Ira Math­ur

"The im­age of the Prime Min­is­ter bow­ing to the feet of the Pres­i­dent of In­dia was both ridicu­lous and re­veal­ing. The ges­ture has a spe­cif­ic ge­neal­o­gy: any­one sub­ject­ed to Bol­ly­wood tor­ture-forced to watch the movies- knows what it sig­ni­fies: an os­ten­ta­tious dis­play of peas­ant virtue which is nei­ther hum­ble nor in­no­cent. Any­one not schooled in this sign sys­tem would mis­un­der­stand this."-Ray­mond Ram­char­i­tar

Colum­nist at the Trinidad Guardian

"If you go there in your per­son­al ca­pac­i­ty you can do that but when you rep­re­sent all the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, do not go and kiss any­body's foot on my be­half. Its the ul­ti­mate sub­servience..su­pe­ri­or­i­ty, in­fe­ri­or­i­ty be­ing demon­strat­ed."-Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley

I hold both these men in high es­teem but I ab­solute­ly dis­agree with both Dr Row­ley and Mr Ram­char­i­tar in their as­sess­ment of the 30-sec­ond ges­ture of the Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar bend­ing down to touch the feet of the In­di­an Pres­i­dent, Prat­i­b­ha Patil when she was be­ing award­ed the Pravasi Bhariya Sam­man award. It was ab­solute­ly cor­rect. To do oth­er­wise would have been rude. In fact, the ges­ture en­deared this coun­try to all of In­dia. And no, I am not a Kam­la boot-lick­er, don't be­long to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty, no, I do not want a 'wok' in the PP Gov­ern­ment, and no, it's not be­cause I was born in In­dia. But let's go back be­fore we go for­ward.

Years back, like many stu­dents study­ing abroad, I was very po­lit­i­cal­ly ac­tive as a stu­dent in Cana­da and the UK. The world was much more black and white then. There were right and left wing ide­olo­gies, there was the cold war, and there was labour, the con­ser­v­a­tives and the lib­er­als. There were par­ties who be­lieved that the state need­ed to pro­vide a huge safe­ty net for the vul­ner­a­ble and there was Mar­garet Thatch­er. There were march­es against nu­clear weapons and against apartheid. There were the com­mu­nists, so­cial­ists, and cap­i­tal­ists. At least you knew who was who. And what you could ex­pect. And who, by vot­ing for a par­ty, you your­self rep­re­sent­ed. Back home, the po­lit­i­cal de­bate was not about how we could free our­selves of our colo­nial wounds, how all our peo­ple could re­alise their full po­ten­tial through de­vel­op­ment and ed­u­ca­tion. The ide­ol­o­gy of de­vel­op­ment was ab­sent in the cor­ri­dors of pow­er. It's as if we were suf­fer­ing from post trau­mat­ic stress and locked our­selves in­to the safe­ty of the pol­i­tics of protest and race. Your vote was nev­er free. It was tied to the race you hap­pened to be born in­to. As a jour­nal­ist you be­come a kind of a con­fes­sion­al and peo­ple every­where said they felt they be­longed to the down­trod­den race in­clud­ing the French Cre­oles (who feel in­vis­i­ble.)

Our bright­est stars, the late econ­o­mists Lloyd Best, Frank Ram­per­sad, William De­mas, with UWI, LSE, Ox­ford and Cam­bridge de­grees, and a deep sense of what it meant to be West In­di­an, could have led us in­to de­vel­op­ment but we were too busy protest­ing. Mas­sa day was done. In­di­an would rise one day. Odd­ly, on the ground, there was peace. Abroad, the In­di­an, African and Eu­ro­pean col­lec­tive­ly owned the roti, the steel pan and the mag­nif­i­cent sev­en flew the same flag at the Oval. Wined with the same ges­tures for Car­ni­val. Still, no de­vel­op­ment of fun­da­men­tal val­ues. The con­ver­sa­tion on every po­lit­i­cal plat­form, from every po­lit­i­cal par­ty, stayed the same, how cor­rupt they were, and how we need­ed to get them out. Who­ev­er came in­to pow­er was go­ing to have to deal with the IMF or the boom, or the slump, and just changed the name of the de­pen­den­cy pro­gramme they were go­ing to put in place. There are four gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple in this coun­try who have worked in pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tions of Cepep and Colour Me Or­ange. There was no de­vel­op­ment. Go back.

In 2002, when Win­ston Dook­er­an, then gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank, got econ­o­mist Prof Jef­frey D Sachs to speak at the bank's lec­ture se­ries he had al­ready been pro­nounced by The New York Times "the most im­por­tant econ­o­mist in the world". "What is glob­al­i­sa­tion? Sim­ply this," said Sachs. "The way coun­tries and peo­ple are in­ter­linked. HIV/Aids is a far more trag­ic ef­fect of glob­al­i­sa­tion than Sep­tem­ber 11. "Three mil­lion peo­ple die of HIV/Aids every year; 9,000 peo­ple die every day from it; 25 mil­lion are dead; it has af­fect­ed over 65 mil­lion peo­ple. It has left Africa iso­lat­ed, drown­ing in the cy­cle of dis­ease and pover­ty. One-sixth of the world, led by the US, is do­ing well with glob­al­i­sa­tion. Every­one else is be­ing left be­hind. "The premise that glob­al­i­sa­tion cre­ates equal op­por­tu­ni­ty is false be­cause some coun­tries haven't even had a chance to join the world econ­o­my.

Ge­og­ra­phy, cli­mate and his­to­ry have al­ready de­cid­ed which coun­tries have a head start. For ex­am­ple, coun­tries in which slav­ery was prac­tised, where there has been a wan­ton dev­as­ta­tion of nat­ur­al re­sources, are ab­sent in the glob­al­i­sa­tion process. Brain drain, dis­ease, so­cial in­sta­bil­i­ty, ge­o­graph­i­cal iso­la­tion, have left a fifth of the crip­pled world out of the race." What of Trinidad? He warned us then that de­spite our oil and gas, our per capi­ta in­come (US$8,000) is rough­ly half that of Bar­ba­dos (US$15,000) which in­vests far more in health and ed­u­ca­tion. De­vel­op­ment will come not by hang­ing on to oil prices, but by in­vest­ing in our peo­ple. He thought it "dis­mal" that 30 per cent of our sec­ondary stu­dents dropped out, that on­ly 10 per cent make it to uni­ver­si­ty, com­pared to US's 85 per cent, Eu­rope's 50 per cent.

I looked around the au­di­to­ri­um then at Crowne Plaza and scarce­ly any­one was lis­ten­ing. The next day's news car­ried more scan­dal, and with our im­po­tent rage went af­ter an­oth­er scape­goat which al­lowed us to bury our heads in the sands while pre­tend­ing we were deal­ing with se­ri­ous stuff. As a peo­ple we con­tin­ue to give our pow­er away to politi­cians and pub­lic fig­ures. What Sachs didn't say was that slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship de­stroyed our most im­por­tant re­source. By strip­ping a peo­ple of dig­ni­ty, sep­a­rat­ing fam­i­lies, co­erc­ing them to change re­li­gions, forc­ing them to ne­glect their na­tive lan­guages, for­get their vil­lages and cities by ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly cut­ting them off from their an­cient his­to­ries and oral tra­di­tions we were vir­tu­al­ly shorn of our hu­man­i­ty.

As it is the ne­glect of ed­u­ca­tion (400,000 among us are func­tion­al­ly il­lit­er­ate) has left us with­out a voice. Pow­er­less, de­pen­dent on hand outs, bereft of the soul of an­cient civil­i­sa­tions, or oral tra­di­tions that could com­fort us, make us self re­liant, hu­man­ise us, we turned blank, harsh and emp­ty giv­ing us among the high­est mur­der rates on the plan­et in a non war­ring coun­try. That's why a coun­try like Spain could have up to five mil­lion un­em­ployed but is prac­ti­cal­ly mur­der free be­cause the peo­ple still have in­tact fam­i­lies, a sol­id sense of their iden­ti­ty, and a broad ed­u­ca­tion where shame is not work­ing as a clean­er, (es­pe­cial­ly when one is qual­i­fied as an en­gi­neer) but de­pend­ing on some­one's hand­out. Back to the ges­ture. We need more. We need more hu­mil­i­ty. We need more re­spect for el­ders. We need to see joy in ser­vice. We need to be able to say please, thank you, sor­ry, af­ter you, keep our word; keep time, with­out feel­ing small. It could be a boost to our en­tire tourism and ser­vice in­dus­tries. Ser­vice should make us feel tall, not small.

She was not "kiss­ing" some­one's "foot". She was bend­ing down, as per­haps mil­lions of In­di­ans were do­ing all over In­dia, and some in Trinidad (my son, on leav­ing for uni­ver­si­ty bent down to touch his grand­fa­thers feet and was blessed) not to put her­self and her coun­try down, but to show that we have re­spect and ask for bless­ings from the most high­ly revered, non po­lit­i­cal woman in In­dia to­day, the Pres­i­dent, Prat­i­b­ha Patil. The PM was at the time be­ing award­ed with the Pravasi award for her achieve­ments in the In­di­an Di­as­po­ra as a "great grand daugh­ter" of In­dia. The tra­di­tion is that no one touch­es any­one's feet. The younger per­son shows re­spect for the wis­dom, love and sac­ri­fice of the old­er per­son. The el­der im­me­di­ate­ly holds the bow­ing younger by the shoul­ders, and hugs them in a ges­ture of bless­ing. There are many sim­i­lar African and Asian greet­ings. In­di­ans al­so put their hands on their hearts when be­ing com­ple­ment­ed or thanks. Hu­mil­i­ty is hu­man­i­ty.

That there is not just grace in hu­mil­i­ty in that ges­ture, but eco­nom­ics that al­lowed the world's largest democ­ra­cy to break out of pover­ty through its an­cient val­ues of hard work, hu­mil­i­ty and sac­ri­fice to be­come one of the most pow­er­ful in the world, then we will un­der­stand the true mean­ing of that ges­ture. The re­al pover­ty we are bat­tling now is the pover­ty of the spir­it which stands ready to de­stroy us. We have to re­gain our hu­man­i­ty from some­where. Why not here with a Prime Min­is­ter's ges­ture?