IN ADVOCATING for its downscaling, we do not suggest for the disruption of the high momentum that Yaman-Gensan is now gaining exactly seven years after its launching in 2002. We do not intend to pull Yaman-Gensan from its high pedestal and bring it back to the gutter.

Our only thesis is that it is now time to expand the social functionality of Yaman-Gensan by mooring it strongly on the productive sectors in the city's goods-producing communities.

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Yaman-Gensan has already created a prominent mark in both domestic and global economic landscapes and, thus, our psychology should now focus on how to enhance it. But, at the same time, we must see to it that its economic umbilical cords connect strongly with the interest of the productive sectors in basic communities to make it more sustainable.

Yaman-Gensan is not only a development program; it is, foremost, a local economic doctrine, under which local economic policies must conform and all local structures must bow down to its majesty.

As a program, Yaman-Gensan is an economic festivity, centering on the development of the local economy. Specifically, it is intended to help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by popularizing their respective products in domestic and global markets.

Yaman-Gensan is also designed to develop and nurture the culture of entrepreneurship among the city's local residents, specifically the members of the basic communities. This is founded on a belief that, unless basic communities wrest control of economic power and their own local resources, genuine and equitable local economic development can never be attained.

The need to disperse economic power to basic communities as a means to achieve genuine development has been unequivocally articulated by City Mayor Pedro B. Acharon, Jr. in his various State of the City Address (Soca), and has been dominating the public pronouncements made by Rep. Darlene Magnolia R. Antonino-Custodio.

Thus, government offices, like the DTI and the OCEMCD, serving as frontliners in giving flesh to Yaman-Gensan, should lose no time to engage in praxis, so they may be able to conform to the development paradigm set forth by these two local political leaders, that is, to establish direct and strong connections between the SMEs and the productive sectors in goods-producing communities. This they should do, if we are to ensure that Yaman-Gensan would result to the economic empowerment of basic communities.

As we enjoy the activities lined up for this year's month-long Yaman-Gensan festivity, DTI and OCEMCD must, at the same time, engage in solemn retrospections of what they did in the past years and do some deep rethinking; lest, they would be choked in doldrums with yearly activities becoming more mechanical, if not static, causing public interest on Yaman-Gensan to unravel as it speedily disappears in the economic horizon.

By doing this, we could prevent the emergence of a situation where Yaman-Gensan becomes an instrument for the strengthening of an extractive and consumerist local economy which would bleed the city dry, further jeopardizing the disadvantaged sections of society.

Sadly, then, Yaman-Gensan becomes no more than an aid to inequality.