Genunine Progress Measures

I was inspired to write this after reading this blog by my Member of Parliment, Elizabeth May.  Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and the first Green Party candidate to be elected in North America.  She is also the best MP I have ever had.  She is the role model of what every democratically elected MP should be.

Here blogs and tweets are informative. Her emphasis on democracy, free speech, integrity and cooperation are commendable. She represents the Canada I want to live in. 

Her blog was about the Genunine Progress Act, which is a way to measure quality of life instead of basing all our political decisions on GDP. 

Traditional Intore Dancers at Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda

 

She quotes the late Senator Robert Kennedy, who said just weeks before his death in 1968:

“Too much and too long, we have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things….The (GDP) counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”

 

How does this factor into Rwanda?  So often the speech in 'third world African countries' is about development. Africa needs development - in order to....what?  Feed it's people? have democratically held elections? provide clean drinking water? supply commodities to developed nations? provide a market for consumer goods?

Agricultural land just below Volcanoes National Park. The potato basket of Rwanda

Never mind that Africa is a continent, not a country. Africa has more than one story. 

And what does it mean to be third world? Is it as simple as taking GDP of a country as the indicator for the health of a country? Are the people actually poorer in the qualities that makes life worthwhile?
 

What do you see in the small children in dirty, ripped clothing playing on the road?   What do you see in man who pushes a bike full of pineapples 15km to the market?  What do you see in two old woman resting in the shade of an acacia tree while they wait for a bus?

Do you see only poverty... or can you also see the wit, courage, wisdom, learning, compassion, devotion... can you see that which makes life worthwhile?

I think Peter Godwin illustrates this perspective clearly in his book 'When the crocodile eats the sun' about his birth country Zimbabwe. 

"The cause of the cicadas' silence crests the path into sight; a ragged crocodile of small black children jogging back from school.  Joanna takes in their threadbare khaki uniforms and the striped jute book bags bouncing on bony shoulders, and I can see how it must look to her.  Even when they whoop and wave and flash bright-toothed smiles as they pass by, she sees ill-fitting, hand-me-down clothes and scuffed shoes or the bare feet of kids who walk miles to and from school each day and go home to thatched huts without indoor plumbing or electricity.  But what I see are functioning schools: pens and paper and a near-universal education producing Africa's most literate population.  She compares up, to the First World, where privileges are treated as rights.  I compare down, to the apocalyptic Africa that presses in around us, where rights are only for the privileged."

One side of the feuding families (asyv theater)

It is true that there are many problems related to poverty in Rwanda.  The fact that I am volunteering at a youth village for vulnerable orphaned youth is testimony to this.  There are problems with access to clean water, to schooling, to food, to health care, to housing.  Sometimes the stories I hear from the staff, the students, the farm workers, and villagers break my heart.  But there are also these problems in Canada and any other country  in the world. Perhaps the scale is just different.

 

But back to the original topic. GDP was developed to measure basic flows in the economy. (Next two quotes taken from The Pardee Papers, No. 4. Jan 2009, Beyond GDP: The Need for New Measures of Progress)

"The US Bureau of Economic Analysis’ description of GDP states the purpose of measuring GDP is to answer questions such as “how fast is the economy growing,” “what is the pattern of spending on goods and services,” “what percent of the increase in production is due to inflation,” and “how much of the income produced is being used for consumption as opposed to investment or savings” (McCulla and Smith 2007). "

 GDP was not meant to be an indicator for National Progress nor of well-being, but it is now used to compare quality of life in different countries.  More frightening is that: "Internationally, changes in a country’s GDP are used by both the IMF and the World Bank to guide policies and determine how and which projects are funded around the world."

There is at least one country that has refused to be pigeon-holed by its GDP. Bhutan measures its progress in not just economic growth, but also Gross National Happiness. 

"The concept (of GNH) implies that sustainable development should take a holistic approach towards notions of progress and give equal importance to non-economic aspects of wellbeing.... The nine domains are: psychological wellbeing, health, education, time use, cultural diversity and resilience, good governance, community vitality, ecological diversity and resilience, and living standards."

And wouldn't you be better off if your MP, your government were making policy decisions based on a wider range of indicators than just how much money you were making and how much you were consuming?

Dancing at the King's feast (asyv theater)

Many Rwandans struggle with poverty.  Many Canadians struggle with poverty.  Some Rwandans are very rich. Some Canadians are also very rich.  We are the same and different.  But one difference that strikes me is the access to education. While most Canadians attend good public schools up to grade 12, Rwandans have only to grade 9 and then they have to pay to go to high school. In addition, while I believe Canadian schools and teachers could have more funding, we are very well funded and developed compared to Rwanda.  The textbooks, the student-teacher ratio, the level of teaching and extra-curriculars are far different in Canada than in Rwanda. Where as highschool is a right in Canada, it is a privileged in Rwanda.

Rwanda will progress as a country but not necessarily through the penny counting of IMF loans, but through the resiliency and the cooperation of its people.  The GDP doesn't measure 18 years of continual work towards peace and reconciliation in this country.  It doesn't measure how Rwandans are trying to move forward to make some things right after the tragedy of the genocide.

The other day, the enrichment year students did a performance after a two week workshop led by the International Theater and Literacy Project.  The play was amazing (of course, but I am partial to these kids).  It was about reconciliation and peace.  Four of the characters in the play were orphans.  They were actually the heroes of the story because by working together, they brought back peace and restored order in the village that had been feuding.  They came together and although they were scared, and didn't think they could do it, one of them said something along these lines 'we are orphans but we are rich in mind. Together, we have the strength to do this.'

the orphans coming together to save the day (asyv theater)