Cheap drugs from India a boon

India has gotten giant drug manufacturers worried. It has challenged the patents on some of the world’s biggest money-making drugs. It has gone into manufacturing of low-cost drugs that would benefit the world’s poor. While India has stumped the big brand-name players, it has given poor nations such as those in Africa with huge numbers of AIDS cases a reason to be thankful.

Well, count the Philippines among the beneficiaries. But can’t the Philippines do the same?

I have been interested in India’s in-your-face kind of upstartness in putting the Goliaths of the drug industry on the defensive (or is it offensive?)

A story in yesterday’s Inquirer said that the government-run Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC) will bring in up to P1 billion worth of low-cost medicine in 2007 to make essential drugs affordable to Filipinos. These will be sourced mainly from India and Pakistan. PITC has, in fact, been doing this but next year’s big batch is getting giant drug multinationals even more worried. PITC sells these cheap medicines through its network of Botika ng Bayan and Botika ng Barangay.

So Pfizer took legal action against PITC, saying that it has no assurance its patent rights would not be violated. With the support of international development agency Oxfam, medicine users picketed Pfizer to stress “patients’ rights over patent rights”. There.



Time magazine has come out with stories on India’s drug manufacturing time and again. Aravind Adiga wrote that India’s generic-drug makers are flooding international markets with cheap copycat pills, infuriating behemoth rivals from the US and Europe. These so-called copycat pills may not be “signature” or branded but they are not adulterated or less potent. Their components are like the branded ones. And they’re cheaper.

Wrote Adiga: “The notion that India’s upstart pharmaceutical firms could be a threat to Goliaths such as Pfizer and Merck might sound as hard to swallow as cod-liver oil. India is the world’s fourth largest drug producer by volume, but its fragmented industry of 20,000 companies is still stunted in terms of revenues. (In 2002), the total value of India’s drug sales including exports came to $6.5 billion, less than the $8 billion Pfizer raked in from a single blockbuster product, its anticholesterol drug Lipitor.”

Yet, Time reported, India’s copycat drug firms are becoming a headache for big multinationals. For not only are these Indian drug firms expanding to the US and Europe, they are also challenging patents so that cheaper alternatives could become widely available.

One of the challengers is Yusuf Hamied, chair of the Indian drug company Cipla who declared in 2001 that he was going to sell AIDS drugs to Africa less than four percent of the price charged by multinationals. A couple of years later, Hamied declared, “Today, the daggers are drawn.”

Hamied has been described as “the good doctor”. Devastated after seeing an AIDS-stricken friend waste away and die, he set out to do something. In his article for Time, Meenkshi Ganguly described Hamied as an organic chemist and owner of drug firms who made it his mission to find the magic drug. So when Glaxo Wellcome’s AZT and 3TC AIDS cocktails hit the market with promising results, Hamied and his researchers went to work.

Hamied’s Cipla has made anti-AIDS drugs available to the French NGO Medicins Sans Frontieres for less than $1 dollar a day ($350 per year) for the poor. “A humanitarian price,” Hamied said.

Indian laws allow the manufacture of already patented drugs as long as the process is different from the patented one. Because manufacturing cost in India is relatively low, Cipla is able to sell its medicines at a fraction of the cost of the original. $350 per patient per year for the Cipla AIDS cocktail as against $15,000 for the original.

The multinationals did not take this sitting down and howled protests saying India violated intellectual property rights. But these MNCs have long been accused of making giant profits out of poor people’s illnesses. Even after they have recovered the cost of research, their drugs remain overpriced, indirectly sending those who cannot afford the drugs to their deaths.

Medicins Sans Frontieres had even argued that some drugs were developed using US public funds and the companies that made them have already made a lot of profits so why the high cost?

And what did Hamied have to say of his drugs? “Just use the bloody thing. So what if I don’t make a profit on AIDS drugs. That is not the be-all or end-all…To say all Indians are pirates is very good PR. If I am a pirate, I am a thief. If I am a thief I have broken a law. But I abide by the laws of the land.”

Such unnerving effrontery if one may call it that. The man has nerve.

Here in the Philippines, it is not the AIDS cocktail that is causing a furor. The Inquirer report said the dispute revolves also around the importation of amlodipine besylate, the active ingredient of Pfizer’s anti-hypertension drug Norvasc, from what Pfizer said are “unauthorized sources” in India and Pakistan.

PITC argued that it is merely making medicines affordable for poor Filipinos and paving the way for an early regulatory approval so that the product could be marketed in the Philippines when the patent on Norvasc expires in June 2007. Pfizer looks at this an infringement on its intellectual property rights.

Gamot sa high-blood, anyone? Patent rights or patients’ rights?

Tabang Mindanaw study on Sulu

“The security situation in Sulu is COMPLEX and has to be understood in all its facets if a lasting solution is to be found.”

This sums up the results of a recent survey that Tabang Mindanaw did on behalf of Pagtabangan BaSulTa. The Assisi Foundation was behind the endeavor.

The report entitled “Developing a Culture of Peace for Sulu” is a review of the peace and order situation in Sulu based on a survey conducted in 18 towns of the province. The respondents were composed of religious leaders, traditional leaders, women, the youth and the economic sector.

But what is this “culture of peace” that the report is invoking? The report uses the United Nations definition which is “a set of values, attitudes, modes of behavior and ways of life that reject violence and prevent conflicts by tackling their root causes to solve problems through dialogue and negotiations among individuals, groups and nations.”

The research team, headed by Victor M. Taylor and Abraham Idjirani, ran the survey that focused on the people’s views on their personal situation, the province, security, factors that contribute to the present situation and factors needed to improve the situation.



“Complex” is the key word used to summarize the survey findings. Civil servants, development agencies and the myriad stakeholders in the province are advised to take heed. Anyone aspiring to work in Sulu is advised to read the report in order to appreciate Sulu’s complex landscape especially the historical and cultural context in which this complexity is being played out.

Why is the situation the way it is, and what can be done about it?

The report first gives a brief account of Sulu’s “glorious and troubled history”. It goes back to the time when Sulu was at the crossroads of trade between China and Europe up until the mid-19th century, then the entry of Spain, the US and the attacks on the predominantly Muslim Moro homeland that went on for a long time.

The report also reminds that Sulu was the nerve center of the Moro secessionist fighting that broke out in the 1970s. Brief peaceful interludes were experienced in the 1950s and 1960s then things changed when martial law was imposed in the 1970s. Today, conflict is very much a part of the Sulu scene.

The survey results show that 82 percent of all respondents feel that things are more difficult for them today, with 74 percent citing the economic situation as the reason. Seventy two percent feel the situation in the province is chaotic. Among the reasons are security (35%), governance (30%), economic (28%) and religion (4%).

While 62 percent of the respondents feel that their respective communities are peaceful, a much greater majority (83.3%) believes that the province of Sulu as a whole is in turmoil.

Security factors cited are the unstable peace and order situation, frequent killings, clan conflicts, armed conflicts (among them the conflict between the military and the Moro National Liberation Front) and other armed groups like the Abu Sayyaf.

One of the issues the report addresses is terrorism. Not all acts of violence could be labeled terrorism or should be linked to terrorist groups, the report explains. They become acts of terrorism only when it is clear that the intent is to achieve a political or ideological objective. Making sweeping labels only aggravates the problem and it often wrongly justifies illegal courses of action on the part of the authorities.

One of the interesting portions of the report tackles the role of civil society in communities in Sulu. It points out the “seeming passiveness of civil society in doing its share to proactively address the issue of peace in Sulu and bridge the gap between the populace and the authorities.” It is as if the people are resigned to their fate and have become mainly passive spectators of events swirling around them. And when civil society does move, it is often in a confrontational manner that results in the deepening of animosities between concerned sectors.

This is not to say that nothing has been done by civil society. In the past months civil society in Sulu has broadened to include the business sector which used to be a separate category. There are venues for coming together. One of them is the Task Force on Peace and Unity which is a gathering of individuals and groups from the academe, Muslim and Christian groups, NGOs, business and government.

Last March civil society groups, government agencies, the military and police and the MNLF held a ground-breaking workshop in Jolo to discuss the future of the province. One of the results was the formation of a core group that focuses on peace and order.

But more needs to be done. Civil society must realize that the work for peace is not theirs alone. Ordinary citizens must know that they have a role to play. Civil society must therefore be a channel of information on issues and events that affect the people’s lives. It should provide venues for discussions and airing of different points of view. It should be able to bridge the gap between the people and government authorities (officials, military, police).

Of course, the religious sector’s role is one of the most important in this predominantly Muslim province. The Sulu Ulama Council for Peace and Development has done a lot through its radio program Ulanig sin Kasajahitraan or Echoes of Peace.

(I love the sound of the first three syllables—Kasaja. It sounds like the Visayan kasadya which means merry or festive. I hope I can use the name someday.)

If you want a copy of the Tabang Mindanaw report, send email to tabang@tabangmindanaw.org

Limbo un-rocked

Today, Nov. 2, is All Souls Day, the day for our dear departed. But feast-loving Filipinos always do the feasting and remembering in advance as if there might be no more tomorrow. And so Nov. 1, All Saints Day, is what Filipinos consider araw ng mga patay.

We Filipinos have a way of advancing the calendar to suit our festive mood. Well, All Souls Day is the harbinger of the Christmas season. Tomorrow the Christmas season “officially” begins in these islands. It will last for two months.

But hold on awhile to the 11th month. We all have our early memories of this November feast that sends Filipino families in droves to their old hometowns. Celebrations in the provinces are so much more folksy and Pinoy, unlike those in Metro Manila where the feast has taken on an American macabre flavor that I find corny and TH.

On the solemn side of memory lane, some melodies refuse to die. I can still sing the first and last lines of the Latin Gregorian chant that the Benedictine sisters chanted during the Mass for the Dead in the beautiful neo-Romanesque chapel in school. “Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla…” Translated as, “Nigher still, and still more nigh, Draws the day of prophecy…”



It ends with the soaring, “Lacrymosa dies illa, Qua resurget ex favilla…” “Full of tears and full of dread, is the day that wakes the dead…”

Oh, it soaked my soul and shook the ramparts of my young heart.

This being the season that makes us ponder life after death, there is now no reason to wonder where limbo is. The vacuous place has been erased from the afterlife. The Roman Catholic Church had created that place during the Middle Ages, last year the magisterium decided to delete it. (Will so-called plenary indulgences be the next to go?)


Blame the creation of the limbo hypothesis on the concept of the stamp of original sin and the outdated way that it was taught.

Last year Pope Benedict XVI abolished the concept of limbo, the place where, Catholics were made to believe, the souls of un-baptized children went. The year before he died, Pope John Paul II had created a commission to come up with a “more coherent and illuminating” doctrine on this neither-here-nor-there place in the Great Beyond.

Pope Benedict XVI (Cardinal Josep Ratzinger then) had presided over the first sessions before he became Pope. A report said that he is on record as saying that limbo has no place in modern Catholicism. In 1984 he was already quoted as saying that limbo had “never been a definitive truth of the faith”.

Limbo has been scrapped.

Limbo comes from the Latin word limbus that means edge or boundary. It was supposed to be the transit area for the souls of the people who lived good lives but died before the resurrection of Jesus two millennia ago. Only on the Last Judgment will they all move on to heaven. Neat arrangement.

Limbo was also supposed to be the permanent home of the babies who died in infancy (and the fetuses too) that didn’t get freed from original sin through baptism. There they were supposed to live in a state of natural happiness, whatever that means.

Here’s something I read: “In the Divine Comedy, Dante depicts limbo as the first circle of hell, located beyond the river of Acheron but before the judgment seat of Minos. The virtuous pagans of classical history and mythology inhabit a brightly lit and beautiful—but somber—castle which is seemingly a medievalized version of Elysium. (A) semi-infernal region, above limbo or the other side of Acheron, but inside the gate of Hell also exists—it is the vestibule of hell and houses so-called ‘neutralists’ or ‘opportunists’ who devoted their lives neither to good nor to evil…” A place for fence sitters and opportunists!

Now that limbo has been demolished, where did its occupants proceed? Or where were they all the time? In heaven, I presume.

Nowhere in the Bible is limbo mentioned, but it is supposed to be the “bosom of Abraham” which is twice mentioned in the Bible. This bosom is supposed to be a blissful state where the good and the righteous of the pre-Jesus era await their eternal reward. It is neither heaven nor hell, it is a transit lounge before entering paradise.

I read somewhere that the gospel story about the “good thief” who was crucified and died beside Jesus is a case that should tweak this limbo theory. Jesus promised him that they would be together “this day” in paradise. Right away?

Well the answer, some say, is in the punctuation mark, the comma. (The celebrated writer Pico Iyer has a great essay on the comma and what it can do.) Did Jesus say, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise” or “Truly I say to you today, you shall be with me in paradise”? The latter means that the thief had to wait in limbo until the resurrection made it possible for him to enter the Pearly Gates.

This is grist for biblical nitpickers. I bring this up only to say it is good that limbo has been deleted from the file folders, it has been erased from the landscape of the afterlife. But the word limbo will stay in colloquial lingo. It means neither here nor there.

The limbo of the afterlife had nothing to do with the limbo dance that originated in the Caribbean. Limbo rock comes from Jamaican English limba or to bend (from the English limber). Limbo rock we all know. It uses a stick below which dancers must bend backwards as they proceed. Limbo dancing is believed to have started from cramped and smelly slave ships that brought Africans to the Americas.

That was not limbo, that was hell. But the real hell is where slave traders—the modern-day ones, specially--should go.

The scent of coconuts

One should indulge in life’s little pleasures even while the world goes berserk and the ugly side of politics is constantly spoiling the landscape of our lives. Food is comfort and we look to so-called comfort food, the food that brings back pleasant memories and feelings, when things go awry.

It was good to savor the flavors and scents of the food of Bicolandia last Monday at the EDSA Shangri-la where the two-week (Oct. 23 to Nov. 3) Gayon Food Feast is now going on. This is being co-promoted by the Department of Tourism’s Bicol Regional Division under Maria O. Ravanilla.

Gayon is short for magayon (Bicol for beautiful) and where the name of the awesome Mayon Volcano of Albay is supposed to have come from. Extend the suffix and you have magayunon or very beautiful; magayunonon means very, very beautiful. You could extend the suffix some more to push the meaning to the extreme.

My verdict? The food was not just masiram (delicious), it was masiramon (really delicious). I say this not because my cousin Didette N. Peralta (who co-owns and runs Legazpi City’s Small Talk Café) was one of the guest cooks but because the flavors did Daragang Magayon (the maiden in Bicol legend) proud. And I judged the spread as it was—somewhat fusion cuisine--not as the home cooked, slow-food fare that purists might pine for. There was pasta pinangat, for example, and Bicol express served on tomato halves. Quite neo-, those. But the real pinangat was there in its coconut-y glory.



I am only half-Bicolana (and half Ilongga) so my judgment would not be that of a true-blue Bicolana. Special guest Honesto General, author of “Coconut Cookery” and an excellent cook, would make a better judgment. I only enjoyed what I ate.

Albay congressman Edcel Lagman who delivered the post-prandial speech had fire in his mouth while speaking about the triumvirate of Bicol cuisine—sili (hot pepper), pili and coconut. These, I suspect, are what bring out the oragon (that X factor) in Bicolanos. But more than the other two, I think it is the coconut that really defines Bicol cuisine. Pili nut sweets (for desert) could be absent, and the sili’s fire could be toned down, but the coconut has to be there in the right amount.

Speaking of coconuts, a new book on the wonder tree of all time was recently launched. “Coconut: The Philippines’ Money Tree” by Dr. Renato M. Labadan tells all there is to know—about the coconut. Root, fruit, flower, palm, juice, oil, trunk, husk, shell—and how Filipinos could squeeze and use all of its parts in order to earn from this tree of trees.

Last year, I wrote about Dr. Conrado Dayrit, his coco-discoveries and his book “The Truth About Coconut Oil: The Drugstore in a Bottle”. The book focused on virgin coconut oil (VCO) which is claiming its rightful place as food ingredient and medicine after the decades of badmouthing and blacklisting done by the West in order to promote its own oils.

Labadan’s coffeetable-type book weighs more than two kilos (the case included), or the weight of about two coconuts. It didn’t have to be this heavy and this big, if you ask me. It contains a lot of photographs and information on how the coconut could work wonders for this country and its people. It’s easy to read but, as I said, too heavy to hold on one’s lap.

Here’s peek. Labadan traces the original home of the coconut and then concludes that the weight of evidence points to Southeast Asia. He then goes on to the beginning of the development of a viable industry during the Spanish colonial times.

And what is the original coconut? Alas, no one coconut can claim “genetical purity” because of cross-pollination and hybridization. Labadan does classify the many different types now in existence, the makapuno included.

While many are going loco over coco virgin oil or VCO as food and medicine, little is known about coconut nectar. Labadan introduces the recently discovered uses of this sap. No, it is not the coconut water from the fruit. Coconut nectar is the concentrated sap from the inflorescence or the coconut “flower”. I know the tuba comes from this inflorescence, but the nectar that Labadan talks about is a discovery of Dr. Gerino Macias who invented an apparatus similar to that of a honeybee that processes honey. The resulting viscose coconut nectar is touted to be some kind of wonder food and cure-all too, like the VCO.

The fruit is, of course, the crowning glory of this money tree. The meat or the “white solid endosperm” of the fruit is the part that is most used as food. (The ubod, the nectar and the tuba come from other parts.) By itself, this edible part of the fruit can build an industry, as in the case of VCO, cooking oil, copra, nata de coco, and now, coco-diesel for vehicles.

Now fiber nets from the husk are the rage especially for environmental purposes, that is, to prevent erosion. Recently Justino Arboleda won the BBC’s World Challenge prize and the Global 100 Eco-Tech Award for his coconet.

Labadan does not forget to take up the controversial, coco-levy funds collected in billions from poor coconut farmers during the Marcos regime that, until now, has not been fully accounted for.

There’s more to this book than just the tree, its fruit and its many parts. A whole chapter is devoted to the coconut farmer and another chapter on the coconut industry and the major players. And more importantly how they coconut industry could be improved.

Labadan (rmlabadan@yahoo.com) is an agriculturist. He finished at the University of the Philippines and Cornell University in the US. This 1970 TOYM awardee also has a master’s degree in business administration from the Ateneo University.

Yunus: ‘Poor women are good credit risk’

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) is on Cloud 9 because 1984 Awardee for Community Leadership, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, is this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. The RMAF was 22 years ahead of the Nobel in recognizing Yunus’ work among the poor.

The Dalai Lama received his RM Award (Asia’s Nobel, so-called) in 1959, 30 years before his Nobel in 1989. Mother Teresa got her RM Award in 1962, 17 years earlier than her Nobel.

This means that Asia, the RMAF of the Philippines in particular, is not behind, it is in fact way ahead, in recognizing its own home-grown heroes and, yes, long before these persons have become familiar names in the world.

Yunus was only 44 when he received the RM Award in 1984, one of the youngest in RMAF’s roster of laureates. Now there is an RM award for Emergent Leadership for those below or on the threshold of 40. Yunus was quite surprised that he was chosen at that time because Grameen banking (microfinance) for the poor was not yet a byword. This is what Yunus said in 1984:

“I still cannot make out how the trustees of this prestigious foundation could notice a small effort such as ours, which has reached only some 100,000 in a population of more than 90 million. (As of July 2006, the population is 147.3 million - Inquirer Research Dept.) I can only admire the foundation for taking a big risk in choosing me…”



Because of the Nobel Peace Prize, Yunus will surely be quoted very often these days, listened to, queried. His words and work will be dissected.

Let’s listen some more to what this economist, said in 1984. Do we recognize a glimmer of the grand possibilities?

“As a student of social science, I could not feel comfortable with what I learned. When it came to applying this knowledge in solving real problems, it appeared toothless. I continued to get a feeling that the knowledge that we present in the discipline of social science is replete with pretensions and make-believe stories…

“Social scientists enjoy being up above in the sky and having a panoramic bird’s-eye view over a wide horizon…The view from the sky without the supportive close-up view from the ground merely encourages you to take recourse to daydreaming.

“Not all people have access to a bird’s-eye view. Poor people don’t. They are too busy eking out a survival for themselves with their worm’s-eye view…Poverty can be better understood if we look at it from the ground level at a very close range. Then, instead of generating billions of words about it, we can find ways to cope with it.

“Poverty is not caused by a person’s unwillingness to work hard or lack of skill. As a matter of fact, a poor person may work very hard—even harder than others—and he has more skill and time than he can use. He languishes in poverty because he does not receive the full worth of his work. Under the existing social and economic institutional arrangements, someone else always comes in between and skims off the income that was due to him. The existing economic machinery is designed in such a way that it allows this process of grabbing to continue and gather strength every day, so that the earnings of others can make a handful of people richer and turn a large number of people into paupers.

“A poor person cannot arrange a larger share or return for his work because his economic base is paper-thin. If he can gradually build up an asset-base, he can command a better share. Land to the landless will help build up this base. There are other forms of assets that will improve his economic situation. Credit, for example; it is a liquid asset. The recipient of credit can decide which particular tangible form he will convert this asset into…With financial resources at his disposal, an individual is free to build his own fate with his own labor. Nothing can match the spirit of a free human being…

“Removal of poverty must be a continuing process of creation of assets by the poor at a steady rate. Poor people know what they must do to get out of the rut. But the people who make decisions refuse to put faith in their ability…”

For more on Asia’s greats like Yunus, read RMAF’s series of books on the RM awardees, “Great Men and Women of Asia”. I found writing some of the stories in the books very inspiring because many of these great men and women were just like you and me when they set off.

I had the chance of listening to Yunus when he was here in 2001 to address “Grameen replicators”. He mentioned then that the RMAF award helped boost the microfinance movement that he started in the 1970s in a small village in Bangladesh through small loans to the poor, especially women. The Grameen way has since taken root in many parts of the world.

When asked why Grameen has a bias for women, Yunus replied: “Because women are good people. Poor women are a good credit risk, even in the most difficult economic times. They are the best judge of their own situation and they know best how to use credit when it is available, especially when supervised and encouraged by their peers. Small business loans pave the way to breaking their poverty cycle. In just one program operating in Southern Luzon, over 1,000 women and their families crossed the poverty line between 1997 and 2000.”

The Grameen-style microfinance movement is growing in the Philippines. In 2001 repayment rate was at 93 percent. Interested in mocrofinancing? Contact Philnet at philnet@mozcom.com.

Microfinance is not in the curriculum of business schools. Maybe it is learned first and best in the school of the heart. And on the ground, like Yunus did.

Sikat

The Catholic Church in the Philippines sets aside the second Sunday of October as Indigenous People’s Sunday and October might as well IP month.

An NGO that has been working for almost 10 years for the education of IPs is Sikat or Schools of Indigenous Knowledge and Tradition or Silungan ng Katututbong Kaalaman at Tradisyon. The Filipino word sikat means shine and when the accent is placed on the second syllable, it means celebrity, a person of note and achievement. Sikat is a non-church, non-profit, non-stock movement that aims to make the IPs find their rightful place, their place of pride, under the sun through education. Not just any education but an education that is attuned to the IP’s way of life—their culture, language, livelihood, habitat, and everything that defines them. This means developing a “culturally responsive education for indigenous peoples”.

Behind Sikat and supporting it every step of the way is the Asian Council for People’s Culture (ACPC).

In December 1997, a group of people from various regions and faiths gathered for the first National Trainers’ Training in order to share and build visions for a national network of cultural workers and community educators. That meeting gave birth to Sikat and the network of schools.

Al Santos, Sikat executive director and founding member says: “In establishing community-owned culturally responsive schools, we create linking pathways for the promotion of indigenous education among various tribes across the country.”



Community-owned means the people build the schools with their hands, run them, staff them and, most of all, help in making a curriculum that is suited for the IP children. This does not mean isolating themselves or setting themselves apart, this means strengthening their children’s rootedness so that they do not become alienated from their origins. Then they could face the rest of the world with pride—pride in their ancestry and everything that nurtured them—even sharing indigenous knowledge and wisdom that many of them had been ashamed of or wished to forget.

There are now dozens of Sikat schools all over the country. These are mostly in the primary level. While there are now schools in the tertiary level (not Sikat’s) that offer specialized curricula for IPs and those planning to work among IPs, there is no way for an interested IP to get to this level without going through the primary level.

But how could IP communities have primary schools in the highlands if there are no trained teachers? Who is the teacher who will walk through forests primeval and across mountains to get to a remote place on earth? Is it worth it? You bet it is, or must be, for I have met teachers who’ve done this. But they are few. And how long could they last?

One of the solutions to the dearth of teachers is to get trainable ones from the communities themselves. They need not be college degree holders or board passers. Training such teachers is what Sikat has done successfully. Why wait forever for someone with a teacher’s diploma to fall from the sky? The children are growing up fast and can’t remain ignorant and illiterate forever.

In Sikat schools the children learn not only the three Rs but also about themselves. The Sikat school is a strong pillar for empowerment. It transmits knowledge crucial to the survival of the tribes. It encourages students to learn their own languages and protects their identity and rights as IPs. It sustains community cycles and events. In others words, the Sikat school is woven into the cultural fabric of the IP community.

Making this work is not an easy task. It involves tri-partite efforts and involvement of the IP community, the NGO and the local government. Local government units (LGUs) have been responsive, Santos says, and why not, it is their constituencies that would benefit from this type of innovative education. Needless to say, they also need to put in local funds to make Sikat happen.

Now the problematic part. While Sikat education could well serve the learning needs of the IPs up to a certain point, how do they move on from there if their teachers have not gone through the regular qualifying exams and their schools aren’t accredited? Although teachers have gone through Sikat training modules and are definitely well equipped to teach, many have not gone beyond elementary or high school. How will their students go to the next level, high school or college, if the Department of Education has not accredited these schools?

This is what is being worked out, Santos points out. The DepEd really needs to address this concern.

There are IP communities that are not so remote, whose children have access to regular schools. Despite their poor and special background, these children have adjusted and made it to the mainstream. But by going mainstream so early, how much of their sense of roots have they lost and exchanged for what is alien?

Sikat does not merely address the problem of education, it is blazing a trail for the IPs to be educated through a rich and meaningful way. I couldn’t help thinking, well, the farther the purer, but then one can’t remain isolated in this day and age. Education and integration is the key, but integration with pride and dignity. But preservation, too, of timeless wisdom and knowledge that are as old as the hills.

Donate old phone books to the women of the Alay Kapwa Christian Community that makes beautiful bags and baskets out of them as a means of livelihood. Pls. drop them at the home of Maring Feria on 3 Taurus Bel-Air 3, Makati. Tel. 8956234.

Billboards from hell(2)

There’s a (2) up there because I used the same title last year when the Anti-Billboard Coalition (ABC) whipped up a storm. Many storms have come and gone since that time and billboards have continued to collapse on highways, vehicles, transport systems, structures and human beings except on those who put them up.

Someone suggested I use the title “Death by billboard”.

The man who instantly died after he was hit by a falling billboard was probably still being embalmed when this outdoor advertising executive said on national TV something like this: Milenyo was a strong typhoon and things standing were expected to fall, among them trees, electric posts and billboards. If we ban billboards, he said, we might as well ban trees and electric posts.

Ano raw? Trees aren’t marijuana. You don’t have to be a true-blue greenie to know the basics about trees. And electric posts? Many have contributed to the ugliness of the metropolis because of the entangled wires they weave around them but they stand there for a purpose. And we expect our power providers to someday do away with unsightly wiring.


But the billboards? The mushrooming thousands of billboards on top of buildings, along roads and superhighways? And throw in the smaller ones that hang on lamposts, columns and street railings. What purpose do they serve?

I do believe in advertising but not in the use of billboards and hangings that litter the landscape. Sure, advertising adds to the vibrancy of the economy, and if well done, informs and educates consumers about product choices, it increases sales volume and helps lower prices, etc. As an industry it also gives jobs to a lot of people. But it could go overboard in content and method and become exploitative, offensive, destructive and dangerous.

The billboard overkill is an example. Now every outdoor ad agency and its clients want a piece of that wall, that roadside, that skyline, even the blue above.

I suspect that if billboards were banned altogether, manufacturers would be happy, equally happy. This would level the playing field, so to speak. Manufacturers, all of them, no longer need to spend for that kind of advertising. Hey, there’s still print, TV, radio, word of mouth, events sponsorship, even charity and social advocacy.

We’d just have a handful of losers—those who invested their money in the uglification of the environment and those who work for them. But there is life down the road when it is all cleaned up just as there should be life after jueteng.

EDSA is not my regular route but when I drove through there a few days ago, I was aghast at how cluttered it has become. No more piece of blue sky in one’s peripheral vision, just the darkening horizon. The whole beyond has been obstructed by rows upon rows of screaming ads that are not just there to be seen but to be read as well. Oh yes, I’ve caught myself reading some of those ads while driving. Careful, those billboards may not flip over but your vehicle might.

This brazen assault on your senses just blows your mind to billboard hell. How have we come to this?

Last year I received a letter from a reader who complained that the letter M (which stands for Mary) on the Antipolo Marian shrine has been obstructed by the giant M or twin arches of McDonald’s. Well now, what do you say to the church officials who run the San Carlos and Guadalupe Seminaries along EDSA who have allowed their haven of green (for the motorists’ eyes) to be taken over by the advertisers? How many pieces of silver did they earn?

Billboards were once made of hand-painted metal sheets. Now they are made of plastic sheets that come out of giant printing machines. I once saw a team preparing to hoist up a billboard. The sheets flowed like a river and covered the whole sidewalk.

This reminded me of the European artist Kristo who covered entire structures with canvas and then had them photographed. He mummified entire landscapes for the duration of his outdoor exhibition. He was making a statement while the population watched in awe and puzzlement. Our advertising and billboard industries leave nothing for the imagination.

Someone should do a Kristo and use discarded tarpaulin from billboards and wrap an entire landscape. That would be a statement.

The issue now against billboards is not just their content. It is their proliferation. It is the inconsiderate, wanton, crude, rude desire to call attention and to sell. Manufacturers plaster giant pictures of their products everywhere. Cell phones, garments and accessories, food, health and beauty products, real estate, accessories, hardware. Just as guilty are the self-styled evangelists, politicians, movie promoters and TV stations.

The bucolic and beautiful landscape in the provinces that beckon people home—it too is now groaning under the weight of billboards. We have become a billboard wasteland.

Once upon a time billboards stood parallel to the highway. Now they are placed on a diagonal position or on a right angle to the road so that they can face, overwhelm and distract motorists.

The billboard disease has spread to the rest of society. Now, everybody just hangs or nails anything on an empty space. ``Tubero’’, ``room 4 rent’’, ``lady bedspacer’’ and ``manghihilot’’ announcements have been around for a long time but now you have ``Happy Fiesta’’ and ``Congratulations graduates’’ from councilor so-and-so.

As of last year, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago already had two bills pending. Senate Bill 1714, the ``Anti-Billboard Act’’ seeks to regulate the placement of billboard signs. SB 1668 is ``an act prohibiting officers from claiming credit through signage announcing a public works project.’’

Billboard advertising—big or small—should be banned altogether.