Reeds could be used as pens. Traditional palm leaf and bamboo paper could be grown according to need in each village, eliminating paper import costs. Small, locally designed planing mills could take the heavy labor out of creating flat wooden blackboards. Small chalk stick presses are needed so teachers can have a ready supply from native chalk. Hardwood trees must be planted to be harvested as strong materials for making machines like chalk presses and planing mills. These are just the technologies needed to promote writing. Developing their like will give villagers more of a feeling that the system of education belongs to them. They must feel it is worth putting energy into, since education cannot be supported by the government- there is no money for it. Many of these technologies can be developed at the provincial level by Lao research and distribution centers like the one in Vientiane. Unfortunately, there are too few Lao technicians and only so many Lao teachers who can promote this kind of work. And the big aid organizations almost never fund projects requiring such care, although they often admire them. More native teachers would eventually emerge if the program developed relevance to village life. But the pace of this kind of program, if done properly, might be too slow. Natural technologies often do not develop soon enough to keep people from becoming addicted to advanced world-market technologies. In one case, the women's project tried to introduce bicycle powered rice mills, but the women insisted on small gasoline powered ones they had seen in larger towns. Another project created sturdier roofs from cement laced with vegetable fibers. Now the price of both gasoline and cement have soared and the villagers are feeling the pressure. There are too few deeply integrated, sustainable aid projects in Laos. Most aid projects hasten cultural dissolution. For example, the World Bank lo~med Laos the money to create an expensive dam to produce electricity to sell to Thailand. Money earned from the dam is now used exclusively to pay some of the interest on the loan. In addition to building the dam, the World Bank project also relocated the villages in the way of Progress and helped to reestablish their subsistence agriculture. The relocation was done on a tiny budget- which might be why it worked tolerably well. The World Bank would never consider doing efficient, small scale work with the money it allocated for the dam itself. The Bank's role is to encourage national dependence on global finance. Cultural Demolition Even with the World Bank's help, Laos cannot become another Philippines- the varied geography and the expense of exporting goods will limit the depth of change. But Laos could return to much the way it was before socialism. The pre-1975 government was corrupt and comWinter/Spring 1991 RAIN Page 15 pletely supported by foreign aid. When this aid was withdrawn in 1975, the new government had no choice but to try to create food self-sufficiency in the section of lowland Laos, around Vientiane, that had become dependent. They encouraged agricultural alternatives to dependence on expensive foreign petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. In a few years self-reliance returned to these areas. The new government started a literacy program that was internationally respected, and their development of international awareness was needed for a people trying to understand why the old government had tried to destroy them. A program was begun to make the larger towns selfreliant in textiles, a shuttle-loom in every provincial capital. This effort was derailed when international trade opened up before the completion of the project; now in the bigger towns people often prefer the new, inexpensive imported goods from places like the Philippines. The government's obsession with centralization keeps it from seeing the advantages of a more robust selfreliance at the village level, such as village self-education. The government theoretically wants to eventually dismantle family self-reliance because it is viewed as inefficient, not adding to foreign trade. The insensitivity of the larger aid projects lends credibility and money to the dismantling of Laos' natural economy. The West has encouraged Laos to go into debt to modernize. Governments that go into development debt are so financially strapped that they pull back resources from ministries like education and health. These are then heavily funded and influenced by western aid agencies, usually to the benefit of opportunists in the government. Laos had a very idealistic leadership until very recently. S orne of the leaders' ideas were destructive in Laos, such as agricultural cooperatives. But the revolutionary leaders genuinely wanted to help their people, and when the wholescale bombardment of Indochina ended in 1975, the Lao needed help. The new government's models were not so good, but their hearts were in the right place. Things have changed since 1986 with the coming of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR) version of glasnost. Politicians from the old, pre-1975 leadership have gradually come back to Laos, and with western money are quietly buying their way back into power. Every one of the big aid programs or loans seems to end up fostering opportunism, shifting concern away from majority needs, and establishing channels for US influence. These have always been the goals of US policy. The United States has maintained an embassy in Vientiane under socialism, unusual among Indochinese allies of Vietnam: a remnant of a left-right split in the politics of the royal family that gave the new government some legitimacy among diplomats. But the US never offered reparations or aid to civilians they had bombed. The political dealings with Laos were invariably insensitive. In a nation struggling to keep people alive, with a devastated countryside, with anti-personnel mines killing
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