A snap­shot of T&T 50 years ago will show cre­ative Car­ni­val cos­tumes, an ef­fi­cient mass tran­sit sys­tem, on-time bus­es, an ef­fec­tive lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem, sub-of­fices for wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion and re­pairs of mains, san­i­tary in­spec­tors who dili­gent­ly en­sured drains were not clogged and cesspits were kept clean. Fifty years ago the Red House was im­mac­u­late and the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings around the Sa­van­nah were well main­tained. Sys­tems were in place to en­sure that trees were not hewn in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly, an­i­mals were not hunt­ed out­side the hunt­ing sea­son, al­most every farmer that re­quest­ed a firearm was grant­ed a per­mit and po­lice were on pa­trol day and night. Every lo­co­mo­tive that used the road­way was li­censed in­clud­ing bull carts and bi­cy­cles and every dog own­er had to reg­is­ter and li­cense his or her dog. There were large pro­duc­tive plan­ta­tions of sug­ar cane, rice, co­coa, cof­fee, ba­nanas, cit­rus and co­conuts. Most im­por­tant­ly, how­ev­er, was the re­spect we had for each oth­er. Men and women did not wear ex­pen­sive cloth­ing but re­spectable cloth­ing. Fam­i­lies shared what they had with each oth­er and cit­i­zens re­spect­ed those in au­thor­i­ty.

Cit­i­zens of to­day will stand in awe if they were to see the im­mac­u­late­ly kept Mahi­ca Oval in Point Fortin pro­tect­ed by well- man­i­cured bam­boo fences over­look­ing one of the largest dri­ve-in cin­e­mas in the Caribbean, the per­fect­ly man­i­cured Botan­i­cal Gar­dens and the pub­lic squares like Lord Har­ris and Wood­ford. Some say that the past al­ways seems bet­ter, but no one would like to re­turn to out­hous­es, wood hous­es and don­key carts. Cer­tain­ly we have im­proved on a num­ber of things but sad­ly we have re­gressed on so many fun­da­men­tals that one won­ders whether in­de­pen­dence was a bless­ing or a curse? Is there any sound rea­son­ing to sup­port the de­ci­sion to re­move the train sys­tem rather than im­prove the ser­vice? What hap­pened to the wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tres that en­sured that lines were main­tained on a dai­ly ba­sis? When did we stop the vis­its by health of­fi­cers to homes to do blood tests on chil­dren? Where have the mo­bile den­tal units that vis­it­ed the schools dis­ap­peared to? What has hap­pened to our agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor? Where are the po­lice that once pa­trolled our neigh­bour­hoods night and day on foot and on bi­cy­cles? What has hap­pened to our well-dressed, re­spectable teach­ers who took pride in the phys­i­cal as well as aca­d­e­m­ic na­ture of our stu­dents? Where have our tru­an­cy laws and en­force­ment of such dis­ap­peared? The stat­ue of Lord Har­ris is no longer in the park and many of our pub­lic parks and build­ings are now on the verge of de­struc­tion.

Fifty years lat­er many of our youths are wear­ing ex­pen­sive cloth­ing that low­er rather than raise their so­cial out­look. We are about to cel­e­brate 50 years of in­de­pen­dence and we have a lot to be hap­py about. Many of our cit­i­zens have made us proud in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, we have shown the world that we can change gov­ern­ments peace­ful­ly and go about our busi­ness obliv­i­ous of the de­trac­tors that are in­tent on dis­re­spect­ing our pub­lic of­fi­cials, and ig­nor­ing those who in­tend to di­vide us along racial or po­lit­i­cal lines. We have been able to en­sure that our ju­di­cia­ry re­mains in­de­pen­dent and our gov­ern­ment re­mains de­mo­c­ra­t­ic. Sad­ly, how­ev­er, we have not pro­gressed as many would have liked. Our foun­da­tion was there to build up­on but in­stead of im­prov­ing on what we in­her­it­ed we rev­elled in our new­ly ac­quired in­de­pen­dence as if to say "it's our time now" to reap the har­vest with­out plant­i­ng or prepar­ing the land for bet­ter or fu­ture har­vests. It is my sin­cere hope that as we cel­e­brate this 50 years of in­de­pen­dence, we take time to re­flect on where we may have gone wrong and make every ef­fort to make the next 50 years bet­ter for the gen­er­a­tions that are des­tined to in­her­it this land called T&T.

Steve Al­varez

Via e-mail