Issue of 21 August 1996
With governments and businesses rushing like scared rats to keep up with the bandwagon of globalization and progress, even at the expense of local communities, there is need to take a breather, distance oneself from the Olympian effort, and chew on a few realities.
"Fast-growing" has become the accolade most economies now aspire for, but what is real growth?
Economists spout statistics when the question is asked, as if GNP and GDP, balance of trade and balance of payments, budget surpluses and import-export figures were all that mattered.
The United Nations, thank God, recognizes other standards. In its Human Development Report for 1996, the UN measured other indices such as life expectancy, education, and purchasing power among its member economies and, only last month, released its seventh annual report.
Its conclusions are disquieting. "The world has become more economically polarized, both between countries and within countries... If present trends continue, economic disparities between industrial and developing nations will move from inequitable to inhuman," reads the report's preface, written by UNDP Administrator James Gustave Speth.
Proceeding from each country's economic growth data, the UN went on to investigate exactly how many of the people are really better off than before. National wealth was not the sole input; well-being got priority ranking.
For many governments in the "fast-growing" East Asia and Asia-Pacific region, the report should be interesting reading. It mentioned 89 countries, most of them developing ones, where the people are worse off economically now than they were 10 years ago.
Were my parents alive today, they would be in full agreement. And I, having tasted a little of Philippine life, business, and development in the glorious '50s, can say I may have more money now than the people then, but they collectively lived better and longer. Of course, I don't expect the economists to agree with me.
However, they should take it from the UN Development Program: "A strategy for economic growth that emphasizes people and their productive potential is the only way to open opportunities... It is increasingly clear that new international measures are needed to encourage and support national strategies for employment creation and human development, especially in the poorer countries."
And where the two--employment creation and human development--come into direct conflict, then ways out of that conflict and toward livable and progressive settlement and accommodation would have to be found.
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Ever heard of Biloxi, Gulfport, or Pascagoula in Mississippi? Or Dubuque in Iowa, Greeley in Colorado, Florence in South Carolina, and Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers in Arkansas?
Those who chafe at the moves of urban (mis)planners who see economic growth only in terms of megacities and metropolises that swallow up people and churn them into productive units servicing the needs of global industry, rather than the other way around, should have weapons at their disposal more potent than frustration.
Findings by the United States Department of Commerce can provide us a little ammunition. It is possible to create thriving growth centers out of smaller cities. The smaller centers mentioned above may not boast of actual export sales as large as Detroit's or New York's, but their percentage gains in exports were comparatively higher than those of the industrial and financial powerhouses.
In developing sustainable export strategies, it is not a community's size that matters. And truth to tell, the residents of Biloxi or Dubuque may be more relaxed, less stressful, and generally happier.
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Say all you will against antiseptic Singapore, but when it comes to well-being, the hackneyed "clean and green" is still that city-state's main claim to fame in all areas of business and investment.
Take it from the brains behind clean-and-green Singapore himself, the abrasive Lee Kuan Yew. In a recent interview with The Straits Times, he said he conceived of well-kept trees and manicured gardens as bait to attract foreign investors to put money into what used to be nothing more than mosquito-infested swampland.
"To maintain a garden is a daily effort and if you can maintain it, it means you are capable of punctuality and systematic work," he said.
From the '60s onward, he ordered his whole island planted with trees, flowering plants, and grass. The grass had to be mown every other day, the plants had to be pruned daily, the trees had to be tended, the flowers had to be cut before they faded. Fines awaited homeowners who neglected their yards--front, back, side.
His words reminded me of the time a Japanese guest told us he always knew, on his periodic visits to Manila, which communities were moving on and which ones were being left behind. He only had to look, not at economic figures, but at the state of each town and city's greenery in public and private gardens, sidewalks, and street islands.
-- NBT
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