To give or not to give?

I caught the tail end of ‘the world debate’ programme on the BCC world channel this Saturday afternoon. The topic for discussion was titled ‘Aid –Is it working?’ and as the title suggests it was about whether or not the financial aid raised by the various humanitarian organisations and agencies and provided to the developing world (to all the women and children suffering in poverty) is really helping. Sadly, the programme transcripts were nowhere to be found on their website.

The only point which I heard raised, which I thought was a very interesting one indeed, was that such aid may not actually be working and might in reality be counterproductive because it leads the relevant governments (i.e. those of the recipient countries) to think that they do not have a part to play or that the aid from all these sources would be sufficient to do the job and therefore they can channel their own resources into other projects. By way of illustration, in countries such as Somalia, the government can pass the responsibility of removing poverty to these organisations while they concentrate their efforts and resources into obtaining more weapons to fight each other.

Before, I thought that the danger in providing financial aid was that, if they were passed to the governments to distribute among the people, this would usually result in the aid not reaching its intended destination. Now, it seems that providing direct aid is also not working. Perhaps, I guess, if for no other reason, it is the lesser of two evils and therefore should continue.

In the final analysis, I think that the issue of poverty will always continue to plague society. This I feel is not because everyone is not doing their part to help. There is of course the first consideration of why there is even the obligation to help. After all, all of us live in capitalist societies where we have to work and achieve our own success. Nobody is obligated to help anybody else. You want to get out of poverty, you work for it. To this end, I believe that there is an Indian economist who came up with an ingenious idea – a bank which loans money to poor people in India to help them establish a trade and lift themselves out of poverty (I cannot remember his name but I believe he recently won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts). Of course this will not work in every country and in every situation. But it is indeed still a brilliant idea (at least these people will be independent, not reliant on charity alone, and will be able to sustain themselves in the foreseeable future).

But even if we put those thoughts aside, will we ever really be rid of poverty? I think that the answer has to be ‘No’. I often think that its interesting that we (and the world’s media) like to turn our attention to instances and pictures of ‘extreme’ poverty but fail to realise that poverty is really all around us (even in developed countries). I’m sure that many of us would be shocked to hear that even in Singapore, there are many homeless and poverty-stricken people (I remember seeing pictures of homeless Singaporeans on the blog of NMP Siew Kum Hong recently). America, UK and Europe have a tremendous number of homeless people living on the streets, in train stations and abandoned buildings.

Poverty is also something which is very difficult to define properly, especially in developed countries such as ours. What does it mean to be poor or impoverished? A cursory look at some dictionaries show some agreement, it is a state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support. In other words, it is someone being in the position where he is does not have ‘basic necessities’ and does not have the means to support himself.

If this were true, then there would be even more people in poverty than we realise or care to admit. This is because, what is considered a ‘basic necessity’ is very much dependent on the society (and times) in which we live. As the society becomes more developed, more things will come under the definition of a ‘basic necessity’. Let me illustrate this. During our parents childhood, a television was rare, a luxury item only available to the rich (or super rich). Now it is somewhat of a basic necessity (with many homes having more than one set). Same goes for a refrigerator, air-conditioner, mobile phone etc. Even education – more people are getting university degrees and post-graduate degrees than in our parents generation – they simply didn’t have as much access to those things then. However, there are still people in Singapore, although perhaps a minority, who are still unable to obtain all or any of these things. They do not necessarily have to be homeless, but they are poor and unable to obtain these very basic of needs i.e. they are in poverty.

Secondly, even people who have jobs may be considered poor and in poverty. As life in countries such as Singapore (and I would venture to suggest the same occurs in every developed country) gets more and more expensive, some with jobs are still unable to earn enough to survive. Of course, these people don’t seem to be in as bad a state as those in Somalia (and perhaps that is the main reason why they are not even considered poor and therefore never offered any relief or aid) but they are also suffering immensely – sometimes more than people realise. A family with both parents working and earning meagre salaries, with a mortgage over the family flat, and debts resulting from providing the basic necessities for their children, may easily be put in a desperate situation if someone in the family falls severely ill. They may not have any assets to sell (everything technically not owned by them yet), be unable to borrow from a bank or other financial institution (possibly they have a bad credit history and as mentioned earlier don’t earn high salaries) to pay off enormous medical bills. Worse still if the person taken ill is one of the parents! (of course all this assuming that such facilities as medi-shield or medi-save have already been expanded etc). What are they to do? Are they not also entitled to help? Do they qualify for such help under the current classifications of what is poverty? How can they be helped if we don’t even acknowledge that poverty exists even on our own shores in the first place?

Notwithstanding my views above about how poverty will always be around, something still has to be done. What I’ve highlighted above are what I perceive to be the problems, unfortunately I do not have and cannot offer a solution.