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By Avinash Persaud |
July 2002: I was born in Barbados, in our year of independence, to Guyanese and Trinidadian parents. At school they called me The Federation boy. When I became an adult, the timing of it all seemed more significant than the island geography.
In Salman Rushie's Midnight's Children, he observed the important difference in the experiences and legacies of the generation that secured political independence from that which came afterwards.
In the Caribbean, our journey to independence was smoothed by earlier more fraught passages, in India, Malaysia and Kenya. But proving to ourselves that we could master our own fate, build our own future, was as elevating and unifying as any just war.
No wonder our parents achieved so much else - Reggae, Calypso, the greatest cricketers. We have taught many around the world how to enjoy the sweet rhythms and colour of life. But let us also not forget how many defeated prejudice to travel to the very top of their fields in foreign lands. Let us not forget that one generation, from a handful of small islands, has produced three Nobel Prize winners - three so far that is.
And more important still, after independence, nations arose with ordinary citizens, proud people, articulate, concerned and a people who sought community and unity.
All this and more should never be forgotten or underestimated. But there is no surer sign that a society is declining than when it starts to be preoccupied with the past. Only through recognising our short-comings will we forge on-going success. Success that nourishes a West Indian-ness that can survive American satellite TV, that feeds our children's minds, and brings them home culturally, as well as clothing their backs.
There was in retrospect too little support for the individual creativity of the most creative of people.
Like others before us, we confused the fight against colonialism with a fight against private enterprise, ending up with the wrong balance between public and private. We let anti-colonialist rhetoric blind us to the democratic deficits in Guyana and Grenada. And we left it to the new colonialists to the north to be the catalysts of change.
We were too relaxed, over the emergence of drugs and crime. How did the most beautiful island on Earth, Jamaica, come to have no-go-areas? Travellers to that other paradise, Tobago, now receive official warnings over the level of crime from the British foreign office.
I would have thought this some patronising racism, if a friend had not been assaulted in the middle of the night with a man brandishing a cutlass and the locals tried to hush it up.
The lesson from around the world is that these basics of good governance are more important than we ever thought; that security and certainty are more important in the long-run than the right price of oil, bauxite, or bananas.
In the 1950s, Singapore and Hong Kong were poorer than our islands. We looked down upon their trading culture. They had no natural resources, just their people. Today those people are four times as wealthy as we are.
Success will come from unleashing the undoubted creativity of our people, which requires developing a risk-taking culture and exposing it to the best in the world. A place where individuals and their friends draw from their inspiration, talent and knowledge to take risks: risks in music, in art, in science, in manufacturing, in service and in retailing. A cacophony of creativity. And of course you know this can be done, because many of you have done it. The Caribbean disapora could teach our friends at home a thing or two about risk taking.
To begin with it must be easy to set up a business. I must be able to do it in an afternoon. I can in London. I can in New York. But I cannot in many parts of the Caribbean. Foreigners should be able to do so easily too we are so often held back by our own natrionalism.
We must never allow our governments or nationalists to mess with a free legal system. Rights must be transparent and predictable. There must be opportunity for redress of wrongs from independent courts. And if independence requires an overseas appeals court, so be it.
Every citizen in Britain can now appeal to a court in the Hague in the Netherlands courtesy of the European Union. And they feel bigger for it not smaller
The government needs to provide a few social goods well. Schools, health, transport, security and looking after the environment. And encourage local and foreign businesses to provide the rest. We need a free press and democracy to ensure it does so. And then all it needs is ambition
There is no reason why with sufficient encouragement the Caribbean could not be the centre of excellence for services for the length and breadth of Latin America. And a centre of inexpensive quality for the southern United States - banking, insurance, legal and design services, all delivered to these customers via the web. And given our enviable environment, there is no reason why with the right investment, rich Latins and Americans could not view the Caribbean as the place to come for education and health as well as their holidays.
There is a cycle of every family busineses, from my Nana's rum shop in Tunapuna, my Aja's farm in Berbice, to that of a new nation. The first generation makes it. The second generation enjoys it. And the third generation loses it.
My generation did not have the opportunity of losing our self interests to the noble ambitions of our parents. Let us make sure that an absence of ambition does not hold us back today, here or at home.
Lets us use the experiences of the disapora to build on those early hopes with the highest ambitions for the individual enterprise, creativity and community of the Caribbean.
Let us make sure our childrens' children are proud of their rich and noble ancestry.
The above is an address delivered at the CARICOM Day Reception organized by The Caribbean Voice newspaper, at Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn, New York City on June 21.