…after Indian Independence?
Yesterday was the 69th anniversary of Indian Independence…and that of Pakistan also. Nobody makes a big deal about it any longer…but it was a big deal at the time. The British boasted that the “sun never sets on the British Empire”…but India and Pakistan’s independence unleashed a wave of nationalism in all the other colonies that ensured before two decades were passed, there would pretty be no more British Empire! The sun had set!!
We can see India’s influence on the names of so many political parties across the Empire – from South Africa to Guyana – that adopted “Congress” from the trailblazing Indian National Congress that led India to independence. If they could do it…each other colony was sure that it was only a matter of time before they too were “Independent”.
The British had been caught in their own artifice as they tried to convince the world that while they’d enslaved millions to accumulate capital for “Mother England”, and had freed them for “humans train” reasons, they were now going to deliver “independence” for the same reason. They were soooo kind!!
Point of the matter is as usual it all had to do with the accumulation of more wealth for the “Mother Land” from the natives. After slavery, the British had undermined the bargaining power of the slaves by bringing in indentured labourers – WHO WERE WILLING TO WORK FOR LESS MONEY THAT THE EX-SLAVES!! Sugar production increased with the indentureds and made “Emancipation” a cruel hoax.
And so would be independence. After all, even India the trail-blazer is finally pulling itself out of the rut they were left when the British departed. They had no industry to speak of for the simple reason that the manufacturing of their major export to the world in the seventeenth century – cotton fabrics – was transferred to England and India ended up importing cotton fabrics from England. And so on and so forth!
And so when it was time for us to be “granted” independence in 1966, nothing had changed here. Don’t even talk about manufacturing aluminium from all the bauxite we had. Even though we had more hydropower that Niagara Falls which the Canadians used in their transmutation of bauxite into aluminium. We’d been shipping sugar for centuries to Holland and England where they were refined into which sugar that commanded a higher price. We still don’t have a refinery!!
So while we have a fancy word for the condition, popularised by Walter Rodney – “underdevelopment”, what have we done to get out of it? Imagine the Muckraker’s upset we’re now importing “tamarind balls” – they used to be called “Burnham Balls”, back in the day!!
…in staffing the state
While we may knock the British for a lot of things, we have to admit their Civil Servants, Administrators and Department Heads were professionals who worked according to strict bureaucratic standards. “I’s” had to be dotted and “t’s” had to be crossed.
In the estimation of your humble Eyewitness, this is one area in which we have failed abysmally and our continued occupation of the degraded position as just above Haiti in the Hemisphere for decades after “Independence”, illustrates the point.
Thing is every leader, from Burnham to the present lot, wants to have their own sycophants to be at their beck and call, which means never having the testicular fortitude to tell the leaders what’s really going down. Even it could be the ship of state about to crash into an iceberg of irrelevant policies. Just look at all the military types flooding the government.
Are we expecting Venezuela to circle around our Maginot line?
…on the smell test
It used to be there was a “smell test” in governance. If it smells rotten, looks rotten and tastes rotten, then it’s goddamn well rotten!!
So could we apply the smell test for Norton AND the Cabinet reviewing its own decision??!
