Opinion - News Analysis   

Lessons from Pasig City

Amit Baruah

The people do not need doles; they need their government to deliver on basic needs.

DISASTER MAKES news, but the story behind the headlines is often hidden from view. The death of 74 persons in a stampede at Pasig City, a Manila suburb, on Saturday morning was a terrible tragedy, but what triggered it off is equally tragic.

The Philippines is a country with a per capita income of about $1,000, more than double that of India. But the problems faced by the poor in this country of 84 million are similar to those of India's poor.

It all hinged on a popular game show "Wowowee," which carried a prize of a Philippine peso 2.5 million house ($1 is equivalent to 50 pesos), a cash award of one million pesos, and a passenger jeep.

On Sunday, the Philippine Daily Inquirer had this to say about what happened at Philsports Arena (stadium) in Pasig: "From accounts, what happened was bizarrely simple: In the mad rush to gain entry to the arena — and thereby get a crack at the prizes up for grabs — people who had been waiting for days, pushed relentlessly until the gates gave way and the people in front were trampled to death."

The noontime show is hosted by a popular host, Willie Revillame, on ABS-CBN and is known for giving away as much as two million pesos in cash on a single day. It has been suspended for one week after Saturday's deaths.

Later a distraught Mr. Revillame said on local radio: "I did not expect this to happen because all I want to do is to make people happy."

Asked by a newspaper why ABS-CNN was encouraging "mendicancy and dependency on doleouts," the channel's vice-president, Charo Santos-Concio, said the reality was that many Filipinos were poor. "We only want to get them hope. We're all human, and I think most of us have tried our luck in games of chance. But we are not encouraging mendicancy," she claimed.

The Pasig City tragedy holds relevance for India. Already, we have the instance of 21 persons being crushed to death when a senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader was doling our saris in April 2004 on the occasion of the former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee's birthday. Whether it is a game show or a political freebie, hosts and organisers fail to take into account the desperation of the recipients. They are willing to wait for days — often sleeping close to the venue — to get a ticket to the show.

The media in the Philippines have done themselves proud in their sharp and critical comments on the how and why of the Pasig incident. In a front-page comment, Michael L.Tan wrote in the Inquirer: "Yesterday's disaster had no real bomb, yet the death toll was worse than some of the suicide bomb attacks in other countries."

"I couldn't help thinking that the dead were human sacrifices on the altar of consumerism and latter-day idols. How long will be allow the entertainment industry to use celebrities, with their manufactured aura, to dictate to us what to buy, how to live - and how to die?" Mr. Tan wrote.

Many of those killed were women — aged 50 or above. Salvador Garcia (74) had come to the stadium with his wife, Virginia (67), who died in the stampede. They had been "in line" since 4 p.m. on Friday. Mr. Garcia said: "It was worse than being punished, because we couldn't eat, we couldn't relieve ourselves. We stayed in the line. We were crushed." The incident must trigger a reality check not just in the Philippines but in India and other developing countries as well.

In this day and age, where consumerism is king, the poor, who are already victims of state neglect and non-performance, also end up perishing in the mad drive to clutch at a sari or a cash award. Do the poor not deserve better? Will they be condemned to die in stampedes for a piece of cloth or the "dream" of a million pesos? Will the state stand by as the lines of poor waiting for a miracle to happen lengthen?

The people do not need doles or dreams; they need their government to deliver on basic needs. That is the message from Pasig City and the deaths of 74 poor Filipinos.

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