What the Poor Say

Powerlessness

The policy of the party is that the people know, the people discuss, the people do, but here people only implement the last part, which is the people do. Ha Tinh, Vietnam.

The poor are excluded not from society itself but from the process of benefit distribution and key decision-making. It happens due to the lack of money…if you don’t grease the palm. Ulugbek, Uzbekistan.

Participation and the peoples’ voice have become part of the development lexicon. However, the Consultations show that while "participation" may be happening in the context of poor people’s own organizations, by and large they are excluded from participation in decision-making and in equal sharing of benefits from government and NGO programs. The poor want desperately to have their voices heard, to participate, to make decisions and not always be handed down the law from above. They are tired of being asked to participate in other people’s projects on other people’s terms. Participation to them has costs with few returns. In Egypt the poor said, "we are tired of self-help initiatives. These initiatives need money, and people are indebted and have other priorities like feeding and educating the children. Organizing is useless and things take a long time to get solved." In Kaoseng, Thailand, the poor called this lack of participation in decision-making "discussion, meeting, and news announcement." Both poor women and men said, "they consult with the powerful individuals," while the poor only found out about decisions when announcements were made.

Poor people were asked in the study to list and rank the institutions that played important roles in their lives. Countries in which government institutions were relatively significant included Brazil, India, Malawi, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. In other countries and sites, government institutions were considered important but ineffective, and rarely anywhere near the top ranks. In some sites they did not feature at all. Participants in Chota, Ecuador, said: "We are a community abandoned by the governmental authorities. They don’t consider us. We seem not to exist, we are an imaginary community." In many countries, the poor ranked government-provided social assistance as important, if not always honest or effective. This included, for example, Plan Vida in Argentina; fair price ration shops in India; samurdhi in Sri Lanka; and entitlements for the elderly, children and the disabled in the former Soviet Union countries. Sometimes, and almost always with the police, government institutions were rated as having negative impacts. In Latin American countries, in South Asia, and to a lesser extent in Africa, NGOs featured in people’s rankings. But what mattered most were people’s own local organizations, including unions, farmers associations, credit groups, midwives, traditional institutions and networks. Religious institutions, such as the sacred tree or mountain or river, the mosque, the church, or the temple were consistently rated high in importance and trust.

The Consultations reveal that in much of today’s world there is a hunger among the poor, not only for food, but for freedom, dignity, voice and choice. The poor in Morro de Conceicao, Brazil said, "the responsibility for the problem is 90% on the government, but we vote badly, we do not monitor, we don’t demand our rights, and are not active to demand a correct action by the government." With the advent of political reform in Indonesia, the poor in some areas are beginning to protest against exclusion and corruption at the local level. In the village of Galih Pakuwon, for example, they are demanding fairer compensation for land acquired by force for a housing project; in Tangoing Redo, the neighborhood chief who embezzled money was forced to step down; and in Padamukti, the village head who sold the common land contributed by villagers to build toilets was forced to resign. In Jamaica, a young woman said, " the government let us down, too many promises - never fulfilling them…we want to have more influence over government." In Bosnia-Herzegovina, a young man said, "I still don’t believe in the veracity of elections, but I always vote. It is necessary to work for democracy. And it is necessary to make accountable those who even today create chaos so that they will get richer."

Next: Four problems with the system: Insecure Livelihood