Titbits : A different perspective: The 24/7 economy model ; And the Grand Bassin show ; Kowtowing to the Asian Powerhouse ; Collective responsibility and witch-hunting; The next Minster of Finance; Depreciation of the rupee ; Abolishing the laureate system

 A different perspective: The 24/7 economy model

An avid commentator of the Mauritian scene once remarked that we are des beaux parleurs, and we get so carried away by our own rhetoric that we start believing in them and the clichés that we readily churn out. We have turned our homeland into a knowledge hub, a regional financial and services hub, a Seafood hub, a judicial hub, an inescapable Cyber hub, a Financial, Banking, Management or Legal Service Centre, a Maurice Ile Durable, you name it.
We are still awaiting the results of the branding consultancy and we are already strung up for some exotic mystic model that others will rush in to replicate. The latest product of our fertile mind that prodigiously persists in surpassing its limited horizons is the 24/7 economy model; a model that will deliver in a nutshell everything you can imagine; “it is a win-win situation’, we are told; “with the many economic activities the occurrence of night crime will be reduced; thieves would think twice as they are highly likely to get caught”. Fertile mind, indeed !!!

            And on a single day, the main titles on one single page of a daily were “Petit Paquet : quartier a l’abandon .”; Beau-Bassin: un terrain vague repaire des malfaiteurs;  Pointe aux Piments: piteux état d’infrastuctures ; Au Nord:  Bus bondés et irréguliers; let us first all get these areas and people on the margin of development  into the mainstream before we dupe ourselves in believing that the 24/7 model will “ foster an effective entrepreneurial environment that will nurture the development of SMEs and widen the circle of opportunities for all.”  Our people will suddenly become innovative and we will become more competitive overnight. Eureka !!! We have found the magic formula; we need not bother to change our archaic education system that continues to reward the advantaged and fails miserably in meeting our needs, not for morons, but for life-long learning creative citizens.  In our own virtual world, we can afford to lose sight of our priorities and mix up working smarter and harder and quantity and quality. But unfortunately, the reality of the economic crisis will hit us hard. Now that people are frightened about losing their jobs, loyalty, productivity and morale are likely to be plunging carrying along our cliché.

And the Grand Bassin show

            They were at it again; they could not leave it to knowledgeable, the few great souls that would quench the spiritual quest of the sincere seeker with just few but gems of knowledge to ignite the light within. And it would have been a memorable Maha Shivatri for years to come. No, that did not suit them. The show had to go on. The ministers and those NGOs that have both a foot in politics and religion could not miss this opportunity to be on parade again to the pilgrims, the devotees and more importantly to the MaBC which quite democratically but sneakily ensured that it invaded the private world of each and every household to unleash an overdose of the event that others would have preferred to be more sober and strictly spiritual. And the prime time was reserved for the speeches!!! If you have a habit of taking everything with a touch of irony, you will be served at your heart’s content. First of all, you will have the long exhaustive list of acknowledgements making sure that they do not miss anybody around who is somebody and after returning the compliments and ending up with the traditional greetings, there will be very little to say given the impatience of the waiting speakers, except to throw in some quotes from our scriptures that will single them out from the ordinary crowd and give the impression of being well-versed with our sacred texts. Others, more raw, will prefer to whip up some emotions, and having in mind the forthcoming elections, invoke the Ramayana, shrewdly picking out the juicy parts of the Ram and Ravana rivalry to fit in their claims at the attempts of undermining the great Hindu EKTA.  And still others, who are not limited in any sense on these occasions, will try to take on the garb of the preacher but it will only succeed in enthralling than educating; again it will be an opportunity missed to rise above the mundane - the usual vapid outpourings against the ills of our society and the problems of forging Hindu unity- for the sublime, that which is peaceful, auspicious, innocent. Shivratri –the night to celebrate the wakefulness of one universal consciousness- is not in anyway sectarian but universal- the unity of the human race. (On their behalf, we wish to pay homage to the solidarity and solace provided by all communities to the pilgrims- a vivid example of the familial bonds of the five fingers of our Mauritian overpowering fist of unity.)  It is too sad that we allowed moral relativism cloaked in jargon, to be on the march again, promoted by the tedious, despicable know-alls, the so-called spiritual guardians. When will we finally decide to boot these bunch of jokers out of our Grand Bassin ?

Kowtowing to the Asian Powerhouse

You recall the comments, during the SIDS conference, that were replete with references to the economic losses of the country because of the consequent traffic jams. Now strangely, the regime’s cheerleaders have gone mum. This is ethically incorrect but la crise oblige; we have closed the schools, we have removed the road humps, we have prevented people from working. We should have censured the press and the internet also, imprison some journalists ; they were proliferating all kinds of calumnies like “les nouveaux colons débarquent”;  “we do not want to be fed melamine.” And our friend Ming Chen, without much humility, reminds us that ”Avec ses trios laureates en cette année de buffle, c’est a dire 10% de cette elite, les Sino-Mauritiens et l’ile Maurice vous souhaitent la bienvenue, M. le President”- Typiquement Mauricien, the perpetual search for the elusive Mauritian identity by forging an ethnic one. Dear friend, despite all the tribulations of our Chinese minority (“Notre statut, nous l’avons acquis à force de perseverance et de sueur” which cannot be denied), our "vivre ensemble " depends a lot on the majority community having enough of political and social sense to leave enough of breathing space for others ; the same cannot be said  for our Tibetan friends who have been undergoing all kinds of injustice at the hands of the Han majority. Kowtowing to the Asian giant for its largesse in the present difficult times has unfortunately turned out to be a sad and depressing denouement which has only succeeded in dragging us all in by the heels to the banana republic still struggling to provide equal opportunities to all..

Collective responsibility and witch-hunting

            Some of our parastatals have been hitting the headlines recently –Air Mauritius, the State Trading Corporation, the National Transport Corporation, the Mauritius Port Authority, the national Computer Board, the Agricultural Marketing Board (AMB), and the Mauritius Shipping Corporation. Some of the top management have preferred to bow out with some semblance of dignity while others-the CEO and the Board of Air Mauritius- quite unethical and improper, stubbornly stay put. Taking opportunity of this turbulent situation, the witch hunters are insidiously advancing their own agenda. At the Agricultural Marketing Board for example, there seems to be other motives in the sacking of Chairman Deewoo while the CEO has dug in his heels clearing the way to   ‘protege so montagne ’ in the forthcoming restructuring exercise of the AMB.; And you know how these people finally end up; ask Harish Bhai!!! Ranjitsingh  Soomaroah CEO of the troubled State Trading Corporation and wiser than the anguished lot, does not intend to end up as the sacrificial lamb and he has been quick to spill the beans, revealing that both ministers Jeetah and Sithanen were aware of the hedging deal on mogas and diesel-. “le ministre Rajesh Jeetah a un representant sur le conseil d’administration de la STC. Il y a  aussi un representant du ministere des Finances… » . How will this end up?   Who is Soomaroah ?  Nou ban sa !!!

The next Minster of Finance

The laborites are fed up; they are finding it more and more difficult to continue upholding their winning formula “putting people first .” With the ongoing retrenchment in textile, the BPOs and the hotels, they are more bitter now than ever for they had warned that there was no urgency in the  proclamation of the Employment Rights Act & Employment Relations Act if Government  was sincere in its concern about the impending job losses. In the present crisis situation, these Acts are more likely to result in firing rather than hiring despite the newly proclaimed social contract in the Stimulus package that has a commitment to preserve employment either within the firm or by redeployment. They do not seem to have much faith in the Stimulus package and doubt the claims that it will shore up our economic performance by 1.5%.  Both the IMF and the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) believe that the stimulus package is a big gamble. “There is the danger that the measures will not be effective in protecting a small open economy from the effects of global slowdown.” The EIU is of the opinion that the Government is taking a risk with this fiscal and monetary stimulus package. If it fails, it will destroy Mr Sithanen’s carefully crafted image as finance minister. The laborites are already one step ahead, they have already adopted Praveen as the next Minister of Finance, the architect of the duty-free island. He has won them over with the promises that he will do away with the NRPT and the tax on interest income and more importantly that he will relieve us of the present regressive income tax system that is hurting the laborites more than others.

Depreciation of the rupee

            In the very columns of this paper, we had pointed out that with our huge trade and current account deficits and huge one-off capital inflows, leading to the appreciation of the rupee, our over-valued currency may be carrying the symptom of the “Dutch Disease”. The sustained capital flows to the IRS and real estate sector have been the main cause of the appreciation of the rupee. These flows do not enhance our productivity and flexibility. They are temporary and they do not in any way boost our export potential. There is no transfer of technology or know-how or any multiplier effects on the economy. We had argued that we can only stem the rupee appreciation by imposing limits on these types of unproductive capital inflows and reprioritise our development projects and reconsider our development strategy. Given the limited absorptive capacity of the economy, greater priority should be given to those programmes and projects that rapidly enhance our productivity and boost our export potential. Only then can we afford to leave it to the market to determine the exchange rate in line with the economy’s fundamentals.  So the issue is not that we are for or against the depreciation of the rupee. Rather, we have issue with those that were claiming that the strong rupee reflected a strong economy. So now, how is it that overnight the strong economy that does not have the cushion of the one-off capital inflows, will, according to the EIU and the IMF, be having a current account balance that will reach an all time record deficit of 12% of GDP in 2009, huge gaps in the overall Balance Of Payments, falling reserves and will be left with no choice than to allow the rupee to depreciate!!! The exchange rate will have to be depreciated by more than 15% against the dollar.

Abolishing the laureate system

There are many who believe that the present HSC scholarship award should be maintained as it acts as an incentive for hard-working students. This so-called laureate system is costing the treasury more than Rs 150 million yearly and is one of the causes of the ills of the education system. It encourages the proliferation of unnecessary private tuition. For the few additional marks that will demarcate the laureate from others there is tuition hopping and an insane competition that vitiates learning rather than uplifts it. We have made a virtue of such competition which means others are seen a threat not a support. This insane competition is superfluous; the more sane type of competition is already there in the system, it is being  imposed upon us by the foreign universities-EU, Australia, US – which have high entry requirements like 5As and rigorous interviews.

Government is already guaranteeing the commercial loans to Air Mauritius and STC  etc. and the SME sector has also been lobbying for such guarantees in preference to the SME funds put at their disposal , and all this in the national interest !!!. In the same logic and to promote this saner competition in the education sector  , why not Government guarantees for the financing plans for higher studies provided by private banks ?. Students can effectively borrow the cost of tuition along with money for their living expenses and re pay it alongside their income tax after they graduate and start earning. There could be grants available for lower-income students. As for private tuition it will gradually get back to its earlier function- its lettre de noblesse - of helping in improving needy students’ grades.