'Probinsya'

TWO of my former work colleagues in an NGO here in Manila have packed up and are returning to the "probinsya," with hopes of carving out a better life.

I'm sure that sounds very strange, considering that in the Philippines, "probinsya" means a place that's less developed, even "backward." Generally, that means any place outside Metro Manila, so that even a huge and bustling metropolis like Cebu might still be probinsya.

The upper classes will use the English word, as in, "Are you going home to the province this Holy Week?" In this case, "province" has positive connotations: a hometown to return to, with beaches and a more sedate pace of life.

My NGO colleagues' idea of returning to a "probinsya" seems terribly anachronistic; after all, everyone seems to want to move to Metro Manila, or overseas. But their move did get me thinking hard about how our attitudes to "probinsya" may reflect a very serious defect in the way we look at national development.

'Promdi'

In the last 100 years or so, from the American colonial period onwards, we've equated the country's future with urban development, while neglecting rural areas. "Probinsya" now means being stuck in poverty and over the years, this view has developed into the idea that anyone who stays in the "probinsya" is probably not smart enough for the city.

About 20 years ago, the term "promdi" was coined, capturing the snobbish attitudes people had developed toward rural areas. Promdi meant "prom di province," a close equivalent of the English "country bumpkin."

The neglect of rural development has worsened through the years. About three weeks ago, a top official of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) spoke at a press conference on the development outlook for the Philippines and observed, with undisguised alarm in his voice, how we were paying too much attention to the development of call centers, while forgetting that we are still a predominantly agricultural country and that we need to develop the agriculture sector.

He was right. Even in the smallest towns, I now see advertisements from diploma mills offering to train people for call centers, or for export as caregivers. Yet, last Sunday's Inquirer had a special feature on the job market, and it showed how agribusiness still leads in terms of potential jobs, ranking higher than cyberservices (which include call centers) and tourism.

Primate city

I'm afraid the potentials in agribusiness will go to waste, simply because agriculture is seen, like "probinsya," as backward. It didn't help that during the American colonial period, our educational system put down farming and created the idea that the way to social advancement was through white collar jobs. Why dirty your hands in farming when you could make money as a government clerk? (At that time, you could live quite comfortably on a low-ranking civil servant's salary, and without necessarily becoming corrupt.)

Prof. Felipe Jocano, in a recent lecture at the University of the Philippines, pointed out how the song "Planting rice is never fun" reinforced our bias against agriculture. In its original Tagalog, "magtanim ay 'di biro" simply referred to how difficult it was to farm, but the English translation went a step further to depict farming as totally undesirable.

But even as we abandoned rural development, we made another big mistake and this was to equate urban development with that of Metro Manila. It was almost as if no other cities existed. Metro Manila was The Primate City. All roads led to Manila, literally (just look at our airline routes).

Many of our neighbors chose a different path, one of developing several urban centers. Even more importantly, the cities' development was tied to those of adjoining rural areas. Thailand is a good example, where the government poured resources into helping farmers to increase their agricultural yields while connecting the farms to markets in urban centers.

In the Philippines, the rural areas were and still are seen mainly as areas for extraction of wealth, as Manila-based landlords lived off agricultural produce from their tenants.

New roots

Today, there are new potentials in rural areas, around agribusiness and tourism. And the national government is bent on developing the mining industry.

But I also have fears about the way we will develop rural areas around agribusiness, tourism and especially mining. If we continue to look at rural areas mainly as places from which we extract wealth, we will see a worsening of rural poverty. Big businesses will rake in huge profits and leave nothing but destroyed environments for rural residents.

The way to national development is to develop rural areas for rural residents. This means helping small and medium businesses through a package of physical infrastructure as well as technical support.

Rural development also means putting more resources for the children in these areas, for their schools and social services. I had long discussions with my NGO friends who were returning to the probinsya, mainly about the future of their children. We knew all too well the biggest risk they were taking was that their children might end up in schools with lower standards.

And yet in the end we agreed that there are good schools now even in smaller cities like Iloilo (whose residents like to compare their city to Athens, with all the schools) and Cagayan de Oro.

My NGO friends also argue that the young might stand a better chance outside Metro Manila, in terms of growing up less materialistic. I wasn't quite sure there, considering how consumerism has invaded even remote rural areas but maybe, yes, smaller towns and cities offer a healthier environment for the young.

Meanwhile, I read with interest a recent Newsweek article about Japanese baby boomers -- those born in the decade after World War II -- now taking agricultural courses as they prepare for retirement. I have other baby boomer friends in the United States and Europe with similar plans of retiring in a rural or "rurban" (rural-urban) place, where they can continue to keep busy by renewing their ties with the land.

Notice how we have a Philippine Retirement Authority that concentrates on attracting foreign retirees, and yet have no incentive packages for Filipino retirees to settle in the "probinsya." Retirement's a long way off yet for me, but yes, I can imagine joining a small army of white-haired retirees when the time comes, helping to develop the "probinsya." Like plants, its older humans who are sturdier and who stand a better chance of being moved around and growing new roots.

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