I have a confession to make. It`s about work. I work for the government of my country since 2006, right before President Lula`s reelection.
Well, what I have to say is directly linked to my view of my country and my expectations as a citizen. I don`t know! I thought I could help my country, I thought I could change its reality and make it a better place, but at this point I realize that governments are all the same. It doesn`t matter what the ideology is, at the end, all governments try to prove what they`ve improved, what they`ve done better, causing it to become a reckless, oblivious, neglecting entity. It works for the present time and for some specific purpose, which, oftenly turns out not to be the people, the citizens, the vox populi.
I feel so ashamed of myself, when I realize I`m part of it. All the time I thought I was helping, but "just coz you feel it, it doesn`t mean it's there". Even when you try to fight it, or confront it, you feel powerless "crushed like a bug in the ground". I began to think that I did good because I`ve always aimed at presenting new opportunities for my country, bringing changes that would contribute to its improvement; and because I try to do everything by the book, hoping that it would make a difference for its sucess. But then I realized, all this drama was not real. It was surreal. The thing is: I lived a different political moment, if you like that expression, or you could simply say I have a different point of view.
See, by the time I started working for the government, we were building the strategies, making medium and long term goals for our country, we were presenting a national plan for culture, bringing the importance of cultural expression to the core of development of a society. We were setting programs to accomplish our goals based on the information we had, which was very little I supposed. This was really hard and some things didn't really brought us very good results. But we knew that was going to happen, it's difficult to change the reality of a country, especially a big, populated, developing country like Brazil. And at some point we got the results from a study we requested for the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) that shoked us a little. We found out that roughly 80% of brazilian citizens have never been to the movies, theater, concerts and so on. At the same time we found out that brazilians spend around 11% of their income with cultural goods and services.
This numbers made it clear the gap between some regions of Brazil and their population. The typical unequal capitalist distortions of the developing democratic countries of South America. Caused by the unfair distribution of everything. In my country this maldistribution includes the population, health services, educational services, culture, infra-structure, etc. Thus we have rural exodus, in search of better quality of life.
Rouanet law
Well, the Rouanet law is mechanism of fiscal/tax renunciation, where a cultural project can be financed using the tax contribution. Actually, it's a trade, the sponsor pays up until 4% of his taxes to the project and he won't have to pay it later in the end of the fiscal year. So, the sponsor gets the right to have his name or label advertised in the cultural project and the cultural agent gets the financial support he needed. This mechanism is not new and it's not perfect either, and, in Brazil, it does not work as well as we expected. This is because a research made in 2008, I guess, showed that more than 80% of all renunciated taxes goes to only 5% of the projects. Clearly an unfair distribution, even worse is the fact that these projects are all based in the same regions, which is the biggest cities of Brazil (Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro). The north of BRazil gets less than 3% of the taxes. It's a sad distortion, some my say, very sad.
But when you start analysing things more closely, you realized that this is actually not as bad as it looks. Let's face some facts based on reports of IBGE, 2007 and UNDP, 2005:
1- the north is formed by seven states that combined total up to a population of 15.023.331 and a Human Development Index (HDI) of 0,764 medium;
2 - The northeast of brazil is formed by nine states that combined total up to a population of 53.591.197 and HDI of 0,72 medium;
3- the southeast is formed by four states with a population of 77.857.758 and a HDI of 0,824 elevated;
4- the south part is formed by three states with a population of 26.729.883 and a HDI of 0,831 elevated; and finally
5 - the central-west part is formed by four states with a population of 13.269.517 and a HDI of 0,815 elevated.
Starting with the numbers presented above we can conclude that the population distribution in Brazil is unequal. According to the data 41% of brazil`s total population lives in the southeast region; 8% in the north, 28% in the northeast; 14% in the south; and 7% in the central-west part. Regarding the HDI also one can conclude that the north and northeast part are less developed than the rest of the country.
But the reference used above mentioned the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, both belonging to the southeast part of Brazil. Note that we're not referring to the States of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, but these states` capitals, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. So, if we take the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro which are considered global metropolis in Brazil, we have that:
1- the city of Rio de Janeiro represents 3% of Brazil's total population (6.186.710 inhab) and HDI of 0.842; and
2 - the city of Sao Paulo representes 5% of Brazil`s total population (11.037.593 inhab) and HDI of 0,841.
These two cities combined account for almost 10% of Brazil`s total population and they are both ranked between the most elevated HDI rates of the entire country. So, based on these numbers I don't think it's really a suprise that only 5% of the cultural projects correspond for more than 80% of the taxes renunciated, Do you?
A Sad Conclusion
Of course, we need to correct the unequal distribution that has been occuring with this mechanism, but, let's face it, the problem is hardly the mechanism itself. The problem relies on more difficult paradigms of the brazilian society, but I have to say that today the solution that has been presented, it's simply to redistribute the money. I can't see how this is going to help, seriously. I don't agree with this strategy. I think it's rather immediatist (that is to say: wants to see results immediately), reckless and dangerous, because doesn't take into consideration the distortions this redistribution may cause.
I like to take the safer approach, the approach I think will be better for my country and its citizens, the approach that chooses to tackle a greater issue: the knowledge issue, the inclusion issue, the information competency issue. The approach that searches for the deeper cause of these unequal scenarios and that instantly realizes that what needs to be better distributed is not money but knowledge, information, intelligentsia. The approach that realizes that these kind of goals aren't accomplished by short or medium term agendas. But they will certainly cause an impact and maybe cause something unexpected to happen. Maybe, one day, an e-business insight that will wipe the money factor off of the equation and give birth to a different system with different distortions but yet, something new. Evolution.
I don't know! I fail to obliterate these numbers whenever I hear the political speaches tackeling the Rouanet Law as an unfair mechanism that causes distortions and unequality. I'd rather face the reality, face that my country is unequal in many ways territorially, demographically, financially and so on, and based on these facts I build a strategy.
I must be a naive idealist, but I can't take all the political bull my co-citizens barely have the witz to analyse. I feel paralysed evey time I see the ignorant mass swallow open a bunch of political BS just because they don't know any better.
Anyways. I just needed to vent.
