Whose life style?

By Sisay W. Melesse

sisaywm@yahoo.com

A bout the view from the bottom one should be modest: it is not for those top-governmental or intergovernmental bureaucrats managing flows of problems and conflicts, private or state capitalists managing flows of economic value and intellectuals/researchers of all kinds helping both to tell those at the bottom what their needs are.
To a large extent, they know themselves; to the extent they do not know, they are like everyone else: uncertain, insecure, ambivalent, changing all the time, inconsistent -in short, human. We can probably safely assume that they want food, shelter and clothing and all the other things that are needed to survive, at least at the minimum material level. In a tremendous pressure of communication beamed from the world's metropolises and larger cities to the rest, to the rural and urban poor, a message of material goods and a way to get them through education and hard work, competition, geographical and social mobility, converting one's human resources into money at the labor market and converting the money into goods at the supermarket - So we are told.
Hence, may one not safely assume that what the rural poor really want is to bring their living conditions closer to those of the urban rich, or at least the urban middle classes? And should we then not, perhaps somewhat hypocritically, simply wash our hands and say that it would be paternalistic to deny them what they want? We could use that sentence as one more source of legitimating for the continued expansion of our enormous nongovernmental governmental, intergovernmental, private and state machineries, working for the day when a universal, above-the-minimum and below-the-maximum diet has been introduced all over the world, a world housing corporation is supplying everybody with standard houses of a limited number of varieties, clothing is uniform as is the medical treatment disbursed to that which is inside the clothes; not to mention the world's standard curricula at nursery, kindergarten, primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary levels of education. And, on top of those basic needs, some non-basic ones for those who are more worthy than the others.
For the really destitute most of the channels are effectively blocked.
No doubt, millions of rural poor have behaved in a way that would confirm this scenario: the poor Ethiopian who leaves for South Africa to work there as a Gastarbeiter, thereby releasing a poor South African who can go to the UK to work in the "Sanitation Department" of some big city (meaning handling garbage), thereby releasing a UK rural man for work on an assembly line, thereby releasing a UK urban man's son for work as a clerk, thereby releasing, etc. One can start the chain in any peripheral rural village one wishes, and let it end at the top of our national and global poly-structures. The pyramids and hierarchies are relatively well-known, narrow at the top and very broad at the bottom, but most channels are effectively blocked for the really destitute.
If movement along the channels that remain open is everything our world has to offer to its citizens, we are then to be in a poor state. For there are at least two important things to say about this image of what development means at the individual level: life at the top is not that attractive, and it is not that obvious that it is what those at the bottom really want. That many people behave as they do constitutes no proof. First, the model propagated by mass media and all kinds of demonstration effects is so strong, so glittering, so overpowering that other models look pale in relation to it. Many children in front of Christmas shopping windows will be attracted by what is most colorful, brilliant, glittering, even if it is junk and those who make the exhibitions know that. Second, although millions move, maybe billions stay, perhaps not only because they are unable to move; they may also not want to. If they do not want to, it may be not only because of fear of the unknown, but also because of a feeling of belonging, of identity with what they have. And this is where things start to get interesting.
Solidarity is easy to ask for when one sits in the center of decision-making.
Let us not assume that people are always wiser than governments nor the opposite, but that the good society is the one that permits dialogue between the two and makes decisions that are flexible enough to reflect a large spectrum of images of development. The good society is probably the one that believes people can find out for themselves, and makes the resources available. In all probability, this points toward societies with a very high level of local self-reliance, meaning societies where the economic unit is relatively small and the economic cycles of course extend beyond the borders of the unit, but in such a way that one can survive in times of crisis.
There seem to be many examples of the rural poor who, when given the opportunity, have burnt the coffee bushes and other cash crops so as to use the soil to grow food. One would expect such phenomena to occur when the opportunity costs of growing cash crops are such that people actually suffer because resources are allocated to that end. Using soil, capital, labor, fertilizer and water for cash crops is usually a way of extending the economic cycle and monetizing it so that the cash flow can be controlled by the top, possibly even end at the top, except for a tiny trickle. It is also, incidentally, a way of ensuring that people in the countryside do not do what people in the cities fear most: grow food for their own stomach only, leaving the cities to feed themselves. The strategy of the cities is simple: either the carrot method of producing and marketing goods that are available for cash only or the stick method of forcing people into a monetized economy by levying taxes that can only be paid in cash.
But, there also could be another reason besides hunger for the destroying of the beautifully fertilized and watered cash crop fields: the desire not to be reduced to some little pawn in the big game of private or state economic planning. It is easy to ask for solidarity with corporate or national goals when one sit in the center of decision making, defining those very goals; the thing looks different from the bottom. One might simply like to be one's own goal setter, not to be a part of a big scheme masterminded by somebody in a distant office. To communicate the goals through the mass media might not oil the machinery the way those at the top wish and think.
The spiritual cost in terms of loss of identity with work may be considerable.
It might even transform apathy into active resistance. Or, it might transform fundamentally diligent, responsive and responsible people into professional cheaters who try to invent ways of milking the system with minimum effort on their part A tractor driver in a planned economy who ploughs the fields on the basis of targets stipulated in the Plan, in terms of acreage ploughed, is likely to cover much ground, but not very well; he will do a poor job but will get away with it, also because the inspector is likely to be rewarded for the number of fields inspected, not for how thoroughly they are inspected The tractor driver may not be economically poor, but the spiritual cost in terms of loss of identity with work, with work product, with nature, with other people, may be considerable. I would include him among the so-called "rural poor" because his work has been organized in such a way that he has all the disadvantages of modern industrial urban life without any of the advantages, i.e., urban services, a certain amount of freedom of choice in what to consume, the possibility of anonymity in some settings and togetherness with family and friends in others.
While there is this desperate struggle against material and spiritual poverty and the sneaking suspicion that material growth is obtained at the expense of increasing spiritual poverty, strange things are happening at the other end of the world hierarchies. For the first time in modern history, people are abandoning cities in Italy and the United Kingdom in favor of the countryside. Obviously, this phenomenon has to do with a general economic decline in these two countries. If a real economic squeeze is coming, it is certainly not unwise to be more self-reliant, even self-sufficient, where food is concerned, by being close to a piece of ground where edible crops can be grown.
A cost-benefit analysis could readily result in the decision to move.
But the phenomenon certainly has deeper roots: the quest for nonmaterial values left unsatisfied in cities, presumably more satisfiable in more communal patterns of living, closer to our base, namely nature. With cities becoming increasingly unattractive and dangerous (crime rates, including murder rates, going up), a cost-benefit analysis of the two alternatives could easily lead to the decision to move. Evidently, such people act against the dominant model, and therefore their motives will be suspected. While there is incorporation at the bottom into the big machineries mentioned above, there is a certain disintegration at the top as people, believed to be trustworthy, reliable supporters to the system, defect. What will be the effect at the bottom when these moves attain greater proportions, and become properly understood?
Mistakes in traditionalism are quite often traded for those of modernism
In the mountain village, the problem was formulated in "structural" terms. The problem was by and large one that is now very well-known: an age-old structure of land ownership and rural work, with a subtle balance among soil, labor, fertilizer and water, animal power and seeds, is upset in the name of social justice and land reform. As a consequence of the land reform, the individual plots are too small to make the farms self-sufficient, and the subtle cooperative network among them is to a large extent destroyed. The individual farmer will have to turn outside the village for production inputs, be it capital (loans), fertilizer (chemical rather than natural), water (through new and very expensive irrigation networks rather than through older systems whose operation depended on the social structure), technical advice (from rural extension workers, fresh out of college, rather than from experience accumulated in that village through generations). In short, the mistakes of traditionalism are traded for those of modernism; the positive side of traditional society is lost and that of modern society is unavailable, for all these goods and services from the outside are too expensive, irrelevant or outright counterproductive. What remains is a sense of uncertainty, insecurity and ambivalence and profound dependence on the outside. A structure is destroyed, and a very poor one put in its place; a population is bewildered, and has a highly unclear vision of how one could combine much of what was good in the traditional pattern with some of the good things in the new one. A high price-for what?
What these two examples amount to, in my mind, is simply this: the danger and the fallacy of working with a development model based on a hierarchy of needs. It sounds so simple and convincing to many people: let us first satisfy the basic material needs, and then move on to the nonmaterial needs. Maybe animals are like that. But, even about this, I have some doubts. It is true, that at the level of acute starvation, brought about by natural or social catastrophes, the slogan "basic material needs first" is relevant.
The city perhaps allows a greater freedom but definitely less identity
Beyond this level of utter destitution, the best thing one can do from the top is to assume that people at the bottom want as much freedom and identity as other people do; that they are not concerned only with security and economic well-being. They want options, choices: real choices. They want identity, meaning closeness, with their own work products, themselves, other people, the society of which they are part, nature, and with something transcendental whether it is called GOD or Ideology. Today, the city perhaps allows greater freedom but definitely less identity. Villages used to be the other way around but are now rapidly being transformed into something where there is neither much freedom nor much identity and of security (particularly relative to the hazards of nature) and economic well-being, there was and is not very much either. To be poor in all senses at the same time is to be poor indeed. Much intellectual and moral courage (or blindness) is needed to launch a developmental process whereby incorporation in the city-dominated system is obtained at the price of loss of identity, and with a vague promise of possible increase in economic well-being at some later stage. Other types of processes are needed, more modest in goal, more human. As long as nobody seems to have anything better to suggest than local self-reliance, autonomous units big enough to produce sufficient surplus to have some light industry, schooling and medical services, in a pattern that would mix collective land ownership with some private plots, this seems to be the better general direction to follow.
If this creates problems for the cities, it might not be unreasonable for the villages to answer: "We have been carrying you on our backs for centuries. We are not asking you to carry us; but if you improve your ability to carry yourselves, maybe we could also carry ourselves better." In short, the problem of the rural poor is probably inextricably linked to that of redesigning cities so that they can grow more of their own food (small plots, more vertical agriculture making use of high-rise buildings as support for plants, an agricultural belt worked by the people in the city themselves). Some urbanizing of the countryside is probably indispensable: it will carry in its wake some agriculturalizing of the cities.
In short, let us simply not assume that the rural poor are different from other people; let us not encase them in a straitjacket of "basic material needs," which could eventually turn into the cages of an animal farm. If we do not treat ourselves or our families that way, we should not treat others that way either. What one can do, however, is to increase the intensity, the depth and spectrum of the urban-rural dialogue with a hope of generating many more solutions for the benefit of both sides.