Social Protection: From Handouts to Social Justice

By Stephen Devereux, Guardian News

  May 17, 2011

 World 

The gulabi gang (pink gang) in Delhi protesting for better implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, a social protection initiative. The women from rural India, social justice campaigners who wear pink saris, are led by Sampat Devi. Photograph: Manpreet Romana/AFP/Getty Images

Social protection was recently described by Madeleine Bunting as "the next big idea to combat poverty". At its simplest, social protection has been implemented as welfarist support to poor people, mainly in countries that have limited capacity to deliver comprehensive social welfare programmes. Within the past decade, countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America have introduced regular cash transfers and other programmes to assist poor and vulnerable citizens, with positive impacts on a range of wellbeing indicators for millions of people. Social protection is indeed a phenomenal development success story.

Of course, challenges remain. Critics from the political right claim that large-scale cash transfer programmes are unaffordable and financially unsustainable, especially in low-income countries where the costs are often underwritten by the international community. In fact, budget constraints are typically exaggerated – how governments allocate their public spending is a political choice. Another complaint is that putting poor people on to welfare programmes inevitably leads to negative side-effects such as "dependency syndrome" – a common criticism of the right wing in the UK – but there is little empirical evidence to support this belief.

Meanwhile, critics from the left say that social protection is a neoliberal con trick – a residual social policy to legitimise neoliberal economic policies and avoid radical structural reforms. In countries characterised by high levels of poverty and inequality – as in South Africa and much of Latin America, where extensive social protection systems are in place – introducing targeted cash transfers or subsidies for the poor is interpreted as a self-serving attempt by those in power to buy off civil unrest. The limitations of this argument are evident from recent events in Egypt, where decades of heavy food and fuel subsidies failed to prevent revolution.

The social protection discourse has been dominated by efforts to demonstrate and measure its poverty-reduction impacts, and to deflect criticisms from the right and left. But social protection is not only about installing safety nets and contributing to the millennium development goals – important though these are – it also has profound implications for governance and social relations in implementing countries. A conference hosted by the Institute of Development Studies in April addressed a perception that insufficient attention has been paid to the politics of social protection, and its relationship to social justice. Several key lessons emerged.

Social protection is much more than a service-delivery sector: the decisions a society makes about how and whether to guarantee basic subsistence for all citizens reveals the vision that society has about itself – is it based on solidarity and interdependence, or individualism and self-reliance? What constitutes a "good society" at a time when neoliberal capitalism prevails and financial austerity offers a convenient excuse to cut back on government spending? These questions resonate in the UK and mainland Europe as much as they do in the poorest countries.

What are the implications of the social protection agenda for the evolving social contract between governments and citizens? If there is no direct line of accountability between the providers and beneficiaries of social protection, the potential for mobilising civil society is limited. This question is particularly pertinent in countries where poverty and aid dependence mean that international donor agencies dominate the design and financing of these interventions.

Social protection must be delivered in ways that do not stigmatise people: social protection programmes need to respect the dignity of claimants and empower them to become active citizens rather than passive beneficiaries. In India, "social audits" are innovative participatory tools that empower marginalised villagers to claim their right to social protection, and to hold local administrations accountable for their delivery.

Social protection should be linked to other dimensions of social policy, such as tackling discrimination and social exclusion, which are often the root causes of poverty: eradicating social injustice can eliminate a need for welfare transfers. For instance, is it better to deny an HIV-positive person work and compel them to depend on social protection, or to outlaw discrimination in the labour market based on HIV status, as South Africa has done?

The most progressive social protection interventions are underpinned by legislation, which transforms a charitable gesture into a justiciable right: in India, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act gives every rural household the right to 100 days of public works employment each year. In Swaziland, where pensions were introduced for all older citizens in 2005, a delay in payments due to cashflow problems provoked aggrieved pensioners to lobby their MPs, and parliament was suspended until the issue was resolved.

In small but significant ways like this across the world, social protection is not only protecting poor and vulnerable people, it is also building democracy from the bottom up. Social protection can be a powerful tool for strengthening citizens' rights and achieving social justice.

Copyright © Global Action on Aging
Terms of Use  |  Privacy Policy  |  Contact Us