Definitely dukha and not merely mahirap

Quite a few people become well-off – never really wealthy – by studying poverty and those who are "poor". A terrific sunrise industry, poverty studies focus on a truly catholic phenomenon, cutting across all seasons, endemic in all climes and, being more adaptable than the organisms responsible for anthrax, smallpox or AIDS, clearly in no imminent danger of extinction. This phenomenal universality may already explain why poverty has gained more attention than mostly anything afflicting the human condition, but another reason may be at the bottom of the intense and durable focus poverty has attracted across the millennia.

It has always been politically and religiously correct across all ages and all regimes to be concerned about the poor. Especially for those who effectively rule and are seldom poor, it has been de rigueur to visibly show this concern and to go on record as doing something about the great mass of poor people we are supposed to always have with us. Most politicians and religious leaders have been richly rewarded for being rhetorically involved with the poor. A minority – unfortunately much too small to gain critical mass at the moment – has involved themselves with proactive efforts to curb poverty. This rare breed often lives with the poor and inspires the latter towards their political empowerment and the improvement of their material conditions.

In our current times, much is gained from having serious anti-poverty crusaders prioritize their target constituencies among the poor. Given the limited resources poverty fighters can bring to bear on their daunting concerns, a system must be designed to discover who among the poor are in greatest need, what their primary characteristics might be, where they are to be found and how best to reach and help them.

There are ongoing attempts to identify the poor but most of them are unable to ferret the poorest from those who are not as poor, the truly dukha o sagad sa hirap (those in abject poverty) from those who are maralita (the moderately poor) and the simply mahirap (the least poor). Until this focusing is done, anti-poverty campaigns will be handicapped by a tendency to lump all poor people together and, in extending equal assistance to all who are generically poor, vitiate the effectiveness of resource-constrained efforts to assist the poorest people. Funds that should have been reserved for those in direct need are allocated to those who while also poor may still access resources the poorest cannot.

So, how do the poorest to be served first?

Government figures that speak of 35 percent to 40 percent of the population being poor as well as opinion survey estimates of from 60 percent to 70 percent of families feeling poor are at best gross indicators of poverty. Lacking enough focus, they are inept guides to resolving the issue of who among the poor must be assisted ahead of others.

Using available survey data such as those that Pulse Asia regularly generates in its quarterly Ulat ng Bayan national surveys, one might design a better guide for prioritized assistance to the extremely poor. One could operationally and summarily define the truly poorest or dukha as anyone who has all of the following attributes: (1) self-rates his/her family as being "poor" or "very poor", (2) belongs to socioeconomic class D (relatively poor and also a non-owner of the residential land/lot) or class E (the poorest), as rated by the survey interviewer using a pre-determined system for classifying the respondents’ socioeconomic status, (3) identifies not having enough food to eat daily as an urgent personal concern and (4) does not have any of the following facilities/appliances: flush toilet, telephone, color or cable TV and other video units, refrigerator, airconditioners, personal computers, any 2-, 3- or 4-wheeled vehicle, or a credit card, among other things.

Using this crude system and applying it to Ulat ng Bayan survey data between June 1999 and October 2001, one can already provisionally identify as many as 5.8 million Filipinos who may be dukha. Their greatest concentrations between June 1999 and October 2001 are in Mindanao (2.25 million) and the Visayas (2.1 million); Luzon has relatively fewer (1.4 million) of these people and Metro Manila has even much less, accounting for barely 61,000 dukha.

The dukha biases are fairly easy to establish from this two-year survey database. Among the adult (18 years old and above) survey respondents who are also dukha, rural residence predominates (79 percent), a big majority (61 percent) has little or at most an elementary education, more than half (55 percent) are quite young being between 25 to 34 years old, slightly more than half are women (54 percent) and quite a few (19 percent) are farmers.

This provisional system of identifying the dukha here could be improved tremendously. Crude as it is, however, it already identifies stress points in society which those who would destabilize the country could exploit. That so many who are rural-based and relatively young could comprise so many of the dukha may provoke prudential thoughts. It is quite possible that the recent Labor Day march by the Manila poor – that singular phenomenon which jolted so many of our comfortable Filipinos, made them nervous and properly concerned about the poor –had not been joined by most of the truly desperate, the dukha in this country. More stressful scenarios may still await us.

It is vital for all and particularly those who are well-off and powerful in our society to know the difference between dukha and mahirap. Osamas definitely work best with the dukha although the sympathy of those who are only mahirap – given sufficient time – may yet be gained by those who believe that terrorism already works.