We are in need of better social safety nets

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

(Shakespeare’s Sonnet 60)

Nonetheless, we as a nation must not ignore the sort of plight that leads to such tragedies. They are manifold and rather intractable. As the country and the world further “advance” materially and economically and become more integrated, more people will be left behind and fall through the cracks of so-called worldly “progress”.

Thailand needs better social safety nets for our most marginalised citizens, who have no chance to share even an iota of the benefits derived from the country’s growing Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

We cannot take pride in being a civilised society or an economic success story, no matter what our GDP might indicate, if we do not take care of those in most desperate need. This includes the family of Anant Jarupankit, who perished the same evening the whole world was celebrating the arrival of a new year, the occasion that Oprah Winfry once said gave us “another chance to get it right”.

Some might dismissive the murder-suicide as an isolated incident, but it was not. The cry for help from Anant Jarupankit must be heard loud and clear in spite of his absence.

First and foremost, there is the recalcitrant issue of abject poverty and its unending vicious cycle of lack, no matter how hard those in need try to break free. Anant was a street vendor who lost his only means of subsistence because of the city’s new pavement-reclamation programme. He had no known other skills to find employment. His two children had to go to school. There were five mouths to feed and rent to pay, while he had absolutely nothing left – no income, no hopes, no dreams. The words “No Exit” were engraved in boldface everywhere he looked.

Second, there is the little-understood, multifaceted issue of mental health, which remains an enigma and a stigma in our society. What happened to Anant and his family was not a mere case of holiday blues. His mother and sister had suffered mental illness for years, and it would have likely persisted until the rest of their lives. Anant himself might have suffered from depression for a while.  By all accounts, he and his family, described by neighbours as being nice, had kept to themselves. Joy must have been an alien word to them.

Traditionally in Thailand, family and temples have been responsible for social assistance rather than the state. In recent years the two institutions’ role as providers of social safety nets has dwindled for many reasons. The government has stepped up social safety programmes, but they are far from adequate or genuinely effective. Implementation has been plagued with incompetence and fraud.

Meanwhile, society largely has been oblivious to the needs of the most needy citizens. It does not comprehend their hopelessness and the painful cruelty of every breath they inhale.

To be fair, our successive governments have contemplated a comprehensive and effective social-welfare programme. But, like any institutional public initiative, serious challenges and constraints stymie such attempt. The unwillingness of the government to levy higher social-welfare taxes to support the programme was one of them.

Generally, social safety nets are part of the broader poverty reduction strategy. According to the World Bank, they have to four roles in development policy. These are: 

l Redistribute income to the poorest and most vulnerable; 

l Enable households to make productive investments in their future that they otherwise miss (such as education, health);

l Help households manage risks, at least offsetting harmful coping strategies and make possible the improvement of the poor’s livelihood options; 

l Allow governments to make choices that support sustainable and across the board productivity and growth. 

There are many misconceptions involving social safety nets, some of which are understandable. First, people tend to think that safety nets lead to dependency and laziness. Second, they are not cost-effective and worse yet, not the effectual and efficient ways to provide security and stability for the poor. Statistics from the evaluation of multilateral development institutions have indicated the opposite. Safety nets provide for the opportunities for the poor to become more productive and less burden to the society. They are also more cost effective than certain popular programmes such as fuel subsidies that do not effectively target the poor.

Today, according to President Jim Yong Kim of the World Bank, about 345 million people living in extreme poverty around the world are helped by safety net programmes. Sadly, nonetheless, another 870 million in the similar financial straits still lack access to any kind of social assistance. With Thailand’s incremental development of safety nets, we fall somewhere in between. Our society can do more.

Economists can argue endlessly the economic impacts of social safety nets, but human lives involve more than numbers. How can we quantify the hopes and dreams of all “les miserables”, and the fierce yet unattainable desire to improve their lives and those of their loved ones? People are not born equal. It is far easier for haves to become have-nots than the have-nots to break out of the poverty cycle. To them, opportunities in life are limited. They do not always stay healthy, and they do not have the wherewithal, financially and vocationally to create options in life. They make do with whatever little they have. To many, death is the only natural relief.

When Thailand began to modernise during the reign of King Rama V, the only request he made to the government of the countries he visited was a trip to their slums. There were none in Siam at that time, but somehow he knew they would be an inevitable by-product of modernisation. He wanted to learn first-hand how people coped and how Siam could best prepare for poverty. 

More importantly, he did care.

We too, must care. The voice of the Jarupankit family must be heard, even posthumously. Their tears and their pain must be heeded. Their suffering and desperation were not an isolated incident. They are more common in our society than many people realise. Every life is intrinsically precious, and it is our and our society duty to treat it as such.