Reflections on august

• March from emancipation to independence eventful, exciting and even inspiring.
• Road from independence to sustainability proving to be long, winding and elusive.
• Independence also about the responsibility and obligation to manage our collective emancipation well.
• How can it be development if people not developing themselves one by one, family by family?

August is the month in which, during a period of 30 days, we move from the observance of emancipation to the celebration of independence. This fact alone should make August a month worthy of reflection.

Emancipation commemorates the legal end of slavery in the then British West Indies, and the character of the occasion is one which appropriately emphasises the celebration of human freedom.

Inevitably, it has become an occasion for the exploration and reinterpretation of history, an opportunity for the assertion of ethnic identity and pride and, more lately, an opportunity to connect directly with the continent of Africa and the countries of Africa, to look to opportunities for ongoing collaboration in terms of trade, investment, cultural ties and development.

This year we will celebrate on August 31 our 46th anniversary of independence. That means that our 50th anniversary of independence in 2012 is four years away. This is something to look forward to. It should be an opportunity to take stock of what we have created and achieved over the last five decades. However, it would be useful at this time to reflect a little bit on where we are as a people and where we are headed in the world.

There can be no doubt that the voyage across the Middle Passage was long, hard and brutal. The journey from enslavement to emancipation could perhaps be described as slow, demoralising and debilitating. I don’t think that it would be wrong to describe the march from emancipation to independence as eventful, exciting and even inspiring.

But how should we describe the road from independence to sustainability on which we are now embarked? From what is available as evidence today, I would say that the road from independence to sustainability is proving to be long, winding and elusive.

There can be no denying that T&T has done well comparatively speaking. There are about 50 countries in the world that are classified as least developed countries and T&T is not among them. In terms of the human development index, 58 countries are doing better than us but we can argue that we are also doing better than 118 countries that are also ranked.

I suppose that one could conclude that even if our achievement is not enviable, it is certainly respectable and cannot easily be dismissed. In a world which competes through the entrepreneurs it creates, the efficient and innovative businesses that it develops, and the strength of the institutional capacity which it builds, we are ranked 84th in competitiveness.

What does this really mean for us? Where do our neighbours stand? Where do comparable nations stand? Does it matter that Barbados, St Kitts and the Bahamas are ahead of us in terms of human development? Or that Bermuda and the Cayman Islands are way ahead in per capita income? Or that Costa Rica is seen as a more significant, progressive country than T&T in the region and in the world?

One can argue that how one interprets our situation depends on whether one sees the glass as being half full or half empty. But even if we see the glass as half full, we still have to double our contribution to make it full and it is in this spirit that I would like to reflect on emancipation, independence and development in T&T.

Emancipation has to do both with individual liberation and collective consciousness. Bob Marley perhaps said it best when he sang about the need to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery—call it the habit of learned dependency, helplessness and the inability to think our way through our challenges both as individuals and as a collective.

If we cannot emancipate ourselves from bad habits acquired over time that now limit our imaginative capacity and our creative potential, then we are lost to the future and the future will be lost to us.

Independence is not about Independence Day. Independence Day in a country is usually commemorated to celebrate the larger meaning of becoming independent. Again, freedom is the key word or call it national emancipation.

In the first case it was the institution of slavery. In the second the bondage of colonial dependency. So independence is also about the freedom, emancipation and liberation for the people who constitute the nation.

However, independence is also about the responsibility and obligation to manage our collective emancipation well—to avoid internal collisions and to navigate the space required to create a place for our sovereign nation and our sovereign people in the world.

Development is about achievement and creation at an individual level and its cumulative impact as a community of citizens. The phrase “development is about people” is meaningful and real. How can it be development if people are not developing themselves one by one, family by family, community by community, citizens advancing everywhere in every sphere to advance the cause and objectives of the nation?

Of what value is emancipation if we cannot think and express our views freely? Of what value is independence if we cannot summon the sense of responsibility and the strength of resolve required to create institutions adequate to the challenge of guarding our freedom and protecting our democracy?

Of what value is development if it does not give sustenance and comfort to all our citizens? There is a way of measuring the value of these things which sometimes only seem like words without meaning. But these words—emancipation, independence, development—must mean some- thing to the individual citizen. And the meaning cannot be that there is no meaning.