IS there a celebrity in your wallet? Hidden inside the tatty leather
or pink plastic named Kitty-Go or some such misguidedly cute name,
there could be a whole new world of parties, yachts, country-hopping,
designer shopping and dripping diamonds so bling they make you blink.

IS there a celebrity in your wallet? Hidden inside the tatty leather or pink plastic named Kitty-Go or some such misguidedly cute name, there could be a whole new world of parties, yachts, country-hopping, designer shopping and dripping diamonds so bling they make you blink. What with wildly rising oil prices and the cost of just about everything else, most of us grimly feel that we are headed in the opposite direction. But, hold on, up comes a report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (them of fruit gum fame). The Rowntree Report, A Minimum Income Standard for the UK, suggests a whole new way of defining poverty. To you and me, poverty may mean the person in rags living behind two scrounged pieces of zinc, begging 50 sen or so, stripped of human dignity. Indeed, the UN has defined poverty as living on US$1 a day (now adjusted to US$2 a day for inflation). So, the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Report 2006 reports that between 1990 and 2004, 70.8 per cent of Nigeria’s population lived on under US$1 a day and 92.4 per cent under US$2. In the Philippines, it was 15.5 per cent and 47.5 per cent. In Malaysia, the respective figures were 2 per cent and 9 per cent. In developed countries, poverty tends to be defined as living below 50 per cent of the median income. In both cases the income level is the defining point. The Rowntree Foundation, however, carried out a survey of people in the UK and based on their judgements, has suggested that the definition of poverty, at least in the UK, should be pegged at an ‘acceptable’ living standard and not the relative income terms. People should have what they need “in order to have the opportunities and choices to participate in society, says the report. “Food and shelter keep you alive – but they don’t make you live.” So, to the essentials of food, warmth and enough for an occasional ticket to the cinema and a simple meal out, the Rowntree Report adds a mobile phone (so essential for the children!), a DVD player and multi-channel TV into the mix. Strangely, no mention of a car or computer with Internet connection, though the report says that a “basic” computer for children to type reports is essential. One suspects that the surveyors did not talk to young people. And, converting that into income, Rowntree said that £370 per week should be the acceptable income for a family and two children in the UK; that is £28,000 a year before tax. Don’t bother converting those figures into ringgit because the result will look more impressive that it really is. Take it as roughly one ringgit to the pound in purchasing power. Adding the people’s judgment of minimum acceptable living standards is as democratic as it is interesting. It also opens the door to opportunity for us Malaysians to climb into the celebrity life if someone did a similar sort of survey and study among us. Opportunity is an advantage for many of us. Couple that with our love of retail shopping, of brand names, flashy cars, istana-like houses, fake Greco-Roman pillars, chandeliers, flashy jewellery and the like and we could build a poverty portfolio to exceed any developed country and pretend that Wawasan 2020 is really around the corner. It almost does not matter that right at this moment we cannot afford all of that. It sounds very retro to carp about how we are becoming addicted to material goods but we have been living the “we are what we have”– some would say “we are what we should have” – lifestyle for many years now. Even in the UK, the Rowntree Report has been met with warnings that it could lead to wider social divisions as its goods-based approach evokes complex community status signals and preening. “If you had two cows and your neighbour three,” complained one commentator, “wouldn’t you want three?” Well, casting an eye over our neighbours’ fences, we Malaysians know all about that sort of thinking.
• Cheryl Dorall was a senior journalist and newspaper editor in Malaysia before falling victim to Operasi Lalang in 1987. She is now based in London and can be contacted at cheryldorall@yahoo. co.uk.

Source: Malay Mail – July 25, 2008