Social Safety Net for Employment Generation and Capacity Development: Current State and Policy Dynamics

Abstract

More than one third of the total population in Bangladesh fails to meet their basic needs with the income they earn. Basically poor people, senior citizens, poor women, and geographicallydisadvantaged people are the most vulnerable, striving to get a minimum living standard. This is why Government, donors and NGOs are implementing different aspects of social policies at local level to help general people to meet their basic needs by creating income generating activities and capacity development. Although previous results of research represent the situation of policy implementation quite well, it is hard to get the evidence of which factors influence the implementation of social protection policy and how they do so. Against this backdrop, this paper tries to answer some specific questions including who played what role from the policy initiation through the policy formulation stages? what were the priorities and concerns of these stakeholders? And, how has such a policy genesis affected policy performance? In this research, National Service Program has been taken as a case. Core activities of the project are capacity development and two years temporary employment generation. The article found that National Service Program is an exceptional policy where ruling political party expressed their greater concern and allocated money to implement the program. In this policy process political commitment is a determinant factor which gives the guaranty of policy success i.e resource allocation and maximum utilization of financial and non-financial allocation. The finding confesses that if political party generates the idea and owns the policy then its implementation becomes easy.