The sto­ry be­hind the rag­ing protests of the last week is con­nect­ed to the his­toric ne­glect of rur­al ar­eas of the coun­try. It is the old for­mu­la for de­vel­op­ment in which pref­er­ence is giv­en to the ur­ban cen­tres while the "coun­try" re­mains with­out the ba­sics.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­ods of mas­sive in­take of rev­enue from crude oil and nat­ur­al gas, ur­ban ex­pan­sion fo­cused on the con­struc­tion of con­crete in­fra­struc­ture in build­ings, shop­ping malls, mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar apart­ment com­plex­es, de­cent enough in­fra­struc­ture of roads, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion links, schools, hos­pi­tals, 24-hour ac­cess to wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty. At the same time, those ge­o­graph­ic ar­eas away from the cen­tre were ig­nored, robbed of the kinds of qual­i­ty fa­cil­i­ties.

The un­fair­ness of the treat­ment in the Trinidad con­text is ex­ag­ger­at­ed by the fact that the wealth en­joyed in the ur­ban cen­tres is gen­er­at­ed in rur­al ar­eas such as Guayagua­yare, Ma­yaro, Point Fortin and Fyz­abad.

Dur­ing the reign of "King Sug­ar" the cen­tral plains and the sug­ar-grow­ing parts of the deep south suf­fered the same fate.

Towns­peo­ple and vil­lagers who through ex­tra­or­di­nary dili­gence re­ceived a sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion usu­al­ly mi­grat­ed to the lo­cal cen­tres for a ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion (many went abroad and nev­er re­turned) and them­selves stayed in the ur­ban sprawl to earn a liv­ing and de­vel­op their fam­i­lies. Then there was the oth­er cat­e­go­ry of rur­al res­i­dent, train­ing or not, who chased af­ter op­por­tu­ni­ties in the cities with many neg­a­tive con­se­quences.

That has been the his­tor­i­cal pat­tern al­most every­where. Re­cent­ly it was an­nounced by the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment that the pop­u­la­tions of the cities and large town cen­tres have for the first time out­num­bered those in rur­al Chi­na.

As re­port­ed by the Guardian, the protests have been hap­pen­ing in Siparia, Ce­dros, Moru­ga, Tabaquite, Bar­rack­pore, Rio Claro and oth­er towns and vil­lages in the "coun­try." The protests have not been over Cepep jobs or the need for HDC apart­ments, but rather about the ab­sence of wa­ter in taps, about dirt tracks which were once roads, land­slips, the di­lap­i­dat­ed con­di­tion of 100-year old schools, and, most of all, emp­ty promis­es made by cam­paign­ing politi­cians.

The vil­lagers are say­ing that dur­ing their cam­paigns, politi­cians came cap-in-hand promis­ing the moon and stars, but they have now dis­ap­peared to the bright lights of the city and their fan­cy of­fices.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar kept her cam­paign pledge to es­tab­lish a Min­istry of the Peo­ple to look af­ter the needs of res­i­dents/cit­i­zens un­der­go­ing dif­fi­cult times. That min­istry and min­is­ter have been ac­tive find­ing caus­es and peo­ple sit­u­a­tions in need of tem­po­rary help, the fun­da­men­tal pat­tern of de­vel­op­ment in which the rur­al is left out of na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment plan­ning.

The protests have been about fun­da­men­tal as­pects of ba­sic needs: wa­ter, in­fra­struc­ture, elec­tric­i­ty, roads; de­vel­op­men­tal re­quire­ments such as health and ed­u­ca­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties, and eco­nom­ic as­pects of de­vel­op­ment such as agri­cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment, the lat­ter ne­glect­ed for gen­er­a­tions.

When peo­ple hit the streets, de­fen­sive Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and oth­ers be­gin to claim that res­i­dents are be­ing po­lit­i­cal the in­stance of Col­in Par­tap and the MPs who were trip­ping over them­selves to de­fend the PM's stew­ard­ship in Siparia be­ing good ex­am­ples.

Sure­ly the protests are po­lit­i­cal in the sense that the res­i­dents are ask­ing for po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions to be tak­en to fo­cus re­sources on their com­mu­ni­ties. In­deed, in his own pro­nounce­ment at the open­ing of a par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards en­cour­aged the pop­u­la­tion to re­claim "the promis­so­ry notes" giv­en to them by cam­paign­ing politi­cians.

In­stead of hid­ing be­hind po­lit­i­cal ex­cus­es, the Gov­ern­ment has to se­ri­ous­ly find a de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy which brings rur­al peo­ple and their hu­man con­di­tion in­to fo­cus. If not, it would sim­ply be where the next protest will take place.