NOW AS WELL AS THEN: After fifty years

One of the high points of my career was when I overheard a colleague say that when he heard Marville speak about Barbados, he could hear how proud I was of my country. I was in Brussels and it was nearly three decades ago. Barbados was at 21 on the UN Human Development Index, just above Italy and below Luxembourg. Now we are nearly 30 points lower and countries like Singapore and Brunei have taken over the running. The Barrow effect was still in operation then.

 

What was so important about the work of our founding father was not only that he gave the country a new direction, removing racial discrimination, freeing up education and establishing a social platform for progress; it was also that he infused a new energy into our society. We had moved from being one of the poorest countries in the Anglophone Caribbean to the best off. We were on a new track that the national hero saw as leading in the direction of Singapore. That enthusiasm died not that long after his death, even though both Parties invoked his name.

 

The celebration is now over. Some of it – the musical extravaganza at the end, in particular – was great. As usual, we never mention in any of our celebrations our Amerindian forebears who left us the sweet potato and cassava, lots of fruit, which the English called apple of one sort or another, as well as barbeque and canoe or the pre-Columbian Africans who feature in our early name, Ichirouganaim, or the foods they left us like yams and guinea corn or the beautiful baobab tree in Queen’s Park. But then perhaps we were focussing merely on the last fifty years.

 

We have continued to make progress, but rather in the nature of baby steps than strides forward. One visible increase has been in the level of corruption within the society both at the public and private levels and an increase in selfish disregard for the country. There has also developed a dependency syndrome both at the personal and business levels that seem likely to side track future progress. Not only are the able – bodied holding out their hand, but the businessman is afraid of or averse to taking any risk and Government is being asked to ensure the element of risk.

 

This is not to say that we have not done well in a handful of areas, like tourism, for instance. However, even there we have concentrated more and more on traditional areas like the four s’s and neglected very potentially lucrative areas like diving. Egypt’s Red Sea coastline is still visited by avid divers in spite of the dangers associated with tourism in that country. We could have picked up on the partial flight from the Red Sea if we had a single diving entity with all the facilities for dealing with bends as well as instruction units for would be divers. Instead we have several small units, reflecting a Caribbean preference for one’s own small operation over sharing in a more profitable large operation with economies of scale. Government needs to have a look at an area like this. 

 

We are unlikely to become a large manufacturing hub, although we do quite well with rum, but there are other native industries that could be propelled into something like global importance. Take the hot sauce industry for instance. We have a series of small operators who seem never to have enough peppers to supply large demands. Why? Surely there is more than enough unused land in Barbados to be able to produce whatever scotch bonnets we need for the entire industry. Once again, why can’t we have all these small operators working as a single conglomerate producing in the most economical and effective manner with marketing done at a central level? Economies of scale have been the universal reality for quite a while now. We are going to have to aim at such unless we want to import everything.

 

There are some cultural habits that we need to keep and others we need to abandon as quickly as possible. We spend too much time away from work for one reason or other; we have too many holidays; we still have not done anything about zoning. We have cherished a tradition of mediocrity – promotion according to the length of time spent in an institution, for instance. Make it to the top on merit!

 

We also need to look carefully on how the present crop of Ministries function and determine how we need to change their structure to be better able to serve Barbados. I have already made a recommendation about the Ministry of Education. I could venture change too especially in areas where we spend masses of money and not necessarily within the Ministry itself, but in areas covered by it. We need to situate ourselves to be ready for not the next fifty years necessarily, but for the next ten!

 

We need to focus on innovation and innovators. Very often there are in areas where the country could gain serious advantages. We therefore need to listen to our young people as well as those older ones who still think innovatively. I once had a student who was making bio diesel, a product that is more environmentally friendly than the sulphur-filled product we import. She could not get Government to remove the restriction on cruise ships offloading their used cooking oil in Barbados.

 

Indeed, imported fossil fuel represents a greater spend than health or education. That is not necessary.  We have had BREA in place for too long now still to be short of solar energy as a normal commodity in Barbados. 

 

We should already have provided Government buildings with solar panels to reduce their dependency on imported oil. The University, the Houses of Parliament, The Prime Minister’s Office and the Water Authority pumping system should all be fuelled by renewable energy. 

 

That is what the future must look like. Energy, optimism and drive are characteristics that we must cultivate. We need to retain our friendliness and the hospitality that have served our tourism well. We need, as my father used to say, to get up and get. We need to abandon the old habits of wasting billions of dollars on bank accounts that provide nothing beyond a false sense of security and invest in our country. Hoarding and stealing merely turn the jealous eye on the hoarder and thief. A focus on doing things not only for oneself, but also for the community and country is what is now necessary.