A dialogue on villages

Jun 03, 2012 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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(President Ramotar recently committed to the revitalisation of our villages. The late Mr Philip Moore had always offered prophetic affirmation of this path.  Some years ago, the late Mr Clarence Ellis and I had a dialogue on the importance of villages in our developmental thrust.)

DEV:  In our proposals on Federalism, from the organisational standpoint, we have stressed the principle of subsidiarity, which declares that governmental tasks should be delegated to the lowest layer that can handle them. Ultimately, this is the village.
When the PNC removed authority and responsibility from this level of our society we really shot ourselves in the foot. The Village movement was a uniquely Guyanese phenomenon – a product of our history and an innovation of the African Guyanese people. We have stressed elsewhere that each society must select its own mix of the three institutions – the state, the market or the communities for coordinating the activities its members. This is one of the reasons that we support Mr. Ellis’ stress on the third level of decentralisation down to the village level: village means “community.”
Unlike the state (which uses coercion) and the market (which uses money), communities structure the activities of citizens through voluntary cooperation engendered by close personal ties and relationships. Communities work through trust. The role of communities has been a most neglected aspect in the development efforts of third world countries such as Guyana.
Let’s take the rice industry. A crucial feature of rice cultivation is the control and allocation of water. In Asia where there has been intensive cultivation for centuries, the communities have evolved intricate local, non-government sanctions and rewards that ensure the most efficient use of water. Compare this today with our situation in Guyana where farmers downstream are never willing to wait for water in their turn, and they either surreptitiously open regulators or “talk” to their friends in authority. Everyone ends up frustrated and costs go up when they have to pump water. China’s and Vietnam’s ability to produce rice at one quarter of our costs is not just due to low labour costs. We have to return responsibility, authority and ultimately, trust to the villages.
MR ELLIS: It is true that when the PNC removed the village councils, “we really shot ourselves in the foot.” The restoration of those councils requires a constitutional change. Maximum advantage from any such constitutional change requires that community councils are established in the East Indian communities as well. That is a massive task.
There is a report on local government reform which does not recommend the complete return of those village councils, which does not conceive of the formation of community councils for the East Indian communities, and which recommends political party rivalry for the Neighbourhood Democratic Councils (NDCs) into which the villages and the East Indian communities are merged. Political party rivalry will bring the bitter outside rivalry into the villages and communities and destroy the trust with which communities work, which Mr Dev observes.
There are two fundamental weaknesses of that local government report. The first is that it does not conceive of a transformed rural economy. In the villages, this can be achieved by co-operatives pursuing the cultivation of crops other than sugar and rice. If the East Indian communities should turn to alternative crops, the zemindar (large landowner) relationship of tenants will change. Large landlords will have a single vote in the community council, and the class domination that presently prevails in those communities will be reduced. That lack of vision in the local government report is its first major weakness.

The second major weakness is that it will be necessary to draw East Indian community council boundaries. This will be a massive task. But I always point to the ridiculous boundaries of the Town of Anna Regina which stretches from Three Friends to Walton Hall, a distance of about nine miles. Of the nine miles, seven miles at least are cultivated rice fields. What sort of town is that?
The organising principle here is the radical transformation of village economies and East Indian communities to compete in the modern world…This might not appear as a national revolution but, if pushed through, will allow racial communities to pursue their development in accord with their cultural distinctiveness. If they are successful in their separate communities, they can collaborate later out of mutual respect, thereby demonstrating that there is an “organic” solution in the rural areas to racial integration.
The principle of subsidiarity need not be assessed in the formal federal terms that Mr. Dev is inclined to use, even though relations with the centre should be comprehensively conceptualised. In the first place, there is the need to follow through with the independence of the public services that I recommended last week.
This should mean that all executive authority should revert to the Regional Executive Officer (REO) who should report, in her or his executive acts, to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry that has responsibility for the Regions. The REO should, however, be guided in her or his programme by the decisions taken by the Regional Democratic Council (RDC).
The second change is much more difficult. Village and community councils should be responsible for managing the drainage and irrigation infrastructure in their villages and their communities. Village councils undertook this task before and can do so again. Councillors may wish a stipend because of the more mercenary outlook in these days, but it should not be difficult to persuade village and community councillors to work for free.
The difficult task that the councils will have to undertake in developing their village and community economies is the transformation process that has been earlier outlined.
That is a lot more difficult. Councillors should be exposed to the data gathering and planning approaches by which land should be allocated, seeds distributed and planting harmonised in the manner Mr. Dev described as obtains in Asia. These approaches can be taught in a faculty such as I suggested for public sector management.
The third and most demanding operation will be the developing of the Regional Chairman and the Regional politicians into catalysts and not directors of development. Their role should be that of providing ideas to the village and community councils in their efforts at transforming the agricultural economies in the villages and the communities. Each Regional councillor and each Regional Chairman should have attended a course at the faculty for public sector management. Regional Councillors should know what to look for in the village and community programmes, and to be capable of suggesting changes.

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