Lisa Allen-Agos­ti­ni

It is four days be­fore the 50th an­niver­sary of Trinidad and To­ba­go's in­de­pen­dence, and near­ly a year since we were re­moved from the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment's De­vel­op­ment As­sis­tance Com­mit­tee (DAC) list–which was a sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al mile­stone, as the UK High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T not­ed at the time. We are, to all in­tents and pur­pos­es, a de­vel­oped na­tion. Our GDP per capi­ta is US$20,300. We have a thriv­ing de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tion. We have schools, roads, wa­ter, na­tion­al­ly avail­able health care, and two in­ter­na­tion­al air­ports. Our Par­lia­ment meets in a very tall build­ing from which one has stun­ning views of the cap­i­tal city and the rolling wa­ters of the Gulf of Paria. We are paragons of de­vel­op­ment in the Caribbean. Al­though there is much this na­tion can and does boast of, there is still so much that is lack­ing that it is laugh­able to call us a tru­ly de­vel­oped na­tion. GDP is not a re­li­able mea­sure­ment of de­vel­op­ment, nor are tall build­ings. These in­di­ca­tors are a smoke­screen hid­ing the very re­al gaps in our de­vel­op­ment.

We have a long tra­di­tion of ed­u­ca­tion, and a pa­per qual­i­fi­ca­tion of enor­mous­ly high lit­er­a­cy rates. New schools are built all the time. But lit­er­a­cy ex­perts have long said the gov­ern­ment rate masks a de­press­ing­ly high num­ber of peo­ple who are not even func­tion­al­ly lit­er­ate. As for health care, sure it's free, but cit­i­zens pay in oth­er ways, suf­fer­ing ap­palling ser­vice, lack of med­ica­tion, and crum­bling phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture in many fa­cil­i­ties. The coun­try has a pipe-borne wa­ter sup­ply, but how many com­mu­ni­ties ac­tu­al­ly get potable wa­ter–not some brown, smelly dreck? Why is it that in a coun­try cov­ered in rain­for­est we have com­mu­ni­ties (like my own) that get pipe-borne wa­ter twice or three times a week, and then on­ly for a few hours in the dark­est night? We have roads, it is true. But these roads seem made of bis­cuit or pa­per, be­cause many of them are reg­u­lar­ly in a sham­bles, pot­holed and crum­bling. Let's not talk about our be­lea­guered wa­ter­cours­es.

Could the $410 mil­lion Con­stituen­cy De­vel­op­ment Fund have gone to­wards some oth­er cause, say per­haps the found­ing of a Na­tion­al Arts Coun­cil, to give trans­par­ent and ac­count­able fund­ing to the arts in Trinidad and To­ba­go? In­stead, as the Guardian warned in an ed­i­to­r­i­al on the Con­stituen­cy De­vel­op­ment Fund a month ago, "There is as yet no ev­i­dence...that this fund would be gov­erned by strict pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures with care­ful ad­her­ence to en­sur­ing that bids are eval­u­at­ed by non-par­ti­san of­fi­cials who use ob­jec­tive cri­te­ria as the ba­sis of se­lect­ing pre­ferred can­di­dates. (...) Giv­en the his­to­ry of ghost gangs and make-work projects, it is al­so quite like­ly that the cost of ad­min­is­tra­tion may re­duce the al­lo­ca­tion to lit­tle more than a to­ken sum as MPs seek to cur­ry favour with their con­stituents by putting as many of them on the pay­roll as pos­si­ble." The ab­sence of cor­rup­tion is not one of the hall­marks of de­vel­op­ment. But there's bunting every­where, acres, miles of it, cel­e­brat­ing this na­tion­al ju­bilee. Hap­py In­de­pen­dence, T&T. On a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent note, the ven­er­a­ble po­et and pub­lish­er An­son Gon­za­lez sent me a note list­ing 50 po­ets who have "up­held the scrib­al tra­di­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go". I share some here (in no par­tic­u­lar or­der) with thanks to him and grat­i­tude to those writ­ers on it.

James C Aboud

M P Al­ladin

Michael Als

Sel­wyn Bha­jan

Dionne Brand

Wayne Brown

Wil­fred Cartey

Faustin Charles

Willi Chen

AM Clarke

Leroy Clarke

Liz Cromwell

Joseph Cum­mings

Wayne E Davis

An­son Gon­za­lez

Maria Gon­za­lez.