Part Three
However, one shining development stands out in the present socio-health-economic crisis. People, as people, tend to look after the needy in crisis periods. The spirit of damayan is what saved the many in 2020. This spirit is at the roots of the instant popularity of the “community pantry” that has mushroomed across the archipelago. Capable middle-income (and even low-income) families share what they have with the poor and the destitute.
Of course, people dependence on the community pantry cannot go on forever. It is thus incumbent for policy makers and political leaders of the country to craft alternative recovery pathways. In this regard, several ideas are hereby presented.
First, the old trickle-down economic approaches, which are focused around the idea of growing the economy—by going back to the “old normal,” by opening up the economy to FDI, by relying on big-ticket build-build-build projects and by asking big corporations to invest more given the fiscal incentives doled out to them—are not working for the many. They will not be enough to create the millions of jobs needed by the people. As in the past, there will be very little trickling down of any growth benefits to the masses.
Hence, a reversal of the trickle-down economic approaches favored by the technocrats is in order. This means promoting growth to come from the grassroots instead of from the top. This means revving up the national economy through the transformation of the country’s galaxy of flattened communities (over 44,000 barangays nationwide) into economic dynamos.
How? By energizing the communities themselves to become beehives of economic activity. By transforming them as mere objects of social assistance into active generators of jobs, livelihoods and economic wealth. This transformation, in brief, is the essence of what we call as the People’s Stimulus, which seeks the economic revival and sustained development of the different communities. Once revived, these communities can then be the bedrock for a stronger post-Covid national economy.
How can this transformation be done? History has some good examples. At the height of the Great Depresssion in America in the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt focused his job creation and economic revival program by focusing on the grassroots, specifically through the launching of a massive program of electrification for Rural America (courtesy of Tennessee Valley Authority), hiring of millions to address sanitation and sewerage issues across the country and hiring more millions to conserve the forests and to contain the giant dust bowls in some states. Those are jobs at the grassroots; they are also “green jobs” at the community level.
To be continued
Dr. Rene E. Ofreneo is a Professor Emeritus of University of the Philippines.
For comments, please write to reneofreneo@gmail.com.