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AS political passions engulf the country over graft and regime
change as the only means to end corruption, let’s take a look at
how the Philippines measures in the global human development scale,
which means how the government has succeeded in improving the
quality of life for Filipinos.
Actually, the Philippines showed a slight
increase in the value of its Human Development Index (HDI) and
ranked 90th among 177 countries, according to the 2007/2008 Human
Development Report released by the United Nations Development
Programme yesterday.
If you wish to talk numbers, the UN report shows
that the HDI value of the Philippines is 0.771, up from the 2006
level of 0.763, when it ranked 84. Other countries in the medium
development category—Jordan, Suriname, Turkey, Dominican Republic,
and Belize— have improved faster compared to Manila, according to
the report.
Beyond standard gauges
The Human Development Index looks beyond the
standard economic yardsticks like the gross national product, the
gross domestic product or per capita income. The index provides a
composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a
long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), level of
education (measured by adult literacy and enrollment at the primary,
secondary and tertiary level) and having a decent standard of living
(measured by purchasing power parity, or income).
The UNDP report adds that the HDI is a standard
means of measuring well-being, especially child welfare. It is used
to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing, or
an under-developed country, and also to measure the impact of
economic policies on the quality of life.
By this standard, the Philippines falls in the
medium category. Widespead poverty (which grips at least one-third
of the population) pulls down programs on other fronts, such as
access to universal education, low-cost health care and affordable
housing. The communist insurgency has held back growth in the
countryside while secessionism in southern Mindanao has sapped
scarce resources that could have gone to social services and public
infrastructure.
How the Asean nations compare
Japan (at no. 8) is the only Asian nation among
the countries occupying the top 10 ranks. The remaining nine are
Iceland, Norway, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland,
Netherlands and France.
Indonesia and Vietnam have kept their positions
at 108 and 109, respectively. Thailand also posted a slight downward
move from a previous rank of 74, but remains ahead of the
Philippines at 78. Malaysia remains in the high human development
bracket at 63. China is ranked 81 under the medium development
bracket. It overtook the Philippines two years ago.
The last 10 countries in the HDI are Congo,
Ethiopia, Chad, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Mali, Niger,
Guinea-Bissau, Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone.
Quality-of-life issues
Other global rating institutions rank countries
according to government transparency, ease of doing business and the
level of freedom. Manila weighs poorly on these scales, as well as
in the corruption index (or the perception of corruption), which
downgrades the country near the bottom.
The point of the Human Development Report is
that it takes more than economic growth to make a country a
developed state. Quality-of-life issues are as important as
modernization, the strength of the currency or having sound economic
fundamentals. In the Philippines, a popular complaint is that
sustained economic gains in the past three years have not filtered
down to the masses to improve lives, or have translated into
well-paying jobs for every man and woman who needs one.
The fact remains that the country is poised for
an economic takeoff and—given political stability, strong law and
order and civic discipline—is capable of joining the ranks of
developed economies in the next 25 years. The tumult that has
gripped metropolitan Manila threatens to erase these gains and
return the county to the starting line. The answer to the crisis is
not only for civil society and the political opposition to respect
due process and protect the Constitution, but also for the President
to use a mailed fist to smash corruption and dedicate herself to
giving Filipinos an honest, achieving and purposeful government.
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