On to Car­ni­val 2026 and away from the cares of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the world, re­lat­ing to the present con­flicts which dom­i­nate the head­lines and cause quite a mea­sure of con­ster­na­tion amongst cit­i­zens every­where.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been forced to de­fend against charges and sus­pi­cions of be­ing an­ti-Car­ni­val, giv­en that she banned fetes from cer­tain state fa­cil­i­ties.

“Noth­ing can be fur­ther from the truth,” the Prime Min­is­ter said in re­sponse to the al­le­ga­tion.

To de­fend her po­si­tion of sup­port for Car­ni­val, the Gov­ern­ment has in­creased by $3 mil­lion the al­lo­ca­tion to the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) to stage the fes­ti­val.

At the lev­el of build­ing to the ma­jor pre-Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties on Di­manche Gras night, and the fi­nals of the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion on the night be­fore, as of this evening, the Na­tion­al Schools’ Panora­ma Fi­nals will be sound­ing off at Skin­ner Park in San Fer­nan­do, a venue change from the past which at­tract­ed a mea­sure of crit­i­cism.

How­ev­er, tak­ing the event to the south­land can be jus­ti­fied by the need to have at least one ma­jor Car­ni­val event in the sec­ond city. On dis­play will be the “style” and en­thu­si­asm the young steel­pan play­ers have brought to the an­ces­tral gift.

There is, though, a ma­jor and con­tin­u­ing mis­con­cep­tion of un­der­stand­ing and plan­ning re­lat­ed to the fund­ing of the ma­jor Car­ni­val events, which need se­ri­ous at­ten­tion. Over the decades and con­tin­u­ing, the em­pha­sis has been the de­pen­dence on the trea­sury to make grants to the Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers.

The Gov­ern­ment and the in­ter­est groups of the Car­ni­val con­tin­ue to plan and op­er­ate on the ba­sis that fund­ing should be count­ed as grants rather than in­vest­ments. It’s long past the time when the ma­jor el­e­ments of the Car­ni­val have to de­pend al­most ex­clu­sive­ly on those gov­ern­ment grants.

To achieve change, what is first of all need­ed is in-depth re­search to find and quan­ti­fy the mon­ey cir­cu­la­tion over the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od, in­clud­ing all the events which make up Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val and how por­tions of those funds should be di­rect­ed to the stag­ing of the fes­ti­val.

The fact is that there con­tin­ues to be an ab­sence of a se­ri­ous eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial re­search as­sess­ment of the es­ti­mat­ed bil­lion-dol­lar in­dus­try. Judge­ments about the size and dol­lar val­ue of T&T’s Car­ni­val in­dus­try are based on what is vis­i­ble rather than be­ing treat­ed like all oth­er in­dus­tries which make up the Gross Na­tion­al Prod­uct, and so can be as­sessed in a sci­en­tif­ic man­ner.

A vi­tal source of ex­pen­di­ture in the Car­ni­val, that which comes from abroad and in forex, should al­so be as­sessed to en­sure that re­turns to the fes­ti­val are max­imised, and in hard cur­ren­cy. The re­search work and the re­sults will take away what has be­come some­thing of a stig­ma on the Car­ni­val and a po­lit­i­cal foot­ball, groups us­ing it as a means of con­dem­na­tion of the gov­ern­ment for mak­ing what is per­ceived to be non-pro­duc­tive con­tri­bu­tions to the sig­nal el­e­ments of the fes­ti­val.

The mod­ern T&T Car­ni­val needs to be pro­fes­sion­alised in its con­cep­tion, or­gan­i­sa­tion, stag­ing and in the fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic as­sess­ment of its con­tri­bu­tion not on­ly to the econ­o­my, but cal­cu­lat­ed as to how the so­cial well-be­ing of cit­i­zens is nour­ished through the Car­ni­val.