Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie

The so­lu­tion to the flood­ing prob­lem, the im­mi­gra­tion prob­lem, the land tenure is­sues, the phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture is­sues are all con­nect­ed. And a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly di­ver­si­fied pro­duc­tion sys­tem is al­so part of the so­lu­tion.

A se­ri­ous ap­proach to wa­ter man­age­ment that in­volves in­te­grat­ed plan­ning, col­lab­o­ra­tive ex­e­cu­tion clos­est to where re­sults are re­quired can lead to sev­er­al green in­ter­ven­tions at dif­fer­ent lev­els and ways, and lead to best prac­tice in or­gan­ic (at least par­tial­ly) and sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al sys­tems. Com­plete with ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems, evac­u­a­tion plans, house­hold and com­mu­ni­ty pro­tec­tion ini­tia­tives, flood mit­i­ga­tion and se­ri­ous dredg­ing of wa­ter­cours­es and re­ten­tion ponds in the low lands.

 And potable wa­ter? We can't be talk­ing about an in­crease in the price of wa­ter with­out de­liv­er­ing pipe-borne wa­ter to peo­ple’s homes. What­ev­er the prob­lems around this is­sue of wa­ter where you need it, there are so­lu­tions to this prob­lem. We must de­liv­er wa­ter to 450 homes, 600 com­mu­ni­ties, 14 re­gion­al dis­tricts and To­ba­go and 1.4 mil­lion peo­ple. As I have said be­fore, T&T’s pop­u­la­tion is half the size of Brook­lyn and equiv­a­lent to a small vil­lage in Nige­ria, In­dia or Chi­na. It is shame­ful to con­tin­ue to talk about this prob­lem, make it a source of com­mu­ni­ty dis­tress and have it as a peren­ni­al po­lit­i­cal foot­ball.

So we need a smart econ­o­my, gov­ern­ment, so­ci­ety and food, wa­ter and ef­fec­tive flood man­age­ment for agri­cul­tur­al sup­port, com­mu­ni­ty well-be­ing and en­hance­ment. Smart econ­o­my, gov­ern­ment and so­ci­ety will have all min­istries work­ing to­geth­er, and the min­istries of Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion play­ing key roles. The min­istry of Plan­ning, Lo­cal And Rur­al De­vel­op­ment, Works and Trans­port, ODPM, Pub­lic Util­i­ties, sup­port­ed by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment can all play roles. The lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies and the House of As­sem­bly in To­ba­go would be key. Here you can have a whole gov­ern­ment ap­proach, in­te­grat­ed plan­ning co­or­di­nat­ed, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed and de­cen­tralised ex­e­cu­tion, op­ti­mum col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Com­mu­ni­ties can be brought in­to the pic­ture, vol­un­teerism could play a part, pub­lic, pri­vate, NGOs can work to­geth­er, CEPEP and URP can be re­con­fig­ured, com­mu­ni­ty jobs can be cre­at­ed every­where, neigh­bour­hood and com­mu­ni­ty main­te­nance, a mix of vol­un­teerism, re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zen­ship and the em­ployed could com­plete each oth­er.

The Min­istry of Plan­ning would have to play a key role in caus­ing to be ex­e­cut­ed the Na­tion­al Spa­tial Strat­e­gy. Strict en­force­ment of rules could guide new de­vel­op­ments on con­struc­tion, on hills, slopes, flood plains, vul­ner­a­ble ar­eas. Min­istries of Plan­ning and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies could be bet­ter aligned in keep­ing with the Plan­ning and Fa­cil­i­ta­tion Bill. Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and retro­fitting works could be guid­ed com­mu­ni­ty by com­mu­ni­ty. Flood mit­i­ga­tion, dredg­ing and in­fra­struc­ture work could pro­ceed apace. In such a strat­e­gy knowl­edge is at work with equip­ment and in­tense labour. In the smart econ­o­my strat­e­gy knowl­edge, in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal and tech­nol­o­gy are work­ing well to­geth­er.

There is no rea­son why com­mit­ment to an in­tel­li­gent trans­porta­tion sys­tem can't give us, in ad­di­tion to food and wa­ter, se­cu­ri­ty, clean­er, fresh­er air. Our new build­ings can all be smart and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly with so­lar en­er­gy and rain­wa­ter har­vest­ing. So too, all new de­vel­op­ments, start­ing with state hous­ing de­vel­op­ments.

If we de­vel­op smart homes, build­ings, schools, com­mu­ni­ties, we can have so­lar pan­els on land and wind farms off­shore. We can have mul­ti-en­er­gy sta­tions for the in­tel­li­gent trans­porta­tion sys­tem. Both Trinidad and To­ba­go could en­joy a ju­di­cious mix of smart sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment to ben­e­fit from the world and tra­di­tion­al, laid-back, leisure­ly is­land so­ci­ety to se­cure tra­di­tion, sim­plic­i­ty and cul­tur­al au­then­tic­i­ty. We can have it all. But it takes imag­i­na­tion, know-how and hu­man will.

We need smart, sus­tain­able cities

The five is­lands and Ch­aguara­mas could be de­vel­oped with pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ment in­to care­ful­ly planned des­ti­na­tions with a  mix of lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al tourism built on sport, leisure, re­lax­ation, and a range of cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ties, with prop­er use made of the Coast Guard and Coast Guard ves­sels and a height­ened col­lab­o­ra­tion on bor­der se­cu­ri­ty. Sig­nif­i­cant in­fra­struc­ture is al­ready there. All of this is tech­no­log­i­cal­ly in­fused and very smart. There are many jobs to be cre­at­ed with such de­vel­op­ment in­vest­ment and strat­e­gy and new de­vel­op­ment of this kind must take the COVID ex­pe­ri­ence and plan for oth­er un­ex­pect­ed dis­rup­tions in mind.

Such de­vel­op­ment in­ter­ven­tion will not on­ly be smart and sus­tain­able but green and eco-friend­ly and with re­new­able strate­gies in­fused. On the Mona Cam­pus in Ja­maica is a build­ing that pro­duces more en­er­gy than it con­sumes. There's no rea­son why POS, San Fer­nan­do, Ch­agua­nas, Ari­ma, Scar­bor­ough can­not be trans­formed in­to smart, sus­tain­able cities. SDG goal 11 talks about the need to de­vel­op "In­clu­sive, Safe, Re­silient, and Sus­tain­able" cities.

 Re­cent­ly a study was done on sus­tain­able cities in­clud­ing cities of the Caribbean such as Kingston and Port-of-Spain. Here is a quote from that doc­u­ment The Fu­ture of Cities, "The dif­fer­ence be­tween cities as prob­lems and cities as op­por­tu­ni­ties is de­ter­mined large­ly by plan­ning and gov­er­nance." Hav­ing ex­pe­ri­enced pan­dem­ic con­di­tions we need to re­think our ap­proach to cities. Plan­ning now gen­er­al­ly has to do with sig­nif­i­cant re­think­ing against the back­ground of the COVID ex­pe­ri­ence. How do we re­design to take these new re­al­i­ties in­to ac­count? Food se­cure cities, not just food-se­cure coun­tries, and the no­tions of con­ve­nience, ac­cess and re­la­tion­ships.

 We can­not do these things with­out recog­nis­ing mer­it. With­out be­ing com­mit­ted to a fair and just so­ci­ety. With­out ed­u­ca­tion re­form and trans­for­ma­tion. With­out be­ing com­mit­ted to eq­ui­ty, in­clu­siv­i­ty, di­ver­si­ty, democ­ra­cy, jus­tice.

We need rad­i­cal eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal ac­tion

I had a dis­cus­sion with my friend Ray Hol­man, a great pan­nist on the dou­ble tenor, soon to re­ceive an hon­orary doc­tor­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. He said, “T&T is on the brink of a precipice eco­nom­i­cal­ly. We face the prospect of so­cial dis­or­der, there is too much di­vi­sive­ness in so­ci­ety. Par­ty pol­i­tics is too an­tag­o­nis­tic and dis­re­spect­ful and peo­ple are be­com­ing alien­at­ed from it.” Most im­por­tant­ly, he said tal­ent is not drawn up­on by the po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the tal­ent­ed are afraid to go near politi­cians and so they with­draw.

 Con­se­quent­ly, there is an in­ter­nal brain drain tak­ing place right here in T&T so­ci­ety. It sad­dened me to hear him speak the truth in that way.

 You can't have an ex­ter­nal brain drain and an in­ter­nal brain drain in your so­ci­ety and ex­pect that so­ci­ety to get any­where good. Our young grad­u­ates are head­ed out­ward. If that is what our po­lit­i­cal lead­ers are do­ing to our so­ci­ety, then for the sake of our so­ci­ety we have to get rid of them. If the cul­ture of po­lit­i­cal par­ties is un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and wrong, it won’t be pos­si­ble to get a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and the right so­ci­ety out of such a po­lit­i­cal par­ty and po­lit­i­cal sys­tem.

We need rad­i­cal eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal ac­tion. Again rad­i­cal means to re­struc­ture the eco­nom­ic and so­cial or­der and in pol­i­tics it means re­struc­ture po­lit­i­cal or­der and re­ori­ent lead­er­ship dis­po­si­tions. I don’t see how mean­ing­ful con­sti­tu­tion re­form can be avoid­ed.

This is not an at­tempt at cheap pol­i­tics and cer­tain­ly not par­ti­san pol­i­tics, it is a nec­es­sary po­lit­i­cal view, in a time of un­cer­tain­ties and anx­i­eties of every kind, at a time when our coun­try needs eco­nom­ic di­rec­tion. We need to recog­nise the sources of di­vi­sive­ness and the ne­ces­si­ty of heal­ing our peo­ple, strength­en­ing our hu­man bonds. Af­ter al­most 60 years, with COVID trau­ma weigh­ing us down, we can come to­geth­er to build a na­tion.

I close with a quote from Amartya Sen, "The thing that we know from John Stu­art Mill is that democ­ra­cy is gov­ern­ment by dis­cus­sion. If you make dis­cus­sion fear­ful, you are not go­ing to set democ­ra­cy, no mat­ter how you count the votes…When some­one says some­thing crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment on the phone with me and they say I’d bet­ter talk about it when I see you be­cause I am not sure that they are lis­ten­ing that is not a way to run a democ­ra­cy. And it is not a way of un­der­stand­ing what the ma­jor­i­ty wants."

Con­tribut­ing to help strength­en democ­ra­cy

I am con­tribut­ing to the dis­cus­sion and mak­ing an in­put to strength­en democ­ra­cy. Bad pol­i­tics leads to bad gov­er­nance, bad gov­er­nance leads to bad de­ci­sions, and such de­ci­sions be­come bad pol­i­cy and trans­late in­to bad bud­gets. You then have to be­come bad lead­ers to jus­ti­fy every­thing when noth­ing seems to work.

It does not mat­ter who is in charge. Bad gov­ern­ment can­not be good for any­one. Bad poli­cies can­not help the ma­jor­i­ty. Bad de­ci­sions are bad de­ci­sions, no­body re­al­ly wins.

 Most peo­ple will agree that the last six bud­gets did not get us any­where good. We can de­lude our­selves by say­ing that things could be worse and that we are bet­ter off than many of our neigh­bours. Things can al­ways be worse, that is true. But maybe, we need to look at those coun­tries not much dif­fer­ent from us in size and gen­er­al con­di­tion that seem to be do­ing bet­ter than us. Be­cause we can do bet­ter!

Maybe this bud­get will be lucky sev­en. To be lucky is one thing, but we have to take re­al­i­ty in­to ac­count as well. Maybe we should talk to the IMF and the mul­ti­lat­er­al agen­cies as well as the rat­ing agen­cies. When we have a clear plan to put to them about where we are head­ed as a coun­try and how this bud­get en­hances that ob­jec­tive, then we can al­so talk to them about resched­ul­ing our debt to have more favourable terms and con­di­tions and bet­ter wig­gle room. I don’t see how it can hurt and I feel it may help. 

The first part was pub­lished on Sep­tem­ber 26.