PERIES: Now, tell us a bit more about why during the success, during the growth period when the economy was doing so well why the PT, Workers' Party--more left-thinking, more socialist in their outlook--was unable to deliver programs and support to the poorest in the country. Particularly given Lula took office on the Zero Hunger campaign, which was partially successful. But it abandoned those programs towards the time when Dilma Rousseff took power. Why did that happen?Real New Network
SAAD-FILHO: The social programs implemented by the Lula administration, and by the Dilma Rousseff administrations, have been very successful. The Bolsa Familia programming in particular was launched as you mentioned by Lula under the previous name of Fome Zero, Zero Hunger program. And it now covers 14 million families in Brazil. That is about a quarter of the population of the country directly benefit. These are benefits that are very small, but they are significant for people who earn very, very little. And they also provide a bedrock of demand for the economy.
There are other social programs as well including social security, including health, including a significant expansion of education at all levels and so on. So these programs were large and they were successful. They were also cheap. There's a limitation to the social programs of the PT, is that they usually did not have a sufficient amount of resources to transform the life chances of many of the poor. Although they did transform the life chances of many people who previously could not go to university but now they can, because the expansion of the sector [inaud.] quotas, and people who could not have accessed health services but now they can because of a substantial expansion of health provision in the country.
These were successful programs and they deserve to be commended, except they were limited to some extent and they should have been backed up by a significant expansion of infrastructure as well. This is [inaud.] missing, in my view.
Brazil Analysis: Upper Middle Class Demonstrations Against President Dilma Rousseff (2/2)
Sharmini Peres interviews Alfredo Saad-Filho, Professor of Political Economy at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and formerly a senior economic affairs officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
1 comment:
Those who never visited Latin America often miss a crucial detail.
Latin America "middle-class" is largely formed by white or at least mixed-race people; basically, as you move up the pecking order, you tend to find fairer-skinned people (there are regional variations, not every single poor person is non-white, and not every single big-wig looks like a Swede, but you get the idea).
The chances of "middle-class" protests to have or acquire a racial component are not negligible, just like the reaction against them.
In countries where people are heavily armed, and where mutual resentment is just hiding under the surface, this is an explosive situation.
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