Poverty reduction and food security should be among central objectives of national development policy.

The likelihood of achieving national development goals without a focus on improving the livelihoods and service accessibility of rural dwellers is low. At present, poverty and hunger are predominantly rural problems. A large number of people living in extreme poverty and food insecurity live in rural areas, and the proportion of the poor living in such regions is expected to remain high in the coming decades.
It is therefore essential to maintain a strong focus on rural areas in order to tackle poverty and hunger effectively.
The Iranian government is often criticized for paying little attention to the agriculture sector, as a result of which many villagers are discouraged to work on their farmlands and instead prefer to migrate to cities.
In spite of huge technological advancements in the global agro sector, Iranian farmers are still deprived of machinery and modern methods of farming and animal husbandry.
Hence, they are forced to sell their products to middlemen at non-remunerative prices. This, together with many other factors including poor living conditions and lack of recreational facilities in rural areas, has encouraged farmers to move to the metropolises.
Another major problem is that the prices of goods and services are almost the same in all the provinces, cities and villages, whereas the per capita income differs hugely in different areas.
It is the duty of the government therefore to provide all the citizens with standard living conditions. The government could do this through establishing specialized organizations and supervising their efforts to improve welfare in villages and small towns.
The government would also have to do away with centralization. As is vividly seen, most of the facilities, from sophisticated hospitals to modern banks and amusement parks, are concentrated in Tehran.
Hence the funds have to be distributed fairly among all the provinces to give provincial people some incentive to stay in their birthplace.
It is also important to note that the many challenges facing metropolises could be resolved only if the problems affecting small cities and villages are removed.

Challenges
Influx of people from rural areas to large cities has created numerous challenges for the country.
These challenges include the threat of extinction of traditions and customs of rural and tribal peoples as well as weakening the agro sector structures, thus leading to an economic recession in the country.
Many villages have been abandoned and their names will soon be written off the national map. Moreover, rural industries, most notably handicrafts, will turn defunct in some areas.
On the other hand, mass migration of rural people to metropolises has created many problems for urban inhabitants, including poor recreational facilities due to the increased population, an upsurge in prices of housing and services, worsening unemployment, health and law enforcement failures as well as the near-breakdown of the civil management system.
By developing the agro sector, encouraging villagers to continue handicrafts production, finding markets for their products at the international level and thus boosting their earnings can prevent them from leaving for larger cities.
Social and economic security is what many migrants are looking for. Otherwise, who would not prefer to stay in his or her native place?

Strategies for rural poverty reduction must address the diversity of rural areas and population groups.

Driving Force
Agriculture and the broader rural economy constitute the engine of economic growth in many developing countries including Iran and the basis for their integration into the world economy. Therefore the productive rural sectors, which make up a substantial proportion of national income, employment and exports, require sustained support in order to ensure broad-based growth.
In fact, a coherent support for rural development makes it possible to address many of the root causes of economic laxities in this country. Rural development can also play a key role in reducing inequalities between regions, developing community structures, improving governance, building capacity and offering solutions to migration.
Many might say that the policies of governments here have tended to be unfair against rural needs because public expenditure and services have been mainly concentrated in urban areas. Worse still, they have often harmed rural development through inappropriate policies and institutions, excessive reliance on costly, inefficient and highly centralized organizations and adverse land and agrarian policies Ð reducing access to and investment in land.
In recent years, however, there has been some progress in tackling these imbalances through structural adjustments and liberalizing reforms. National development strategies indicate a growing commitment to poverty reduction that offers important opportunities to tackle rural poverty.
One has to admit however that while existing strategies tend to focus on macroeconomic management and social sector spending, they still pay relatively little attention to the specific needs of rural areas, where the majority of the poor live.

Strategies
It is worth mentioning time and again that rural development is the key to forging the missing links between economic, social and environmental development.
Rural areas are of critical importance in the struggle to achieve sustainable development, yet they tend to be neglected in the development strategies of governments.
Policies and approaches to rural development should integrate the objectives of poverty reduction, food security and sustainable natural resources management in a single and coherent framework because rural poverty is a multidimensional problem that includes low incomes, inequalities in access to productive assets, low health, educational and nutritional status as well as natural resource degradation.
Strategies for rural poverty reduction must therefore address the whole range of problems and take due account of the diversity of rural areas and population groups, as well as the changing context of rural poverty.
Experts now say that there is need therefore for a mainstreamed approach to rural development. This means working within existing or emerging policies, strategies, institutions and programs and ensuring that rural concerns are properly addressed as a first step to formulating a comprehensive national development strategy.
Further in the process, rural development concerns have to be integrated into the macroeconomic framework and into all relevant sector policies and strategies. Finally, rural development concerns and priorities need to be reflected in the government’s budget and in the provision of public services.
Key policy areas that need to be addressed would be supporting economic policies to enable broad-based growth, ensuring more equitable access to productive assets, markets and services, investing in human capital, promoting more sustainable management of natural resources, managing risks and providing safety nets; and building more effective, accountable, decentralized and participatory institutions.
In addition to development cooperation, many other areas of policy are relevant to rural poverty reduction and sustainable development. These include trade, agriculture, fisheries, food aid, research and technology development, environment and migration. More efforts are needed to ensure that all policies towards achieving rural progress are coherent and mutually supportive of sustainable development and poverty reduction objectives.
Poverty reduction and food security, in the meantime, should be among central objectives of national development policy and rural development.

Participation bonds are a financial means for governments around the world to collect liquidity, control inflation, offset budget deficit and finance development projects. But in Iran, the mechanism hasn’t been used properly either before or after the victory of the Islamic Revolution (1979).
Participation bonds are issued under certain conditions to avoid violation of religious law in transactions involving usury.
The buyers of participation bonds receive a fixed amount of money over a period of time as profit, commensurate with their investment deposits in a productive activity.
However, the profit rate of participation bonds, like usual bonds, is fixed, irrespective of whether the project produces the desired result or makes losses.
Experts believe that lack of transparent regulations and the ambiguity surrounding the source of issuing bonds, profit rate, tax and repayment capability are among the major problems facing the issue.
They maintain that due to the delay in implementation of projects in Iran, banks would have to pay the profit from their own resources and this is against the very objective of the scheme.
Elimination of government monopoly over participation bonds and the involvement of private sector in the area are considered as fundamental economic reforms in the country, which could lead to increasing demand of economic units to enter the stock exchange market.
It should be pointed out that parliament has authorized the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) to issue participation bonds worth up to 15 trillion rials until March 2006.
Some 154 lawmakers voted for the double-urgency bill submitted by the Ahmadinejad administration to authorize the CBI to issue participation bonds in a bid to reduce liquidity.
According to the ratification, revenues from the sale of participation bonds can only be invested in economic projects and cannot be spent for other purposes.