Martin Henry JUST LOOKING around the Caribbean neighbourhood, Barbados has a per capita GDP of US$15,494; The Bahamas, $17,012; T&T, $8,964. Ours is $3,639. Even Guyana is a tad richer than we are on a per capita basis at $3,963!
Some very interesting stats on our CARICOM partner in forced under-development appeared in this newspaper on Monday, November 11. Guyana has one of the highest migration outflows in the world. The migration rate has jumped by 150 per cent over the last decade alone. And the current estimate is that over six persons per thousand of population are exiting annually and the number is expected to reach as high as 97 per thousand by 2010 at current rates of increase.
"Migration," the headline says, "threatens country's future." If you ask our brand-new Minister of Education what education is for, somewhere in the answer she is going to say education is for development. Whose development? The Economist magazine, whose frank pronouncements on Jamaica in the past have tended to arouse our righteous indignation, has tendered the provocative estimate that 75 per cent of Jamaicans with tertiary education have taken their education abroad. Give or take a few percentage points, the majority of tertiary grads have, in fact flown. And many of those who have not, constantly wonder why they have not.
Education for export. One of the sure signs of lost development potential is when economy and society fail to absorb and retain the paltry proportion of the population in whom investments have been made for tertiary education. The figure is under 10 per cent. Three-quarters of the output have migrated; the remaining quarter have trouble finding really productive, development-oriented work, and, increasingly, any work at all. When such small proportions of our population with higher education are throwing up surplus labour to go into the export market then we certainly have a serious development problem.
But lack of opportunity at home is not the only problem. Security and quality of life issues are major push factors. And they cripple effort, investment and productivity. Since 1990, the UNDP has been leading the way in measuring development by a basket of factors beyond the traditional GDP of the economists. While there are disagreements about particulars, the world has basically bought the concept of a composite human development index as a measure of development.
"The central message" of the very First Human Development Report in 1990 was "that while growth in national production (GDP) is absolutely necessary to meet essential human objectives, what is important is to study how this growth translates --- or fails to translate into human development." "Some societies", the 1990 HDR continued, "have achieved high levels of human development at modest levels of per capita income. Other societies have failed to translate their comparatively high income level and rapid economic growth into commensurate levels of human development".
The UNDP defines development as "a process of enlarging people's choices." The process encompasses health, life expectancy, knowledge as well as political, economic and social opportunities. As we started out noticing, migration patterns are a pretty good measure of people's perception of development. Human freedom, including free exchange in functioning markets, is vital for human development the reports keep hammering home. The 2000 report dealt exclusively with "Human Rights and Human Development."
When the Minister of National Security tells the nation that para-military gangs are threatening the nation's development it is a sobering admission in high places of reality long known on the ground. Security, stability, order, freedom of action, and the right to peacefully enjoy the fruits of one's labour and one's associations in community are so basic to development. Las May has been at it again. In his Sunday Gleaner (Nov 10) cartoon Minister of Agriculture, Roger Clarke is furiously watering a stub of sugar cane and commanding it to grow. And this against the news background of the worst sugar cane harvest in over 50 years.
MIGRATION RATE
The HDR 2001 discussed "Making New Technologies Work for Human Development." The impact of crime on agriculture is well established. Just as well the issue of The Sunday Gleaner with that cartoon carried a heavy focus on crime leading with "Brutal murders' and continuing "Peace talks cross party lines," "Spotlight on troubled communities," and "As the guns continue to bark." The contributions of the political parties to shegging up development from the days of Bustamante and Norman Manley is awaiting serious analysis by honest, courageous people. Mr. Seaga told us on the campaign trail that per capita GDP has hardly budged from what it was in the 1960s, nor has the literacy rate. The murder rate has however grown ten-fold.
And what is hardly known or mentioned is that the migration rate has been higher over the last decade than in the runaway days of the 1970s. It would really be interesting to see how the level of home ownership has changed between Independence and now. Government housing solutions propaganda suggests that the level of ownership has grown. When the destruction of housing stock by the tribal wars in what were previously prime residential areas but are now euphemistically labelled inner-city areas is factored in and the fact that perhaps one-third of the population are squatters, we may well be staring at a decline in the level of home ownership, or at best stagnation as in so many other things. Home ownership is a powerful index of development progress in a market-oriented society and a store of capital value for entrepreneurship, education and the creation of a real middle class. Cell phones, secondhand cars -- and even highways -- are much poorer indices.
We have done much better with extending life expectancy and in controlling infectious diseases. But trauma cases from violence and reckless accidents in a dangerous society are eating out the health budget. Our number on the most recent human development index of the UNDP/HDR is 86. Not bad out of 173 countries. The real tragedy is what might have been had we not squandered so much of our prospects. Just looking around the Caribbean, there are just a few countries ranking below us. Like the weather as the explanation for this year's disastrous sugar harvest, we have lots of nice little excuses.
Martin Henry is a communications consultant.
