While the global economic crisis refuses to yield to any of the fixes, bailouts and crisis management of the governments of the top industrial countries, Third World economies remain vulnerable to the hiccups of the international market. This underlies the dire situation of having an economy that is heavily dependent on external markets rather than on a stable domestic one. In the Philippines, we depend mainly on our export products of raw or semi-processed mineral ores and agricultural goods while buying finished consumer items and even food as imports.

Our economy is characterized by the shrinking share in the gross domestic product of manufacturing and agriculture making us overly reliant on overseas remittances, foreign loans and investments. The lack of industries is also a reason why we have a perennially high unemployment rate with nearly 4.6 million people without jobs for the first half of the year.

Every country in its right mind desires economic independence and would harness its local talent and resources to achieve this goal. Yet as long as the neocolonial pattern of production, investments and trade remain, the push to build local industries will not be there. We will remain as an economy mainly based on the export of agricultural and extractive raw materials, the import of finished goods, agricultural commodities and capital, and the re-export of reassembled or repackaged imported manufactures. These are the characteristics that make our economy vulnerable to globalization’s failures.

Without an industrial base, it becomes cheaper for the government to import something new than to hire a scientist, a researcher or an engineer to do the job. Imports largely supplanted the need to build industries and have kept science and technology backward in our country despite the talent that can be found here.

As such, advocating that we build our own industries to serve primarily domestic demand based on actual potentials has been part and parcel of our (AGHAM’s) campaign to improve the state of science and technology in the country. The degree to which industrialization is achieved is reflected in the advanced science and technology it uses to process its raw materials. It is also largely dependent on the degree of rural industrialization reached through genuine agrarian reform and agricultural modernization. We can thus say that science and technology in the country advances as our industry develops.

Besides improving science and technology, national industrialization is also the key in securing livelihood for our people so that greener pastures will be here and not abroad. With our comprehensively rich natural resource base and skilled forces of production, we can target the local production of capital while providing for basic consumer needs and ensuring our food security and self-sufficiency.

A decade of science for the people

Throughout the decade since the founding of AGHAM last July 24, 1999, our objective to make science and technology serve the interest of the majority has always been our guide in all our activities, projects and positions. Mobilizing scientists in the concerns we have mentioned in this column has been both productive and meaningful not only to the scientist-participants but to the community that has benefited from their help. These concerns are in the environment, food security and self-sufficiency, scientific and mass culture, public utilities and in advocating national industrialization.

We have had our successes especially in the Paaralang Aloysius Baes-People’s Science School and in mobilizing scientists in direct community service in the field and through research works. We have contributed to consumer issues like advocating lower electric power rates, telecommunications charges and other public utility costs. We have concretized the issues of science and technology in the Philippines both in the policy level and in the parliament of the streets. There are some that would wish to capitalize on these successes. Some groups have used our name in politics in bad faith even as we have clearly supported progressive party lists like Bayan Muna since 2001 who push for programs that would lead to building national industries.

One would also realize that this call of making science and technology serve the people is not a narrow slogan limited to scientists and engineers. This is a demand of a broad segment of society that has long been suffering under the same circumstances that have kept science and technology in the Philippines underdeveloped. The ultimate aim of any such industrialization effort is to bring about the national prosperity, economic growth and economic independence of a country. Science workers should unite together with the rest of society in calling for genuine development and join in the efforts underway to make this come true.

After one decade, we continue to join the rest of society in meaningful social change. Einstein summarized this in his 1949 statement, “Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.”