What price freedom?

TODAY is Independence Day but, as it falls on a Sunday, the country will observe the national holiday tomorrow. Now 41 years after we "gained our freedom" from the British colonial power what, as a nation, do we really have to celebrate? What real progress have we made in the process of building a nation? We would like to pose that question to every single citizen of our country since, in our view, the true test of nationhood does not lie simply in geography or politics or economics or sovereignty but, more meaningfully, it resides in the hearts and minds of the people themselves. The strength of a nation, as we see it, is best measured by the citizens' deep-seated and enduring consciousness of it, their respect for the land of their birth, its natural beauty and endowments, the rights of fellow citizens, its civil authority and, above all, how committed and willing we are to seek the interest of the whole country above that of the individual or group; in other words to put nation before self.

Superficially, of course, we may compliment ourselves and claim that we have done fairly well. For more than four decades we have permitted the politically-generated tensions of ethnicity to have their democratic play without ruffling the basic stability of our country. The sad fact, however, is that the race problem and accusations of discrimination embitter the nation's politics now more than ever before without the establishment of independent agencies designed to resolve these kinds of disputes and grievances and to ensure that equal opportunities exist for all our citizens. Tracing our politics since 1962, in fact, is a somewhat dismal exercise. Where the country should be gaining its inspiration, its hope, its standards of service and ethical practice, its examples of national pride and commitment, it has been troubled instead by instinctive and disruptive confrontation, a determination to place partisan interests and agendas above the progress of the country. Looking back, one cannot avoid the gloomy observation that the "nation's" politics has been perhaps its most serious hindrance, retarding the development of a united spirit among our people and the engendering a love for the country as a whole.

Economically, it seems that we have made great strides in exploiting the country's abundant natural assets. In this effort, we now appear to be making a great leap forward in the monetising of our oil and gas resources. Still the country's economy remains lop-sided, its unemployment problem and the level of poverty among the population unacceptably high. How wisely TT's wealth will be used to address these matters, of course, will be another test of the maturity of our nationhood. But the evidence of how far we still have to go to achieve, mentally and emotionally speaking, some semblance of true nationhood may be seen in many other areas of our "national" life. This newspaper continues to receive letters from citizens grieving about the destruction and pollution of the country's environment, the littering of our beaches, the disposal of waste in our rivers, the decimation of our wildlife, the fires that destroy our mountain side vegetation, the general lack of pride in our heritage. It may also be seen in the recklessness and carnage on our roads, in the destructiveness and indiscipline of our young people and in the high rate of crime. After four decades, it may still be said of us that a people has been freed but a nation is yet to be formed. But what do we expect when we ignore the fact that nation building takes a positive effort? We have no institutions to inculcate pride in our country and its history, and fostering a love for country in our youth is something that nobody cares about.