In the previous two part series of articles, we talked about the ills of being dependent on foreigners for our economic well being.
So is there a way to bring development and progress to our rural areas minus foreign influence and an ineffectual government? This article will highlight residents from various developing nations who cared enough about their locality to engage in people centered progress. From the inspiring stories told here, we may take away several useful lessons in the development of local economies.
Kenya: local residents generate self reliance.
Residents of Kiangurwe, a rural community in the country’s central province, have started an electric company that is fueling a revolution. They are saying no to expensive kerosene imports and to the regional power corporation, Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC). Instead, residents are harnessing their own natural resources through a small hydropower company called Gpower.
Local residents volunteer two days a week to build a hydro dam and help fund the project through weekly contributions. Once the project is complete, members of the community will staff the organization that runs the dam, and those who helped build it will receive dividends.
A local funding system aims to ensure sustainability. Eight percent of the project is paid for by wealthy coffee and tea farmers who have bought shares in Gpower Ltd. Donors and subscribers will pay the other 92 percent.
Gpower’s first dam was set to open in late December, providing electricity to about 110 people. By the end of 2014, a total of 11 hydro dams are planned to be up and running on the Thiba River, serving a total of 11,000 households, 13 schools and two hospitals.
India’s Anna Hazare: A soldier for rural regeneration
Where Anna Hazare lives, no one starves. There is no disease. The environment is clean and wooded. All children are in school. The farm economy is booming, and there are no social divisions, no caste system and no racism. Women are empowered, and nobody smokes, drinks or goes to see decadent movies. Hazare, together with the villagers, converted a drought prone land into flourishing farm land. He created an economically self-sufficient community while simultaneously inspiring the poorest of the poor to lead moral, dignified lives.
Background
Ralegan Siddhi was a drought prone 4 sq km land where until 1975, only 80 of its 2200 arable acres were farmed. The annual rain -- about 400 mm in a good year but mostly a third of that ran off the undulating land. The 2000 strong population sat and stared at a hopeless future. Children died early, men beat their wives and disease ran rampant and about the only businesses that made any money was the liquor stills - 40 of them.
The transition
When retired army driver settled in the village, he donated part of his pension settlements from the army to renovate a local temple. In that temple he sought to instill in the villagers his five economic and moral points. They were:
• Prohibition
• Family planning
• A ban on open grazing
• A ban on felling trees
• Voluntary labor
The temple today houses a ‘Grain Bank’. Any family in need can borrow grain from this Bank. It must repay it with a little "interest", for the village has decided that things obtained free are not valued. The "Bank" started with the growth of community spirit. The village resolved that every family which had surplus grain should contribute, and the assessment was done by the villagers themselves. There has not been one case of a family having "defaulted" on the "loan" for they all know that they are borrowing from themselves
A youth group, Tarun Mandal was formed. The group worked to ban the dowry system, caste discrimination and untouchability. Liquor distilling units were removed and prohibition imposed. Open grazing was completely banned with an emphasis on stall feeding.
All elections to local bodies began being held on the basis of consensus which made the community leaders complete representatives of the people.
A school building was constructed using the resources of the village. No donations were taken. Money if needed was borrowed and paid back. The villages took pride in this self reliance. A new system of sharing labor grew out of this infusion of pride and voluntary verve. People volunteered to work on one another’s land.
Water is systematically harvested today; by percolation tanks, by check dams, by wells being recharged. Of the 1700 odd acres of arable land, 1100 to 1200 acres are under irrigation. The village in which a fifth of the families got no more than one meal a day, now markets vegetables, grain and milk.
The very way of life and relationships within the village has been transformed beyond recognition. Twenty years ago, the village was rife with disputes, due to poverty and addictions. Today every family contributes voluntary labor of one adult every week. Almost everything new that one sees has been built and accomplished by community labor.
Guatemala: Revolution at Nuevo Horizonte
Nuevo Horizonte is a small village in northern Guatemala. The streets are nearly devoid of trash as well as the advertising so ubiquitous throughout Latin America. The houses are surrounded by fruit trees and flowers. The residents seem particularly proud of their efforts to preserve a small, 250-acre chunk of intact rainforest which they have recognized for its ecological value in preventing siltation of the local lake.
Background
In 1954, a U.S.-initiated coup that overthrew the elected president of Guatemala served as the catalyst to a thirty-six-year civil war that pitted a succession of military dictatorships against leftist political organizations. The Guatemalan government’s response to community organizing was to label the opposition as “Communist” and send in the army. During the 1980s, the government began targeting the rural Mayan people, burning fields, razing entire villages, massacring men, women, and children, and assassinating priests. After years of suffering political oppression, economic injustice, and racial violence, many of the Mayan farmers organized an armed resistance movement using the jungles as a base. Finally, in 1996, the peace accords between the rebels and the government ended the war and provided an opportunity for the revolutionaries to continue their efforts, but without their guns.
Transition
The cooperative community of Nuevo Horizonte was founded ten years ago. Residents found an old ranch that had been cleared and burned. Arriving with nothing but the rags on their backs, they began to forge a community based upon their revolutionary principles of social equality and communal land ownership.
Each family owns their house and farm plot, the co-op retains ownership of pasturelands, the forest, the lake, and plantations of pine, pineapple, and lime trees. The co-op provides free day care, primary and secondary education, adult vocational training, and operates a pharmacy and clinic, charging as little as twelve cents per visit. Nuevo Horizonte also maintains two pickups and a minivan for anyone’s use.
The co-op’s explicit economic goal is to provide alternatives to the Central American Free Trade Agreement and demonstrate how communities can be less vulnerable to the negative effects of globalization. To this end, the co-op provides low-interest micro financing. The community now boasts a welding shop and two corn mills, and maintains its own seed bank to counter efforts by corporations to control crop production.
The revolution of Nuevo Horizonte is no longer being fought with guns, but with education, sustainability, and the integrity of the natural and human community coming together in a cooperative effort to provide for all.
Brazil: The landless retake the commons and thrive
Thousands of displaced Brazilian families are taking back the land, setting up schools, homes, cooperatives, and organic farms. This revolution is being led by the Landless Workers Movement (MST)—one of the most successful land reform movements in the world.
Background
The MST arose 20 years ago out of a desperate need for land redistribution in a country where ownership of arable land is disastrously skewed. Entrenched are policies that favor large-scale, export-oriented agriculture and wealthy landowners who fraudulently take land with impunity.
Between 1965 and 1985, half of the Brazilian population streamed into the cities in search of work, and the influx continues today. Giant slums rose around cities, and many families fell into poverty, drugs, and hunger.
The reforms of the MST
The MST mobilizes landless people to squat on or near idle land, in MST “camps.” Those in the encampments, along with supporters, pressure the government to enforce the Brazilian constitution, which declares that land must be used for its “social function.” This means that it must be cultivated for production if it is not being preserved for ecological reasons.
As a result of this massive nonviolent movement, more than 300,000 families have won land, and many are now living in permanent settlements, farming, studying at MST-organized schools, and supporting others who are likewise working to move back to the land.
The MST has established an educational network of more than 1,000 schools that teach literacy, sustainable farming, and leadership, and prepares people for professions in such areas as teaching and health care for use at their settlements.
The students are MST members who come from impoverished rural and urban backgrounds. At the school, they divide their time between study, work, physical education, and reflection, discussion of current events, music, and volunteer work. Non-violence education is integrated into all courses.
Students stay at the school for two months, and then travel back to their homes in MST encampments and settlements for several months to use their newly acquired skills. They continue this rotation until graduation.
The schools run as cooperatives; resources are shared between everyone, and everyone has a task that contributes to the whole, such as baking or gardening. Ideally, the students rotate through all the positions before graduation.
There is another way
In the settlements, MST works to demonstrate that people can provide their own food instead of importing and exporting cash crops—a system that has led to a large increase in poverty and starvation in Brazil.
Residents are proud to say that they practice 100 percent organic farming. When they first arrived they had the idea that they had to use lots of pesticides. With time, the community realized that they were spending more and more money on fertilizers and pesticides because the chemicals were exhausting the soil. The chemicals' side effects also caused illnesses within the settlement. The community decided to switch to organic farming. The settlements also raises cattle for meat and dairy, and fruits and vegetables.
Conclusion
Our economic fate as a nation will be determined by a system of cooperative development where all participants have an equal say in the decision making and implementation process.
Sadly we cannot rely on government, local or national, to bring any meaningful reform as it is laden with corruption and scandal. The rulers in power at this time will not bring progress by virtue of them being hold-outs from previous retrogressive regimes or thuggish opportunists lacking any agenda.
We are preparing a manifesto using the ideas we have garnered from around the world and housed in this blog and some yet to be published, to form the basis of a people’s political party tentatively set to commence operations next year. All are invited, regardless of tribe or political affiliation, to participate as valued members in this economic and social revolution. A brighter day and a gleaming future will only be brought about by ‘we the people’.
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