Let’s empower the communities at the grass roots
“During the years immediately after colonialism collapsed our development urge was to copy western systems rapidly with heavy strains on our natural resources, large scale use of machines that virtually affected our appropriate technology systems, excessive use of fossil fuel, even indiscriminate exploitation of forests and abuse of water systems.”by Rt. Rev. Dr Daniel S. Thiagarajah
(September 29, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) While apologizing for my inability to be present personally at this important CWM SARC Forum of Churches from South Asia that are actively involved in addressing the Global Climate Change and Water Crisis to consult as to how we can respond to such a challenge, please be assured, but for a heavy schedule that involved also travel to North America, I would have been present with you all as an active participant in your deliberations. I thank you very much for your kind invitation to inaugurate this conference and deliver the keynote address.
I convey to you all, our fraternal greetings from the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India.
Even more than sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Caribbean and the Pacific Islands and also China, the South Asian countries India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Maldives which has nearly a quarter of the world’s population is also the poorest region. Despite the fact that there has been some development and in certain areas, quite dramatic too, let me give you some examples of the scale of the problems that are mind-boggling.
In South Asia 879 million people do not have proper sanitary facilities. Almost 280 million have no access to safe drinking water and the same numbers do not have basic health services. The region’s development challenge is largely focused on the four largest nations India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Being neighbours, this calls for inter-connected development partnership among these countries. We have to address to their natural resources especially water from the rivers so richly fed from the Himalayas as a common source for the water requirements for agriculture, drinking, hydro-electric energy, river transport and various other needs.
It is a sad reflection on the development priorities of these countries that water that should have been channelled most efficiently applying systems of irrigation and conservation in particular and instead of husbanding it constructively, we have allowed excess water and that which has not been channelled properly to be destructive. Why should water cause so much destruction especially in regions like Chittagong in Bangladesh time and again?
I read somewhere that 400 million people in South Asia are trapped in extremely poor circumstances. If growth accelerates to 10%, poverty could go down by two-third by the year 2015, just seven years away. But to achieve it the infrastructures needed would demand an annual investment of US$ twenty-five billion.
The poor in this region especially in Bangladesh have low levels of education, limited access to land, and are highly concentrated in low paying, physically demanding and socially unattractive occupations as casual wage labourers. In both rural and urban areas, where the poor lack much access to modern amenities and services, they also tend to live in houses of inferior quality. In the case of families headed by females who are widowed, divorced or separated, poverty can be absolutely brutal.
India with 240 rural and 72 million urban people in destitute circumstances has the largest concentration of poor people in the world. Poverty in Nepal is chronic and agricultural land base is fast approaching saturation point. In Pakistan, one-third of the population is poor mostly in the rural regions and outer-lying provinces. Educational and health facilities are very much in want when compared to other South Asian countries.
The civil conflict and the persisting resource constraint as a result have affected Sri Lanka’s promise of becoming a highly developed country. A nation of 12, 000 islands with a population of 250,000 the Maldives suffer from poor land, water scarcity and lower lying areas being vulnerable to erosion and even more, climate change. Bhutan, one of the least populated countries in the world has rich natural resources. This Himalayan state should seek to develop its own resources applying traditional techniques more than the modern ones and become a role model to the nations of the world in the proper and efficient use of natural resources.
During the years immediately after colonialism collapsed our development urge was to copy western systems rapidly with heavy strains on our natural resources, large scale use of machines that virtually affected our appropriate technology systems, excessive use of fossil fuel, even indiscriminate exploitation of forests and abuse of water systems. Today we have to apply the reverse gears and try to understand how we could make the vital elements of our lives water, air, fire, earth and ether as partners in our development and free of pollution.
Ancient philosophers had good reasons to recognize these five elements as sacred and even deified them. We call them as the Pancha Bhuta - Jala, Vayu, Agni, Bhumi and Akasha. Sages of old recognized that the human body was made up of these five essential elements. They believed that God used akasha to create the other four traditional elements and that the knowledge of all human experience is imprinted in the akashic records, the archives of the heavens.
Today in our development efforts we have to recognize the factors that are exploiting these crucial elements indiscriminately and could imperil all life forms on this earth. Our challenge as Mahatma Gandhi once said lies in the rural regions of these countries. We have to address ourselves to communities at the grass roots and empower them with the hope and knowledge that they can with their own resources give a good start to the development process.
Naturally many areas would certainly need outside input especially expertise and also production and welfare oriented support. But what is key to success and progress is to create a hope that the rural people can become the creators of their destiny and ensure they need not depend on the urban sector for all their needs and even more, that the rural people need not migrate to urban areas for their survival.
My message therefore my friends would be to seek ways and means to empower the people at the lowest and vulnerable levels of the society whether in regions, or caught up circumstances due to the cruel social stratifications of caste and class. There were five thousand people to be fed and all that they had were only five loaves and two fishes. Faith ensured, no one went home hungry that day and there were more left.
(The writer Rt. Rev. Dr Daniel S. Thiagarajah Ph.D, Bishop in Sri Lanka,Church of South India (Jaffna Diocese). He can be reached at bishopthiagarajah@gmail.com) - Sri Lanka Guardian
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