Fine young professionals

This country is beginning to look like an Edgar Allan Poe mystery novel. Indeed, if the messages from political quarters are anything to go by, Mauritius is on the fast track to oblivion. Listen to them and all you see is a horizon shrouded in poverty, unemployment and myriad other lugubrious ills.

Well, here?s some good news: the doomsday scenario so tidily contrived by the political leaders of different persuasions, is unfounded. The sad irony of the matter is that those who are now ripping down our self-confidence and national unity are the same who saw Mauritius emerge from the post-independence mire to become an economic and social miracle in the 1980s.

What?s wrong, guys? Too much power and money? You prefer to fight each other rather than for the country? Have those youthful ideals evaporated into unadulterated acceptance of the exploitative world order? The terms ? yesterday?s news and anathema - come to mind. The history books will remember this. It?s not just little Suzie who needs to wake up.

Take a short walk around Port-Louis and you will see just how erroneous the nay-sayers really are. The capital is positively teeming with bright young people bursting with ideas and enthusiasm. Yesterday, I spoke to a young man who has invested a considerable amount of his own money in order to offer free IT services to whoever needs them and the United Nations have rewarded him for his spirit of innovation. He is but a single member amongst the swelling ranks of the nation?s army of fine young professionals. They won?t swallow the gloom that is being fed to them because they?re simply too busy taking life, and let?s hope the island too, by the horns.

If they are to succeed in their quest for a more egalitarian and prosperous society, there are several institutional hindrances that will have to be overcome. The IT and tourism industries are being heralded by government as the buoys that will keep the economy afloat. If you will, it?s their legacy to coming generations. Unfortunately, this rhetoric is burdened by the double standards of reality. T. S. Eliot hit the nail on the head in The Hollow Men :

?Between the idea and the reality

Between the motion and the act

Lies the shadow?.

Mauritius aspires to be a cyberisland; yet, telecommunications prices are still prohibitive. We want more tourists; yet, we don?t really want to facilitate their getting here. Although these are but facets of a more complex whole, protecting these bloated public institutions is tantamount to giving the competition a club to knock us over the head with. This hypocrisy must give way to true economic democracy. If not, the cyberisland might succumb to the ?dead in the egg? syndrome whereas the tourist industry will slowly wilt and perish. Mauritius is beautiful but the world is full of idyllic spots that are all too keen to welcome cash-toting visitors.

Thus, the fine young professionals have the impetus to carry the country forward and, although their enthusiasm seems boundless, government needs to create an environment propitious to their emancipation. Not anything groundbreaking, mind you, just the right conditions for them to have the same opportunities and incentives that State-owned companies enjoy. Take that, Edgar Allan Poe enthusiasts?