As multiple crisis of economy devastates millions of poor and excluded people, we saw feeble responses from governments in shape of undersized offers of social protection, to support people in facing a crisis of civilizational magnitudes.
Occupying central attention of our governments were attempts to resurrect economy back on its “business as usual” and “unequalizing” road, through what are now commonly known as fiscal stimulus packages.
In the global north, with US leading the pack, trillions of dollars of public resources has been redirected to recapitalize banks, assert control over ailing financial institutions and underwrite guarantees to deposits and assets of rich.
Responses from the least developed economies in global south, in Africa, Asia and Latin America were powerless, given the limitations of economic and political autonomy, they face.
As African Development Bank then articulated “Africa is trying but the scope to do more is very limited”, given the body blows African economy received with the down turn of global economy.
Larger developing countries in global south such as China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina, Egypt, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam promoted responses of some significance in relation to national GDPs.
Such efforts were mainly oriented towards augmenting public investments in infrastructure especially in rural areas, social protection and to a lesser extent on the direct support to ailing sectors.
Facing elections in 2010, the Indonesian government announced a US$4.5 billion (approximately 1 percent of GDP) fiscal stimulus package for investments in infrastructure and selected export sectors, while devoting part of stimulus to promote direct cash transfers to about 20 million poorest families, from the money saved from cuts in direct fuel subsidies in 2008.
The Hopeful Family Program (PKH), Indonesian Government’s flagship Social Protection program, remains only a form of conditional cash transfers, allowing each poor family an annual cash assistance at minimum levels.
First, the response packages have been oriented largely to resurrect the current economic structure which do not serve the worlds majorities — of poor and excluded. Bailouts and fresh infusions to industry and service sector in north, for instance, adversely impacted the terms of trade by increasing industry capacity and protectionism and limiting outsourcing in the fortified developed world, in a ways which are difficult to replicate in the south, leading to a gradual slide to de-industrialization, and restriction of labor intensive accumulation strategies and peasant agriculture development in the south.
Second, the squeeze on revenue generation through corporate tax cuts and other tax reliefs together with continued growth of expenditures in areas such as defense, raises long term concerns over financing overall public investment, employment and eventual socialization of economy. These trends are not new or unknown in global south.
Third, silent in our government’s responses were announcements to reorient public policies in progressing social and economic rights for all peoples.
Fourth, the social protection programs heralded in this period, are no more that miniscule efforts to provide safety nets to the poorest to cope with “shocks”.
To argue that these efforts have in any way altered or redistributed economic gains of any significance, would be to fall prey to the dangers of learning disorders.
As we enter the next decade, it is for us to look closely at the lessons of colonialism, and the capitalist cycles of boom and bust of the past century, to realize that these small social protection programs, even if well intentioned, would necessarily come to grief, if we do not restructure economy and polity in the interests of our national majorities of peasants, labor, women and indigenous people.
The minimalism of social protection urgently needs a “collective rights turn” and the instruments available to people for their political expression, need renewal to birth and secure popular agendas.
What is needed is authentic democratization at all levels in social, economic and political life of society.
Democratization implies peoples, and not private control, over natural resources — land, water, forests and minerals, while also guaranteeing access to land for all peasants.
The job of nurturing peasant production, atrophied by centuries of starvation, cannot be overemphasized together with the need to advance struggles of a billion plus workers, and amongst them the majorities of “wretched informals”.
Popular imagery is also needed on the question of ecology, to fragment oligopolic dream of mortgaging futures of humanity further through the re-scramble for worlds resources.
At the start of a new decade, an important question for people of the world is how to continuously develop and sustain people’s energy to realize the great tasks that await humanity.
When human creativity is tamed and its power diverted by capital to labor on pathways of accumulation for a few, the task of continuously promoting social imagination for “projects” which give rise to a new humanity, becomes both urgent and critical.
New songs sung on the tune of a progressive social alternative in the service of worlds majorities, and not the ones dictated by tunes of social protection, would be the elixirs for this march.
By; Sandeep Chachra
The writer is New Delhi based executive director of ActionAid India. He was earlier the head of international governance with ActionAid International. The views expressed in this piece are his and not organizational.
Published on The Jakarta Post (http://www.thejakartapost.com/)
New songs for the long and difficult march
The Jakarta Post | Mon, 01/03/2011 4:30 PM | Opinion
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