People talk about "the Brazil risk" as if this country were not already foundering in alarming social indices. The risk is to stay on the same course, deepening even more the social inequality and the exclusion of a majority of the population. We're not the ones who tomorrow should fear the Argentina of today. It's the neighboring nation that fears to be tomorrow the Brazil of today. Just remember that the population of Argentina (about 36 million) is smaller than the number of Brazilians who live below the poverty line. The two nations no longer put up with leaders who are indifferent to the social sphere. Over there, bank depositors cannot withdraw their savings. Here, the Central Bank reduced the yield of funds. Over there, people take to the streets. Here, they prepare to go to the polls. Brazil is the world's 10th-ranking economy. Therefore, it's a rich nation, out of step with all the others because it's saddled with a very high index of poverty. Within the Brazilian population, how many live in abject poverty? The World Bank says 15 million; the Institute for the Research of Applied Economics (IPEA), 22 million; the Citizenship Institute, 44 million; and the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, 50 million. Statistics aside, you need only open a window to see the pitiful scenes below the bridges. Above the poverty line, 30 million more people make do on a monthly income of less than 80 reales. Altogether, 53 million Brazilians live below the poverty line. That contradiction is due to the economic model adopted by the federal government in the past eight years, which stresses the concentration of income. Twenty-one percent of the Gross Domestic Product (about 1 billion reales at present) is set aside for the social sector. No other Latin American nation, with the exception of Cuba, spends so much on social issues - 6 reales out of every 10 reales collected. It so happens that the poor get the least amount of that money. Almost half of the money paid to retirees goes to the richest people, who account for 10 percent of the population. Only 7 percent goes to the poorest, who account for 20 percent of the population. The public universities (which educate the élite of Brazil) swallow about 60 percent of the budget for education. And only 2 percent of the social area is set aside, for example, for basic sanitation, which is indispensable to reduce infant mortality and the spread of infectious diseases, such as yellow fever and Chagas disease. As Oded Grajew puts it, what's the use of mopping the floor when the roof is leaking. One of the indices to measure indigence is used by the World Health Organization, which deems as impoverished anyone without enough resources to consume 2,000 calories per day, an amount indispensable for a productive person. This implies the daily consumption of 1½ rolls of bread, some margarine, five spoonsful of rice, half a spoonful of beans, a glass of milk, a 100-gram slice of beef, half an egg, three spoonsful of sugar, soy oil, and flours made from wheat and yucca. That's very little. In fact, it's nothing in a country that has more than enough food. Why, this year's grain harvest is sure to exceed 99 million tons! As Amartya Sen, Nobel laureate in economics, observes, there are nations where destitution is measured by the lack of foodstuffs and there are others where it's measured by the lack of money in the pockets of the people, which is our case. The distribution of income and agrarian reform are two challenges that no government has surmounted in the history of Brazil. Trying to document the indigence of Brazilians is enough to drive one to indignation. Still, something even more worrisome looms ahead: According to the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, almost one half of the destitute (45 percent) are children and adolescents not yet 15 years old. Seventeen percent of the destitute are youngsters 16 to 25 years old. What future awaits those who escape an early death? As Fernando Henrique Cardoso himself conceded, we are an unfair nation. Of the 830 million poorest people in the world, 3 percent live in our country. That wouldn't be too bad if our foreign trade didn't represent less than 1 percent of the trade movement worldwide. Just to give you an idea: Switzerland's foreign trade in 1990 accounted for 6 percent of the world trade. According to the IPEA, the gap between the richest 20 percent and the poorest 20 percent of the population is five-fold; in the United States, eight-fold; in Mexico, 13-fold; in Chile, 18-fold; in Brazil, 33- fold. It is a proven fact that the higher the parents' level of education, the greater the educational achievement of their children. To invest in elementary education would be one way to disarm the mechanisms of income concentration in Brazil, where 1 percent of the population has the same amount of resources as the poorest 50 percent! In addition to the lack of an effective agrarian reform, the lack of an effective housing reform affects 12 percent of the population (20.2 million people). According to the João Pinheiro Foundation, Brazil has 44.9 million homes. It needs 6.6 million more. The Brazil risk will continue to grow, unless the nation this year decides to remove from the electoral map those politicians who have no programs to reduce indigence and social exclusion. By the way, the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (CNBB, the acronym in Portuguese) is staging a national mutirão (collective action by the community) against indigence and hunger. In the case of Brazil, it's not a question of multiplying the loaves. It's simply a question of handing them out. * Frei Betto co-authored, with Emir Sader, the book "Contraversões - civilização y barbárie na virada do século" (Boitempo Publ.), and other books. (Translation in to English: Progreso Semanal y Progreso Weekly)