Ian Boyne
IT WAS an awful paradox.
While Finance Minister Omar Davies was delivering his most comfortable Budget speech in 11 years, reeling off accomplishments, citing buoyant investment prospects and growing private sector endorsement, scared residents from his inner-city constituency were fleeing for their lives as the struggle over donmanship intensified.
The country has breathed a collective sigh of relief that there was no additional tax burden in this year's budget, substantially containing social tensions. The trade unions have in effect handed billions over to the Government through the Memorandum of Understanding, and interest rates have been going down for a record number of times in succession. The private sector has never been as happy and enthusiastic about Jamaica's economic prospects as they are today, and leading representatives of the sector are telling talk show hosts that Government's fiscal targets are eminently achievable. Even Charles Ross and John Jackson have been converted into optimists!
At the same time criminals in Arnett Gardens are driving decent citizens from their homes in the struggle for control of the area. The Minister of National Security is admitting that murders are up and the Minister of Education is publicly lamenting the escalating sexual promiscuity among adolescents in schools. Mark Wignall on Thursday had a touching story about the brutal, atrocious rape of 'Susie' from Whitehall in a column on inner-city life titled, 'The Rape Factory'.
"The criminals and rapists roam free. They are the new wardens among us," Wignall mourns in his column. Ronnie Thwaites on Independent Talk just last week said that many Jamaicans have retreated into their own narrow space, avoiding any sense of social or community obligations, just obsessed with their own little 'hustling' and 'juggling'. Wilmot Perkins on his talk show told of an incident where he picked up a teacher in Malvern, St. Elizabeth, some time ago to hear her say that despite her diligence in inculcating excellence and other values in her students, their heads were nowhere there.
What they told her was that "they were interested in driving 'Bimmer'," and could not see the relevance of what she was teaching them to the attainment of that. After all, it was from a bus stop that Perkins had picked up this teacher of many years. Last Wednesday was Teachers Day and one teacher from one of our inner-city schools told me on Wednesday night when I called to wish her happy Teachers Day that she was so frustrated with the indiscipline, violence and crudeness of her students that she would not go to school that day to be unnerved by people wishing her Happy Teachers Day. This dedicated, previously zealous teacher has been teaching at that inner-city school for 30 years. For more than an hour she told me alarming stories about what was going on in our schools and the moral depravity which pervades.
VALUES, ATTITUDES
Meanwhile, eyebrow-raising stories have surfaced about school girls' engaging in 'Girls Gone Wild' sex on public buses and these are not by any means limited to inner-city schools. The moral deficit affects Uptown as much as Downtown. We fool ourselves if we believe that increased investment projects, growing private sector confidence in the economy and the interest rates, inflation and the fiscal deficit going in the right direction mean that we are okay. Indeed, our economic prospects are directly threatened by negative values and attitudes. This country has not taken seriously the issue of values and attitudes. The issue is getting nowhere near the level of attention and priority that it should. Values and attitudes is not a religious issue. It is an issue which affects politics and economics which is all that seems to matter to our secular elites.
There is some indication that certain groups are seeing how critical this issue of values and attitudes called social capital in the academic literature is. This week the Dispute Resolution, in association with the Mona School of Business, hosts the Second Caribbean Conference on Dispute Resolution (May 12-14) at the Jamaica Conference Centre. It deserves the widest participation and discussion. On Wednesday at the regular Think Tank forum of the Jamaica Information Service (JIS), the mediation manager of the Dispute Resolution Foundation, Mr. Ronald Mason, said some very important things and insightfully tied the issue of conflict resolution to wider economic issues.
Mason told the think tank session: "In Jamaica there are a lot of personality conflicts. Two people in the same department don't like each other and work-flow slows down. People don't come to work because they don't want to deal with the other person". Mason pointed how personality conflicts and people's inability to resolve conflicts cost the country in terms of productivity.
VISION 21
A most exciting, comprehensive and visionary programme to deal with Jamaica's serious and crippling social capital deficit is the Jamaica Vision 21 initiative sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and under the rubric of the Civic Dialogue for Democratic Governance Project. This project comes under the auspices of the Leadership Forum which is a multi-stakeholder group from a variety of groups across Jamaica. The list of representatives is most impressive and broad-based. If this project is as excellent in implementation as it is in conceptualisation, it will be the most far-reaching programme to address the country's low social capital.
The country needs to learn that it is not enough to boost finance and physical capital while social capital is declining. Indeed, investments in social capital are absolutely necessary for sustainable growth in finance and physical capital.
The Vision 21 project properly analyses the main elements of Jamaica's disastrous social capital status which it lists as follows: "Social inequality; disregard for law and order; public distrust for the system of governance; insufficient knowledge of the rights and responsibilities of citizens; a breakdown of traditional social structures; historic patterns of discrimination; political rivalry; inappropriate and inadequate education." The objectives of the programme broadly are to promote dialogue and discussion between Jamaicans across different sectors and classes in order to "inspire new ways of thinking and address the current challenges."
The project will also help to "promote the mindset and behavioural changes that will reduce the social problems in the country." Vision 21 lays out some possible futures for Jamaica over the next 10 years. In one such scenario, titled 'Paradise Lost', the main features reflect current realities: "The present negative trends in the political system deepen. Dons are now seen as the extensions of the political system and are playing an increasing role in governance. There is a lack of visionary leadership. The state and civil society neither respect nor trust each other. Levels of crime and violence are high. Economic progress is negatively affected by the spiralling crime rate. Social disorder leads to high rates of migration. Jamaica is in a state of near anarchy as the downward spiral continues."
This Paradise Lost scenario will be ours just worse if we continue with the present trends and if we fail to realise that economic growth by itself will not address the underlying and fundamental problems in the society. We continue to downplay the values and attitudes issue to our peril. There is an abundance of scholarly documentation to prove that the countries which grow economically and which successfully meet developmental challenges all have high social capital levels and are strong on trust, co-operation, building alliances and social cohesion, discipline, tolerance and peace.
If we don't deal with the growing anarchy in the society, we will be building vast numbers of hotel rooms and having luxury resorts like Harmony Cove, but they will be empty because people will avoid Brand Jamaica. If Brand Jamaica is associated with violence, social disorder, indiscipline, corruption and political instability, our tourism investments will be in vain and people will be locked up behind burglar bars in their homes, not driving on our spanking highways. We have to deal with the values and attitude issue. It is primary.
GET UP, STAND UP
The desirable option which The Civic Dialogue for Democratic Governance Project aims to facilitate is the one under the 'Get up, Stand Up' scenario: "People see a common vision which includes them. All communities in Jamaica are engaged. The entire population, including Government, private sector and civil society is mobilised into unified action. Respect is an important ingredient to all levels of society. Social justice is promoted. Planning and tough decision-making are by participation and consensus. The population is motivated to achieve success through hard work. There is national growth to everyone's benefit."
Extremely well put and well-thought out. This is what you call vision. This is the kind of bold, far-reaching catalytic thinking that Jamaica needs, and the elites in the society must ensure that this project is given every assistance and facilitation possible. The media must get on board right away. The intellectual work is avant-garde and sophisticated and reflects the best developmental and governance thinking in the world. Jamaica will be the loser if this impressive conceptual project fails.
The Jamaican intelligentsia is narrowly economistic and largely disdainful of ideas. It is quick to brush aside issues of values and norms as peripheral to the real business of production and productivity, thus revealing its intellectual myopia and provincialism. The capitalist class needs to understand that workers will not be optimising productivity and giving a "fair day's work for a fair day's pay" unless they have bought into some notion of moral obligation, or if they see their interests tied up with the interest of the owners of capital. And workers and professionals, especially in a highly materialistic society, don't generally see their compensation as fair or adequate.
So, how will they give their best unless they are inspired by factors other than money? Why shouldn't policemen and women accept bribes from unscrupulous motorists, thus multiplying our road accidents, and bribes from drug smugglers if their only frame of reference is material advancement? How will corruption decrease if people don't have values beyond getting more money? How can rapes, teenage pregnancy (usually by older men), family break-ups decline if people only think about their short-term sensual gratification rather than ethical norms? What will motivate irresponsible men from impregnating large numbers of women, who are then abandoned to grow these children on their own, with tragic consequences to the society in terms of crime, violence and other social ills?
The economic indicators are going in the right direction, but the social indicators are terribly wrong.
* Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. You can send
your comments to
ianboyne1@yahoo.com
