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Commentary>Political vision: The challenge for Jamaica in 2008By Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist |
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Everyone knows India is one of the likely next superpowers - at least so the globalised hype tells us.
Yet this kind of positive thinking about India's prospects was not always the prevalent view. Indeed this widespread or prevailing thought may not reflect the reality even of today's India.
Sir John Strachey, senior official of the British Indian Raj, member of the prominent family associated with politics, philosophy, economics and colonial control of India among other things, very confidently and, grandly opined that the territory's diverse states simply could not possess any sort of unity, physical, political, social or religious. Strachey, clearly, was wrong: India today is a unified entity and a rising global power. Even so, it continues to defy explanation. India's existence ... has also been an anomaly for academic political science, according to whose axioms cultural heterogeneity and poverty do not make a nation, still less a democratic one. Yet India continues to exist. "Publisher's Weekly's reviewer makes these points in discussing Ramachandra Guha's India After Ghandi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy that:
"India's continuing existence results from its unique diversity and its refusal to be pigeonholed into such conventional political models as Anglo-American liberalism, French republicanism, atheistic communism or Islamist theocracy. India is proudly sui generis, and with August 15, 2007, being the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, Guha's magisterial history of India since that day comes not a moment too soon."
Are We Going Wrong?
Guha's work is indeed magisterial, perceptive in analysis and understanding of the Indian path to democracy and approach to economic prosperity. This history of India, Ghandi's and his successors' influence, its democratic, cultural and economic path encourages one to look at Jamaica for 2008 and beyond, during its 46th year of independence, after failed attempts at Federation, after Norman Manley, Eric Williams, Grantley Adams and Arthur Lewis, and wonder, how, what, where, do we, are we going wrong?
Jamaica has had no attempt at any kind of theocracy whether Islamist or Rastafarian but has tried democratic socialism.
And whereas some have flirted with atheistic communism - whether as youthful exuberance or simple hunt for power - our general path may be described as a variant of Anglo-American liberalism.
Perhaps we might wish to use Carl Stone's preference "Clientelism" or even grope around for a concept that marries paternalism with corruption, tying it in with Jamaica's peculiar form of hostile divisions, exemplified by the 'garrison constituency'.
Yet, we have neither ultra large opposing blocks of religious adherents nor multiple languages and the extent of poverty associated with some regions of India.
Our problems seem minuscule in comparison. We have a two party democracy but the fruits of economic development, to the extent we might claim such, eludes the mass of our population.
Why? For India, Guha credits Ghandi and Nehru with a lot that is positive today. Can we say the same for our politics and politicians?
Norman Manley agreed to a referendum even though he must have figured such a move could well lose him power. Yet, he did, he was a democrat with a vision for Jamaica - some might call it an elitist one with a smattering of populism.
His and the early Eric Williams, Adams and in general that cohort of West Indians had strong, grand visions for a democratic and economically prosperous independent Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados.
Co-requisites
Among the desiderata they coveted were freedom, independence and equity somehow defined and delivered. The foremost economists who make poverty a study all agree, and it is perhaps self-evident that freedom and robust institutions, fairly administered, are in general if not prerequisites, at least co-requisites for economic advance.
But how do we guarantee freedom? What do we mean by freedom? Ultimately, how do we even define it? Seems as if we have lost both the grand vision and its pursuit. We, therefore, cannot find the path to everyday demonstration of freedoms that lead every man and woman to value pride in work and its fruits.
Farfetched as it may seem, Jamaica's economic woes are not economic at all.
They have to do with the social and political infrastructure in which they are played out. They have to do with the influence and selfish interests of very few special interest groups, denudation of social and institutional structures that were never completely built and commissioned in the first place, and a politics that avoids difficult decisions for apparent short-term advantage.
How do we solve this problem, or rather set of problems? Perhaps we should convene a constitutional change commission to look into all these issues for comprehensive review and presentation to the people.
Tinkering with bits and pieces shall provide immediate relief, but for the long run there must be some changes that run deeper.
Our political leaders have to develop that vision and commitment to the nation and its possibilities that mark the likes of Ghandi and Mandela and Tutu. Are we up to this or not?
wilbe65@yahoo.com