Max­ie Cuffie

Nev­er­the­less, the analy­sis has shown that (for) the Car­ni­val in­dus­try the bal­ance be­tween fi­nan­cial in­puts and fi­nan­cial/eco­nom­ic gains is pos­i­tive. The over­all eco­nom­ic im­pacts are: in­creased com­mer­cial ac­tiv­i­ty; an ex­pand­ed tourism prod­uct which has led to in­creased tourist re­ceipts; and a di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in for­eignex­change.

Jo-anne Tull, Mon­ey Mat­ters–T&T Car­ni­val 2005

One of the more pos­i­tive mea­sures adopt­ed by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion is the recog­ni­tion that the Car­ni­val busi­ness mod­el which has evolved over the past five decades does not meet the needs of the 21st Cen­tu­ry pro­duc­ers and con­sumers of the Car­ni­val prod­uct and is in dire need of re-en­gi­neer­ing.

Soon af­ter his el­e­va­tion to the Cab­i­net as Cul­ture Min­is­ter, Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas an­nounced his recog­ni­tion of the prob­lem and said he was open to pro­pos­als for pri­vatis­ing and fran­chis­ing Car­ni­val op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing for­eign ones. And when his sug­ges­tion was im­me­di­ate­ly met with op­po­si­tion from the state-ap­point­ed chair­man of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Car­ni­val sta­tus quo, Dou­glas quick­ly had him fired. That was a good start.

But while it is an im­por­tant first step, recog­nis­ing that you have a prob­lem is not the same thing as do­ing some­thing about it.

The Car­ni­val mea­sures an­nounced this year, in­clud­ing changes to the for­mat of the Di­manche Gras com­pe­ti­tion, the Kings and Queens of Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions and the Ca­lyp­so Monarch are piece­meal and fall far short of the rad­i­cal over­haul need­ed if Car­ni­val is to be­come the ma­jor eco­nom­ic con­trib­u­tor it needs to be.

Car­ni­val at­tracts ap­prox­i­mate­ly 71,036 vis­i­tors last year's of­fi­cial AATT fig­ures. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of par­tic­i­pants take part in some form of Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ty even if it is just lis­ten­ing to ca­lyp­soes. De­spite this, the cre­ative tal­ent be­hind what has been de­scribed as a bil­lion-dol­lar Car­ni­val in­dus­try, strug­gles to make ends meet even as its pre­mier shows have been suf­fer­ing de­clin­ing au­di­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion for sev­er­al years. Their plight has giv­en much com­fort to a small but vir­u­lent lob­by which seeks to de­ny the sig­nif­i­cance of Car­ni­val on grounds that are both ahis­tor­i­cal and un­in­tel­lec­tu­al. It does not help, how­ev­er, that Gov­ern­ment keeps throw­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in­to the fes­ti­val with­out pro­vid­ing any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion save that "it's for the Car­ni­val."

This year Dou­glas has an­nounced the sec­ond largest ever al­lo­ca­tion for the an­nu­al fes­ti­val. On Jan­u­ary 17, at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, the min­is­ter an­nounced a $27 mil­lion in­crease in the al­lo­ca­tion (orig­i­nal­ly $197 mil­lion) for Car­ni­val 2013, tak­ing the an­nu­al sub­ven­tion to $224 mil­lion, from the $237 mil­lion ap­proved for last year. This is al­most dou­ble the $123 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed in 2009 and 2010 and the $122 mil­lion vot­ed for 2011.

What Car­ni­val needs is less gov­ern­ment mon­ey, not more, and if Dou­glas is se­ri­ous about cre­at­ing a Car­ni­val in­dus­try, then the first step which needs to be tak­en is for the Gov­ern­ment to get out of Car­ni­val and sim­ply be­come the reg­u­la­tor. This will cre­ate a prop­er le­gal frame­work for the in­dus­try, en­forces the ap­plic­a­ble laws and trans­fers the man­age­ment of the Car­ni­val in­dus­try, in­clud­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of prizes, to the mar­ket.

An ap­pro­pri­ate le­gal frame­work would en­sure the pan play­ers and ca­lyp­so­ni­ans are re­ward­ed for the use of their in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty; that mas­quer­aders are recog­nised for their roles as play­ers and con­sumers; spec­ta­tors ac­tu­al­ly pay for the en­ter­tain­ment they en­joy; and busi­ness­es con­tribute a re­al­is­tic rent for their am­bush mar­ket­ing dur­ing the fes­ti­val.

Gov­ern­ment's in­volve­ment in Car­ni­val with easy mon­ey for prizes, tents, shows and all man­ner of ac­tiv­i­ty has crowd­ed out in­no­va­tion and stul­ti­fied the in­dus­try. The Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion is more or less the same as it was when I first at­tend­ed more than 25 years ago, and one sus­pects the mod­el has re­mained rel­a­tive­ly un­changed over its 50 years. It is the same for the Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion, and the now-sub­sidised tents have be­come so heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on the State as to sti­fle the lead­ing pro­po­nents. And what has been tout­ed as the most suc­cess­ful event, the So­ca Monarch, is now so heav­i­ly sub­sidised by gov­ern­ment min­istries that it makes a mock­ery of its sta­tus as an NGO which pays no tax­es.

But the fail­ure of the Car­ni­val en­ter­prise is not just a fail­ure of the gov­ern­ments, past and present, but a fail­ure of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty. The lat­ter has al­lowed it­self to be crowd­ed out by state largesse and has been slow to cap­i­talise on the po­ten­tial for an ex­pe­ri­ence good which at­tracts thou­sands of con­sumers and has sig­nif­i­cant ex­port po­ten­tial. The aca­d­e­m­ic com­mu­ni­ty as well has pro­duced a pauci­ty of quan­ti­ta­tive re­search on such a ma­jor dri­ver of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty for a quar­ter of the fi­nan­cial year.

The biggest fail­ure is, how­ev­er, ac­tu­al­ly the Car­ni­val fra­ter­ni­ty, which is re­mark­ably slow to adapt to change. A good ex­am­ple is the pan of­fi­cial who ar­gued that through the ab­sence of a tele­vi­sion broad­cast, old pan­men were de­nied see­ing the Panora­ma free, rather than see the rev­enue loss to the cur­rent pan­men from a tele­vi­sion sta­tion's re­luc­tance to pay for the broad­cast.

There will al­ways be my­opic views on Car­ni­val, like ob­jec­tions to its con­tri­bu­tion to the in­crease in the coun­try's birth rate. One would think that as a coun­try with an age­ing pop­u­la­tion, a low birth rate, and con­sid­er­able fi­nan­cial re­sources, we should wel­come any ac­tiv­i­ty that would re­alise an in­crease in the num­ber of cit­i­zens. The high birth rate at­trib­uted to Car­ni­val, al­though not borne out by any em­pir­i­cal da­ta, is there­fore not an "op­por­tu­ni­ty cost" of the an­nu­al stag­ing of the fes­ti­val but a pos­i­tive ex­ter­nal­i­ty for which the State should be grate­ful.

Dou­glas' first step, in­stead of throw­ing more bad mon­ey in­to the fes­ti­val, should be to com­mis­sion a busi­ness case study of Car­ni­val, as a pre­lude to con­sult­ing with stake­hold­ers for the rad­i­cal changes re­quired. With­out it, all the al­lo­ca­tions will amount to noth­ing more than mon­ey jump­ing up in steel­band.

Max­ie Cuffie runs a me­dia con­sul­tan­cy, In­te­grat­ed Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, is an eco­nom­ics grad­u­ate of the UWI and holds an MPA from the Har­vard Kennedy School as a Ma­son Fel­low in Pub­lic Pol­i­cy and Man­age­ment.