Increasing awareness in the countryside [Archives:2004/802/Opinion]

Yemeni cities are continuing to absorb many of the rural Yemenis, who have come to feel that their rural habitats are unable to provide the means of sustenance, or those who may have come to believe that modern life can only come to dwellers of urban metropolises. It goes without saying that there is a clear inequity in the lives of the urban and rural dwellers and the access to many social services or the amenities of modern life is almost non-existent for the rural dwellers in many of the remote areas of the country. Over the last twenty years, this massive migration from rural to urban areas has become a foundation for the rise of many social ailments Yemeni society was lacking as traditional rural norms managed to keep family life stable and people were content with the sustenance that traditional farming eked out for them.

The development process in Yemen unfortunately focused its projects and programs on making the large cities the beneficiaries of most of the efforts to provide social services and even markets were encouraged to concentrate in urban areas, thus leaving the rural countryside untouched by the rapid strides that the major cities of Yemen have taken. On the other hand, the cities have neither been prepared for this influx of rural dwellers nor capable of sustaining continued urban growth in light of the absence of adequate sustainable water supplies in the basins that provide them with their potable water requirements. Yet, the influx continues and the cities are forced to absorb a lot of people, who are neither prepared for city life or even have a feeling of the adjustments they need to make, socially and culturally if they are to realize the quests they hoped to pursue in the cities they have come to.

Part of the problem is that the public media, especially television and radio, has very little broadcast room for making the rural population aware that the cities are not going to be the paradise they envision and that they should pursue means of developing their own areas. This is a consequence of the slow efforts at decentralization of government authority and the reluctance of the central government to empower local habitats to have a say in how they run and use their local resources or how they manage their development projects, if they have any that are directed towards them. Thus, if such projects are undertaken, it is usually administrators from the central government that are assigned the tasks of designing and implementing these projects, often with very little input from the beneficiaries. These projects, in many cases are usually finished and almost abandoned right afterwards, or turned over to local authorities or traditional leaderships that are ill prepared in their operation and maintenance. Thus, there is a lot of waste of investment funds that are often provided by loans and many of these projects turn into empty facades or dead rusty metal that never serves the purposes intended for them.

Because the rural countryside relies on broadcast media for most of the information that is available to it about the rest of the world or as a possible source of cultural development, one would hope that the broadcast media would allocate certain air time to helping the rural population finding means of making their present habitats by providing programs that educate the rural population that rural areas can also become modern habitats that provide all the services that may be found in cities and can attract merchandise and goods that provide some of the amenities of modern life as well. This would of course mean educating rural populations on the way to administer themselves, without having to rely on central government authorities to provide the services they need (although they should contribute to the funding of the establishment of such services and provide some technical backup.

The best way is to make the rural population feel that they are free to organize themselves into cooperatives that are independent of any government control and that are able to determine the activities they will sponsor based on their needs. In many ways this can be done through teaching rural people how to set up community action teams that can pursue different projects and manage them independently in a fully transparent manner. Yet, so much air time is wasted on meaningless programs that are not only not directed to the rural citizens, although they still make up some 70% of the population, but even city dwellers find them to be useless or lacking in any form of culture so as to enrich their lives or direct them to the path to better living.

The government is spending a sizable chunk of its budget on sustaining various forms of public media, especially radio and television. The people in the countryside are hungry for knowledge, especially on how they can better their lives where they are living rather than join the mass exodus to urban centers that are neither ready to accommodate them or become the dream world they hope to become a part of. On the other hand, the public media should also point out to the rural population the difficulties they will face in cities and the social problems that will counter their peaceful and serene rural lives.

Much of the inhabited rural countryside are areas of scenic beauty and may often be suitable for developments as attractive tourist havens. The public media can help introduce programs that educate rural residents how they can work to provide the facilities that tourists need to make their areas attractive to them. This means that rural areas need to set up basic accommodation facilities, rest areas for tour groups and protection for sites that have a historical or aesthetic value.

The public media should start to reach out to the rural people because they have truly been victims of neglect long enough. This is not only important for the rural dwellers, but for the already congested metropolises that are becoming hotbeds for social degeneration and urban squalor.
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