Hell breaks loose as the patriarch booms: Sell everything, except my boyhood home in Tondo! I will live there, he says, and anyone who has the balls and wants to be with me can join me there. Yes, sell the big house in Forbes Park too.
The scene is from Hari ng Tondo, an entry at the Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival awards in early October. Veteran actor Robert Arevalo won Best Actor for his portrayal of Robert Villena, the patriarch, and Cris Villonco Best Supporting Actress for her role as the granddaughter. The retro-style film might have won Best Picture for its deep social message and the superb acting. But critics generally regret the wastage of a powerhouse cast delivering awesome performance on “situations (that) may not have been too possible to happen in real life,” confusing a “no-brainer idea that those who’ve succeeded in a community should not forget the less fortunate around them,” as two reviewers said.
By sheer natural responsibility of human beings for each other, the rich must care for the poor, initially by being aware of the disadvantaged, and then finding some way to give back to alleviate the plight of these underprivileged ones. But that is easier said than done, asHari ng Tondo tried to convey in its plots and sub-plots.
The reality is that although the Philippine wealth gap is seen as narrowing, the share of the 10% richest Filipinos has always been over 70% of the country’s wealth, in fact 76% this year according to the Credit Suisse Group. The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Fifth Progress Report on the Millennium Development Goals (2010-2015) has confirmed the income disparity, also reporting a slightly declining Gini ratio that went down from 0.48 in 1991 to 0.47 in 2012. (As explained by economist Gerardo Sicat, “Among different measures of income inequality, the most popular metric is the “Gini index... (which) measures the extent to which the distribution of income or expenditure among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution of income. A Gini index of zero represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality. Often, the Gini is represented as a ratio with a value from zero to one.”)
The decile dispersion ratio is probably close to what Credit Suisse described as 70% of the wealth being in the hands of the 10% richest in the Philippines. The MDG report says that the average income of the households of the richest decile is now about 18 times that of the average income of the poorest decile. The ratio has declined very slightly since 1985, when the ratio was 21 times.
Indeed, “despite the high economic growth in recent years, progress in reducing poverty has been slow.” The share of the population’s bottom quintile was only 5% of total income (GDP) in 2012. There was too little “trickle down” of the average 5.2% GDP growth over the last 10 years. We can see this in the squalor of the slum areas, as depicted in Hari ng Tondo.
The United Nations defines the slums as those households lacking flowing drinking water, insufficient sanitation (toilet facilities), not durable and cramped living areas, and no security of tenure (informal settlers). NEDA reports 40.9% of households in 2009 were slum dwellers, steadily increasing from 16.47 million in 1991 to 18.3 million in 2009.
In Hari ng Tondo, the rich man pondering on the filth and poverty of the slum scavengers on Smokey Mountain cries tears of desperation. His two grandchildren, who initially had “balls,” experienced the slums only on a three-month “testing” basis. But the balls retracted in the realization that such sordid living was not for them (nor were they really accepted by the slum dwellers), and back they went to Forbes Park. There were no redeeming solutions hinted at in the movie.
But it is a reality that Filipinos have to face -- how to contribute to poverty alleviation in the different roles of being Filipino -- individuals in their little spheres of capacity, and the government people in their sacred role as trustees for the welfare of all citizens The MDG report admits that the goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015 seems not to be achievable at this point, hinting that natural calamities have decimated efforts toward this goal, as “the Philippines is the third most disaster-prone country in the world.” However, the gains on education, specially of the poor, are touted as the key to poverty alleviation.
The low employment to population ratio, stagnant between 59% and 60% from 1990 to 2013, is directly affected by the low education completion levels, specially for the poor. Poverty hinders education of the children, and low-educated children have lower employment possibilities and are likely to stay in the poorest economic levels. Happily, for primary education, the net enrollment rate has increased from 82% in 2007 to 95.2% in 2013, with the completion rate (less drop-outs) improving to 73.7% in 2012, from 65.5% in 1991. The executive summary of the MDG report does not have tables on secondary education, but perhaps this is swept into the K-12 system.
The MDG promises on poverty reduction were targeting 2015 and were perhaps too ambitious. But amid all the natural calamities and man-made crises in this country, what it takes is focus by our governance and, as the Hari ng Tondo says, “have the balls to do what you must do.”
Amelia H.C. Ylagan is a Doctor of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines.
ahcylagan@yahoo.com
source: Businessworld
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