Prakash Per­sad

Of all of God's and na­ture's crea­tures, none has the ca­pac­i­ty for self-delu­sion as ho­mo sapi­ens. Why else would the fi­nite be­ing man claim that he is made in the im­age of the in­fi­nite be­ing; a pro­nounce­ment that would sure­ly bring about a sense of dis­qui­et in God if in­deed such a thing could hap­pen.

Be that as it may, the in­tent here is to fo­cus on more mun­dane is­sues, in par­tic­u­lar, the hypocrisy that em­anates from the po­lit­i­cal pul­pits. One can­not help but won­der if politi­cians re­al­ly lis­ten to them­selves and are com­fort­able with their in­cred­i­ble about-turns. When the for­mer regime de­cid­ed to in­ject some pep in­to the low­er end of the na­tion­al work­force by cre­at­ing a cat­e­go­ry of em­ploy­ees whose des­ig­na­tion was formed from the sum­ma­tion of the words "sea" and "pep­pers," both the work­ers and gov­ern­ment were sub­ject­ed to sus­tained, fe­ro­cious at­tacks.

The pro­gramme was la­belled a make-be­lieve work ven­ture that was serv­ing to de­stroy the work eth­ic and fur­ther caus­ing an acute labour short­age of agri­cul­tur­al work­ers. It can­not be de­nied that, if viewed sole­ly from a busi­ness an­gle, the cost per square foot to main­tain the grassed en­vi­ron­ment was ex­or­bi­tant. How­ev­er there were oth­er so­cial el­e­ments of the pro­gramme that mit­i­gat­ed this.

It al­so can­not be de­nied that the ad­vent of the pro­gramme did bring about a quan­tum leap in the ap­pear­ance of the pub­lic space. Many a vis­i­tor, up­on re­turn­ing to the coun­try af­ter many years, would com­ment on how clean and well main­tained T&T looked. The fact that many women were em­ployed, which served to pro­vide them with a source of in­come for their fam­i­ly, whether they were sin­gle par­ents or had fi­nan­cial­ly delin­quent al­co­holic hus­bands, nev­er saw the light of day in the rag­ing storm of bad-mouthing.

One would pre­sume that those who so ve­he­ment­ly op­posed this com­mu­ni­ty en­hance­ment thrust would at best tol­er­ate it up­on as­sum­ing the reins of pow­er; in ac­knowl­edge­ment that clos­ing it down would bring about mass un­em­ploy­ment and the at­ten­dant ills. The mas­sive ex­pan­sion of the pro­gramme rep­re­sents an about-turn. Has the pro­gramme sud­den­ly be­come good or is it plain po­lit­i­cal hypocrisy?

Would the large in­crease in the num­bers of work­ers not af­fect the much pro­claimed agri­cul­tur­al thrust? The cyn­i­cal would ob­serve that this is how politi­cians, at least in T&T, be­have. What was bad when you were in op­po­si­tion be­comes good when you are in gov­ern­ment.

So dur­ing the de­bate on the re­cent re­quest for more fund­ing for the Cepep pro­gramme, one would have thought that the op­por­tu­ni­ty would be seized to ap­prise the coun­try as to some good points of the pro­gramme and how the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to im­prove it. In­stead, the old harp­ing con­tin­ued, in­clud­ing the call­ing of the names of pri­vate peo­ple with no oth­er pur­pose than for po­lit­i­cal ma­lign­ing and mal­ice.

Such el­e­men­tary po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iour is at a low­er lev­el than that of the read­ing lessons of pre-school­ers. See Jack run, see Nip bark, see pep bray. In an­cient In­dia, a sage was re­ferred as a mu­ni. Lal is a Hin­di word that means red and al­so used col­lo­qui­al­ly to mean son. Sages were ad­mired for be­ing free from mal­ice, hypocrisy and oth­er vices.

Those who pro­fess to be ad­her­ents to the Eter­nal Code of Con­duct or Sanatan Dhar­ma are re­ferred to as the de­scents, in ef­fect sons, of the great sages. One would not ex­pect such a per­son to house such un­be­com­ing vin­dic­tive sen­ti­ments, there­by the de­mean­ing his­tor­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment from which he has de­scend­ed.

The prin­ci­ples of fair­play and nat­ur­al jus­tice con­tin­ue to be trau­ma­tised by the priv­i­leges be­stowed up­on par­lia­men­tar­i­ans. Con­sid­er­a­tion must be giv­en to pre­scrib­ing lim­its to the ut­ter­ances of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the de­bates are broad­cast live on na­tion­al ra­dio and tele­vi­sion. We may be un­able to leg­is­late the ban­ning of hypocrisy, but we can cer­tain­ly en­sure that more re­spon­si­ble speech is prac­tised in Par­lia­ment dur­ing the con­duct of the peo­ple's busi­ness.

• Prakash Per­sad is the di­rec­tor of Swa­ha Inc