Now that
the show is over, our VIPs have gone back to their daily chores satisfied of
their speeches, their deliberations, their exchanges ( skillfully circumventing
the Zimbabwean cactus to others’ discontent) , their networking, their small,
but however niggardly contribution ,be it on the Aid for Trade agenda ( Two years have gone by since Aid for Trade was launched at the WTO, we
are still groping for a clearly accepted definition of what counts as an Aid
for Trade initiative, with guidelines for accessing funds and effective
monitoring and evaluation mechanisms) that stands the risk of being struck off
the agenda in the current precarious climate of uncertainties and food crisis or
the operationalisation of the SADC Development Fund ( another one of those
funds that refuse to take off despite commitment taken at the extraordinary
summit held in Midrand, South Africa, in October 2006) . .
Now it’s is time to balance the books. Was it
worth it,
the SADC international conference on poverty and development? Only time will say whether this additional
conference has helped in making a difference to the 40% of SADC population on
average living on less than one dollar a day , the 60 % on less than two
dollars a day and in those SADC countries
where there are more than 80% of the population living in poverty. At the end of the day, at the cost of some Rs
20 millions, we did manage to come out with quite a polished declaration that
has more or less everything what we need to combat poverty- food security,
addressing climate change, alternative sources of energy, pro trade
liberalization, PPPs, increasing sporting as well as information services, you
name it !!!
After
recalling to us that the ultimate objective of the SADC is to eradicate poverty by promoting sustainable and
equitable economic growth and noting that despite enormous efforts of SADC
member states , the task ahead is till enormous for the region to achieve MDGs
targets , and after further reaffirmation, reiteration and encouragement to
member states to meet their commitments, we are served this time , not with the
usual lingo that is so common to all
declarations, but with something “futuristic”
that heralds the doom of “Poverty”- a “Regional Poverty Observatory to monitor
progress made in the implementation of action in the main priority areas of
poverty eradication”.
Mind you of those skeptics, who are already
hollering that it is yet another of those dispensable SADC units that we could
have done without-the business of these bureaucrats is bureaucracy- more of
institutions and adjuncts. Hear them out, these value-for-money activists,
borrowing a leaf from their Tibetan dissenter-friends, trying to disrupt our
efforts at nailing poverty in the long term,, wanting their Rs 20 millions
back. “This is all you have for us,
besides the gibberish of pro-poor growth and pro-poor trade liberalization- a
Poverty Observatory.” they shouted, the poor and their sympathizers,
these very ungrateful ones who had been given the exclusive opportunity of
watching the whole show in the comfort of their homes and catching stalwarts
like Mr Thabo Mbeki live in the privacy of their tiny ramshackle quarters. “How can you claim to eradicate poverty
with your double standards, carefully avoiding good governance in the Declaration
thus skirting around the Zimbabwean Crisis and its poor; Good governance did
not even figure on the agenda of the interactive thematic working group sessions.”
they argued. Face with such hostility and aggressiveness, it is advisable to
beat a retreat and play it safe by rapidly sweeping such awkwardness under the
carpet. We cannot put at risk the good
running of the organisation for the sake of the poor of Zimbabwe, already caught
in the hyperinflation inferno (they should try our antidote- acute blanket
appreciation of the local currency
that favors the rich as well as the poor- it seems to be working wonders here) and patiently awaiting for some
leftovers after Dada Mugabe has finished redistributing expropriated land to
his cronies
Another of those stalwarts in the combat against poverty - who can
claim to have been at the forefront of time-bound actions to lift the poor out
of the rut, for he had it all, well-thought out, ready for implementation in a
monograph “Policy Consensus, Strategy Vacuum”, that was launched some 11 years
before Sachs “End of Poverty”- seems to share the views of our dissenters. He
asserts, quite confidently ‘Enough then
of speeches, declarations and action-plans! Let’s act earnestly to make poverty
history!’ How !!!
Going through the labyrinth of
the Cairo Agenda of 1955, the issue of geography and small country markets, the
balkanisation of Africa, the absorption and generation of new technology to
production and marketing, the main prescription that I found was “Regionalisation
of economic activity will enable our national economies to build up capacities
in all critical areas...” etc,; it is more or less the same traditional
stuff in line with the SADC vacuous discourses. However to give credit to our anti-poverty
crusader, he does mention, quoique en
passant , the present status quo of policy reform , without any commitment
on what type of reforms is needed for making poverty history.
Most
of the prescriptions to make poverty history are based on the earlier widely
held view that once we take care of GDP, it will automatically take care of
poverty and the benefits of economic growth will diffuse automatically across
all segments of society. This was the well-known trickle down hypothesis, which
was a dominant thinking in the 50s and 60s. So economies improved policies for
macroeconomic management, stabilized currency, reduced fiscal deficit and debt
ratios, liberalized trade, relaxed regulations, privatized public sector
assets, overhauled tax systems and opened up the economy to capital and
talented professionals. Yet, they failed to reduce the disparity between the
rich and the poor. The trickle down hypothesis had to give way to what we were
told was a new remedy, the so-called “pro-poor growth”. This was a variant of
the “growth with equity” of the 1970s. Its more modern version is “broad-based
growth” used in the 1990 World Development report with a sharper focus on those
in society who are most deprived. Today it is an accepted fact in the
mainstream of development economics that there is an axiomatic trade-off
between growth and equity.
But for those that advanced alternatives to such orthodox
prescriptions to the poverty issue point to the limitations of these growth
theories –pro-poor or broad-based- as a means of reducing poverty. For all its
successes, Asia remains home to two-thirds of the world’s poor who live on less
than a dollar a day. Globalisation has widened the divide between the haves and
the have-nots, and more importantly the pace at which the rich are getting
richer was way ahead of the Poor’s attempt to make a mere living. The UK
Department for International Development predicts that by 2015 some 309 million
South Asians and Chinese will still live in poverty, which compares to 366
million in the whole of Africa . Proponents of
globalization and global expansion of markets keep holding to their
neoliberal theories stubbornly ignoring contrary evidence. Challenging the
conventional idea that poverty can be solved simply by creating more jobs and
higher income - an approach that has not worked historically-some social
scientists contend that the contemporary
policy orthodoxy of economic liberalisation, social safety nets and empowerment
fails to recognise the radical policies, of redistribution and global
regulation, that are needed to tackle the processes within the present economic
system that creates and sustain poverty. To such beliefs that « le marché est désormais l’ultima ratio du modèle économique……. qu’il
n’y a pas d’autre solution à cette lutte contre la pauvreté que la croissance,
la création d’emplois, l’éducation et la formation. «, their arguments are that in general it can be said that the major
bulk of public and private resources are invested in an infrastructure that
ignores the needs of people already marginalised, while institutions of all
kinds-more so in education and human resource development- are built on the
norms and needs of the non-poor who set the agenda for what is good for its own
kind.
We
have to rethink the traditional ideas about poverty and why it happens; why poor households face problems such as inadequate nutrition, health
care, housing and transportation and how those issues can best be addressed? Structural
injustices remain the source of poverty and exclusion. These structural
injustices include insufficient access to productive assets as well as human
resources, unequal capacity to participate in markets and undemocratic access
to political power. The orthodox approaches to poverty reduction focus on
growth, in all its variants, and do not recognise the structural sources of
poverty. They therefore will never be effective as a framework for poverty reduction.
It is actually to this structural injustice that IFAD is referring to when
it points out in the local context
of the
case of « les ménages les plus vulnérables sont ceux
qui «dépendent des industries sucrière ou textile; ne possèdent pas de terres
ou seulement de petits lopins...»
There
are still others who believe that, short of apocalyptic change, the poor will
continue to be caught in an inexorable process of polarisation – the vilified
vicious circle of poverty. Our trade union leader, Mr Ashok Subron, subscribes to this more radical
approach that makes hope possible for the poor rather
than despair convincing. «On a deux élites économiques à Maurice. La
première a été identifiée comme des rentiers. La deuxième gravite autour de
l’Etat et draine toutes les ressources de la société vers elle. A côté, il y a
une paupérisation d’une majorité de Mauriciens dont les salariés. Et le
problème va s’amplifier avec la crise énergétique, les changements climatiques,
la crise alimentaire et la crise économique qui a commencé avec la récession de
l’économie américaine. Aujourd’hui, il faut se demander si le modèle économique
axé sur l’exportation peut réussir. Car même si on a de l’argent, on n’a pas de
quoi acheter !» argues
our trade unionist.
This radical rethinking of the anti-poverty strategy is categorical that
all efforts at poverty reduction are futile unless poverty production is
brought to a halt. Poverty grows wherever the benefits of economic development
are reaped by a handful of the rich industrialists and the elite. So long as
government are powerless to break the hold of vested interest on which many of
them depend, the poor will never be free from want poverty and hunger.
But poverty is a multidimensional
phenomenon and there is no single approach or strategy that will capture all
its facets. For example, if the objective is to supplement the earnings of
low-income groups, a particular approach is called for. However, if the
objective is the improvement of healthcare or educational access and achievement,
an approach which only measures income, would not necessarily correctly
identify the disadvantaged groups in need of support. There is need to re-engage with Keynesian
notions of government intervention to favour disadvantaged social classes and
individuals. It is this variant that has
been adapted locally .While acknowledging the poverty-reducing potentials of
pro-poor growth, there is also the high probability that as growth occurs
certain regions and social groups will be left behind. This will lessen if
there is no discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, etc which prevent
people enjoying the benefits of assets and skills, or denies them the
opportunity to acquire assets and skills. Our ex-president, Mr Cassam Uteem has been quite
committal that « L'économie de
marché n'assure pas un partage équitable qui permet aux pauvres de bénéficier
de la richesse d'un pays. Il revient au gouvernement d'intervenir et il n'a pas le droit de
jouer à l'abonné absent…. L'Etat est là pour être aux côtés des plus démunis,
des plus pauvres. L'Etat ne peut pas être arbitre entre les pauvres et les
nantis. Il doit prendre position pour les pauvres et être à leurs côtés. C'est
à l'Etat de venir avec un pro poor budget. »
It is an approach that demands
greater commitment and involvement of all stakeholders and well-targeted
investment in low-cost housing and education for lower income communities,
starting with early-childhood education and extending all the way up to better
access to post-secondary education. Mr Uteem
pinpoints to the impediments to social mobility and an education system that
rewards the advantaged and thus some children are bound to be left in the cold.
“… Il y a quelque chose qui s'est
produit qui fait que la mobilité sociale est devenue extrêmement difficile. L'école n'a pas assumé ses
responsabilités, son rôle dans la promotion au niveau de la hiérarchie sociale.
L'enfant d'un laboureur, d'un pêcheur doit pouvoir devenir un professionnel.
Aujourd'hui, cela devient de plus en plus difficile.”
We make a virtue of competition which means other people are a
threat not a support; when you are in such a competitive environment there will
be always the belief that the poor, however hard they struggle,
are not trying hard enough and that they just need a kick up the backside to
break out of poverty.. They are
thus consciously made to feel stupid.. Gaetan
Jacquette, of the Conseil National Creole, in two very challenging and quite
caustic articles ( sans langue de bois) on « La
pauvreté du débat - Conférence de la SADC » nous interpelle « L’échec scolaire
constitue une insulte a notre economie et un danger pour notre tissue social.
Nous pouvons esperer qu’une decison politique sera enfin prise de s’attaquer à ce scandale qui n’a trop
duré. La Conférence sur la pauvreté aura alors
porté des fruits. »
Without directly overhauling the
real social and power relations that increase inequality and exacerbate
vulnerability, the emphasis of the fight against poverty has shifted to a more
middle of the road approach, from a focus on basic access to, or ownership of, resources to the
multiple forms of participation and rights within a society. Tackling poverty requires a fundamentally
different approach: it is about taking a back seat and providing the space for
the poor to develop themselves, one that starts with people themselves and
encourages the initiative, creativity and drive from below that must be at the
core of any transformation of their lives if it is to be lasting. Such a view has quite profound implications for the design of
poverty programmes-running schools at night for the convenience of the children
and training semi-literate but unemployed youth in deprived areas to become
part time “barefoot teachers” in these night schools; Quietly, many imaginative
and innovative ways of promoting gender equality and empowering women have also
been initiated by community based organizations. Here dignity is taken as a
central principle, It would suggest that “.
By emphasizing human dignity, poverty reduction programs would come under a new
type of scrutiny that would go beyond the functionalist analysis of how much
resources the poor receive, or about the percentage of people living under the
poverty line. It would promote a more honest and open dialogue with the
“beneficiaries” with the aim of making visible the multiple and fluid
definition of human dignity. People cannot be treated as means: the creation of
a society based on dignity can only take place through the development of
social practices based on the mutual recognition of that dignity”
(Holloway, 2002). Obviously, this would
be a contested process that entails an immense challenge as it would require a
confrontation with histories of discriminations, exclusions, humiliations and
pains.
