When I went to India in 1978 as one of two Philippine delegates to a UNESCO-sponsored regional agricultural broadcasting seminar, I never thought the experience would teach me an exhilarating life-long experience I will never ever forget.
At that time, India was already home to some 800 million Hindus. Like us the people were suffering from abject poverty, corruption in high places, unemployment and population explosion. They also had discriminatory practices as classes of Hindus were classified according to a caste system.
India had, at that time, already practical and useful agricultural practices that helped fed its massive population. Agriculture authorities (they have state agriculture ministers) employed strategies to save rain water that was used during the dry spell season.
All farmers were enjoined to enlist in cooperatives and were taught the best agricultural methods and technology available at the time.
They were also mandated to tune in to agricultural programs over the state-owned All-India Radio simulcast over local stations.
Instead of harnessing expensive mechanized equipment, Indian authorities utilized manual labor to build and construct edifices and other structures up to certain heights. Using spades, crowbars, picks and other tools, husbands and wives, men, women and even senior folks, including some children, were employed to do menial tasks that would earn them a meager compensation for the day.
India, as I am thinking today, invested in their huge human resource as an initial step to combat unemployment and poverty.
I see this as a relevant scheme to even, partially, solve our unemployment and underemployment problems and turn “istambays’ into productive citizens albeit temporarily.
If I remember correctly, the late Pres. Diosdado Macapagal created the Emergency Employment Administration (EEA) to respond to the unemployment crisis at that time. Thousands of idle hands then were hired to work on government projects in many parts of the country.
The World Bank, I read, is working towards this end of assisting Third World countries by encouraging them to invest in human capital.
Because foreign direct investments are hard to come by to generate employment and livelihood opportunities, the World Bank is encouraging simple home-based, entrepreneurial endeavors to create and distribute wealth and provide the family three square meals a day,
With a continuously growing population, the Philippines has had to battle one crisis after another as global economic and political developments impact on our lives one way or the other.
Instead of utilizing mechanized equipment just to repair a sewer line to install culverts, it might be practical for government authorities to hire manual labor.
Meaning small-scale construction projects should be carried out by the government instead of hiring contractors to do the job.
For this matter, the construction of barangay and farm-to-market roads should be exclusively in the hands of the government office concerned (DPWH) where hundreds of unemployed men and even women in the area can be utilized for the purpose.
Sure, mechanized equipment are faster and more efficient to use but these have indisputably replaced the practical utilization of human resource as a resort to help ease the unemployment problem.
Even the huge railway system in the United States was first built by human hands, trudging through difficult mountainous and hilly terrains from the East Coast to the West Coast.
Do we really have to wait for foreign direct investments to create these employment opportunities when such simple strategies are within the grasp of government authorities?
Nikola Tesla, the man who invented the robot, predicted that sooner or later, the workplace would be dominated by mechanization that inevitable.
