WHY COME BACK: The Irrelevance of Geography
After half a life of caring for everyone but herself, an exhausted
wife may well contemplate running away from home. A mid-life businessman – mortgage paid, kids finished
school, some money saved – might think of relocating to a future rich with guiltless
possibilities. But for hundreds of young
St. Lucians studying abroad, where to live is a question of an entirely
different colour.
If there’s a family business, a plot of debt-free land, or some
promised post still waiting, a few will eagerly return. But many young undergrads – in Canada,
England, America, Cuba or Trinidad – foresee at best, a doubtful future and feel
a dwindling sense of national obligation.
After three or more years in a world of higher incomes and stronger
growth, they view their new degree as a tradable asset offering immediate
returns. In a vibrant, if foreign labour
market, it is the first step to even higher earnings. Retreating now would feel like the end of
learning, unplugged from the mainstream of professional advancement.
By comparison, home is a stagnant backwater. Even for the wealthy and well-connected, it
is a tangle of pot-luck politics and vengeful personalities. For students from
modest circumstances, prospects are even more daunting. Return implies building
a future from scratch in an economy with no discernible direction. Better to stay abroad: learn, work, save,
grow.
Over there, new paths and old pitfalls are fairly clear: there is a perceptible
order to society. If one follows the
rules, there will be certain rewards and assurances, whether you are Joe Plumber
or Marcella, a gifted software designer with village roots in Mon Repos. Success is the expected norm, not the coveted
exception.
Granted, it is tough going with fewer family and friends. But at least daily life is not frustrated by arbitrary
ignorance. Out there, the enemy is
known, and it is not some ministry official messing with your life just because
he can. Whatever happens, you do not labour
under the illusion that you deserve a break in your own country.
Meanwhile back home, others also want out. They crave escape, living for the day when
they too will be sent for. The family
home, with its aging parents and a slew of heirs, offers few possibilities. It is not their capital to mortgage.
Then there is that student loan: larger than a house, slower than a
car. It will devour half the average EC salary. So, the best risk-taking years are spent paying
off a mountain of old debt. Soon there
will be a vehicle loan and the inevitable mortgage. By then, it is too late to transition from
bill payer to investor. All that state
of the art expertise, lost to kin and country.
So the decision to leave or stay is hardly rocket science - not with
economic growth dwindling, investment approaching zero, and employment under
siege at home. The future becomes that
place where the graduate can reasonably expect to prosper on individual merit,
in a system that cares little about who he is, or where he started, or how he
voted in the last election.
Of course, there is still love of country: that need to be rooted to
a few square miles of planet earth. All very nice, but that won’t pay the bills. Besides,
these grads know how elusive higher education can be. They remember what their
parents lived through.
Even for retirees, who also need good health care, personal security
and a sense of order, back-home is no longer the ideal place to retire. The tug
of patrimony has given way to practical considerations about their quality of
life. Without a range of wholesome activities to occupy their days, the
undertow of emotion which once dragged them back from England and North America
is dissipating.
The emotional tug does not work on their offspring either; those second
and third generations, full of first-world knowledge and technology. All they feel - if they visit - is acute disappointment
that so little has changed since their parents migrated to a better life. To them, basic systems of governance remain inexplicably
archaic and obtuse: their metropole has moved along while ours has slipped
back.
To foresee the future, one need only ask the average St. Lucian -
secondary schooled, thirty something, mother of three – if she has any idea
where the country is headed under this or any other administration. Ask her about the tourism product; what it
will look like in five years. Ask her
about new jobs in e-commerce. Ask her
about environmental change or green energies.
Ask her where she thinks her school-leaving son will likely find a
job. Then ask her if she wants a ticket
to Obamaland.
Hell, ask the average minister about renewables, emerging technologies,
new economic space, alternative agriculture, global trends in education, digital
media, social entrepreneurship... or how to energize a shrinking private
sector. It’s not stupidity; it’s just that our systems have not evolved and now
require radical re-engineering.
Simply put: our economic base is not adequately prepared for the
future. Most Caribbean economies are languishing because the economic
fundamentals are sagging and the old ways are painfully obsolete. At this stage cosmetic surgery simply will
not do.
What the region needs is more like a triple bypass operation to
remove the detritus of decades of complacency.
Unless this happens soon, not even our own moribund citizenry will take
this country seriously. And that lack of
faith – now manifesting as a haemorrhage of brain power – will be the fatal
stoke.
Already, there are signs of a muted frenzy bubbling to the surface
of everyday existence: that dark energy which turns people on each other at the
first scent of blood. It makes a bus
full of travellers curse a policeman for sanctioning their reckless driver. It makes a young man stab his best friend over
some electronic trinket.
It makes you think you’re not a victim of a crime taking place next
door. It makes a politician kill a
project offering a hundred jobs, because the idea came from someone on the
other side. It makes the ministry
official messing with your life, chronically unavailable to answer phone
calls. It makes governments impotent,
unable to satisfy even the basic aspirations of ordinary citizens.
So if
young graduates don’t turn for home, don’t be surprised. They too feel the need to jump free of the
failing system. Unable to point to a
single thing that works convincingly well, they make the only rational choice
available.
The
same logic drives away investors, foreign and domestic. As economic circumstances level out across the
global marketplace, the factory floor is moving even further from its virtual
boardroom. To be effective, first-world executives need
little more than a smart phone and a bank card.
Consequently,
quality of life issues - not geography - will increasingly decide where progressive
businesses locate. They too need security, education, health care, infrastructure,
quality services and good governance. Where
St. Lucia ranks in that scheme of things will also determine whether or not our
own army of tech-savvy, knowledge-laden new-age entrepreneurs ever return to
our shores.
The
bottom lines are not much different: what
works for our people also works for likeminded others. In the meantime, the
islands are great to visit, but fewer and fewer people actually need to live here.
Changing
that outlook means a shift of focus, in public policy and actual
follow-through. A more progressive
approach to financing higher education is critical. Removing disincentives to
domestic investment will certainly help. But the huge challenge is creating
viable opportunity: new economic space rather than low-wage employment for its
own obvious sake.
Both
the country and its people need to become magnets for home-grown talent as well
as foreign capital. To do that, St.
Lucia needs something that no amount of foreign aid can ever buy: more open and enlightened government. That is the one thing the people must
manufacture for themselves.
As
the recent US elections demonstrate, many rank and file voters are prepared to
forego immediate benefits to secure a more viable future. Any party which is bankrupt of ideas, energy
and new ways of resolving economic challenges, will be summarily dismissed, even
if the alternative is not much better.
If
local elections prove anything, it is that citizens will no longer tolerate inefficient,
corrupt and self-serving government. The
rationing of economic benefits by secret ballot needs to end. The alternative, which serves even myopic
politicians, is a functional, well regulated market system built on competitiveness
and merit.
It is
also an excellent platform for re-election; one that would excite an
unimpressed electorate and draw deserved attention from that new generation of
global citizens we so desperately need in our midst. Hopefully younger and wiser, they just might
have the energy to drag this place, kicking and screaming, from the fringes of
anarchy into the civility of a new century.
If
our current crop of leaders have any sense at all, they would chart that
course, rev up the economic engine, and get the hell out of the way.
__________
Adrian Augier is a development economist
and St. Lucia's 2010 Entrepreneur
of the Year. He is
an award winning poet and producer and a
Caribbean Laureate of Arts and Letters. In October 2012, he received an honorary
doctorate from the University of the West Indies in recognition of his
contribution to regional development and culture. For
more information on this writer and his work visit adrianaugier.blogspot.com
