Understanding the root causes of absolute poverty

Benget Simbolon Tnb., Jakarta

Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Alwi Shihab stated during the closing ceremony of the Millennium Development Goals meeting last week that poor people lack the motivation to improve their lives.

The minister is not alone in saying this. Many people shared his view. Others put it even more bluntly: The poor are poor because they are lazy.

Is this true? It is not fair to jump to any conclusions without first asking, "Why?"

On a humorous television program some time ago, a man kept talking to a second man. Every time the second man tried to say something, the first man cut him off and kept on talking. He never gave the second man a chance to be heard. When a third man joins them, the first man tells him the second man is very quiet. How come?

We say the poor lack motivation, but this is actually a truth of our own making.

Just look at our social structure. The poor, especially poor farmers living in rural areas, have long been dominated by the system we designed or at least contributed to: the Wong Gede-Wong Cilik (Powerful-Powerless) relationship, in which they have no say at all in decisions.

Anthropologists say that due to an unfavorable social structure, most of the poor in Indonesia succumb to the concept of fate. They believe they were predestined to suffer in this world. They have to accept it because there is nothing they can do about it.

With no chance of being heard in society, many of them, knowingly or unknowingly, develop a passive mentality. Others prefer to turn to the invisible world, rather than the visible world, to solving their everyday problems. That explains why they like to use the services of shamans or wait for a kind of Ratu Adil (their own version of The Just King) to liberate them.

Perhaps to meet such expectations, many people prefer to take the "give fish" approach rather than the "give a fishing rod" approach in helping the poor. We can see this in a number of aid programs and charitable efforts that function more to strengthen the people's passivity rather than their spirit of working hard to achieve something.

Take some of the local reality shows as an example. They are actually very moving in nature and help the poor to some extent. But unfortunately, assistance is only given to a selected few through a lucky draw, giving the impression that "waiting for your turn patiently" rather than "working your way up" is the way to go.

While the "give fish" approach to assistance can help temporarily, it does not help the poor empower themselves so they can have their own fishing rod to catch their own fish for life.

Their lack of motivation can also be traced from their isolated condition. Most of the poor, including those in cities, cannot benefit from the existing information services and infrastructure.

There are many villages that are completely isolated, like Kabuka village near the border of Indonesia and Timor Leste reported on by The Jakarta Post on Wednesday. This make the people socially isolated and contributes to their inability to improve their lives.

Being poor also means having no resources. And without resources, the poor cannot become involved in social activities. They are imprisoned within their subsistent lives.

While they see lives around them move dynamically, their everyday lives are stagnant. In some ways, they see their lives only getting worse.

This is happening with many farmers in rural areas. Due to the absence of favorable regulations on land ownership, they have seen their land ownership decreased to an average of 0.25 hectares per household, while more and more of them are landless and have to be satisfied earning money as agricultural workers.

Their saddening condition is worsened by the fact that we are a corrupt society, in which the rich can use their resources to bribe their way to what they want, while the poor can only accept their fate.

The poor, therefore, are like the stagnant water unwillingly trapped outside the main stream of a river. Only some outside movement will push them into the flow of the main stream.

They are waiting for the outside movement, especially from the government, to change the social system and facilitate a further process of democratization, politically and economically, so that they will be empowered to free themselves from the poverty trap.

The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.