Anand Ram­lo­gan

A sad con­se­quence of the racial-based na­ture of our pol­i­tics is the ex­clu­sion of the "oth­er" ma­jor race from gov­er­nance.

"They" sim­ply have no say in how the na­tion's re­sources are dis­trib­uted, and do not en­joy any of the in­flu­ence that comes with high pub­lic of­fice. They nev­er seem to "fit the bill" for such ap­point­ments which are sup­pos­ed­ly made on mer­it. This glar­ing ab­sence at the top ex­plains why peo­ple iden­ti­fied with po­lit­i­cal jar­gon such as "alien­at­ed," "mar­gin­alised," "os­tracised" and "tol­er­at­ed." Po­lit­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion in our sys­tem car­ries a racial con­no­ta­tion and per­cep­tion if the vic­tim is of the "oth­er" tribe.

Hard da­ta to sub­stan­ti­ate racial im­bal­ances that can jus­ti­fy in­fer­ences of dis­crim­i­na­tion is very dif­fi­cult to ob­tain, as racial sta­tis­tics are not re­al­ly kept. Richard Thomas has tak­en the trou­ble to com­pile some sta­tis­tics about the eth­nic com­po­si­tion of the up­per ech­e­lons of state-owned com­pa­nies, and it paints a fright­en­ing pic­ture that shows that things have ac­tu­al­ly got worse when one com­pares the rel­e­vant da­ta on this is­sue in the 1980 re­port pre­pared by the Cen­tre for Eth­nic Stud­ies, UWI. I present this ta­ble as ev­i­dence of the po­lit­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion that is re­tard­ing the growth and de­vel­op­ment of our dear coun­try.

Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty: Out of 11, 2 (1 Ramesh Lutch­me­di­al, di­rec­tor; and 2 Ros­alind Chin­nia-Ra­madeen, deputy gen­er­al man­ag­er, (Op­er­a­tions, Crown Point). Caribbean Air­lines: Out of 8, 1 (1 Dr Shafeek Sul­tan-Khan, di­rec­tor). DFL Caribbean: Out of 13, 3 (1 Rod­ney Prasad, di­rec­tor; 2 Stephen Singh, di­rec­tor; and 3 Gilian Go­lah, se­nior man­ag­er (Cor­po­rate Ex­ec­u­tive Op­er­a­tions) and com­pa­ny sec­re­tary. E-TECK: Out of 12, 2 (1 Ne­sha Kochhar, vice-Pres­i­dent (Prop­er­ty Man­age­ment); and 2 Hen­ry Ku­mar, gen­er­al man­ag­er (ICT Project Im­ple­men­ta­tion); maybe a 3rd (Eu­gene Tiah, di­rec­tor).

FCB: Out of 25, 6 (1 Govind Ma­haraj, di­rec­tor; 2 In­ez B Sinanan, di­rec­tor; 3 Ram­cha­ran Kalicha­ran, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CMMB); 4 Li­onel Se­u­nar­ine, asst GM (Com­mer­cial Bank­ing); 5 Shi­va Man­raj, fi­nan­cial?con­troller (Fi­nance and Plan­ning); and 6 Har­joon Heer­alal, cor­po­rate man­ag­er (Group Corp Plan­ning) Namde­v­co: Out of 6, 1 (1 Cin­tra Per­sad, di­rec­tor) Na­tion­al Flour Mills: Out of 7, 2 (1 Ganesh Sa­hadeo, chair­man; and 2 Ross Alexan­der, di­rec­tor). Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny: Out of 16, 4 (1 Lisle Ramyad, di­rec­tor; 2 Win­ston Lal­la, di­rec­tor; 3 Re­bec­ca Ramd­hanie, vice-pres­i­dent (Fi­nance and In­for­ma­tion Man­age­ment Group); and 4 Prakash Saith, pres­i­dent (Na­tion­al En­er­gy Cor­po­ra­tion)

These sta­tis­tics pro­vide ir­refutable ev­i­dence about the ex­clu­sion of In­do-Tri­nis from state cor­po­ra­tions. The fig­ures are prob­a­bly no dif­fer­ent in the for­eign ser­vice, se­cu­ri­ty ser­vice and pub­lic ser­vice in gen­er­al. The re­verse is prob­a­bly true when the UNC was in pow­er. The pen­du­lum swung from one cor­ner to the next.?Can we ever re­alise that elu­sive dream of equal­i­ty and mer­i­toc­ra­cy? Some­thing for the re­form­ers of our con­sti­tu­tion to think about.