On paper, the Philippines and other Member States of  the Association of  Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) are all committed  to the protection of their citizens against social and  economic risks.  However, the adequacy of the social protection extended to the ordinary people is still limited, as  reflected in  the social spending made by Asean countries on social protection, roughly 4-6 percent of  the GDP versus the  20-24 percent in the developed  countries. 

In particular, Asean members need to address the policy gap.  There is  policy variance between the populist declarations on social protection made by the political leaders and the kind  of  socio-economic policies  that they pursue.  The latter, which often favor  society’s  elite and the big corporations, tend to deepen inequality and put those  in the margins in a precarious and  vulnerable  situation due to job displacement, unemployment, underemployment, ill health, accidents and marginal incomes.  As Resolution  202 of  2012 of  the  ILO puts it, a major requirement to achieve national  social protection floor is policy coherence in the social  protection advocacy and  the  supporting socio-economic policies that States  follow.

However, one  cannot deny  that there is greater awareness in Asean today on the importance of having universal, adequate and  comprehensive social  protection in every country.  A brief historical review on how this  rising awareness came about is  in order.

Two decades  ago, in 1997-1998,  Southeast Asia gave the world the “tom-yung” financial  crisis, better  known as the Asian  financial crisis (AFC).Four  Asian countries sunk into  depression:  Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and  Thailand.  The  Philippines  and  other Asian  countries, including Russia and some countries in Latin America were shaken.  The AFC was  followed a decade  after, in 2007-2010, by the bigger global  financial crisis (GFC),  which originated from  the heartland of financial capitalism: New York and London.

Millions lost jobs overnight in Southeast  Asia due  to the  AFC. The Indonesian strongman Suharto himself lost his  job, after meekly submitting his country to  the supervision of the  IMF. It  was  against this  backdrop that  some  serious  re-thinking about social protection took  place within the official policy circles in Southeast Asia.

Earlier, in  the 1980s and 1990s,  the World  Bank and its  neo-liberal  supporters were still obsessed with the promotion of the privatization  of government-managed  pension  and  social security programs, as  part of  the  broader program of  privatizing, deregulating  and  liberalizing economies of  the world. This privatization  proposal was  meaningless to all  those who lost their jobs  and  incomes due to the  AFC. 

In Thailand, the government of  the  populist  Thaksin Shinawatra pushed  for the 40-baht universal health  care despite  the earlier austerity program pushed  by the  IMF-World  Bank  group.  In Malaysia, Mahathir defied  the IMF by imposing capital controls  to stop  the hemorrhage  of capital and  jobs  out of  the country.  But the beleaguered Suharto completely  succumbed  to the IMF diktat. 

And  yet, 10 years after,  at the  height of the GFC,  the  world  re-discovered  the  Keynesian approach in crisis  situation, that  is, government stimulating the economy through various deficit spending mechanisms.  In  America, the spending program  was even  seized  by  the big banks, which precipitated  the  crisis, as  a means  to save themselves  by arguing that  their  collapse  will  lead  to the  bigger collapse  of  the economy.  These  banks are, accordingly,  “too big too fail”. In  2017, the  IMF Research Department wrote  a “mea culpa” on capital controls,  virtually telling the  world that Mahathir,  the  medical doctor,  was correct in  making interventions  in  the capital market in 1997-1998.

The  foregoing narrative  on IMF-World  Bank policy somersaults on austerity and  capital  controls  shows that there  are social and economic  realities on the  ground that cannot  be ignored. These realities are  forcing these  institutions  to adjust  their neo-liberal  lenses somewhat somehow.

One  important adjustment is  the  way  these  lenders and  their neo-liberal supporters are treating  social  protection.  In  the 1980s and 1990s, the  ILO  had a  weak  program on social protection. But from the  turn of the  millennium, the  ILO  has  become increasingly more  assertive.  It conducted  financial estimations  on how  much were needed  for a developing country to put in place universal social protection.  The figure arrived  at was 6-8 percent of the GDP. In  2012,  the ILO’s concept of  social  protection  floor  also gained  global  acceptance  with the adoption of Resolution  202.

This ILO Resolution   is  now  supported by the World  Bank, which  has  been collaborating with the  ILO  in a number  of  social  protection  promotion  programs. The World Bank  no longer talks of  pension  privatization, after this  was shot down by the strong criticisms articulated   by Joseph Stiglitz. Instead, a new program is  advanced: the  promotion in  Asia of  the World Bank’s  Latin American experiment called  “Bolsa de Familia” or conditional  cash  transfer (CCT).  Under the CCT, minimal monthly allowance is given  to poor mothers  on the condition that the  mothers get maternal medical check-up and  her  school-age children continue  to go to the  schools.  

In  Southeast Asia in  the  meantime,  the Thaksin universal health  care initiative  has  also gained wider acceptance in some  countries, in Indonesia  and the  Philippines in  particular.  Social protection  has  also  become  a major  Asean  theme since 2007, when the  Asean Charter  was  adopted.  Thus,  there has been a proliferation of social  protection programs  being bandied  around or being proposed, with  the  World  Bank and ADB coming in now as  the social protection  champions. In 2013,  the  Asean came  up  with a sweeping Declaration on Strengthening Social Protection, which cites all UN conventions  on economic and social rights  that citizens  should be able  to get.  There  are  other Asean  Declarations: An Asean Declaration on Ageing: Empowering Older  Persons  in Asean, an Asean  Declaration on Strengthening Family Institutions, an Asean Declaration  on  the  Enhancement of  the Role  and  Participation of Persons  with Disabilities, and an Asean Declaration  on the  Enhancement of the Welfare and Development of Asean Women and Children. Today, the  Asean has  been organizing numerous  ministerial meetings on how to push social protection through the Asean Strategic Framework on Social  Welfare and  Development (2016-2020).

At the level of the individual Asean members, political leaders also  talk endlessly on the need for social protection – universal health care, education, pension for the retirees, social  assistance to the disabled, etc. – for the  poor and  those  in  the margin of  society.  The  only limit is  budget that can be allotted  for this purpose, or money that can be borrowed  from the  World  Bank, ADB and  other  aid  givers,  again for this  purpose. 

And  this is precisely the problem.  The issue of  social protection, now  accepted and  articulated by government officials, has  become  a question of budgetary allocation.  The deeper  problem on why there are so many poor and so many are  on the margins  is  not being addressed fully.  More importantly, neo-liberal policies that  are in place and  the  neo-liberal thinking that still dominates general economic policy  formulation are  not being questioned. For example, the privatization of  public services such  as  water  and  electricity, instead  of  being kept in  the hands  of government to ensure universal access for all, is still  a priority  program  in many countries.  These are usually  bundled  under  what  the  technocrats  call as  the  Public-Private  Partnership (PPP), a scheme pioneered  in  London under  Margaret Thatcher.  Under the  PPPs  or  their hybrid  forms  in  Southeast Asia, the  big private  service providers  are  able  to transform natural monopolies into private sector monopolies.  As a result, inequality is deepening and  the exclusion  of the many is  being exacerbated.

Worse,  programs  or policies  that are  anti-poor deepen poverty and  the  lack of  social  protection  for them. Example: many peasants, indigenous  people and  rural poor  are being displaced due to the rapacious land  accumulation programs of the big land  developers, the  big agribusiness investors and the  members of  the national elite who want to get  the  best  lands.  In this  process,  the displaced  become the  “floating population” of poor circulating within countries.  They  join the huge  army of the  informals, who constitute  two-thirds  of the  labor  force  in most countries.  They  include the home-based  workers,  the street vendors, the  informal transport workers/operators and the  coastal fisherfolks. Most of the informals  do not get adequate social protection, only paltry social  assistance programs  that are  dependent on limited budgetary allocations  of government.   

In  the formal  labor market,  there are  also problems.  The army of  the  precariat continues  to grow, partly because  of  the  efforts of  neo-liberal economists and  corporations to pressure governments to maintain labor  flexibility policy, meaning workers can hire  or fire workers at  will.  The  non-standard or non-regular paid workers, who outnumber  the  regulars, are  often not given  formal  employment contracts nor are they  enrolled  by their employers in the  social security system.  

To complete  the  labor market picture, the  floating population  of displaced  landless  rural poor and  jobless urban poor is supplemented  by  the  floating population of  migrant workers  crossing borders.  There are varied  estimates on their number.  In Southeast Asia,  the biggest destination countries are Singapore, Malaysia and  Thailand.  A number of  migrants are doing well.  But majority, who occupy the low-end jobs  shunned  by the nationals of  the destination countries, are in  the  most vulnerable position, with  limited  access  to legal and social protection assistance.  Again, increased  migration is  largely the  outcome  of  poor economic policies at home, while  those  using migrants’ services are able  to restrain wage  increases in their own countries.   

So how  then do we wipe  out poverty and  provide social  protection  for all given the foregoing? 

In  the Asean, the good thing is the rising awareness  within policy circles  on  the importance of providing universal social protection, starting with universal  health care.  The sad  thing: all this  is  treated  as  a funding or budgetary  issue. There  are  numerous  meetings and  workshops  on social protection or various  aspects of  social protection such as the  systems of  delivering services, packaging the  services and  so on.  But rarely is  there  an  exhaustive and  serious  discussion on the root causes  of poverty and social  exclusion.

And  yet, the  reality is that universal and  adequate  social protection is not possible if there are  no meaningful social and  economic reforms to  ensure  that economic growth  is inclusive, balanced and  sustainable.  The point is that a  program  of  social protection  should  be  part of  a  bigger transformation  program.  It means  discarding the   neo-liberal assumption  that growth automatically trickles down to the benefit of the  poor.  There should  be a needed re-thinking and  transformation too of  the  overall  design of regional  and  global  integration. Why should countries at different levels  of  development be subjected  to  uniform rules for the rich and  poor countries?  Each country, given  the level of its development, should be given the  freedom to determine its development priorities based  on the principle  of special and differential treatment.

Socio-economic  transformation  programs  should  be  synchronized  too  with programs  dealing with  transitions – just transition  in  addressing problems  of the environment and  climate change risks and  just transition  to prepare  the  people on  the impact of  rapid technological change  under the  ongoing  Fourth Industrial Revolution. On the environment, climate change risks are mounting everywhere and  decimating agriculture, water systems and  so on.

On the other hand, the  technology revolution is subverting Factory Asia, which is based on international  subcontracting initiated by the multinationals  in car,  electronics and so many industries.  Some  institutions, including ironically the ILO,  are  talking of scaling up developing countries’ participation in the  global  value  chains when the reality is that  these GVCs are now  being reconfigured  because of robotization  and  automation.  Also, there  is no way  the  laggards  can graduate to a higher level of development if they simply tie their fate  to the coattails of the GVCs of the MNCs. 

So,  it is  an urgent task for governments and  the  working peoples to come  up with just transition  programs for the  environment and the technology revolution.  Just here means  just transformation  programs  involving the people every step of the  way.  For example, cleaning a coastal area should  not lead to the  displacement of the coastal fishing community but should enable the  community to become partners and keepers of clean coastal  areas  while  building a  prosperous  fishing community.

Clearly, so much has  to be done.  The  task of securing universal, adequate and  comprehensive social protection for all cannot be reduced  to a mere question  of creating the fiscal space for this such as  generating new taxes.  The most basic is  how  to align social  and  economic policies  in support of inclusion and  sustainability by  abandoning the  neo-liberal development straitjacket and by abandoning the regional and  global  Race to the Bottom in the treatment of workers and  resources of  a country. We need to embrace a new  paradigm of  regional and  global integration,  where people are truly at the center of development.