Tony Fras­er

Un­doubt­ed­ly, there needs to be greater eq­ui­ty in a wide range of eco­nom­ic and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties than there is at present in this mul­ti-eth­nic and mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go; a so­ci­ety which has de­vel­oped along skewed colo­nial and neo-colo­nial lines. But as hint­ed at in last week's col­umn, for one in­di­vid­ual op­er­at­ing in one seg­ment of na­tion­al life to em­bark up­on this re-bal­anc­ing in a very nar­row and vul­gar man­ner, and to seek to do it with­out po­lit­i­cal, le­gal or any oth­er form of man­date from the pop­u­la­tion, can­not be in the in­ter­est of peace­ful, sta­ble and pro­gres­sive de­vel­op­ment. But now that the is­sue of im­bal­ance has been raised, al­beit in a most in­ap­pro­pri­ate man­ner de­signed mere­ly for po­lit­i­cal polemics, here, there­fore, are a few ques­tions, as­ser­tions and pro­pos­als for de­bate. The first as­ser­tion is there can be no nice dis­tinc­tion be­tween achiev­ing bal­ance in the pub­lic sec­tor while dis­re­gard­ing the pri­vate sec­tor. Tra­di­tion­al ar­gu­ments have been that the fo­cus has to be on the pub­lic sec­tor where pub­lic funds are spent. But are pub­lic funds not spent in the pri­vate sec­tor?

The an­swer must be-in large quan­ti­ties, as in­cen­tives to cre­ate jobs, build the econ­o­my and in­crease the pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty in gen­er­al. In­deed, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is al­ways clam­our­ing for the gov­ern­ment to con­struct the eco­nom­ic and so­cial in­fra­struc­ture for it to cre­ate win­ners. Con­tracts, in­cen­tives and the like for the pri­vate sec­tor, form part of gov­ern­ment spend­ing in the same man­ner as sup­port of the pub­lic sec­tor and trans­fers to state en­ter­pris­es. The re­al­i­ty of pub­lic re­sources be­ing sunk in banks and com­mer­cial fi­nance hous­es is well il­lus­trat­ed by the re­cent ex­am­ples of the Gov­ern­ment step­ping in to bail out Cli­co and CL Fi­nan­cial, the Hin­du Cred­it Union and a num­ber of cred­it unions and co­op­er­a­tives which in­vest­ed in the Cli­co ex­ec­u­tive in­vest­ment fund. The trad­ing sec­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go op­er­ates on the ba­sis of the re-dis­tri­b­u­tion of very pub­lic en­er­gy rev­enues. No busi­ness (eth­nic) com­pa­ny trad­ing and pro­duc­ing can do with­out the pa­tron­age from oth­er eth­nic en­claves, elim­i­nat­ing the no­tion that any one group has done it all by it­self with­out the in­put of the en­tire so­ci­ety in all its var­ie­gat­ed won­der­ful­ness and ca­pac­i­ty for pa­tron­age.

Trinidad and To­ba­go stu­dents ed­u­cat­ed at UWI and UTT en­joy the ben­e­fits of full schol­ar­ships paid for by the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go with pub­lic funds. Many oth­ers who go abroad do so part­ly, and in the in­stance of full schol­ar­ship win­ners, on the ba­sis of sub­stan­tial spend­ing by the Gov­ern­ment of pub­lic funds. The ex­am­ples abound of the fic­ti­tious di­choto­my be­tween pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors and the in­ad­e­qua­cy of fo­cussing on the spend­ing of the pub­lic sec­tor. But the point has been made: no one can say that achieve­ment of pro­fes­sion­al, tech­ni­cal and oth­er forms of skills and ed­u­ca­tion is done sole­ly on the ba­sis of in­di­vid­ual ca­pac­i­ty. There are very few, if any, busi­ness op­er­a­tions which come in­to ex­is­tence and sur­vive on the ba­sis of pri­vate cap­i­tal and en­ter­prise; in­di­vid­ual and spe­cial group ac­cu­mu­la­tion of wealth is con­tributed to by all.

It is non­sen­si­cal to talk about ex­clu­sive group in­dus­try and ef­fort re­turn­ing re­wards with­out the con­tri­bu­tion of oth­er groups in the so­ci­ety. Com­mer­cial banks, in­sur­ance com­pa­nies and oth­er fi­nance hous­es mo­bilise cap­i­tal from all groups and from the Gov­ern­ment. It ob­vi­ous­ly would be un­ac­cept­able for these in­sti­tu­tions to utilise the cap­i­tal gath­ered for the ben­e­fit of ex­clu­sive eth­nic and so­cial class groups. How­ev­er, that has been done and as Ryan point­ed out, vol­ume two of the study done by Ryan and La Guerre at the Cen­tre for Eth­nic Stud­ies dis­plays the ev­i­dence to sup­port such al­le­ga­tions made for decades by blacks and In­di­ans, es­pe­cial­ly those from the so­cial un­der­class. This means the so­ci­ety can­not mere­ly fo­cus on the po­lice ser­vice, the army and the coast guard; un­less of course there are spe­cial con­cerns that groups of in­di­vid­u­als may have that with an im­bal­ance ex­ist­ing at the high­er ech­e­lons of the se­cu­ri­ty forces, that im­bal­ance could be used against them.

As Ryan and La Guerre found in the ear­ly 1990s, there was an his­tor­i­cal im­bal­ance favour­ing Afros in the pub­lic ser­vice, al­though the gap was clos­ing. How im­bal­anced it may still be must be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and so­lu­tions found; rab­ble rous­ing will not do it. The im­bal­ance in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is quite glar­ing. A very small busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, con­sist­ing of very small mi­nor­i­ty groups in­clu­sive of the Syr­i­an-Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, the old French-Cre­ole class, eth­nic up­per class Afro and In­do-Trinida­di­ans and mem­bers of the Chi­nese busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, con­trols the large per­cent­age of the busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty. How is that im­bal­ance to be re­dressed? In­do-Tri­nis have in the last cou­ple decades been dom­i­nat­ing the med­ical pro­fes­sion; sure they do so in part on the ba­sis of dis­play­ing aca­d­e­m­ic bril­liance but the al­le­ga­tions of be­ing favoured for ad­mis­sion to the lo­cal med­ical schools have con­tin­u­ous­ly been made.

Will the cit­ing of a law school in Pe­nal al­low In­dos to hold an ad­van­tage in the le­gal pro­fes­sion? If there is a need to bal­ance op­por­tu­ni­ty should there not be a more cen­tral lo­ca­tion for one law fac­ul­ty to al­low equal ge­o­graph­ic ac­cess for all eth­nic and so­cial class groups? Are there not deep so­cial and aca­d­e­m­ic risks of sig­nal­ing that one school is for In­dos and the oth­er for Afros? That takes us to the pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem and the ex­pen­di­ture of pub­lic funds there which have his­tor­i­cal­ly favoured not mere­ly cer­tain eth­nic and so­cial class groups; but has al­so se­ri­ous­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ed against young peo­ple with oth­er kinds of abil­i­ties. There cer­tain­ly has been in­suf­fi­cient fo­cus and spend­ing of re­sources on de­vel­op­ing cur­ric­u­la and in­sti­tu­tions for chil­dren and young peo­ple with oth­er kinds of abil­i­ties and dis­po­si­tions. The trade union move­ment, bar a few unions and union lead­ers in cer­tain ar­eas of the econ­o­my, has been tra­di­tion­al­ly dom­i­nat­ed by Afro-Tri­nis. If In­dos were not in­clined to­wards trade union­ism, a spe­cial ef­fort must be made to have them un­der­stand the im­por­tance of hav­ing a ma­jor stake in in­dus­tri­al is­sues. These are mere­ly a few provoca­tive thoughts on bring­ing jus­tice and eq­ui­ty to this mul­ti-eth­nic, cul­tur­al and re­li­gious so­ci­ety.