By Shyama SOONDUR

Government is about wealth redistribution. You tax incomes earned by individuals and entities to finance a set of core public services and to help the most vulnerable.

Government is also about supporting wealth generation. You set up and service a framework geared towards bringing creative and entrepreneurial forces into play.

In essence, government is about balancing wealth generation against wealth distribution. Simple, isn?t it? Why then does the handful of people chosen to perform this balancing act seem to be failing so lamentably?

Government?s latest decision to draw from the Mauritius Tourism Promotion Authority?s funds to subsidise high school exam fees is yet another sign that the authorities are losing it. The balance has just been tipped in favour of wealth distribution and to the detriment of wealth creation.

Government is proposing to spend money that it doesn?t have. And in order to do so, it is hitting the tourism industry in one of its most vulnerable spots. Lack of funds for destination marketing has always been a major bone of contention between industry and government. As it is, Mauritius spends far less on marketing than competing destinations like the Seychelles and the Maldives. It would have made better sense to increase the MTPA?s budget and to strengthen its capacity. Not the other way round. Tourism, it seems, is paying for its success. Government argues that the industry is the most prosperous and it can afford the hundred and fifty millions rupees or so.

Maybe it can. But there were surely other ways to enlist its contribution?

More disturbing still is the fact that government is spending beyond its means. Instead of modernizing the welfare state, it is compounding its cost burden on the country by giving in to populist measures like providing universal free transport facilities to all school goers. On the other hand, government is getting caught in an ideological muddle each time it tries to modernize and increase the wealth creating capacity of the country. The latest faux pas has been the apparently cavalierly way in which the authorities have tried to change the rules of the game concerning the reengineering of the sugar industry. When new rules are imposed unilaterally and unexpectedly, the business climate gets frosty. Uncertainty sets in. Entrepreneurs get confused. Granted, to govern a country is akin to walking a tight rope. The more so when the going is tough.

But then, tightrope walking is an art not to be mastered by those who are unfocussed and in whose minds live a thousand and one conflicting motivations.