Aid (2017), provides some much need material.

Included below are some additional brief comments and the Press Release (with links) as well as the Introduction and Key Findings of the Report. The full Report may be accessed HERE.

The focus of remedial projects, especially those aimed at providing remedies against enterprises for conduct the results of which produce human rights related injury,  have tended to focus on the formal mechanisms of state. The UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights emphasizes the duty of states (in its Pillar I principles) and the remedial obligations of states through their judicial and non judicial mechanisms, including state administered international soft systems (in its Pillar III principles).  It reflects both a foundational sense of the current political order that the basis of all governance must rest, in the end, on the state and its apparatus.  It also reflects, to some extent, the traditional disdain of governmental agents, and of the international non governmental sector, for the value of enterprises to the task of providing important and legitimate remedies. These views, completely comfortable within the milieu of political organization as it developed from the 18th through the late 20th centuries (and embedded into the basic line of key international organizations like the United Nations itself), belies the transformative element introduced by globalization and its new realities on the ground.  Not that the state is eliminated, but more that trends toward the governmentalization of the private sector and the privatization of the state, has rendered the old models more formally complete but less functionally related to the realities on the ground as they have emerged over the last quarter century.

It might appear to the initiated that the remedial focus has an even more important element than the mere provision of remedies for specific human rights wrongs.  That overarching remedial goal of the drivers of the business and human rights machinery at lofty levels, might be focused on the socialization of rights holders into an appropriate appreciation of their condition and the management of their desire for compensation and other redress more in line with the tastes and objectives of those who design and operate the system. Remedy, then, may well have as its object the construction of hierarchies of influence and control in which the poor, again, sit at the bottom. The highest value remedy, then, might be the inculcation of appropriate human rights related values among the poor (e.g.,Reflections on "Report on the 2016 UN Forum on Business and Human Rights," Statement of Beatriz Balbin Chief, UNOHCHR Special Procedures Branch Office).

The socialization occurs on two levels.  The first is on the acceptance of the value of the state, and especially its manifestation at the local level, as a principal and legitimate instrument for the delivery of remedies worthy of that name.  The second is on the nature of remedies worth obtaining.  The international community sometimes has a very specific idea of the sorts of remedies they deem worthy and those they deem less so.  These might tie into broader objectives of international society and to the ongoing contests over the control of the narratives of values, responsibilities and rights. The socialization tends to be a function of conceptualizations about the needs and characteristics of those for whom the UN Guiding Principles have been crafted (no, not business in the first instance, but for the protection of those whose interests may be adversely affected by the conduct of economic activities by state and private enterprises).  

For the most part such conceptions might be considered legitimate because of the representational character of the non state sector organizations that appear to act on behalf of human rights victims and of the poor in general.  The representation is societal in the sense that there are no markers for legitimacy of representation as these have been built into political conceptions of rule of law (see, e.g., here and here). From a pragmatic perspective, this arrangement made sense if only because of the technical problems associated with actually asking the poor what they thought in any meaningful way.

It is in this context that one must welcome the remarkable efforts of at least two NGOs who sought, at least in an initial and tentative way, to actually ask the objects of all of this effort what they sought.  And in the process learn a little more about who they are. Through its Report: What India's Poor Have to Say About Poverty and Aid (2017), Globescan Foundation along with Oxfam International

demonstrated that it is possible to randomly sample the poor and ultra-poor population and conduct quantitative research with them using a standard questionnaire. This infographic, based on our Indian sample of 1,021 people living in poverty, includes a graphical display of insights found in our complete report, available here.

The Press Release and small portions of the Report follow.  The most interesting element of the Report is, as might be expected, points to greatest difficulty that confronts a state based business and human rights project (and as well, the Treaty that is meant to be built on that conception).  That problem is the substantial distrust by the objects of state duty to the actual institutions of state and its administrators, on which the poor must rely.

When rating different actors on whether they help or worsen their living conditions, respondents give the lowest ratings to two important actors: village/community leaders and the police. Four in ten respondents say these two actors worsen their lives (39% and 40%, respectively), almost double the number saying they improve conditions (28% and 22%, respectively). This suggests that these are possible intervention points or audiences for initiatives that would have the effect of improving the daily lives of those living in poverty (especially the poorest). (Report, p. 5)

Until that problem is fixed--and at the local level--no amount of high theory, no efforts to protect and project state bottom through the bottom rungs of society, will be effective in this effort to bring effective remedies down to its operational level. But even more interesting for the international NGO community is the finding that there is substantial trust building work needed by NFGOs among the communities they serve.

Respondents rate both non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and companies as worsening their lives (24% and 25% respectively) a bit more than helping their lives (19% and 23% respectively), with almost one in four unable to rate either of them. This suggests relatively low awareness and trust in these actors currently to deliver aid programs at the local level.

Indeed, that NGOs are viewed about the same as the enterprises that tend to be cast as the wrongdoers in international forums, suggests that the assumptions that drive law making and that underpin policy may need to be revisited--or the approaches of NGOS as well as business rethought within the context of the UNGP framework.  Of course, it is more likely that the thought of the poor will be dismissed or distinguished.  And that, more than anything, will mark the tragedy of the efforst that might then become far more disconnected from their objects. . 

PRESS RELEASSE: Survey of the Poor: Results of Pilot Study in India

Begun in 2015 in partnership with Oxfam International, the Survey of the Poor initiative of the GlobeScan Foundation has set out to conduct the world’s first statistically meaningful survey of the poorest of the poor around the world, giving voice to this important global public and providing metrics to help governments and development aid organizations assess their impact and better target their efforts.

The goals of the Survey of the Poor initiative include deeply understanding and widely reporting the life conditions, views and needs of those living in poverty around the world, and to track over time the improved conditions that world governments have promised them. Without engaging with people living in poverty in this way, we cannot see how the Global Goal of eliminating poverty will ever be achieved.

In the early development of the Survey of the Poor, a series of qualitative focus group discussions were held in India during 2015 with people living in poverty and their advocates in both urban and rural settings.

This current report gives details of the methodology, findings and statistical analysis from our first quantitative survey of 1,021 Indian residents living in poverty, which was conducted from April to June 2016. Seen as the pilot phase of our initiative, this survey was aimed at piloting and testing both the sampling methodology and questionnaire. The learning from this phase of work will be applied to further developing all aspects for the 2017–2018 rollout of the initiative across five to ten countries..

Download this report or view highlight findings in our infographic.

__________ 

Report: What India's Poor Have to Say About Poverty and Aid (2017)

Introduction (pp. 4).

Begun in 2015 in partnership with Oxfam International, the Survey of the Poor initiative of the GlobeScan Foundation has set out to conduct the world’s first statistically meaningful survey of the poorest of the poor around the world, giving voice to this important global public and providing metrics to help governments and development aid organizations assess their impact and better target their efforts.

The goals of the Survey of the Poor initiative include deeply understanding and widely reporting the life conditions, views and needs of those living in poverty around the world, and to track over time the improved conditions that world governments have promised them. Without engaging with people living in poverty in this way, we cannot see how the Global Goal of eliminating poverty will ever be achieved.

In the early development of the Survey of the Poor, a series of qualitative focus group discussions were held in India during 2015 with people living in poverty and their advocates in both urban and rural settings. (Please see here for our 2015 focus group report.)

The GlobeScan Foundation has developed its initiative as a collaboration involving a wide range of aid and development professionals from bilateral and multilateral aid agencies, as well as international NGOs. In addition to the vital on-going advice of our Project Advisory Group (please see page 34 for members), twenty of our fellow members of the World Association of Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) participated in a “collaboratorium” we held in Buenos Aires in late 2015, giving substantive advice on our first draft of the questionnaire.


The current report gives details of the methodology, findings and statistical analysis from our first quantitative survey of 1,021 Indian residents living in poverty, which was conducted from April to June 2016. Seen as the pilot phase of our initiative, this survey was aimed at piloting and testing both the sampling methodology and questionnaire. The learning from this phase of work will be applied to further developing all aspects for the 2017–2018 rollout of the initiative across five to ten countries.

The GlobeScan Foundation gratefully acknowledges the substantive support provided by the International Development Research Centre (Ottawa) as well as donated professional time and services by Team CVoter, our Indian research partner, that enabled us to complete this pilot study.

The pilot questionnaire used in India was designed to demonstrate the efficacy of such research findings (used in conjunction with other inputs and “Big Data”) in informing more effective designs of interventions aimed at providing pathways out of poverty. The goal is to inform the development of policy and programs to address the felt needs and aspirations of the so- called “Ultra-Poor” – variously referred to as the “Poorest of the Poor,” the “Base of the Pyramid” and the “P-20” (the poorest 20% of the population).

All of the 1,021 interviews used to generate the findings in this report were conducted with randomly selected people living below the poverty line of 3,000 INR (rupees) per month, in both urban and rural settings in India. A minimum of one-third of the sample can be categorized as “Ultra-Poor.”1

For methodological details, please see the Methodology section of this report, and the more detailed Appendix.

 * * *

Key Findings (pp. 5-6) 

The findings from the 2016 Survey of the Poor in India suggest that we achieved a statistically meaningful sample of those living below the poverty line there, including a minimum of one-third of the sample living in “ultra-poor” conditions:

The majority of those surveyed (56%) report living in one room or less (including structures without walls and outside).

The average household size includes four adults and 2.5 children.

Only 50 percent of school-age children in the surveyed households are currently attending school.

Gender significantly predicts living conditions; 60 percent of women surveyed report living in temporary shelters or outside (vs 31% of men), and 61 percent of women say they live without four walls around them (vs 4% of men). Also, 36 percent of women report never having attended school (vs 6% of men).

When asked about sanitation facilities, 45 percent of respondents report having to use open fields or pit toilets; 37 percent have no privacy when using the latrine, including 32 percent of women.

Most surveyed households report going without electricity (67%) and clean water (51%) at least once in the last month.

38 percent of households have gone without food in the past month and 61 percent report being unable to afford healthy or nutritious food.

65 percent of respondents report helping others less fortunate over the last year (including 9% saying “many times”).

One in two respondents (50%) say the length, timing or severity of seasons have changed over the last decade, and 39 percent say the change in seasons has negatively affected their ability to feed their family. (Among the 246 respondents owning arable land, these percentages are 86% and 45% respectively.)

There are a number of findings and analytical results that can be used to directly inform policy and program interventions that will improve the lives of people living in poverty:

When rating different actors on whether they help or worsen their living conditions, respondents give the lowest ratings to two important actors: village/community leaders and the police. Four in ten respondents say these two actors worsen their lives (39% and 40%, respectively), almost double the number saying they improve conditions (28% and 22%, respectively). This suggests that these are possible intervention points or audiences for initiatives that would have the effect of improving the daily lives of those living in poverty (especially the poorest).

Respondents rate both non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and companies as worsening their lives (24% and 25% respectively) a bit more than helping their lives (19% and 23% respectively), with almost one in four unable to rate either of them. This suggests relatively low awareness and trust in these actors currently to deliver aid programs at the local level.

Segmentation analysis by GlobeScan reveals three distinct and equal-sized segments of respondents, varying by their subjective wellbeing: High, Medium and Low. Each segment has its own set of factors holding them back, suggesting different interventions may be needed for each segment. (See Segmentation Analysis section for more details.)

Levels of activism, outrage and empowerment are lowest amongst the Low (or poorest) segment but are elevated amongst the High segment, suggesting that as people climb the ladder out of poverty their activism will increase, especially since members of the High segment are particularly frustrated by bureaucracy and institutional failures. The implication is that the poorest of the poor are unlikely to be organized at the local level.

Our detailed statistical analysis of the cognitive and situational structure of poverty in the minds of respondents very much supports the Multi- dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) framework that was developed by the UNDP and is increasingly being adopted in development circles. The only exception being that in our data analysis, level of education was not predictive of perceptual/subjective wellbeing. In other words, our research shows that simply using income and consumption levels to identify the poor does not come close to the level of understanding needed to effectively intervene to help move people up the ladder out of poverty. (See Subjective Poverty Index section for details.)

Should the above findings be substantiated through the five- to ten-country surveys conducted during the next stage of the Survey of the Poor initiative, they would suggest that program and policy interventions aimed at obvious and important goals like improved housing and education are necessary but far from sufficient to alleviate poverty. Other initiatives aimed at increasing the security, connectedness and empowerment of those living in poverty would also positively impact the subjective life satisfaction of the poorest of the poor. For example, interventions aimed at police and village / community leaders to sensitize them on the needs and rights of the Ultra- Poor would improve the daily lives of these citizens.

Finally, our analysis of the India research results suggests that one size does not fit all when it comes to programs that will most lead to the poor moving up the ladder out of poverty. The Ultra-Poor have significantly different needs and drivers of satisfaction than those whose income is close to the poverty line.