It is not ad­e­quate to say that our na­tion to­day is in a 'cri­sis', a term made all too pop­u­lar in re­cent times by many a so­cial com­men­ta­tor. It is with­out a doubt that there has been a strong nar­ra­tive of pro­gres­sive de­gen­er­a­tion, how­ev­er, it was made on­ly more vis­i­ble giv­en the shat­ter­ing–as I like to call it–of the oil veil, the re­source that kept the politi­cians, since our birth as a na­tion in 1962, in a rel­a­tive bub­ble. With its pop­ping and the all-round de­cline in eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, mon­ey can no longer be thrown at is­sues as was the tra­di­tion in past times as the night­mare of fac­ing them head on be­comes a re­al­i­ty.

Cur­rent is­sues such as in­ef­fec­tive crime pol­i­cy, the de­pen­den­cy and vic­tim men­tal­i­ty it cre­ates from spe­cialised treat­ment to cer­tain ar­eas, un­der­achieve­ment and vi­o­lence in schools, and dys­func­tion­al eco­nom­ic poli­cies that con­tin­ue de­pen­den­cy and un­bal­anced growth rather than sta­ble de­vel­op­ment, is un­cov­ered. Cen­tral to this is Vi­sion 2020, a mod­el, project and dead­line that has be­come part of the prob­lem not the so­lu­tion.

Aside from not meet­ing most of the mea­sures out­lined, it re­lies on ig­nor­ing a vast amount of ar­eas that sees the eco­nom­ic giv­en em­pha­sis over the so­cial and prof­it over peo­ple. This de­vel­op­ment path: goals, ini­tia­tives and means, are tak­en di­rect­ly from de­vel­oped na­tions and ap­plied in a hard and fast con­text to our re­al­i­ties. That mass con­sump­tion so­ci­eties, high rise build­ings and mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar in­fra­struc­tures rep­re­sent the be all-end all in so­ci­etal per­fec­tion. But just why does de­vel­op­ment en­tail such a nar­row scope? Why must the so­ci­etal ide­al re­sem­ble the con­di­tions of our for­mer colonis­ers? Why does this vi­sion re­sem­ble an Amer­i­can re­al­i­ty and con­scious­ness on­ly for a Trin­bag­on­ian land­scape? Why are al­ter­na­tive paths of­ten ig­nored or even con­sid­ered in the de­vel­op­ment project?

It is not that this vi­sion as prob­lem in it­self but be­cause it pa­rad­ed as an 'ul­ti­mate des­tiny', that any crit­i­cism or move away from this frame­work means one is ir­ra­tional or im­prac­ti­cal. That in our bid to adopt a de­vel­op­ment pat­tern that was cre­at­ed in a par­tic­u­lar time, place and cer­tain con­di­tions mean we ac­tive­ly ig­nore our own re­al­i­ty, his­to­ry and con­scious­ness.

The hard and fast means by which it is em­ployed in pol­i­cy and ini­tia­tives usu­al­ly ac­counts for it re­sound­ing fail­ure for any mean­ing­ful 'de­vel­op­ment' to take place. That fail­ing crime, ed­u­ca­tion and eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy is on­ly fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed by a faulty un­der­stand­ing that leads to ir­rel­e­vant so­lu­tions.

A lack of his­tor­i­cal un­der­stand­ing of the 'weight of his­to­ry', to know that the prob­lems we face to­day are not re­cent but come from the larg­er colo­nial lega­cy that six­ty some­thing years of in­de­pen­dence has yet to ad­dress. Un­til we un­der­stand that this scheme is not neu­tral and ob­jec­tive but au­thored by a par­tic­u­lar group, which giv­en our his­to­ry and cur­rent con­di­tions does not per­mit at least to the de­gree as­pired, a vi­able goal.

That though we should take note of cer­tain con­cepts, the whole­sale adop­tion of strate­gies is to our own detri­ment. That our de­vel­op­ment plans should be at the in­ter­sec­tion of so­cial, eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal vari­ables root­ed in out lo­cal con­scious­ness and not some for­eign one should be the true goal.

Re­gret­ful­ly how­ev­er, be­cause of the ig­no­rance and in­dif­fer­ence of our his­to­ry (colo­nial­ism mere­ly viewed as a 'pe­ri­od' in time) and the con­di­tion­ing and de­sen­si­tis­ing of West­ern me­dia that sees us adopt norms, val­ues and be­hav­iours that give cre­dence to this sin­gle 'Vi­sion', the myth from a dis­tant so­ci­ety con­tin­ues to lim­it, dis­tort and blind us to any mean­ing­ful al­ter­na­tives, all the while we march on un­ques­tion­ing­ly in hopes of gain­ing First World sta­tus while en­gulfed in Third world prob­lems.

ROMON ATWELL

Stu­dent, So­ci­ol­o­gy Ma­jor