Prakash Per­sad

We have been asked to an­nounce the death of Ob­jec­tive Analy­sis. He was the son of An­a­lyt­ic Meth­ods and Sci­en­tif­ic Rigour and the broth­er of Cal­cu­lus from Eu­rope, Arith­metic from In­dia and Al­ge­bra from Ara­bia: the fa­ther of Physics, Chem­istry, Eco­nom­ics, Pub­lic Process­es and Ge­net­ics: the grand­fa­ther of In­ter­na­tion­al Space-Sta­tion, Mod­ern Med­i­cine and Man­age­ment Sci­ences.

Up­on the ter­mi­na­tion of slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship, the colo­nial mas­ters, prob­a­bly in a rare mo­ment of con­science-dis­tress, de­cid­ed to em­bark up­on an­oth­er pro­gramme of im­mi­gra­tion; this time with the as­sis­tance of the UN. In a move full of irony, they re­moved the old iron that con­sti­tut­ed a sug­ar mill, ap­prox­i­mate­ly in the cen­tre of the flat cor­ri­dor of land at the foot of the North­ern Range and be­tween the two road ways that con­nect­ed east to west and pro­ceed­ed to build fa­cil­i­ties to house the newest ad­di­tion to the coun­try.

In or­der to name the fa­cil­i­ty, they rea­soned it was for you (the cit­i­zen stu­dents) and us.Nat­u­ral­ly, the name You, We seemed apt and ap­pro­pri­ate. The idea was, among oth­er less no­ble ones, to in­tro­duce an­a­lyt­ic meth­ods up­on which mod­ern and de­vel­oped so­ci­eties are based since the fu­ture lead­ers of both gov­ern­ment and in­dus­try would be at­tend­ing. They ter­ri­bly un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the dif­fi­cul­ty in plant­i­ng an­a­lyt­ic ideas in a trans­plant­ed plan­ta­tion so­ci­ety.

To­day You We stands in the cen­tre of the east-west cor­ri­dor where rea­son, hard work, tol­er­ance and pro­duc­tive val­ues have died were cre­mat­ed, the tenth day rit­u­al (shav­ing cer­e­mo­ny or das­ga­ta) and the wa­ter and food of­fer­ings (bhan­dara) com­plet­ed. But not every­thing is for­got­ten. The bhan­dara cer­e­mo­ny has sur­vived but mor­phed in­to a new form with an in­no­v­a­tive name filled with the en­tre­pre­neur­ial ethos; Eat ah food.

This in no way for­gets or be­lit­tles the tenth day rit­u­al that, de­fy­ing all log­ic, has come to rep­re­sent sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment and which still con­tin­ues; the fa­mous 'ten-days wuk'. The pa­tra read­ing for this, in­clud­ing the aus­pi­cious name and time to start, was done by a fa­mous Ox­ford his­to­ri­an.

Of course fur­ther read­ing and name changes were sub­se­quent­ly done by both his dis­ci­ples and his aun­ty dis­ci­ples. He how­ev­er failed mis­er­ably in re­viv­ing the bhan­dara cer­e­mo­ny or re­nam­ing it. This hap­pened in one of his aun­ty dis­ci­ple's lav­ish par­ty.

Though Ob­jec­tive Analy­sis ar­rived in ro­bust health, he nev­er was re­al­ly ex­posed to the trop­i­cal virus called 'By Us', aka bias. This is a re­al­ly vir­u­lent species made more dan­ger­ous by its bipo­lar and plur­al na­ture and ori­gins. It orig­i­nat­ed from and is sus­tained by a blood-suck­ing mul­ti-di­men­sioned in­sect which has been named 'Poly Tics'. It op­er­ates as fol­lows. If it is 'For us, by us' then there is no claim of bias by us.

It was hoped that Ob­jec­tive Analy­sis would flour­ish in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor and would be used to analyse the prob­lems and chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try and pro­pose so­lu­tions for the bet­ter­ment of the coun­try. It is un­der­stood that even though all the nec­es­sary da­ta might not nec­es­sar­i­ly be avail­able and at times it would be ex­pe­di­ent to have sub-op­ti­mal so­lu­tions, nev­er­the­less, the tenor of an­a­lyt­ic meth­ods would pre­dom­i­nate. Hah! If hope was dope then pipers won't thief we soap.

The thing about an­a­lyt­ic meth­ods is that it is al­ways trans­par­ent and open to scruti­ny. Not every­body would agree but at least you can see the rea­son­ing even if you do sub­scribe to the as­sump­tions. Al­so the process is da­ta-dri­ven, not vaps-dri­ven. But more im­por­tant­ly, the adop­tion of a cul­ture of an­a­lyt­ic method­ol­o­gy forms the foun­da­tion for putting prop­er gov­er­nance and sys­temic de­ci­sion mak­ing process­es, the foun­da­tion up­on which sus­tained de­vel­op­ment is built; the plat­form for de­vel­oped so­ci­ety sta­tus.

In a coun­try as po­larised and di­vi­sive as ours, trans­paren­cy and open­ness are es­sen­tial for progress. We should not have to wait for in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies to tell us that. We need to let it be dri­ven by our own de­sire to build a strong, vi­brant and eco­nom­i­cal­ly sta­ble so­ci­ety. Ra­tio­nale de­ci­sion mak­ing is es­sen­tial to that process. We should there­fore view the present demise of Ob­jec­tive Analy­sis as but a tran­si­tion and put the re­quired mea­sures in place for its rein­car­na­tion, sus­te­nance sus­tained growth.

• Prakash Per­sad,

Di­rec­tor, Swa­ha Inc