A recent post from our talented Harish refers to “MIC p donne milliards banne ti-copains mais Soodhun p dire PM finne dire li mendier avec Sheikh Dubai !
Another one from Mr Jean-Pierre Lenoir who writes in Le Mauricien of the 27th January in an article titled "Waka-Belal" that “Jadis proclamée Tigre de l'océan Indien par un quelconque esprit en mal de comparaisons bouffies d’orgueil, notre île surfe aujourd'hui sur une vague où l’illusion le dispute de façon terriblement dangereuse à l’autosatisfaction.”
And yet this one -from some elements of our diaspora and some distorted minds who swear by their identity politics- which is being hammered daily upon us bearing a subtle tint of revengeful and sectarian supremacist ideologies “..the “mangeurs of dhal” has turned the country into a country of dhal…a country of doom and gloom… 50 plus years wasted -a lop-sided and inequitable development.” Years of development that were not being analysed from the angle of the need for an alternative economic model or sustainable model, of an outdated economic and political elite , but from an ethnic angle !
A quick reply : When you have such incompetent beggars running the country banking mainly on their populist measures, what can you expect?
For anyone who feels vaguely disillusioned with the government, the above provides quite a reasonable answer to Harish’s post. But it’s not a befitting, a more comprehensive one, for the other two posts/comments .
We have to delve deeper !
In 1997, when a spreading financial crisis knocked out tiger after the Asian tiger, it also destroyed the myth of the invincibility of Asia's "tiger" economies, which had until then enjoyed decades of vigorous and uninterrupted growth . Similarly in our case the historical dodo virus that had caught up with the African cub-tiger in the early years of the new millennium started undermining the emergence of the “Indian Ocean Tiger”.
But before the advent of the lost decades when we got caught up by the historical dodo virus , what was the country’s development path ?
It was framed by the special Mauritian cocktail of pragmatism and social consensus that helped us to usher in relatively reasonable periods of stability and export-led growth and allowed us to envisage a safe landing on a more diversified and multi-pillar, knowledge based cyber island .
a. 1960s : “ the roots of success decade” - from a grim spectre of hopelessness and exploding demography to a frontrunner in engineering one of the fastest rate of fertility decline - a milestone in the history of population control.
b. 1970s: The failing industrial policy emphasising import substitution (with its accompanying development certificates) led to the implementation of a two-pronged policy strategy favouring import substitution in tandem with export promotion. This 1971-1977 period witnessed one of the fastest growth in our economic history, resting mainly on the shifting sands of commodities boom. The sugar boom was wasted through extravagant public sector projects, social transfers and subsidies. The crisis was imminent; it was a combination of external and local factors.
c. 1980s: The economy was taken to the intensive care unit and the specialists of the Bretton Woods. Between 1979 and 1987, Mauritius adopted a consistent programme of reforms, supported by IMF and World Bank resources. A series of measures in respect of fiscal stabilisation, exchange rate re-alignment, cautious wage policy, trade liberalization, financial consolidation and supply-side policies were implemented. The Structural Adjustment Programmes and policy prescriptions that had a special Mauritian touch together with the commitment to policy continuity in policy reforms launched Mauritius on a development path quite unique in the region and nurtured the gradual emergence of the “Indian Ocean Tiger”.
Over three decades, over the period 1970 to 2000, Mts had chalked up an impressive average real growth of 5.6 percent compared to 3.8 percent for Sub-Saharan Africa. It was outperformed by only a few countries namely the formerly known East Asian tigers and Bostwana. Mauritius' economic performance had been invariably labelled as the “Mauritian miracle" and it had often been cited as the “African cub-Tiger” or the "Indian Ocean Tiger". It ranked, on the basis of the Human Development Index for 189 countries, 66th globally, 44th among developing countries and first in Africa and was classified in the High Human Development quartile globally. Mauritius was also ranked among the top African performers in terms of international competitiveness and 13th out of 190 countries according to the discredited World Bank Ease of Doing Business Report . Life expectancy at birth, adult literacy and income distribution improved significantly to surpass average levels for upper middle-income countries.
These were not wasted years ! No, we were not " bouffies d’orgeuil " or "en mal de comparaisons" . It was the pragmatic policies from a dedicated team at the helm of the country , including the “mangeurs dhal”, which ensured that our particular set of functioning democratic traditions and institutions helped to develop a social consensus without which the continuous and consistent programme of economic liberalisation would not have been possible.
The quality of the country’s institutions of conflict management thus ensured that the quota rents from the EU and US markets were properly utilised into productive sectors. The social infrastructure that consisted of free education, health services, a non-contributory basic retirement pension and an extensive set of social aid schemes was most effective during that period in meeting developmental, social insurance and social assistance goals. The fourfold increase in per capita income in less that two decades was achieved together with significant progress in all critical human development indicators namely, life expectancy, infant mortality, and school enrolment.
A more leftist narrative of our so-called economic miracle is that, as in the case of the East Asian model of development, it is by the use of exports as the engine of growth to leverage the competitive advantage provided by continued depreciation of the rupee and the exploitation of an educated and low-wage labor force that we succeeded in growing faster than many other African countries for some three decades.
Why did we turn up to be only a paper tiger ?
Because in the midst of a challenging environment, of a new era where the protected environment in which we were evolving so far was withering away, we chose to continue with same outdated model of development rather than mapping out the measures for developing an alternative, more inclusive and sustainable model of development. Growth dwindled to an average rate of only 4.0% over the past two decades, nearly a two percentage points below the heady historical trend.
Like the dodo, the cub-tiger was cosily enjoying the spoils of its success that it has lost its competitive and enterprising drive. Indeed, the tiger needed immediate treatment. It was still a well-cocooned economy, where the economic agents haven't learnt all the tricks of competitive trade and business practices. “Markets and free competition are limited by the actions of the oligarchic families who dominate major plantations, financial institutions, real estate, trade and telecommunications.” And an education system that was no longer responsive to the needs of the economy and we had too much excess luggage on board- an over-burdened bloated public sector and unsustainable social maintenance programmes among others.
“It is a model that cannot extricate us from our current inegalitarian low-growth economy because it encourages private sector connivance with the public sector resulting in rent-seeking activities, restrictive markets and crony capitalism.”
We avoided making hard choices. We opted for short term piece-meal reforms, like the improvements to the business and investment climate and the adoption of a more simplified and growth-friendly tax and hiring system instead of a total remodelling of our development agenda.
Why have we become such beggars , why has the “Indian Ocean tiger” turn out to be a paper tiger, why can we safely say that meanwhile the “mangeurs dhal ” has somewhat progressed marginally to be "mangeurs de baja” to be more in tune with one of “them” -the economic elite ?
We know now !
But the true discourse remains the needed changes and reforms to our present economic model of development and the accompanying political system.
