Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The best insight, instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Joining us at this time, a gentleman who's been with us on several occasions before this. Welcome back to our program. Doctor Varnas James, good morning to you. Nice to have you with us here this morning.
[00:00:18] Speaker C: Morning Satish, how are you doing?
[00:00:19] Speaker B: I'm fine. Nice to have you here. There's a lot for us to discuss when it comes to economics and foreign exchange and all those things, but your opinion on other matters, things related to Tobago is also very valuable and there's a lot going on that I want to talk to you just a bit before, before we get into the discussion about finances and foreign exchange and all these things and that relates to the crime situation and some of the overtures that we've been seeing and want to get your opinion on some of these developments and whether direction they can help or whether they are misguided or what's going on. Crime Tobago, 19 murders. It's record on so many different levels and we have a beehive of activity. The minister and the ministry and the commissioner came back yesterday. They were there since Monday, some announcements being made by the chief secretary and so on. What's your take on all that's going on?
[00:01:11] Speaker C: Well, the trauma is real in this society and the expressions of the trauma point you to the fact that the society wants a comprehensive approach to dealing with this problem.
This is not only threatening to the existence of individuals in the society, but it's also threatening to the way of life, the economy, the sense of security that we need to offer the world as part of their incentive to them to come here and set up business and enjoy their holidays and so on. So, you know, halfway solutions, policing focused solutions alone will work for this. We need to fight on two fronts, massive reforms to underwrite a prevention program all the way up to current prevention, long term prevention and current prevention on the one hand. And then of course we need serious efforts on the detection and I and solution of the problem immediately. So what I hear is largely about policing crime emerging in any society. But surely in a place like Tobago where we have had almost no historical record of criminality except of crime, of murder, except for this recent surge, maybe I would say in the last ten years at most.
In a place like this you might as well go for fundamental long term approaches that will net the problem in the body. It's still fresh, it's still young and.
[00:03:06] Speaker D: We need to approach it properly considering.
[00:03:09] Speaker C: All of the fundamental issues that relate to our governance model, which is driven by an information flow mechanism and of course a matter of self determination by our communities that will allow for a full court press to deal with this problem.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: You just highlighted that it's your impression that there's a lot of focus on the policing element of crime fighting and that there are other elements that need to be working in tandem with this fight against the crime. From the police service, do you have are you confident we're going to get to that stage or are we in that direction? What's your take?
[00:03:54] Speaker D: Well, all of the changes we need.
[00:03:56] Speaker C: Fundamentally in this society are the responsibility of the citizens. They're not the responsibility of the police or the government or anything like that. So I think as the trauma goes, citizens are going to have to wake up and ponder on the real solutions and I'm confident that the wounds will be willing. Just yesterday I was coming from a funeral in my hometown and the whole.
[00:04:23] Speaker D: Conversation about how do we approach crime.
[00:04:26] Speaker C: And newton, this is a car full of highly skilled professionals.
[00:04:32] Speaker D: And everybody agreed that Tobago Indians are.
[00:04:35] Speaker C: Going to have to wake up, not just government. Tobagonians are going to have to wake up and organize themselves, reorganize themselves, push for the reorganizations we need in order to preserve the serenity of our society.
[00:04:51] Speaker D: I am confident we will do.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: That. That's an interesting element of the entire equation that you're raising there because we have the same discussion here at home and we are told time and time again that the citizenry needs to do its part. Its debatable as to what its part really entails, but thats the discussion that we have over in Tobago.
The crime situation is at a level where I dont think if you ask anyone on the island or even off the island, it turned out that they thought would have gotten to this stage.
And you spoke about ten years.
Was there evidence over the past ten years to suggest this is where were heading? Because it appears as though the crime situation in Tobago fell off the edge about three years ago when we started seeing an increasingly murder figure.
Last year we had what many people thought would have been the record. We're looking at that in the rearview mirror now. And we are told that gang violence is responsible for much of what is taking place in Tobago. I know that visitors to the island are being told lock your doors, keep your doors locked. You have small businesses that are victims of robberies and all of these things.
How does this the present situation?
Tobagonians and their frame of mind are Tobegonians by and large. You spoke about a car professionals, but by and large the average Tobago, Ian, are they confident in your opinion, that Tobago can beat this crime thing?
[00:06:35] Speaker D: Well, let me take up a couple.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: Of different aspects of what you're saying then. First of all, yes, I am confident that we can beat this crime thing.
[00:06:46] Speaker D: Because no problem you have in society.
[00:06:49] Speaker C: Could be approached by the citizens by throwing up their hands.
So for all the problems we face, all of them, we as citizens have to be confident that if we put our minds together and put proper solutions in place, we can beat the problem.
[00:07:07] Speaker D: That's the problem of development, crime, all of it. Literacy, whatever.
[00:07:14] Speaker C: There's no problem we can't tackle as a society if we come together properly to address it, to understand it scientifically, and to do things about it.
[00:07:25] Speaker D: Secondly, with respect to the long gestation.
[00:07:29] Speaker C: Period for what you now seen as.
[00:07:31] Speaker D: The tip of an iceberg, crime rests.
[00:07:35] Speaker C: Fundamentally on the sociology of the society.
And you have to understand that sociology.
[00:07:42] Speaker D: Properly, the sociology is not simply good parenting and good family life and all of that. All of that's the foundation, but it's also critically the way we work together, the way, the way we're organized to work together. You could have seen, therefore, not ten years ago, 2030 years ago, when economists began this kind of conversation with Tobagonians. You could have seen, surely when I.
[00:08:16] Speaker C: Came back here 1213 years ago to.
[00:08:19] Speaker D: Live permanently, I kept saying to the society, if we don't sort out the way we are organized to bring our.
[00:08:28] Speaker C: Communities fully into the business of taking responsibility for how we raise our children.
[00:08:35] Speaker D: The problems that we are seeing in Trinidad, that are the consequences of the.
[00:08:42] Speaker C: Same fundamental failures, will show up here.
[00:08:46] Speaker D: Some of it internally, organically grown, and.
[00:08:50] Speaker C: Some of it as a transfer from Trinidad in the light of the spiraling, out of control crime that you're seeing down there. And that's really what you're beginning to see here.
[00:09:03] Speaker D: Much of what we talk about, the killing in our guy, these are all tied to the spillover effect.
No society is immune from it, but.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: You can do things that should be effective.
[00:09:20] Speaker D: We knew, for example, from, since way back, since 1987, in the conversations we were having, we knew that you have to set up Tobago in a way that the communities are able to pursue their own self determination. That means every day there are people who wake up in these communities responsible for the community development agenda, not a tha, not a central government. The communities must be empowered to take full responsibility for their own development and their own self determination, whatever future they want for their children. And if you do that, they'll monitor crime. They'll monitor possible deviants. They'll know their children as they rarely do now, but they'll know them in a way that ties to their power and their ability to take steps to correct. I saw that growing up. I saw in Charlotteville, I saw a society that took responsibility for my development. When the central government did not provide a library for my village, the community came together and built their own library. Responsible people like Emily Nicholson and Vera Nicholson, those kinds of people took responsibility and said, this village needs their library. And my father told me they established it on their own. They didn't ask nobody for any help. The community got together.
Some people donated their homes, their ground floors. ML was famous for that, and so on. So they took responsibility. And I remember too satish when the community came together and put up money to send talented children to school.
So what you're talking about here is they knew, and the communities all know today, my conversation with them over the last six months, they know they can do everything that is needed to keep primary control. They just are not properly empowered.
And I give you an example quickly, not to hold you up, but we have a public library in Charlottesville, replacing the one that the community built. If I were in charge of the nation, what I would, as I have recommended, I would have turned that on its head, put the resources in the hands of the community to continue the development of their own library. We do not need to live in a society which central government has to come in to our communities, or the TJ has to come into our communities to get things done, because they always will have massive blind spots. They just don't know enough to know what's going on.
[00:12:04] Speaker C: They don't know what to fix, when.
[00:12:06] Speaker D: To fix it, who to incorporate into fixing it, and so on. They're operating on a 10% information pool. The communities are operating with 100% information. And they are the ones who really, we have to look to an empower to deal with crime, to fix our economy, to chance, diversify. All of the things we really are talking about and we know so well should be done in the country, must be anchored on what we are doing in our communities. That idea is not in the minds of those who want to run around playing heroes to solve a problem that really is beyond their capacity to solve. The evidence in Trinidad is that government cannot solve crime problems by itself. Looking up from cabins, the communities have to be brought fully into the picture. Whether you're looking in Laventille, or looking in palmist, or wherever you look, that's.
[00:13:03] Speaker C: The basis on which it's going to.
[00:13:04] Speaker D: Be fully and properly done. And that's not just true for China and Tobago. That's in Jamaica, too. The science is pretty clear so far. So the other thing is that when you want to do crime, you have to know it the same way you.
[00:13:19] Speaker C: Want to know poverty.
[00:13:20] Speaker D: You have to understand what's going on in the heart of the villages, in the heart of the families, up and down, in the interactions between the villages, the networking mechanisms, all of that, that could only be fully and properly done in the communities. They are the ones who must be equipped to gather the data, process the data, respond to what citizens are saying. You democratize from the ground up, not from cabinet compound. And if you don't democratize, the part of the solution of the problem of crime will always be missing.
[00:13:53] Speaker C: So that's my point.
[00:13:55] Speaker D: We've seen this problem since we set up the teach. So this is nothing new in Tobago. Nothing new to scholars like myself. Sure, we've been pointing it out all along from the start. Set up Tobago properly or you will reap the same rewards you're seeing the in trial. So, yeah, there's no question in my mind that we know what to do. We just have stubborn politicians who do not understand that authoritarian government is a killer of a society and prevents all of the fundamental solutions, not just crime solutions, all the fundamental solutions, education, healthcare, all of them, from being properly put in place so we could build a society that could share something, contribute something to the development of human civilization.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: I thought it pertinent to get your views, because I remember us having conversations and you bringing up the perspective of getting the community and citizens more involved in all the processes and that can bring about better results. And I thought that would tie greatly into the discussion about crime and some of the things that need to be done. So let's move on a bit.
Having you on this morning, the intention is to speak a bit about this foreign exchange problem that continues to confront us, it seems, as a nation, and we grapple with people going in the bank and can't get money to go away. And then you have what is being reported by one regional economist. Billions of us dollars have gone missing over the years, and we just don't know where it's going. And we need to figure that out. The prime minister having a pretty stern response. Dismissive. One can even say to such a suggestion that there is the need to investigate where a foreign exchange is going. We know that as a nation, we may not necessarily be earning as much foreign exchange as we were by so there should probably be greater control as to how we use it. Let's get your, I'm positive that you would have been looking on, probably have some research and information about what's been taking place with our foreign exchange and why we are in the situation that we're in. Let's start there. Give us, give us your views on what's you, what do you think's been going on with our foreign exchange and some of the reasons why we are where we are?
[00:16:17] Speaker C: Well, the practical question of how people dispose of different exchanges that we have access to now is just an empirical matter. It's just a matter of monitoring the financial flows. We have institutions that are set up to do that and to control those flows. And so that's no magic. If the country wants to know, if the citizens want to know, the institutions are there, who can tell you quickly.
[00:16:49] Speaker D: As in next week, they can gather.
[00:16:51] Speaker C: The data, assemble all the information, publish the information, and there will be no mistreatment.
[00:16:56] Speaker D: That is not our fundamental problem where.
[00:16:59] Speaker C: Our foreign exchange is going.
[00:17:01] Speaker D: Our fundamental problem is a problem that's been with us ever since slavery, strict indenture and sugar.
[00:17:09] Speaker C: It was there when we transformed from.
[00:17:12] Speaker D: Sugar into cocoa into bananas to coconuts. This is a perennial surge. And remember, all we got from oil.
[00:17:23] Speaker C: And gas was a surge that was the result of the discovery of a gift from nature.
[00:17:34] Speaker D: Now we got the gift.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: And over the past 53, 54 years.
[00:17:42] Speaker D: Certainly since 1973, what we did with.
[00:17:48] Speaker C: The money was to cook it up into all sorts of slogans.
[00:17:52] Speaker D: Money is no problem. All sorts of loose thinking that failed to recognize that these are economies built in a way that would continually get.
[00:18:03] Speaker C: Themselves into trouble because of these massive.
[00:18:09] Speaker D: Shocks, positive shocks that give huge splurges, and negative shocks that makes your imports.
[00:18:17] Speaker C: Outrun your capacity to generate exports. That's a historic problem, from slavery to.
[00:18:25] Speaker D: Now, in order to deal with that problem, you have to understand how the society has been evolving over time. In order to deal with the issue.
[00:18:36] Speaker C: Of the capacity to earn foreign exchange.
[00:18:39] Speaker D: We generate, essentially, we generate foreign exchange from two sources. One is exports of goods and services.
[00:18:47] Speaker C: And the other is foreign capital inflows to support investment in reasonably profitable activity.
[00:18:55] Speaker D: We have done nothing much to deal with this second channel.
[00:19:01] Speaker C: We've basically encouraged foreigners to come where it's naturally attractive, like in oil and gas, just the same way we did.
[00:19:09] Speaker D: Long, long ago with sugar.
And there is a whole doorway of potential in our, in the sector of.
[00:19:21] Speaker C: Our economy that we have discriminated against.
[00:19:24] Speaker D: And suppressed for centuries, that will generate all kinds of new goods and services.
[00:19:31] Speaker C: We can sell to the world.
[00:19:32] Speaker D: That's where we got our music from in our communities back to that in our communities. That's where we invented roti. That's where we invented Soca. That's where we bended the african and indian culture to give you what Rajati described as soka.
That's where we have invented our foods or clothing or music or culture or dances. All of the things that we describe.
[00:20:00] Speaker C: As creative activity, clothing, styles.
[00:20:05] Speaker D: All of that. And what. And the language too. The powerful language that we used to communicate is in Trinidad and Tobago language. In Tobago. We have a Tobago language in every community. We invented our own versions of.
That is the thing that we have to understand and develop. You don't quote unquote diversify without developing that self, that multidimensional path of your society that Lloyd used to call the inshore sector or the residential sector. That's the civilization building part of us. And it is there you have to look to allow for the development of sustained capacity to export. Now, when you discriminate against that sector and you don't put proper programs of education in place, there's no skill intensive path. Everybody knows SocA is about skill.
The carnival industry. Skill. Endless skill. Why are bending this? We have not bothered to put a skill intensive component component in place in our education system. We still have this archaic stuff that we call an academic education system that therefore cannot cater for the development of the economy. Despite what the minister of finance might say. You can't guess at development. You have to understand the mechanisms that work. I run models of the China and Tobago. And the single most important sector that drives our developers is this locally created, innovative, export oriented, dynamic sector that repeatedly comes up with solutions to our problems. Here. In here, you look at what is happening in the carnival industry every year. Without the support of any serious backing from the school system. The SoCA artists produce new music every year. Just like it's done around the world every year. Of course, you see the same thing when you're talking about cell phones. Every Monday morning, Apple and Google and we come up with new phones. It's the same mechanism.
And what we have done in our society is to so discriminate against our own self in terms of this dynamic civilization building sector that every year we run into the same old problem of the one, the other part of the economy which is not built that way, but is built only on the basis of the attractive high profit earners that the foreigners find attractive on their own. Not with our encouragement. But on their own they find oil and gas attractive. So they come to that. Until we get into the business of telling them this is what you can come and make money in, come join the efforts we are making to build a whole civilization and there's money in this. Until we get into that, we're not going to get out of this problem. So what people are doing is they're really working with Bush economics, let me put it that way. Just like Bush law and Bush medicine. In order to solve a fundamental, fundamentally difficult problem which could only be solved when we open up the system, allow the information flows, democratize the decision making, allow the communities to drive the economic development and so on. Until then, there will be no fundamental solution to this problem. Let me ask you satish. You and I grew up in this country. If Laventill and southeast Porter street were empowered properly in terms of community empowerment to pursue their self determination, won't despas and all stars be the best music schools in the world in terms of teaching pan and so on. That's what they would do. They invented these industries and what they would do is they would keep the investment going. Exodus into Napuna and so on. They will turn these centers, these pan orchestras into schools just like you have in New York City where they orchestras are anchored in Lincoln centers. These are schools where you could teach people how to make music if you understood the power of community empowerment. Rather than keep thinking that the country could develop with autocratic government any form, no matter what, who is running the government?
You take a government like tha where we went to the people of Tobago and said we're going to set up this system to empower you to look after yourself. Fali and his team turned it into dictatorship and collapsed the economy in two years. It is not going to get you anywhere. Dictatorial systems are by nature in the Caribbean vulnerable to the shocks you're talking about. And we have to wake up and deal with that through self knowledge, scientific self knowledge. And until we do so, we're dead in the water. Yeah, that's the problem. That's what we have to understand. This is not about where you're foreign exchange book is why you're not developing an economy that doesn't have a foreign exchange problem.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Doctor James, this is where we're going to have to leave it because we have a couple messages to take us up to the news. But we've just scratched the surface and you've given us so much food for thought on what really needs to be the focus and where the action really needs to be that. I'm sure that we'll have another discussion. But thank you for being with us here this morning and giving us this valuable insight. Thank you. Once again.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Best insight instant feedback, accountability. The all new talk radio Freedom 106.5.
