Why are the poor households standing off to the side with their hands behind their backs, just watching?
Recently I chatted with the first secretary of a poor village. He sighed that poverty alleviation work at the grassroots level is not easy to do. The most troubling thing is that some poor households are still fairly seriously inclined to wait, rely on others and demand things. Some poor households even say "frankly" to the officials paired with them for assistance: Help me do it well; if I do not escape poverty, you cannot be released from your responsibility, and you will also drag down your own progress. That feeling of "being kidnapped" makes the assisting officials very depressed...
The phenomenon of a "one-man poverty alleviation show" that this first secretary described, in which "officials do the work while the masses watch," does indeed exist.
The reasons include both ideological problems among poor households and problems with assistance methods. It cannot be denied that among today's poor households there are indeed some who are lazy and love ease, "waiting to be helped and lying down to ask for things," and this is also one of the important reasons they are still poor today. On the other hand, it must also be said frankly that, under pressure from the target responsibility system, performance assessments, and recall if found incompetent, some assisting officials do too much "doing it for them" in order to get their paired poor households out of poverty as quickly as possible, while the poor masses instead just stand aside and watch.
How can we change the current phenomenon in the battle against poverty of "officials helping to do the work while farming households watch from the sidelines"?
To prescribe the right medicine, of course the first thing is to stimulate the internal motivation of the poor masses and change "I am being asked to escape poverty" into "I want to escape poverty."
To help the poor, one must first lift their spirit. Long-term poverty easily wears down a person's fighting spirit and makes people gradually lose confidence in living a better life. In some places, long-term blood-transfusion-style poverty alleviation has also caused some poor people to develop path dependence of waiting, relying on others and demanding things. But most poor people are still willing to rely on assistance and, through hard work, live a good life. In the battle against poverty, one important task is to help poor people drive away the "roadblock" in their hearts. In practical work, in addition to publicity and education, poor people can also be organized to visit successful poverty-alleviation models on site, especially successful cases close to them. Through seeing-is-believing visits and learning, their confidence in escaping poverty can be strengthened.
Improve policy design and encourage poor people not to wait or rely on others, but to take the initiative and work actively. In relevant institutional design, those who work hard must not be allowed to live worse than those who are lazy and love ease, and at the same time a clear policy signal must be sent to poor people: policy supports getting rich through hard work, and bottom-line guarantees only guarantee basic living. When improving relevant poverty alleviation policies, we must not fall into the welfare trap of "squatting by the wall in the sun, waiting for others to deliver moderate prosperity." In addition to universal benefits, many policy supports can appropriately introduce competitive mechanisms. Through policy arrangements such as "start early and get more support, start late and get less support," we can more powerfully mobilize the enthusiasm and initiative of poor people to escape poverty, so that poor households accustomed to "waiting for money and demanding goods, lying down and not working" can stand up and get to work.
Second, the specific methods of assistance work must be improved so that both sides of the assistance become a community for escaping poverty. Take industrial poverty alleviation as an example. When choosing poverty alleviation industries, try not to choose projects that are too "high-grade, advanced, refined and cutting-edge," which most poor people would find hard to master even after training, because this easily leads them to "retreat when they see difficulties" or "stand aside and watch." We should guide poor people as much as possible to choose distinctive local industries with a certain foundation and advantages. By providing poverty alleviation loans, technical guidance, and implementing policies such as agricultural insurance, we can lower the threshold for entering industries and strengthen their ability to withstand risks, thereby increasing poor people's participation and the success rate of escaping poverty. Industrial poverty alleviation should not just hand out money and goods; as much as possible, let poor households share a bit of the cost. The amount need not be large, but only after they have paid money will poor households care more. Assisting officials must always remind themselves that giving a man a fish is not as good as teaching him to fish; poor households are the "main actors" in escaping poverty.
Finally, the current battle against poverty must strengthen the orientation of improving poor people's capacity for development. Improve the current poverty alleviation assessment mechanism, change the situation in which income indicators "dominate alone," and make improving poor people's capacity for development an important indicator. Only in this way can we better guide assisting officials not to seek quick success and instant benefits or overstep their roles and do everything for them, but instead to pay more attention to gradually improving poor people's "blood-making" capacity through methods such as training and guidance to improve technology and taking them along to find sales channels to improve market expansion capacity, thereby achieving more stable and higher-quality poverty escape.