“We” in the title meaning Mauritius and Mauritians (at least most of us in most fields but, thankfully, not all of us in all fields!)

Left behind in what? Well in many things, e.g.

In teaching methods and in what our kids learn

In the way we run schools

In what most parents expect for the future

In the way politicians and business leaders take decisions,

In the present, backward way, we now use for choosing and appointing people into many jobs of responsibility (just compare how far ahead India has reached in meritocracy, independent of castes etc!); in our administrative procedures, which have deteriorated to very often being just procedures “ki bizin suiv”(to obtain a passport, to get a building permit, to register a new-born or to access good medical advice) instead of being service to the citizen.

In our increasing dependence on foreign culture, music, fashion, behaviour, examinations, expertise and know-how (the best solution several leaders arrive at is often “we will name an outside consultant to study the problem”, all this to the detriment of our own),

In our almost total dependence on imported energy (petrol) and strong dependence on imported technologies, imported goods and it seems soon on external capital. Furthermore, when we reflect on how much our industries, traditional and modern, are geared to export markets, we may well ask, “Where is our independence?”

In our filling station and super-market mentalities, by which we only learn to meet our energy, food and material needs by ordering, picking and paying at the counter. The average Mauritian makes no efforts to produce, search for, manufacture or prepare most of these necessities for living. Through such mentalities, which are of course those of the least effort, Mauritians score low on a self-survival index, unlike the vast majority in Asia and Africa (where people know how and are prepared to word hard to produce what they need). Nor will we, for lack of resources, become like Western Europe and North America, the epitomes of consumer society. Hence we, as a nation, may well be falling between the two proverbial stools.

(In the early nineties, with colleagues of the UN and IUBS we furiously designed indices as mathematical indicators for various social, economic and environmental conditions; my best personal one was a quality of life index, which took off; another one was a self-survival index, which did not).

WORLD FRONT-RUNNERS: There are fortunately many exceptions to being left behind. In some areas we are amongst the world front-runners or at least not far behind. Your list is as good as mine! Free press, newspapers and radio are surely among them. So are the individual efforts being made to modernise the country and serve people, although often sporadic and short-lived. The new budget could turn out, when implemented, to be a model of in-depth reform for the developing world, although its land taxes could be perceived as a Mugabe-style reform. It also failed to address the energy independence question (we are still wide open to the next drastic energy crisis, since we are 100% importers and zero producers of petrol, refer for arguments and solutions to Live’N’Learn in Outlook, 9 and 16 May 2006).

Mention could be made of the IVTB and some of the practical, hands-on training it offers, although its planning lacks future studies to forecast which trends will be in demand and which are likely to disappear (like shorthand, Latin studies, classes de couture, to mention a few).

In the technology field we have not taken off as yet, as has South Korea and Taiwan, but Mauritius is full of historical and present-day examples of innovation. In this respect, the need for a fully-fledged patent office is strongly felt.

We are surely among the LAST in a world classification of national football teams (hats off to Trinidad and Tobago!), but here and there, in athletics, in judo and a few other disciplines we are showing revelations.

Finally, although this is only a short list, there must be a place for “Mauritius as a mini-United Nations”, that is a country with people (mostly the young generation, but also a few of the older ones) who have escaped the 5C’s in their daily-life relationships. People who are able to live in peace, beyond Community, Class, Caste, Creed and Colour (in the particular matter of creed, the sought-after flexibility is achieved through knowing one’s own religion and learning to understand and appreciate the religion of others).

In my rather wide experience of this world, few populations have achieved that!

<B>Dr. Michael ATCHIA

[email protected]</B>