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My idea of the enlightened rich is Pedro Abad Santos. He gave away
his land and everything he had, his material possession a baggage to
his cause. Then, with his books and his high ideals of social
justice, preached among the peasantry about agrarian serfdom,
struggle and liberation.
The brother of my maternal grandmother, a
peasant with callused hands and a big heart and bigger dreams for
himself and society, abandoned the small plot of land he was tilling
to follow Pedro Abad Santos, one of the very first to do so. Many
like him from my barrio did the same thing, hero-worshipping Pedro
for his act of self-abnegation.
The brother of my grandmother passed on to me
the great stories of Pedro Abad Santos during his few visits to
Lubao from his remote farm in Cotabato—where he was forcibly
relocated by government with a shipload of unrepentant followers of
Pedro Abad Santos and left to fend for themselves in that new and
cruel environment. The rebellious farmers dumped in Mindanao lost
their domicile but not their high ideals and their moving stories of
Pedro Abad Santos.
The stories gave framework, structure and sense
to my idea of the enlightened rich.
So when Big Business and About-to-be-Big
Business make the grand announcement that they have scheduled big
talks about CSR, or Corporate Social Responsibility, I always
compare their supposed grand gestures for society with the acts of
Pedro Abad Santos.
The owner of a coffee shop chain is engaged in
coffee contract farming. Is she paying the coffee growers the right
price? We do not know.
The others give away scholarship grants.
The others run training centers for voc-tech
education.
The others join Jimmy Carter build houses for
the poor, whenever Carter is in town, part of his Habitat for
Humanity work. The local rich that join Carter get Page One photos
doing quickie masonry work.
Others support Gawad Kalinga, which itself is
embroiled in a controversy within the Couples for Christ movement.
This is a bitter form of schism, the last thing you would expect of
a lay and supposedly pro-humanity organization.
Based on the benchmarks of social responsibility
established by Pedro Abad Santos, however, these supposed grand
gestures (that generate tremendous PR and publicity for the
participants), fall short. They are mostly shallow gestures. Or
hogwash.
The hardened segment of the peasantry has a
more cruel description of the CSR exercises—hypocrisy. Or aspirin
for cancer. This section of the peasantry wants moves, acts and
gestures that possess a fraction of the gravity and purity of what
Pedro Abad Santos did several decades back.
What, for example, are initiatives that Big
Business and About-to-be-Big Business can do to really change the
lives of those on the margin, in our case, the peasantry? Here is a
big start.
Big Business should tell the banks, which the
major figures of Big Business own, to start lending to small
farmers. There is a law, the Agri Agra Law that mandates the
commercial banks to allocate 25 percent of their yearly loan
portfolio to small-scale farmers and agrarian reform beneficiaries.
Unfortunately, the Marcos-era decree has a rider. In lieu of lending
out money to small farmers and agrarian reform beneficiaries, the
banks can invest in housing or buy government securities.
Since the 70s, the banks have been investing in
housing and buying government notes to comply with the law. Their
mind set is lending out money to farmers is fraught with risks. It
is untenable. Government treasury bills are the safer alternative.
For decades, small farmers have suffered from an impossible credit
squeeze. They have been shut out of the lending mainstream despite
the desperate need for production loans.
While shoving the farmers out of the credit
mainstream—and practically crippling small-scale agricultural
production—Big Business holds the yearly rituals that worship in
the cathedral of social responsibility.
The anti-rural bias of the banks’ lending
policies borders on the criminal, responsible, as it is, for the
massive and grinding rural poverty. Had the banks mustered the will
to give loans to small farmers and agrarian reform beneficiaries as
mandated by the law, roughly P400 billion would be unleashed to
provide production muscle to the peasantry.
The accusation of hypocrisy comes in this sorry
context.
Those in the league of Big Business are
different from Juan de la Cruz—and Pedro Abad Santos. It is fact
of life.
But if they can’t come close to the social
consciousness of Pedro Abad Santos, they should dispense with the
yearly ritual of phoniness, the shallow and callow worship on the
cathedral of social responsibility.
mvrong@yahoo.com
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