OPINION: Poverty Commission
As Hong Kong’s political drama unfolds, its newest commission goes quietly about its laudable task of reducing poverty. Barely two months old, the Commission on Poverty was a key initiative of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa’s last policy address; a change of leadership should not alter the importance of its work.

Chandran Nair

It deserves support, coming also amid unprecedented global focus on helping the poor. The next year is critical in showing the effort here and globally is not just more talk.

The commission seems to have begun well, drawing on people with ideas and experience from all walks of life—government officials, legislators, businesspeople, non-governmental organisations, experts and academics, all under the chairmanship of the Financial Secretary Henry Tang Ying-yen. They will focus on who receives support, how it is to be distributed, and will study the yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots.

It should recognise that many similar, well-intentioned attempts have suffered because of unrealistic expectations, and at their heart, oversimplification. Here, the commission passed its first test. Meeting on February 18, it decided that setting a “poverty line” was “not practicable”, Mr Tang said: “Poverty involves more than a rigid group of targets.”

The commissioners are in good company. This is the same hard-won conclusion that the World Bank and similar organisations gnawing away at world poverty have reached after decades: injecting aid arbitrarily into different, unconnected sectors has limited success, because the underlying thinking fails to take into account the many dynamic influences that result in poverty.

So what approach should they take? Not to be rushed, on March 7 they began a district-by-district study to see who needs help: first, Tin Shui Wai, near the border and home to many mainland migrants and struggling families. Some people argue for more welfare, saying comprehensive support systems pull poor people out of their plight. But even with such systems there are still people who do without.
The commissioners should know that many programmes failed because their financial formulas were static—rapid urbanisation and population growth shift the goalposts constantly.

The vital role of education must be threaded into the fabric of any commission scheme. Literacy, job training and property rights are central elements in creating the right conditions for people to pull themselves out of poverty.

And while there is also some truth to the belief that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor, to focus on vilifying the rich only serves to raise tensions. Wealth disparity does not equal poverty but social inequity, driven by envy, and this can lead to crime, and other problems. This is pressing, but diverts attention from the root causes of poverty, and the best approach to its solution—that it must shared by the poor, the rich, the government and the community at large. This interdependence needs to drive our search for solutions, not slogans.

Again, the commission has struck a sound chord, saying that poverty alleviation must be achieved “through encouraging and supporting self-reliance and community engagement”.

The commission has a tremendous opportunity to build credibility for the administration in its social agenda by bringing together the combined experience of opinion on how to help the needy in the most effective manner. It will need the support and constructive engagement of all, and they must abandon entrenched positions and blame-shifting. Failing to build on this and proceed rationally will impoverish us all, not just the poor.

Chandran Nair is founder and chief executive of the Global Institute For Tomorrow, an independent social venture think tank dedicated to advancing understanding of the impacts of globalisation.
www.globalinstitutefortomorrow.org/