Why do Poverty Reduction Programmes tend not to work out as intended? Discuss in relation to either i) states or ii) civil society organisations (NGOs or social movements or both).

Introduction
Mass poverty is the single most important economic and social issue on our planet today (Downer, 1997). ‘Poverty’ is a multidimensional concept involving the inability of people to meet their economic, social and other standards of well-being (OECD, 2001). Over the years a number of institutional approaches have been used to ensure the eradication of poverty from the society (Sarker and Rahman, 2006). One of these efforts is through a poverty reduction strategy. According to Barder (2009) ‘Poverty reduction’ is often described as the promotion of economic growth that will permanently lift as many people as possible over the poverty line. This line is defined as ‘the income levels below which people are defined as poor’ (World Banks, 2004). However, making poverty reduction strategies work has proven a much bigger challenge regardless of the fact that many efforts have been made towards alleviating it. Downer (1997) argues that the provision of opportunity for people to meet their basic needs has become the greatest challenge to most countries. Why then do poverty reduction programmes tend not to work out as intended? Pellissery (2005) points out that in developing economies, public authorities who are responsible for designing and implementing anti-poverty interventions are not sufficiently independent from the interests of the dominant sections of society. He asserts that anti-poverty programmes, at the implementation stage, strengthen the local elites’ capacity to wield power and support their own private interests (ibid). According to OECD (2001) report, policy reforms that are pro-poor often raise difficult political issues and that peoples’ representation in the