What has propelled the Indo-Trinidad community to advance at such an astonishing speed in the post-Independence as a group, as individuals in business, politics and in terms of human development, at the same time that the Afro-Trinidad society at its broadest sociological base has declined in all areas, even in politics in which the Afro-Trinidad People's National Movement had the political ascendancy for 30 years–1956-1986?
This column returns to the subject after noting a few columns back that whereas direct party political patronage has left behind large segments of PNM support bases in Laventille, Beetham, Morvant and elsewhere dependent at the CEPEP/URP levels, UNC patronage has created and nurtured small contractors, many of whom have turned into the major civil and engineering operators owning and managing billion-dollar operations.
My friend Ferdie Ferriera, who I often turn to for clarification and explanation on the political history of party development and governance, pointed out to me, after that column, that there were many Afro-contractors who benefited from PNM support, a fact which I overlooked. But as Ferdie noted, most of those Afro contractors did not go beyond the generation of their creation; they have gone out of existence. So too the once emergent black business class in downtown Port-of-Spain of the 1950s-1960s.
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