Not meeting the challenge

I can remember as a primary school child the pre independence excitement in 1962 when we learned the National Anthem, patriotic songs such as Marjorie Padmore’s God Bless Our Nation, and the new National Watchwords: Discipline, Tolerance and Production. We were eager to meet the future, and confident that we could rise to the challenge. How things have changed. In spite of our good fortune in terms of natural resources and a harmonious environment, we have sunk in the Human Development Index ratings. The only one of our watchwords that is widely followed now is tolerance, especially of lack of discipline and lack of production.

We tolerate a deterioration in parenting leading to lack of discipline in our young that has caused a rapid increase in crime. We tolerate a system of government that has not been able to produce the required quality of education and health services. Reaching our full potential seems to be an elusive goal. Another memory from my days in primary school was our school (Belmont Boys RC) motto: “It all depends on me” As I remember this, my mind trips across to Lloyd Best’s frequent exhortations for us to take responsibility for understanding our situation, and devising and implementing the solutions required to take us to our goals. Though this has been long in happening, Lloyd is confident that the stream of graduates produced over the years by UWI has the necessary “ration of intelligence, industry and commitment” for us to meet our responsibilities to ourselves.

I am not sure that UWI has provided us with a cadre of professionals up to the task. Ten years after Independence I was a student at UWI, and the mindset of many of the students was, to use Lloyd’s phraseology again, proletarian rather than proprietorial. Most of us expected someone to give us a job after we graduated, one to which we could wear a nice shirt jack with pens in our pockets. I do not think we had an idea of how we could contribute to national development other than the general feeling that things would improve once we were in charge. I hasten to add that the faculty at UWI did not encourage this attitude, and several of our lecturers such as Gordon Draper and Ainsley Mark challenged us to get out there and start our own businesses. I suspect that many did not feel up to that task.

Did our professionals ever really understand the Watchwords? There is considerable evidence that we are capable of Discipline. Just look at our steelbands playing on stage in a competition final and you can see focus and discipline. Off stage though, players reach late for practice sessions, and some are disruptive when the tune is being taught.  Essentially the bands revolve among a small core of disciplined players, while the band leadership has to struggle to maintain a semblance of control over the rest. What about Production? I never cease to be amazed by the amount of people who are satisfied to do their best without thought as to whether they have achieved what is required. Workers in some service environments (such as banks) see customers as people who hold them back from doing their work. Not only is there a complete lack of understanding of the purpose of their jobs and what their organisation exists to produce, but also a complete unawareness of their responsibility.

Someone once said that the height of irrationality is to expect a change in outcomes while continuing to do the same things. We have embarked on an exercise to make Trinidad and Tobago a developed country by the Year 2020, and if this goal is to be achieved changes have to be made in the way we do things. Everyone who has been involved in development for says that all the studies necessary to tell us what we have to do have been done. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. Our problem in the past may have been not having the resources to implement what is needed, but this is about to change. We need to re-commit ourselves to the Watchwords, especially Discipline and Production. We need Discipline to maintain our focus on the difficult issues we need to grapple with, and Discipline to maintain the required level of commitment to see the process through to the end. We need Production to ensure that we complete all of the steps we have to take in an expeditious and satisfactory way. Above all, we need to maintain our sense of responsibility to future generations to do what has to be done, as well as a positive attitude to knowing that we will achieve it. May God bless our Nation on the 41st Anniversary of our Independence.

The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Guardian Life. You are invited to send your comments to guardianlife@ghl.co.tt