Reflection on dependence, in response to Mafa Chipeta.
Maybe sometimes people just cannot help themselves and require external support. Like the time when they are just born into a very poor family that experiences chronic food insecurity, with mother who is severely malnourished, overworked and unable to breastfeed its child, so the newborn is dependent on the external support (ie. nutritional supplement) to have a chance to live… or the time when they are really old and – despite working their whole life (often longer than 30 years) – they never had an economic or institutional opportunity to pay for their social security (or save money) to protect their livelihoods, and thus depend on the state pension to keep them alive; or even when they are a (hard)working poor farming family and the shock strikes and destroys their harvest – they too need protection to stabilize their income and consumption, and ensure their livelihoods are not permanently damaged. This support might also prevent the adoption of the potentially corrosive coping strategies to survive, such as illegally cutting and selling forest products to survive…
The basic fact of life is that we are all, at certain stages of our lives (and for different reasons and levels), dependent on external support, which often comes in the form of social protection (ie. cash transfer, a public work, school meal, social security/social insurance, food assistance, or pension).
Maja Gavrilovic