 Hello and a very warm welcome to you to DW World Economic Forum's debate coming to you from Hanoi in Vietnam. I'm Amritha Chival. It's a great pleasure to have you with us. With me is an interesting and high-profile panel as well as an audience and we're all here to discuss the issue of inequality. Vietnam is one of the ten member states of ASEAN. The region has seen a great deal of growth, prosperity, peace, as well as record economic growth, especially in the last 20 years, but it's also seen a growth in inequality. What is the reason for this? What are the implications of this? And how can we accelerate the reduction of inequality? Now, these are the questions I'll be discussing with our panel today. From Malaysia, I'm pleased to welcome, in Yinsin, she is a young global leader designated by the World Economic Forum. She's also the CEO of CREATE, and that's a Center for Research, Advisory and Technology. And in 2014, Yinsin founded an organization, a grassroots movement, to help flood victims in the eastern peninsula, a coast of eastern Malaysia. Welcome to you. From the Asian Development Bank, we have Steve Grof. Now, he's the vice president, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. He's responsible for setting up strategic and operational priorities in a variety of fields. He's done extensive research and written reports on a number of issues, including inequality. It's a great pleasure to have Anna Brigitte Albrechton. She is one of the co-chairs of the World Economic Forum Summit here in Hanoi. She is the CEO of PLAN International, 25 years of experience in development in humanitarian affairs. You've also been in the Danish Foreign Ministry. Thank you very much for being with us. Now, from Malaysia, we, sorry, from, I beg your pardon, from Indonesia, we have Nadeem Makareem. He's a CEO and founder of Go Check. Now, that is a motorcycle taxi hurling service, which you set up in 2010. And within six years, it became the first unicorn of Indonesia, and a unicorn, of course, being a company, a startup, which is valued at more than a billion dollars or more. You've expanded your services a great deal, and we'll, of course, be hearing about those during our discussion. And also from Indonesia, I'm very pleased to welcome former finance minister Mohamed Khatib Basri. He is an economist and currently the chairman of the Mandiri Institute in Indonesia. A warm welcome to all of you. Ladies and gentlemen, please give them a big hand. Okay, now, before we dive into the discussion, you know, I was thinking, what is my image of inequality? Now, I live in Germany, but every time I visit India, where I come from, I get out of the airport, I sit in a car, and at the first traffic light, I see a little girl, say about seven, eight years old, with a little baby, possibly a sibling begging for money. And that, for me, the contrast of coming from an affluent country like Germany and to India every time is my image of inequality, and it hits me like a sledgehammer every time I go home. So I thought I'd begin by asking all of you for your image of inequality, starting with you. Nadine, what is your image of inequality? It's an interesting question. There's many of those images in Jakarta, in my home city, that you are confronted with day-to-day. But I think for me personally, what I would choose as my kind of image of inequality is I remember this one day where I saw about an eight-year-old boy teaching his father how to use the Gojek driver app. And I think that, for me, is an image of inequality and by being able to visualize the digital divide, the digital literacy gap between this kid and the same family as the father, who did not understand how to use a smartphone, an Android smartphone. And I think that was a very poignant moment for me where I realized, wow, this is a big gap, and it could also be growing even further. Nadine, Cathy, what about for you? What is your image? Well, as an economist, let me talk with the data. I was quite struck when I look at the composition of the ownership of the time deposit in Indonesia, because 99% of the owner of the time deposit in Indonesia, their maximum saving is only about US$130,000. But the rest, 1%, have a lot of savings more than US$2 billion, more than US$130,000. So somehow it reflects, if you look at from the savings perspective, that only small of the population can own the wealth. So this is really a big issue for the economy. Yes, as an economist, of course, you think in numbers, they're not in images. But Steve, what about you? What about an image for you? Thank you, Amrita. For me, we spent a lot of our time dealing with the aftermath of natural disasters throughout Asia. And one thing you find in going to all of many of these sites and the aftermath of these disasters is that it's the poor that are hit the hardest. Both because of geography, that's where the poor tend to live in these areas, but also because they have so few assets that they can use to help themselves recover. So for me, I think really the image is how difficult it is for poor people to recover from these natural disasters. And Amrita, you're the CEO of Plan International, but your personal image of inequality? So I could certainly share yours from the many, many communities around the world where we work, where poverty is very visible and very abject. But I'd rather go to a different kind of inequality, which is the inequality that the 10-year-old girl faces when she starts opening up and dreaming about a future where she's educated, maybe working in tech, maybe being part of the new digital economy and is told that maths is not for girls. When she opens a math book in school and there's no image of a woman in business, when she gets her education and the social norms in her country are assuming that, well, she might get a job, but as soon as she has a child, there is no network for her to continue her career. So the image of inequality for me is the disappointed look in so many millions of young girls and women's faces when they are told to stay in their place. Very interesting. And Yinsin, what about your image of inequality? Well, the image of inequality for me is perhaps a little bit different from what all the other panellists have shared. So imagine this. If you're in a wheelchair, if you have the ability to get on to the public bus, which most of the time is not designed to be disabled-friendly or based on universal standards, and the moment you get off the bus, there's no shouted bus stop, and if it's raining, imagine that you have to wheel yourself back home for two hours in the rain. To me, that's real inequality. So we have very different and varying aspects of inequality that we've discussed here. Now, one thing is clear that, as I mentioned, despite the fact that ASEAN has seen record growth in the last 20 years, inequality has risen. Now, Steve, you've done a lot of work on inequality. Now, one of the figures that I read is that the richest person in the world, where we are, earns in one day what the poorest man earns in about a decade. Now, that's a huge scale of inequality. Give us a sense first. What is the situation of inequality in general in Asia? Well, in general in Asia, the situation is getting worse. We've seen an increase in inequality across pretty much all countries in Asia over the last several decades. There are some exceptions to that in countries like Japan and South Korea, but those are countries where there's high social expenditure, where there's a fair amount of investment in social safety nets and other mechanisms that help reduce inequality. But in most of developing Asia, we've seen massive increases in inequality over the last several decades. Now, it's not quite as bad in absolute terms as it is currently in Latin America. Latin America's gene coefficients tend to be higher than they are in Asia, but the trajectory of growth of inequality in Asia is what is worrying, and it hasn't slowed down very much in most countries. In fact, it's speeding up. And why is that of a concern? Well, first, obviously, all the stories that we just shared on what inequality means to us, that is hard. It's difficult. It's not fair. But at the same time, just from a pure economic standpoint, it's not an efficient use of human capital and resources that are at the disposal of any economy. So it actually has a negative return to the potential of economic growth over time. But it also has a negative impact on social cohesion over time. And I think that what we've seen in a lot of electoral cycles in the United States and Europe, in Asian countries elsewhere, are reflections of people that feel that they've been left behind by many, many decades of good economic growth around the world. And so I think we also see that the disintegration of social cohesion has another impact in terms of how countries respond to inequality and why we need to be worried about it. Not just because it's important that all people should have equal access to opportunity, but because it also will threaten future growth globally. So you've talked of some of the major implications of inequality for Asia. Ana Brigida, let me turn to you. You talked about this disappointed look in the eyes of young girls. That's one kind of very pointed form of inequality. But tell us a little bit more as to how inequality affects the future of children, who you said at one point they are the most vulnerable in society, but also have the greatest potential. So what we generally see, of course, is that there are huge differences. You've talked about it. But I mean, let's just unpack some of the images that we've seen. Inequality in cities look very different from inequalities in rural areas. Inequality is between girls and boys. Inequality is depending on your ethnic origin. Here in Vietnam, we work with children in rural communities in the north where the ethnic minorities live under conditions that are nothing like anything you see here in Hanoi. I think the issue really for the ASEAN region when we talk about children is to use the power of the investments in education to build in, shall we say, the ASEAN respect for dignity or the ASEAN emphasis on dignity and respect and equality. It is there in the makeup of the ASEAN society that dignity and respect is so high. But it's not necessarily taught in schools, for example, for children in a way that really advances equality, that advances inclusion. You were talking about children living with disabilities, children from ethnic minorities, girls versus boys. That's not part of the educational program. So when we look at children, and yes, children are impacted more by disasters, half of the deaths in disasters are always children, 80% are children and women because men are stronger and can run away faster. So that's very much part of the reality. I think I'd like to focus our attention on how we in this region with its emphasis on education really put emphasis on inequality and on dignity and respect and non-discrimination because that is what will help these economies both grow faster and be more inclusive. Absolutely. Equality of opportunities. I think crucial in education is really important for equality in opportunities. Turning to you, Khatib, you've been a finance minister. There are those people who will argue that actually inequality is a policy decision, a fiscal policy decision. Would you agree? Well, it is quite obvious that the fiscal policy can play a role in addressing the issue of this inequality. But I think the important question that we should ask is actually, even though we already implement the fiscal policy, why the inequality is keep rising? I think this issue has to do about the implementation. Let me give an example. We are talking about this allocation of the government spending on the social assistance. The question is what kind of social assistance? Let me give an example about the case of Indonesia. We are trying to protect the poor by providing a subsidy for the fuel. In fact, the one who get a benefit of this fuel subsidy is middle and upper class, not the poor people. We try to provide an allocation of about 20% of the budget for the education, but in fact, not much improvement on the quality. So designing the mechanism is very important. So what would you suggest? What needs to be done instead of subsidies? Because some people feel these social subsidies actually help people in a short term, but they do not lead to any income redistribution. My suggestion is rather than subsidize the goods, you better subsidize the people directly. And one of the possible options for that is either you do the cash transfer, the direct cash transfer or the conditional cash transfer. Let me share with you a very interesting story. The problem with the cash transfer is targeting the poor. How do you target the poor? Because everyone will claim they are poor when they are receiving money. So what we did in Indonesia is rather than targeting the poor, we let the poor to identify themselves. We provide this cash transfer, but making this process is rather difficult for only $15. If you have to queue for three hours only to get $15, unless you are very poor, you don't want to queue. So you're using this, you know, somehow the market signal or market mechanism, and based on that, you can identify who are the poor people. And talking about this, you know, giving an access for the education, you give the money for the poor people but require them to send their kids to school. So that kind of innovation and program is very important rather than talking about the fiscal policy in general. And last but not least, the institutional aspect is very important. Because we need the government intervention to protect the poor, but don't forget that the government intervention can end up, you know, to prevent the economic growth for the country as well. In many countries all over the world, I should say, you know, jokingly, that one of the reasons why many people become religious is because they have to deal with the government. You know, you ask many things that there's nothing you can do, only pray to God until the government can help you on this. So we need to create a certainty regarding this process on the implementation of this fiscal policy as well. But just on the fiscal policy point, I think, it's also, as Hatim knows, it's not just a question of cash transfers or conditional cash transfers. It's also a set of choices that governments make with respect to investments in infrastructure, investments in education, investments in health that are also critically important and also the distribution of those and composition of those investments and making sure that it's not concentrated only on urban centers, but it's distributed more equally across the country as a whole. That's a very important point about the rural urban divide which also obviously influences inequality. You've seen, you set up this grassroots movement and you've said that you're passionate about changing society and you want to be the change that you want to see in your country. What do you want to see change? You listened to what Khatibah had to say. What would you like to see change? Well, if I may first add on to what had been discussed earlier on public policy and whether it's fiscal policy or social policy, when it comes to implementation, it has to come by design. That's what you're saying. But what I am saying today in most governments, in most administrations is that we tend to design policies for implementation for the majority, for example, for the 95%. And then to think about the remaining out of 5%, either as an afterthought or out of obligation, that we need to look good, therefore let's do the 95 plus 5. What if we can reverse the way we engineer or I would say, what if we re-engineer the way we design policies for the 5% and that would mean that we automatically designing for everybody. I think this is something that perhaps government and policymakers should be looking at. You're talking about the 5% as the bottom 5% in terms of economic terms. It can be economic impoverished people, it can be the rural poor, it can be the urban poor, it can be the body disabled people. It is always the marginal, the outlier of the society no matter what perspective you are coming from. I think in terms of public policy making and in terms of political will for political leaders to take on, it is really something for us to think about because most of us here in this room are normal people if you are not high achievers or over achievers. But there are many, many people like what you have said earlier in the Northern Vietnam, the kids who are living in conditions that we cannot even imagine. What if we design policies? When we are designing any public policy, we design for the 5% who is living up North in Vietnam or the most rural part of Malaysia, the indigenous people. So by doing that, by designing for that 5%, we are automatically designing for the rest of us. I think this is something that perhaps it's something that we need to dial into more. Okay, moving away from public policy, Nadim to you because you're not into public policy, you're into private enterprise. Now you've set up this company, Gojek, which is a play on words. Gojek is, Ojek is a taxi in Indonesia, right? And you've called it Gojek. Motorcycle taxi. Motorcycle taxi. Okay, so now you tell me, I want to first know about your story, how you started with this enterprise because I've heard that you actually, like many startups, you were sitting in Harvard with a bunch of buddies and you came up with this idea. Is that a myth or is it true? It's semi-true, yeah. It was during that period in business school that I solidified the idea and, you know, it required a whole bunch of people to bounce around, but it's been something on the back of my head for some time that I've wanted to do because I was an avid Ojek user during my consulting days and I just saw this massive group of informal sector workers who were completely undervalued by society and who could actually be doing some of the most high value economic activity, but there was this issue of trust and intermediaries. And I think that goes to my point about, you know, for me what I've seen inequality, the biggest driver of inequality in my mind from what I've seen in Indonesia is the inability to establish trust between a variety. So there's a huge economic cost to lack of trust. That's the first. The second thing is there's a huge... because of the lack of trust or lack of access, there's a huge economic cost and structural inequality created by layering. Before Gojek came, these drivers were stuck to a particular location that were not able to balance demand and supply, having to pay a fee to whoever was the leader of that little area. Before Gofood, people were stuck with having to have enough capital to build a restaurant in a mall or in a place with high traffic instead of just cooking in their own kitchen. A variety of technology players in Indonesia right now are doing the same thing in e-commerce, giving direct access. And what's happening is that I think the analogy that's very good to use is an organizational inefficiency as well. When you have an organization that looks like a pyramid with multiple layers, nothing gets done very quickly. But as soon as you kind of flatten out the org this way, things really speed up. And you're able to leverage every single point of economic asset, productivity, people, whatever you call it, any asset. And I think that to me, poverty and structural inequality is that asymmetry of access. And I do fundamentally believe that outside of policy, the other big push that could even achieve scale maybe at a faster rate is actually technology. It's actually technology because I'm biased, obviously. But I've seen it firsthand how a company, a motorcycle taxi company in three years could become the largest employer in Indonesian history. Indirect employer in Indonesian history. That's just one story. There are many, many other stories that are going on like this that shows that with the smartphone revolution, your ability to then level the playing field for people to access each other, build trust, and de-layer entire economic verticals is extremely powerful. Does you want to say something? No, I'm intrigued by the story. It's obviously very fascinating. I am a little bit curious about how many women you employ. I would assume that many of the drivers are in fact young men. And one of the issues that we are very keen to bring to the forum, of course, is that as we have this rapid urbanization, as we see an increase in public and private transport, what we're also seeing is that girls and young women feel increasingly unsafe. We have every single urban area in this region. Eighty percent of girls will say they never feel safe in public spaces. And so there's that part of the inequality agenda when you don't even dare get on one of your taxis because you're worried about harassment and safety, not traffic safety, although I know that's a big preoccupation in this region, but sort of personal dignity and integrity safety, I think is something that we have to keep in mind. And the other thing that we're seeing with the growth of this phenomenal digital economy, which also obviously gives opportunities to young women, is that the digital divide is growing. So we are seeing massive new opportunities in technology, but mostly for men. Only 10% of the employees in technology companies are women and 20% in mobile companies. That's actually a worsening of the gender inclusion in the economy than before this actually happened, where ASEAN was actually doing quite well. The sort of the inclusion of women in the economy was coming this way. Now it's going that way. Can I jump on it? I just want to pose that question, linking to what Anna Brigitte is saying. Why should women in particular be affected by digital divide or the divide between those who have technology, access to technology and those who don't? Well, I think if we want to discuss about this role woman related to the issue of the digital technology, we can see from the perspective that how many women participate on that production process. But don't forget about one thing. If you want to give the opportunity to women on the labor market, the digital technology, I do believe, can contribute a lot of things through the financial inclusion, for example. So you can work like the technology at home. You can work at home while at the same time sort of like you're taking care of your kids, which is in many developing countries, usually the job of the duty of women. But with the financial inclusion with the digital technology, you can imagine they get an access, financial access. So I will see that on my perspective, this digital technology can help to empower women to participate in the labor market, which is the thing that probably the government cannot entirely do through this government agency. But we would like to see people like Nadim. Probably he'll start at this moment with the right hailing, with the motorcycle taxi, but maybe one day they become like the financial inclusion, which will provide the technology for home, for women. And this kind of improvement of the technology will help a lot on the quality of this, you know, access for women for the financial access. And just to catch on, build on that, you know, it's also so much dependent on this point on infrastructure investment as well. And just anecdotally, in the Philippines, Philippines has a very big business process outsourcing IT industry that's been growing over many years. There are concerns about automation, what the implications of that are on that industry in the Philippines. But what they've observed in the countries as they've built out the internet backbone through the country, there's more women that are joining the BPO industry because families that were reluctant to let their daughters move to urban centers, now their daughters don't have to move to urban centers. They don't have to move to Manila where that kind of fear and that kind of concern is real. They can stay in smaller, you know, not rural necessarily, but smaller urban areas where they're nearer to family, where they don't have to go very far. So again, I think it's just, if we don't have that infrastructure investment that goes alongside and that rollout of internet connectivity that goes alongside these great new industries and new businesses, you know, we're going to see that divide growing. So just sort of think underscores the need for continued investment focus on that area. I think we also need to focus on what we can do to overcome this inequality divide that is between the haves and the have-nots. Will Nadim's enterprise be an example that we can have more kind of entrepreneurial companies and things and startups which come up, which focus not just on profitability but also on social inclusion? Does that... Let's make a comment on that. For me, if every single person even below the poverty barrier has a smartphone, which is not actual improbable, it's actually quite possible in the next three, four years. As soon as an Android smartphone gets to about, I would say $15, $20, which is not so far from now, this should be achievable. I can tell you that the profit motive of serving the bottom of the pyramid due to its inherent scalability will be sufficient in providing most of the immediate needs of the poor itself. Now, this is a very contentious point. People disagree with me on this. No, but it requires a huge amount of government intervention. And yes, all of that to build human capacity, education and health cannot. This cannot be solved privately. However, for other issues such as structural access to cheaper products, structural access to financial inclusion, structural access to credit. Without credit, there is no ability to then take risk to move up to your next level of economic development. As we all know, you need some access to credit. So in my mind, what will private sector companies try to acquire or sell to the bottom of the pyramid? It's what they need most. What they need most is actually access to information and access to financial services. These are the critical things that people in the poverty line or slightly above the poverty line really need. The third thing they really need is jobs, not just because of an employment issue, but because of under-employment issues. These three things with the gig economy is one of the most powerful ways of driving employment, financial services and information is a smartphone, actually all three in one. So I think we are severely undervaluing and also governments I think are undervaluing the benefit of spreading smartphones. Some people go all the way and extend it to a very high concept of digital literacy, all this stuff. Actually to be very honest at the bottom, the basic line to me is giving everyone a smartphone. Once that is, the market itself will address all the needs because to be honest, there's also this myth that the poor or the bottom of the pyramid do not have money to spend. And this is a neuroneous point. Of course they spend all their money on a month-to-month basis and they actually have a capital spent as long as those services can meet their needs. Yantu, do you agree with that? Yes, I know because of course there are lots of debate and discussion about the gig economy. Actually, why didn't the gap of inequality in many societies? Perhaps GoJet is not the best example to take care because of the scalability of Indonesia. But if I may just grab two simple examples that we are all very familiar with. One is Airbnb. Yes, it makes it easy for anybody who wants to lease out your spare capacity at home to make an extra income. That's fine. However, this model of gig economy actually also at the same time put a lot of people out of job because of course it is much easier and cheaper to maintain two rooms in a house for listening than to run big hotels professionally and properly. I think there's this ethical debate about the gig economy. How far do we want to go down the line whereby you say that GoJet, for example, the gig economy model actually bring access, bring jobs, bring financial inclusion to the marginalised or under-poorish community. But I think if you look at other examples, this may not be the case. However, building onto what you said about giving everybody a smartphone, if I may also draw an example of Facebook. It's giving out free mobile phones to a community in South Africa. So why do we need, assuming that I'm from South Africa or the African region, why do I need Facebook and American company to give me mobile phones? For me to go onto the social platforms thereby they can take all our data. We all know that data and content means wealth in today's world. What if we look at, of course, China's model, not the best model, but the example of WeChat. WeChat, we all know, a bigger social media platform in China. Of course, some people say that because the Chinese government would like to climb down on freedom of speech and putting you under surveillance or whatever you say. But assuming that we can come up with a platform or a system whereby we allow people to communicate freely, to share their views, ideas whereby we do not control or infringe on the basic rights of people of freedom of expression if the data within the country or that region I think that would mean bringing social innovation back to the core of the society because whether you are educated whether you are rich or you are poor the moment you are able to share content or provide or generate content and data online you will be creating wealth in the future. I think maybe this is something that all our nations should be looking at instead of allowing big international conglomerate deciding what do they do with our data that should belong to our own national sovereignty. Anna Brigadier, you were Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations before you joined Plan International as a CEO. You've also worked for the Danish Foreign Ministry. How do you see... Technology can be leveraged to decrease inequality. If you have access to it as we've heard various examples of that. But where does the balance lie between public policy and unleashing entrepreneurial skills within a society to kind of increase financial inclusion. So there is no doubt that there will be huge benefits also for the bottom billion with the technology advancements but it has to be matched by very distinctive pointed public policy as well. And not just limited to the social sector of health and education. I think that general learning that we've seen is we've tried to say for example around gender equality. We've tried to be very rational. We've tried to appeal to the private sector to governments about the importance of including women in the economy. I mean our friends from McKinsey have told us for years and years that there are trillions and trillions of dollars to be added to the GDP if we include women in the economy. And it's still not happening. So that's where public policy comes in with issues around behavioural change. We've had enormous success in reducing for example cigarette smoking and the benefits of healthy lifestyle is really taking off across many parts of the world. We need the same kind of leadership and mobilisation around public policy and equality and changing social norms. The reason why we don't go there though is that every society has a little bit of a taboo feeling about getting into issues of cultural norms, social norms. The reality is that culture changes all the time and public policy and leadership from across societies help change norms all the time. And in fact, naming is norming. So when leaders be that young leaders, more senior leaders, government leaders, private leaders start talking about the harmful norms that prevent their businesses or women in their businesses or them being able to attract women into their businesses that's where that policy bit goes beyond the legislative part and into the part of really changing behaviour and the partnership between the private sector, the public sector and community based organisations working with the most poor like ours is about creating mobilisation from the ground up and setting the norms from the top and the norm debate is largely missing even the title of this session accelerating reduction in inequality. It's all about speed. Speed, speed, speed the speed of the economy, the speed of everything etc but when we're talking about really changing structural issues and norms and cultures, we actually have to slow down because we're not going to bring the most disadvantaged with us. We're not going to change those norms in a blink of an eye or in three years but to do that we need everybody to speak the same language. Absolutely and putting the issue on the agenda and that's exactly what we're doing in this debate. Kathib, you're also on the United Nations advisory council for gender and development at the World Bank so obviously I'm sure you share a lot about concerns that Alan Brigitte has with the inclusion of women but as a former finance minister there are a lot of policy initiatives we can take and one of the things that Indonesia suggested itself in the World Economic Forum in 2016 was a minimum wage program for ASEAN and in fact Vietnam and Cambodia agreed with that proposal. Do you think how far would that go in creating better conditions that everyone has a minimum wage in ASEAN? Is that a feasible plan? Is it a idea? On the one hand that may help a little bit but don't forget about this dualism in the labor market as well because if you impose the minimum wage the one who get a benefit is the one that already in the labor market because we had an experience when we submitted the labor law Indonesia is a country with the highest severance payment in the world because we want to protect labor, we want to protect workers and if you want to fire people you have to pay probably what 24 months you know what happened after that? The industry, the investor shift from the labor intensive industry more into capital intensive in which raising the inequality so when the government designed the program we need to be very careful with this if you want to come up with the issue of the minimum wage be careful whether what about the people outside the labor market whether they get a benefit or not you know the the public policy this is very difficult how to strike the balance let me give an example especially nowadays with the digital technology how the government should position themselves under this kind of situation why? because the product cycle is getting shorter and shorter if you introduce the policy the next day will be obsolete because the disruption there is no way the government can come up with a policy that relevant all the way you mentioned about this changing a culture this is the thing that we need so what we need actually is an agile bureaucracy but agile bureaucracy in its oxymoron there is no way the bureaucrat can be agile exactly so this is really a challenge so from the government the public policy perspective we probably have to change our mindset from agree on rules to agree on principles but is it possible? as a bureaucrat this is not going to be easy because you have to adapt all the times this is really the big challenge for me we've been doing it all the first industrial revolution you worry about the issue of this replacement but in fact we survived but the most important one is would be sort of like adapt to this situation and that's why we need the agile bureaucracy I'm not sure I can give an excerpt for this but I can see this is going to be a big problem in the future I wanted to ask you about that you have an overview of the entire ASEAN nation which countries are getting it right and what are the policies which actually help reduce inequality? it basically comes down to a question of social protection policy at the end of the day and I think Pahatib's point about whether a minimum wage is the right answer or not is a very good one because at the end of the day so much labor policy in the region and across the developing world is protecting jobs rather than protecting people so how do you develop policies that are going to provide a safety net for those people that fall through that are left behind by disruption or left behind by policy change or left behind by automation but not feel that they necessarily have to keep that job how do you make investments in human capital that are going to make sure that people are sufficiently the workers of the next generation are sufficiently flexible to adapt to disruption to adapt to this constant change that we're going to be seeing and our education policy isn't keeping up with that our labor policy is not keeping up with that so I think that there's a bunch of different things and I think just to go back to I see a point that I like the optimistic view on the role of technology and I myself am optimistic about the role of technology I can't forget or leave behind the importance of financial literacy and consumer protection policy because we have seen when financial services are extended beyond the capacity of a community to absorb that or have the education or literacy to understand it then people get very severely negatively impacted so yes I think it's great that technology is advancing and yes I agree entirely that access to information access to technology, smart phones is going to make a huge difference as it has across the world but we also need to make sure that policy is keeping up in a way that it can protect those people that fall through so I think at the end of the day it comes down to really strong social protection policy and making investments in social protection policy in human capital that's going to address this continuing challenge of inequality and another result of that is a huge problem about drawing people in the informal structure into the system and the SMEs and the MSMEs are kind of the backbone of ASEAN establishments from 88% to 98% in ASEAN member states how does one actually can your company serve as a blueprint for drawing people in how do you see this going further beyond traditional structures we need to think beyond the envelope and where do we go from here it's a big question but I want to go on your own experience and see how does that I think that so there's two things there's the short term or the medium term impact which is a combination of government policy as well as technology deregulation to enable that there's a large exception of consumer lending which is quite dangerous if you let it go rampant on its own exactly like you said there should be some checks and balances there that's the kind of medium term things that can have impact within 2, 3, 4 years but you'll always end up in the same cycle again if you don't address the biggest kind of lever for future inequality reduction initiatives which is education you can't hack your way around it at the end of the day you're going to need to give the largest amount of knowledge and opportunity for the younger generation to be able to be either self-employed get a job or become part of the creative economy so if you don't establish that there will be no SMEs the health of that is really bad so for example in GoFood 80% of our transactions comes from mom and pop shops not the large franchise retail etc and may I add also the vast majority of the new first time entrepreneurs are women actually because guess why because they get to take care of their kid at the same time but they have less access to capital yes but now that their transactions are all tied up in a digital content banks and all kinds of financial institutions are now gunning for them to be able to provide financial services because it wasn't cash so therein lies kind of also the key gateway to financial inclusion is also the elimination of cash so that you have information to be able to assess that but I think in whatever you do today for the existing adult working population can only do so much to solve inequality gender inequality economic inequality opportunity inequality that all needs to be addressed in somehow transforming the educational system today because it will be too late if we don't attack this especially given the massive demographic boom actually being experienced so the demographic boom can go both ways it can go as a bonus if you get the education right today or it could be a massive both political and social risk if it creates even a higher inequality because the most unhappy person is a college graduate who comes out and can't find opportunity that is when countries begin to destabilize and so I think I'm torn between the medium term ones and the real long term educational initiatives that are no short of a Herculean task because you've got to transform the education system evolving it will not do today you have to really transform it there seems to be a general consensus among all of you that actually education is fundamental access to opportunity is essential to kind of deal with the problem of inequality I think we have about seven to eight minutes left and I want to get a few questions from the audience if we can so whoever has a question to ask please identify yourself and address your question if you can to a specific panelist and if you don't I'll assign a panelist who can answer your question raise your hands anyone anyone has a question okay do you want to hi so my name is I'm from Singapore and I'm working with some workers in the developing regions my question is for Markrim from Gojax so I'm just curious touching upon Anna's question earlier so how many of your drivers are women and how many of your passengers are women and following on that based on that statistic what is your company doing to kind of include women both as passengers it's pitiful five percent which is actually the largest ever female drivers have been brought because of the platform but it's still very very small and they experience a lot of bad stuff like customers cancelling as soon as they find out it's a woman happens all the time so there's a bunch of programs that we're thinking to address this but it's incredibly hard to fight culture so that's on the driver side but however I'm very happy to say that in our management in the top 300 people of the company we have 40 percent female 40 percent which is kind of unheard of in most I think companies in Southeast Asia now things get very interesting when we're talking about consumers because don't forget that the the impact the impact of Gojax is not just in the employment opportunity it is also in how people are able to use it so women now are able to get a job and not have to cook for their family so by the time they go home they take a Gojek and then they order their Go food immediately to arrive so they can provide for their family as well as in both ways by working as well as what still feeling like they're contributing to the household so we believe roughly about 60 percent of our user base are women which is really interesting and the majority of the people who use it for two wheel motorcycle were first time motorcycle taxi users so before that they felt the safety level was not sufficient for them to go or maybe their spouse were not comfortable with them taking that but with this brand of trust it's able to do that so I think the biggest impact for women is still in the usage or consumption of the product interestingly enough now finally when we're talking about Go food merchants which are like home kitchens I think the vast majority of the home kitchens are women this is so all these SMB restaurants who before didn't have the capital or the bandwidth to be able to leave the house to start a business are now starting all kinds of food businesses from their homes so I think those are the key breakdown of gender equality but you're right we have to do a lot more in this space it's just there's a lot to do Thank you very much Nadim there was a question here can I ask whoever it is to come take the mic please come forward so you are in front of us rather than behind us did you have a question do you want to please come forward here and ask the question Thank you very much it's a very energizing type of discussions and regarding the inner course my name is Cheryong Lama I run a social innovations called I Days To Do in Nepal I completely agree with our panelists about what happens to the evolution there's a big gap between the revolution and the revolutions and I also agree with you about educations for the long term is our Asian countries our education system is keeping up with all the technology revolutions happening at the moment number one number two again the technology side of it and I completely agree with you again about the have and have nots has it increased how many billion people something like that the data shows that don't have access to technology what about them who's going to talk on behalf of that so my question to the panel is what does we need to take is it evolution versus revolution or to sustain our human dignity or is it the digital gap is increasing more than ever before between have and have nots Anand Brigadier if you could answer that question briefly because I have time just for one more question after this so two really quick points there is no doubt there is no education system in the world today let alone here in Asia that is fit for the future I completely agree with that we have focused a lot on access and that's great we have not focused on content and quality from our point of view obviously making sure that you have enough equality in technology education and maths and science etc is key but there are so many other aspects to the new future education in terms of the digital divide there is no doubt that it is widening it is bigger today than it was in 2013 in terms of the digital gender gap we have 18% less women with smartphones than men 1.2 million women in low middle income countries around the world that don't even have a phone and that gap is unfortunately widening so while there is spread of technology we are seeing the numbers actually go the wrong way together with the World Bank we launched a report on that on Friday it can be made available to anybody interested but we are calling this out here because we are as excited as everybody else about the digital opportunities that are out there but if we are not really conscious there are some of the advances that we have made in the last 20 years that will be reversed and that would be an incredible shame if I may add to that very quickly I will just take one small question from someone one small question no comment but just a question will you come up in the front and ask that question Hi, I'm Maui from the Philippines I'm an impact investor and a serial entrepreneur I'm wondering what the future is in the SCN region for having philanthropic capital or public sector capital buy down the risk for investors like me who want to invest in social impact thank you do you want to answer that briefly? well it depends one way to do it is of course if you look at the potential market is there or not why many people are interested in Indonesia because it's a huge market but in addition to that maybe the government can play a role as well because if you are talking about some issues for example on education on health how to sort of encourage the private sector to get involved through the technology on education and health maybe the government can do something if you do a training let me give an example of the case of Indonesia the government has this training center but unfortunately every graduate from the training center should be retrained again because the equipment is not there because the ability is not there so rather than let the government running this training center why don't we ask the private sector to do it and give the tax deductible give a tax double deduction on tax on the issue of R&D similar to the social impact so the role of government somehow could be supported by the private companies perhaps I answer your question right so now we've completely run out of time so what I'm going to do is I'm just going to ask for 30 second closing remarks from you Stephen and then with your Yinsen and that will bring our debate to an end Stephen starting with you 30 seconds well thank you just very briefly I think what we as you said we've really agreed that it comes down to education I think a lot of the questions here have focused on the issue of education and it is critically important and our systems are not up to snuff at the moment but I also think there's a point that Hathi made just now on tax policy and how that influences decisions and how that influences behavior on a whole range of fronts and I think that you've seen some good examples of reforms in tax policy in a number of countries across ASEAN which need to continue doing that because it can help influence behavior on the part of corporates of individuals in a way that's going to prepare us better in the future thank you Steve Yinsen well in fact I just want to echo I think governments around the world need to relook at how wealth is being created and how we redistribute wealth tax system is one of the way to look at this moving forward do we want to continue the tax money, tax capital or we would like to tax those who utilize resources more than those who contribute financially to the society I think that's one in terms of social investment I think definitely this is the way to go but only government will be able to put in place that kind of ecosystem to make that happen more you see reducing inequality sound like a big idea it sounded something like it's very difficult but in fact if you look at it in a very granular form it can be done through equal access equal opportunity to high quality education to healthcare sanitation and even financial inclusion I think by taking all the small steps we are in fact reducing inequality gap in all our countries and regions that's a very good note to end taking small steps towards a big goal thank you very much you are watching the DW World Economic Forum debate coming to you from Hanoi in Vietnam thank you very much for your company and thank you very much my panelists here and the audience please give them a big hand ladies and gentlemen so thank you very much