Abstract:
The objective of the paper is to examine the governance issues in
government’s major poverty alleviation programme - the Samurdhi
programme- in Sri Lanka. During the past three decades, the concept of
‘good governance’ became more popular in many subject areas such as
development studies, political science, public administration, public policy,
management and economics. Specially, the good governance concept is
most familiar in poverty alleviation programmes in developing countries. The
author uses both primary and secondary data related to poverty alleviation,
the Samurdhi programme as well as governance. Primary data was collected
through questionnaire survey, key informant discussions and focus group
discussions in selected eight districts. The quantitative data were analyzed
using the simple statistical method and qualitative data and information were
analyzed through descriptive methods. The introduction part of the paper
provides a brief introduction to poverty and poverty alleviation programmes.
Then, the paper discusses the concept of ‘governance’, ‘good governance’
as well as ‘poverty’. In the third section of the paper, the author presents
poverty situation in Sri Lanka using both monetary approach and nonmonetary
approach. The fourth part of the article discusses poverty alleviation
programmes in Sri Lanka. In this part, author gives details about the Samurdhi
programme and its major components. In the fifth part of the article, the
author explores the major governance issues related to Samurdhi
programme. The conclusion is that the Samurdhi programme is suffering
from serious governance issues such as mis-targeting, lack of transparency,
accountability, efficiency and effectiveness, equity and social justice as well
as informed citizenry.
