Under da Silva, the World Bank, UNDP and other international organisations took note of Brazil as it implemented Bolsa Familia. It may not have been 100 percent perfect as a social service intervention, but it nonetheless drew millions out of the poverty bracket. Innovative thinking like this, that generates ‘quick wins’, is what we desperately need and not the hypocritical, high-sounding political policy statements that don’t have a way to trickle down to the common man, particularly the poor and the downtrodden. Although Bolsa Famila had a fairly wide area of coverage, it was nonetheless adjudged by an agency as having “generated significant results for the country”.
The World Bank, in a report, described the Bolsa Famila as “Brazil’s Quiet Revolution”, inferring that it broke away from decades of non-inclusive growth models and regressive social policies. Da Silva’s Bolsa Famila scaled up and coordinated scattered existing initiatives under a powerful simple concept trusting poor families with small cash transfers in return for keeping their children in school and attending preventive health care visits. Its poverty-fighting and hunger-reduction impacts became obvious, from the results of independent studies that were later published. For instance, the World Bank noted that “10 years after, BF has been key to help Brazil more than halve its extreme poverty – from 9.7 to 4.3 percent of the population”.
It is good to quote the World Bank a little more copiously to drive the point further home. It stated: “Most impressively, and in contrast to other countries, income inequality also fell markedly to a Gini coefficient of 0.527, an impressive 15 percent decrease. BF now reaches nearly 14 million households-50 million people, or around 1/4 of the population, and is widely seen as a global success story, a reference point for social policy around the world. Equally important, qualitative studies have highlighted how the regular fund transfers from the programme have helped promote the dignity and autonomy of the poor. This is particularly true for women, who account for over 90 percent of the beneficiaries.”
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So, why the hues and cries about stomach infrastructure if not a reflection of a lack of understanding of the practical importance and relevance to people’s needs? From simple understanding of Biology, the stomach infrastructure is actually needed to build the “grey matter infrastructure” needed for good thinking. Good food is needed to build a productive brain, intellect and productive outcome of intellectualism. I reckon that this was what Fayose is up to. I hope to be proved right. To demonstrate his seriousness about this much-vilified social service intervention, the new governor of Ekiti State stopped at nothing to appoint a cabinet status official on ‘stomach infrastructure’. Governor Fayose needs to be encouraged as well as praised for being sensitive to this vital aspect of Ekiti people’s lives and breaking away from old, nebulous policies that leave no real human impact behind. No need to grandstand about the status of Ekiti, a state which, so far, has been producing intellectual and human capital resources for other states and countries, but has not developed much at home.
As we know, the knowledge economy requires some basic things to thrive, most of which Ekiti State currently lacks, and the lack of which explains why educated Ekiti indigenes are more outside that state than within it. It is important to emphasise that intellectuals are highly mobile, which is why you hardly would find up to 10 percent of the Ekiti intellectuals at home. The investment in intellectual capital in Ekiti, over the decades, has not yielded any appreciable dividend due to the perpetual brain drain through migration to other states that are more economically viable and with bigger commercial cities, as well as to other countries, particularly Europe and America. Those at home, who are mostly a rural and farming population, and a small population of the educated in public service, need all such support as may be encapsulated in the stomach infrastructure programme if well articulated and implemented.
My wish is that the stomach infrastructure policy under the Fayose government will be pointed, sustainable, result-oriented, inclusive and tailor-made to meet the needs of the people. I also hope that political consideration will not stand in the way of its implementation and there will be no policy somersault in the process of implementation. Rather than discrediting this laudable aspect of Governor Fayose’s intervention, it is important to praise it, watch it while it is implemented and give it all the support it needs to make it impact on the populace.
Olukayode Oyeleye