Everybody agrees. Call it Economic State of Emergency or what you will. The situation certainly calls for urgent action but, above all, for a new way of looking at things, a new vision and a new project.

It all started in the sixties when the call for independence did not generate much enthusiasm. The upper class was against; an important fraction of the middle class, specially the intellingentsia, was simply not on; support had a clear ethnic colouring. Independence came and we need not be surprised that a feeling of national identity and a sense of belonging to a nation has never really developed. The opposite is true. Speeches and emotional pleas will bear no fruits.

Political leaders have their fair share of the blame. Have we not recently witnessed - O how revealing - the pedestrian delving of our chief histrionic bungling botcher in a mess of bouillabaisse in Rue de la Canebière feverishly looking for his roots?

More importantly, neoliberals who control media houses now conceitedly clamour the end of history and the death of ideology.

The end of state capitalism commonly known as - so-called - communism does not mean the end of history or ideology. Probably it’s only the end of the beginning. The serious problems engendered by capitalism (ecological disaster, oil crisis, etc.) should on the contrary drive us from entropy to new creativity in thought and action, to a new outlook or ideology, to more soul-searching solutions. Less government, privatisation and globalisation under the thumb of US imperialism will simply not work.

A neocolony, which Mauritius is, has to get back to the drawing board. The present shambles at all levels can be tackled only if we take the right road. We must break the neocolonial shackles. We must chart the course to New Independence, which will be nationalistic and democratic or will not be at all.

To achieve this we need the right approach, programme and leadership.

<B>Dev VIRAHSAWMY</B>