We say “Happy New Year” because happiness is what we seek and pursue as human beings. We say “Prosperous New Year” because improved economic conditions bring comfort and gives one better options, more choices, which open up psychological space.
If we think of this, in the context of a small society such as ours, creating conditions for better options for more people can only mean “shared prosperity.” To have shared prosperity, an economy must first be prosperous; that is to say, it must be generating wealth and income as an economy. Then, the level of participation and extent of reach and impact, largely determined by economic structure and government policy, help to determine the extent of sharing.
When I was 17, Garth Alleyne, a thoughtful teacher at QRC, once asked me to read two books, reflect on them and write down my thoughts. One was “The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations” by British economist Barbara Ward, who examined the widening gap between nations of the industrialising North, and the developing world of the South. Although she argued for a more equal world economic system, she concluded that developing countries were poor because they lacked natural resources to help them develop. In other words, a country was poor because it was poor in natural resources. This book was published in 1962, the same year that Trinidad and Tobago ceased to be a British colony and became independent. In 1966, when I was writing my response to that book, I could not agree that a country was poor because it was poor in natural resources, although I acknowledged other uplifting and enlightening elements of Ward’s thinking.
Since then, we have come to understand that it is how you look at resources and how well you leverage them. For example, how do you leverage 400 IT graduates produced by our tertiary system for the last two decades and continuing, and our unsurpassed natural and environmental assets?
The other book was “The Problem of India” by KS Shelvankar, a seminal work published in 1940, and a penetrating critique of British imperialism and colonialism in India, as the source of India’s stagnation, underdevelopment and poverty. Although, as a boy I had no idea of the power of such an intellectual challenge as articulated by Shelvankar, it was an important immersion for me in thoughts on the challenge of underdevelopment and development. But I do remember being resentful of the fact that the author referred to his country as a problem. A country and a people cannot be seen as a problem. These are your prime assets to find a way to develop.
In 1966, Chairman Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution was initiated in China, 17 years after he established the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In 1966, Lal Bahadur Sashtri, the sitting Prime Minister of India, died of a heart attack in Russia, making way for Indira Gandhi’s ascendancy. In Britain, Harold Wilson’s second term ushered in a period of social liberalism, as that country, with the Beatles, fashion and trends, led a global cultural revolution that spread to the US as the Vietnam war raged, resistance and opposition grew and the Civil Rights movement intensified in the US.
Today, China and the US are in a race for number one in competitiveness in every sphere. India just overtook Japan to become the fourth most competitive country on the way to overtaking Germany for third place sometime in the near future. Britain is strengthening relations with Europe, living in dread of Russian ambitions and trying to maintain stability in relations with Trump’s USA, as it strengthens bonds with Canada, now uneasy over relations with the US and striving for greater autonomy and as it marginalises the Commonwealth.
Relative progress has been made in the Caribbean and Latin American region since the Cold War, the rise of military dictatorships, dependency theory thinking and unsuccessful policies and the ideological rifts of the sixties.
In the Caribbean, the focus was on Independence following the failed Federation of 1959 and most Caribbean countries have made their way to middle-income or high-income status now, but are largely stuck, except for the new energy domains.
But the western hemisphere remains the zone of greatest inequality in the world, the highest cocaine producing and distribution region, and an area of entrenched gangster violence.
It would be significant if leaders would take charge of their countries and address their challenges with precision and cooperate across the hemisphere to make the Western Hemisphere a zone of shared prosperity beginning in 2026.
