Flight from poverty

Flight from poverty

If it was meant to be a wake up call, it failed to arouse even
the slightest interest of the nation. A World Bank report about
the state of poverty in Indonesia, and why it must be urgently
addressed, was not alarming enough to prompt us to act.

That nearly 60 percent of the population -- or over 120
million people -- in this country are either very poor or are
"near poor" barely grabbed national attention. The report
received a brief mention, mostly only in passing, by some media,
as it was largely eclipsed by the political intricacies of the
Annual Session of the People's Consultative Assembly.

The World Bank report was presented to the annual meeting of
the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI), which brought together
the country's major aid donor countries and lending agencies, in
Jakarta. It picked poverty as the chief theme as the group
discussed Jakarta's aid needs for the coming year. When the CGI
decided that Indonesia should get US$3.14 billion, the message
that rampant poverty was undermining Indonesia's future either
got lost, or was simply, and conveniently, ignored.

The World Bank's message was strong enough for our donor
countries and agencies to generously fork out more money, but
apparently not for the recipient government to push poverty
alleviation to the forefront of the national agenda.

The World Bank acknowledges that officially, Indonesia's
poverty rate fell in 2000, thanks to moderate economic recovery
and falling rice prices. By last year, "only" 15.2 percent of the
population, or 32 million people, as against 27 percent in 1999,
lived below the official poverty line, which is measured in terms
of a minimum calorie intake a person needs to subsist.

The report however said that, using a more widely used
international measure, some 58 percent of the population, or 121
million people, lived on less than $2 a day. While most are not
necessarily poor, they are very vulnerable. Another crisis, not
an unlikely prospect with the slowing down of the global economy,
would quickly plunge them back into abject poverty, just as it
did in 1998-1999, the report said.

The World Bank stated that the sustainability of Indonesia's
economic recovery hinged on the government's ability to lift more
of its people out of poverty. The report called for greater
efforts in ensuring access to basic services such as education
and health for the poor, and for the elimination of what it
called "anti-poor" government policies.

Many people who have been quietly but actively working on the
front line in the war against poverty could not agree more with
the warnings of the grave consequences for Indonesia if it fails
to address the problem of poverty.

There is the tremendous loss in terms of national
productivity. There is the danger of Indonesia losing even a
second generation of children (everyone agrees the 1997-1999
economic crisis had already cost the nation virtually an entire
generation). There is the threat of the nation falling further
behind in the increasingly competitive global economy; and since
poverty breeds crime, there is the threat to security, and
consequently the threat of a break down of law and order. This in
turn will deter investors from coming to Indonesia. Thus,
Indonesia could be condemned to a vicious cycle of poverty.

Poverty has never been a favorite topic for this nation. It is
something that we would rather not talk about. The last time
poverty became a major national issue was in 1998 at the height
of the economic crisis. And that was chiefly for the wrong
reason.

Donations poured in from outside Indonesia as expressions of
sympathy for the plight of the poor. But for most people in the
government, poverty was seen more as a "project", an opportunity
to enrich themselves, than a problem. Projects entailed fat
commissions and generous expenses for those handling the money.
Money donated for the government's social safety net programs,
intended to cushion the poor from the impact of the crisis, was
heavily "taxed" by the handlers before it reached the intended
recipients.

Corruption remains a major concern in Indonesia today to the
point that the CGI has attached strings to part of its $3.14
billion aid: Its disbursement is subject to the government
showing progress on both poverty and corruption fronts.

Since it is clear that the survival of this nation is at
stake, we can no longer afford to ignore the problem of poverty.
There can be no other agenda more important to Indonesia today
than tackling poverty. But we can only do that if we admit that
we have a problem, a grave one, in hand. It is time our nation
started owning up to the problem and taking care of our poor.