Within A linear distance of half a kilometer from any affluent house in Metro Manila, there is a squatter colony where people live in miserable conditions. This is generally true no matter how upper-class and exclusive one’s residential subdivision is, give or take a few exceptions.
It must be these alternating enclaves of wealth and ghettoes of poverty that prompt many foreign visitors to remark that the inequality between the rich and the poor is so gaping in our country.
Foreigners also express their impression that generally, we Filipinos turn a blind eye and even demonstrate a lack of concern to this huge divide between wealth and wretched poverty in our midst.
There is a ring of truth to this observation if we take a backseat view of our daily conduct in our lives. For the 12-hour stretch of night, we of the middle and upper classes stay in our manicured subdivisions. For the 12-hour span of day, we drive through roads lined with prosperity-colored businesses, and cocoon ourselves in the air-conditioned confines of our offices. On weekends, we troop to the make-believe world of malls, get glued to the fantasy world of television, and mingle with fellow faith believers in the afterlife.
We live, work, and play in pockets of comfort insulated from the compacted communities of poverty around us. We busy ourselves moving around our zones of comfort without the inconvenience of traversing the dens of squalor of our poor neighbors.
We may have a fleeting consciousness of the colonies of poverty around us because—compared to the wide expanse covered by wealthy subdivisions—tiny fractions of land are home to the poor multitudes who are packed like sardines in multilevel shanties. Do we ever wonder how many hundreds, if not thousands, of families live within these packed colonies of the poor, each colony a land space equivalent to a few family lots in gated subdivisions?
No matter how we garrison ourselves inside our zones of comfort, and no matter how resolutely we close our eyes to the widespread destitution around us, we can never isolate our lives from the lives of the poor. We cannot go on with our lives pretending that their lives—their needs and dreams—do not affect us. They affect our lives in so many crucial ways.
The poor’s choice of political leaders affects us in colossal proportions. A sizeable portion of government revenues is devoted to the social service needs of our underprivileged. The quality of our culture of which we so complain about—movies, television programs, songs, arts, crafts—caters to the humble needs of the multitudes. The goods sold in our stores are dictated by the modest needs and means of our destitute. Heightened issues of peace and order coincide with elevated levels of poverty. These are a few examples of issues that show that the rich and poor have entangled lives.
We have so much at stake, and we stand to gain immense improvement in our community/national wellbeing if the lives of the poor are uplifted to levels that will empower them to aspire for the needs and dreams similar to those of the fortunate members of society.
Think of the poor attaining economic security and consequently gaining the wherewithal to join civil society movements denouncing corruption and incompetence in government, and then clamoring and voting for honest and competent leaders. Think of the poor achieving sufficient education that vests them with the sensitivities to patronize and increase demand for indie films and creative television shows. Think of the poor obtaining the purchasing power that enables them to afford and cause the proliferation of delightful diners and pleasant cafés not only in the cities but also in the provinces.
Fifty percent of Filipino families are rated as poor by their heads, as revealed in the “self-rated poverty” survey figures of the Social Weather Stations in December 2015. This means that, of our total population of 100 million, 50 million admit to being poor.
At the tail end of the Marcos regime, self-rated poverty reached 74 percent. For the 30-year period of five presidents after the 1986 Edsa Revolution, SWS survey figures show that the annual average for self-rated poverty ranged from a low 47 percent to a high 68 percent.
It is this self-assessment of economic wellbeing by Filipino families themselves that reflects the true state of our economy. The much-touted growth in gross national product merely reflects the galloping growth in the income of fictitious persons—known as corporations—and not real people and families. These corporations belong to a mere 1 percent of our population.
To attain an improvement in our lives, it is not enough that we engage in the race to get more money in our pockets. Notwithstanding our accumulation of personal wealth, so many important aspects of our lives will remain stuck in the quicksand of poverty if we live in a society that buzzes with the sound of grumbling stomachs.
Extending educational assistance to our house help’s children, a modest scholarship for a poor child in a public school, sharing a portion of our business profits with employees, and adding our voices and warm bodies to civil society movements that censure wrongdoing and incompetence in government, are some practical contributions to our society’s uplift.
Improving the lives of our less fortunate countrymen will not only lead to an improvement in their economic wellbeing but will also transform our political, social and cultural wellbeing as a nation.
* * *
Comments to fleamarketofideas@gmail.com