[GKD-DOTCOM] What Do We Mean By "Poor"?
Dear Colleagues,
I suspect that we operate under two quite different concepts of "poor",
which in turn gives rise to more confusion.
Under the first concept -as for instance used by UNDP for the Human
Development Index- "poor" or "not so poor" is -to put it briefly-
measured in terms of "liberty" - understood as real choices to conduct
their own life -and "freedom"- understood as being free from most basic
threats like risks to life or health, hunger, fear of oppression".
(Thanks to FDR, who first coined these shorthand definitions).
Under the second concept -as used by pure economists- "poor" or "not so
poor" is measured in income, consumption, or productive capacities.
Both concepts are somewhat related, but not in a straight forward
manner: i.e. Bill Gates has apparently more liberties and freedoms than
-say- the woman in the Philippines that puts the latest version of
Windows XP into their boxes.
Likewise there are backward-constraints: some services that imply more
liberty -like education- or more freedom -like health services- need
resources (i.e. they are not for free and hence the question arises what
to do if those who need those services don't have nor can they
contribute collectively the resources that are needed to provide those
services).
It isn't an extremely serious problem in countries or societies, where
those "without" are a smaller fraction of the whole population. Here it
can be solved by insurance and taxes (it's a classical "political"
problem).
However it becomes an extremely serious problem without easy solutions
in those countries -the overwhelming majority- where those "without"
count for 50% to 80% of the population. And in these cases it cannot be
solved either by insurance or by taxes, simply because there aren't
enough resources available that might be partially re-distributed.
Having said all this, let me clarify my position:
(1) There is no doubt that ICT can -and many times does- make the poor
"less poor" in the sense of the first concept.
(2) Yet even in these conditions a careful analysis beforehand is
needed, to see whether the same effect could not be obtained by using a
lesser amount of resources, without going over to "ICTs". I found out
that sometimes ICT is indeed the most cost-effective solution, whereas
in other situations it's an outright waste of resources.
(3) However if we are talking about a win-win situation between
corporations and the "poor" (persons, families, sectors, countries,
regions) then it would be deeply unfair for the poor to measure on one
side of "win" in terms of Dollars and Cents and on the other side of
"win", in terms of liberty and freedom, because this implies that we
condemn the "poor" to remain forever "poor" in the second sense, which
-due to the backward-constraints mentioned above- implies that they will
depend forever on charity or lack basic liberties and basic freedoms (on
any level: persons, families, sectors, countries, regions).
Yours truly,
Cornelio
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This DOT-COM Discussion is funded by USAID's dot-ORG Cooperative
Agreement with AED, in partnership with World Resources Institute's
Digital Dividend Project, and hosted by GKD.
http://www.dot-com-alliance.org and http://www.digitaldividend.org
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