Jack L'Eclaireur

Les plus perspicaces parmi nous tirent la sonnette d'alarme depuis longtemps déjà. Il n'est pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre. Le constat aujourd'hui est consternant. Ce n'est guère une vision apocalyptique, encore moins une quelconque théorie du complot. Au fil des années, l'édifice même de notre vivre ensemble s'est fragilisé. Il n'est pire aveugle que celui qui ne veut pas voir.

Il ne s'agit pas ici de lyncher les fossoyeurs. N'empêche, au fur et à mesure que la griserie (le "miracle mauricien"), la complaisance (en Afrique "nou mem meyer") et le clientélisme (roder-boutisme) se sont infiltrés au sein du système, la "démocratie" si vantée s'est transformée en "réseaucratie". C'est-à-dire, le citoyen peut difficilement aspirer à un maintien, voire une amélioration, de son niveau ainsi que sa qualité de vie sans se débrouiller pour devenir un insider du système tordu. Autrement, le statut d'outsider équivaut à signer un pacte avec un parcours parsemé d'obstacles visibles et invisibles.

La majorité des Mauriciens a certes le mérite d'avoir su préserver ne serait-ce qu'une illusion de bien-être. Hélas, les privations refoulées remontent par d'autres canaux, pas forcément les plus sains, surtout avec une politique nationale de loisirs lamentable. A moins de considérer les casinos comme un exutoire. La démotivation au travail, la consommation de drogue, les maladies cardio-vasculaires, la désintégration de la cellule familiale, la criminalité et le repli identitaire étant parmi les manifestations les plus répandues.

Le diagnostic est cinglant: l'obsession de la croissance économique a exacerbé les inégalités, a radicalisé les conflits sociaux et a déstabilisé l'écosystème. Suffit-il alors de brandir Das kapital (Karl Marx) et de honnir The wealth of nations (Adam Smith) pour restaurer la confiance? Et si c'est le modèle d'une société juste et inclusive préconisée par Politeia/Res publica (Platon) qui peut nous servir d'inspiration. Encore faut-il que, dans l'imaginaire, ce ne soit pas une représentation contaminée et édulcorée au gré de son passage dans le temps et dans l'espace.

Il faut privilégier le concret au détriment de l'abstrait, pratiquement tous les pays souscrivent à des degrés divers à l'"économie de marché". Donc, l'objectif réaliste est de contenir ses excés et ses dérives. Le blocage se situe justement là. Parce que Maurice est essentiellement façonnée par les décisions et indécisions de ses gouvernements. Et les partis politiques mainstream convergent vers la même doctrine "croissance à tout prix".

Que faire?
L'émergence d'une deuxième force crédible se fait toujours attendre. Idem pour le renouvellement des dirigeants dans les partis existants. En attendant, la piste qui semble la plus prometteuse à explorer est une action collective concertée et critique dans le but de provoquer une remise en question. L'initiative doit venir des véritables moteurs de changement. Bien entendu, ils seront majoritairement des outsiders mais il faut aussi des insiders, ceux qui ne pratiquent pas la langue de bois car conscients que personne ne sera épargnée, si on laisse mijoter les frustrations trop longtemps.

Jack Bizlall semble en avoir bien saisi les enjeux. D'autres Mauriciens doivent lui emboîter le pas, qu'ils soient inconnus du grand public ou Bernard d'Arifat, Georges Ah-Yan, Zaheer Allam, Vina Balgobin, Marousia Bouvéry, Jayen Chellum, Ming Chen, Christina Chan-Meetoo, Lindsey Collen, Nita Deerpalsing, Bashir Ebrahim-Khan, Khalil Elahee, Alain Gordon-Gentil, Akash Gura Goredo, Filip Fanchette, Sanjay Jagatsingh, Karim Jaufeerally, Jooneed Jeerooburkhan, Iqbal Ahmed Khan, ,Ibrahim Kooduruth, Kee Cheong Li Kwong Wing, Roland Maurel, Jocelyne Minerve, Jean-Claude Montocchio, Danielle Palmyre, Shenaz Patel, Chetan Ramchurn, Jonathan Ravat, Nicholas Ritter, Guffran Rostom, Serge Seeneyen, Cédric de Spéville, Ashok Subron, Kreepalloo Sunghoon, Dharumvir Takoor, Kendall Tang, Vijaya Teelock, Cassam Uteem, Nathalia Vadamootoo, Daden Vencatasawmy, etc.

Si cette liste n'est pas exhaustive, elle est en revanche hétéroclite, ceci pour bien exprimer la complexité d'une société. La construction de la nation mauricienne restera vaine aussi longtemps que les différentes sensibilités ne sont pas identifiées et intégrées. Du moins, celles qui sont libérées de toutes formes de corporatisme et qui jurent loyauté, non pas à l'asservissement aux diktats matériels, égocentriques et ethnocentriques, mais à tout processus qui oeuvre dans le sens de l'intérêt général.

L'antagonisme gauche-droite ne suffit pas pour renverser la doctrine "croissance à tout prix". Au contraire, il alimente un dialogue des sourds. Pour simplifier, disons que la "gauche" tend vers le "social" et que la "droite" tend vers le "marché". Idéalement, ce serait aboutir à une situation, où, d'une part, la protection sociale et l'autonomisation des citoyens sont optimales et, d'autre part, la concurrence joue au bénéfice des consommateurs et récompense les agents innovateurs. C'est ce que les pays scandinaves, la Suisse, le Canada et la Nouvelle Zélande, entre autres, s'efforcent de proposer avec plus au moins de réussite.

Prétendre qu'il n'existe pas d'alternative à la doctrine "croissance à tout prix" n'est donc qu'une perversion de la réalité. Ce ne sont certainement pas les économistes Paul Krugman, Thomas Piketty, John Kay ou ceux du site web Macroscan, qui sont par ailleurs loin d'être des pourfendeurs de l'"économie de marché", qui diront le contraire. Finalement, c'est la capacité d'anticiper les problèmes futurs et de les résoudre qui compte. A chaque problème, sa solution. Certains contextes justifient plus de "social", d'autres plus de "marché". Singapour est un modèle d'efficacité dans ce domaine.

Pour déverrouiller la situation, les moteurs de changement doivent prendre le devant afin de revendiquer une allocation plus judicieuse des ressources et une redistribution plus équitable de la richesse générée. Ce qui signifie intérioriser notamment que :

- "la corruption détruit la démocratie", selon l'observation de l'écrivain Aravind Adiga, et exiger plus de transparence et de redevabilité dans l'utilisation de l'argent public;

- la dépréciation persistante de la roupie crée un cercle vicieux qui, entre autres, plombe toute tentative d'améliorer la productivité et pénalise la compétitivité;

- la dimension spéculative dans l'exploitation de nos terres est suicidaire et que sans une réforme agraire, Maurice met en péril sa sécurité alimentaire et énergétique future.

L'aspiration de Maurice à devenir "durable" ne pourra être concrétisée que si elle passe du mode "shareholder" à celui de "stakeholder".

Talking' Bout a Revolution

Arianna Huffington, co-founder of groundbreaking The Huffington Post, an American internet newspaper launched in 2005 as a progressive alternative to conservative mainstream media, reminds us:

Don't forget: our media culture failed to serve the public interest by missing (with a few honourable exceptions) the two biggest stories of our time: the run-up to the Iraq war and the financial melt­down. We've had far too many autopsies and not enough biopsies. And online news is well suited to obsessively follow a story until it breaks through the static. We need to also remind ourselves that the mission of journalism has always been truth-seeking not, as it has often become, striking some fictitious balance between two sides.

As things stand, it is fair to say that the "two biggest stories of our time", that is "Mauritian miracle" and "reform", have failed media scrutiny too. But reality rarely fails to bite deception.

What's the next verse Tracy?

... people gonna rise up
And get their share
... people gonna rise up
And take what's theirs

Street Fighting Years

When the link is lost between citizens and governments,
When politicians see the world through the eyes of rent-seekers,
When mainstream media is infatuated with the darlings of Big Business,
It's no surprise mobocracy takes on flawed democracy.
Protest is the TINA (There Is No Alternative) of the disenchanted.
True, the critical mass is not there yet,
But the build-up looks promising.
Slowly, but surely, civil society is waking up.
The consent manufactured by reactionaries is fading.

Lula Stops the Traffic

Many observers tip Brazil among the few countries to ride out the global economic downturn the least dazed. Such a feat would not have been possible without an enlightened leadership embodying vision, sovereignty and empathy as opposed to nincompoops who outsource their thinking to bean counters and the macro(economics) tribe, notorious for branding the likes of the World Bank. Here is how Brazil's maverick President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also known as Lula, proves his mettle in the Financial Times:

" We could not grow, it was said, without threatening economic stability – much less grow and distribute wealth. We would have to choose between the internal market and the external. Either we accepted the unforgiving imperatives of the globalised economy or we would be condemned to fatal isolation.

Over the past six years, we have destroyed those myths. We have grown and enjoyed economic stability. Our growth has been accompanied by the inclusion of tens of millions of Brazilian people in the consumer market. We have distributed wealth to more than 40m who lived below the poverty line. We have ensured that the national minimum wage has risen always above the rate of inflation.

We have democratised access to credit. We have created more than 10m jobs. We have pushed forward with land reform. The expansion of our domestic market has not happened at the expense of exports – they have tripled in six years. We have attracted enormous volumes of foreign investment with no loss of sovereignty.

I hope for a world free of the economic dogmas that invaded the thinking of many and were presented as absolute truths. Anti-cyclical policies must not be adopted only when a crisis is under way. Applied in advance – as they have been in Brazil – they can be the guarantors of a more just and democratic society.

I do not give much importance to abstract concepts. I am not worried about the name to be given to the economic and social order that will come after the crisis, so long as its central concern is with human beings."

Dream, dream dream dream...

L'oligarchie dépigmentée

Une économie de marché qui concentre le pouvoir économique entre les mains d'une minorité ("market-dominant minority") et une démocratie qui renvoie le pouvoir politique officiel à la majorité appauvrie réunissent les conditions pour exacerber les tensions sociales. C'est du moins ce que postule Amy Chua, professeur de droit à l'université de Yale, après des études empiriques dans son livre "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability".

D'emblée il faut dissiper l'amalgame racial en ce qui concerne l'hégémonie économique. Les Chinois en Indonésie, les Indiens au Kenya, les descendants d'Européens à Maurice, au Zimbabwe et en Martinique sont des exemples témoignant de la diversité ethnique dans le pouvoir économique.En effet, la concentration de la richesse a des origines plus historiques - souvent coloniales - et politiques. Quand l'Etat ne joue pas convenablement son rôle de régulateur, toutes les dérives sont possibles. Dépendant du degré, l'entente délictueuse entre certains membres de la politique, de la fonction publique et du secteur privé ("crony capitalism") peut être dévastatrice.

Avec le déclin économique, les sentiments d'humiliation et d'injustice que subissent les peuples remontent à la surface. L'ignorance et l'arrogance du pouvoir par rapport aux inégalités ouvrent une brèche que les démagogues exploitent à volonté. De plus, lorsque le schéma ethnique ou religieux s'associe dans la psyché collective à cet état des choses, les ingrédients d'un cocktail explosif sont, d'ores et déjà, disponibles.

La mondialisation est perçue comme un phénomène similaire où les États-Unis incarnent le "market-dominant minority". Toutefois, dans l'affrontement entre les radicaux, ceux qui brocardent uniquement les activistes de l'anti-mondialisation en épargnant le dogme du "Washington Consensus" véhiculé par le Fonds monétaire international manifestent peu de circonspection.

D'ailleurs, les militants lucides sont passés de l'anti-mondialisation à l'alter-mondialisation après Porto Alegre 2003. Preuve que la mondialisation est dorénavant acceptée comme un fait. C'est le modèle qui est contesté. Bref, au niveau international les choses commencent à se dessiner positivement. Comme toujours, les signaux d'un changement fondamental d'attitude doivent émaner des dirigeants éclairés.

Si on veut vraiment que la mondialisation soit soutenable tout en étant moins déstabilisatrice, il faut créer l'environnement qui permettra à ses bénéfices d'être répartis plus équitablement. En s'attaquant d'abord à la source de la corruption, en motivant les petites et moyennes entreprises pour qu'elles se multiplient et en accélérant la dérégulation des différents secteurs pour inciter les sociétés internationales les plus crédibles à s'implanter dans le respect des cultures locales.

La démocratie et le libre-échange, comme toute autre théorie certes, ne peuvent fonctionner dans un vacuum. Le piège à éviter justement, c'est d'en faire une fin en soi. Même si on doit admettre, de par l'évolution de l'histoire, qu'ils demeurent les meilleurs moyens pour générer la richesse. Encore faut-il les adapter à des contextes différents et les encadrer avec des paramètres favorisant la "corporate citizenship".

Nous verrons découler les solutions seulement lorsque nous cesserons de nous dérober à la réalité. C'est bien dans l'action que les bonnes intentions seront jugées.

The Case Against Oversimplification

It is never easy to represent succintly one's perception of the real world. It is a balancing act that must explore grey areas and sort them into a distinct pattern of different pieces connected to each other. In its basic dimension it is about common sense, in its more elevated dimension it is about wisdom. All in all, it ought to be everybody's quest.

Alternatively, propaganda is a synthesis of selective information that is meant to capture emotions of the target audience and modify its perception. Propaganda machines master the art of disseminating appealing slogans to twist reality. Their approach is always binary, doctrinaire and repetitive. It reduces everything to an either/or and us/them dilemma. It portrays one party in a positive light and the other in a very negative one.

That is why the view of Tarun Tejpal, writer and editor of Tehelka, is enlightening:

"The real challenge is to present complex things as complex things, and to urge everyone to read them well and to come to terms with them".

Put bluntly, we must not let ourselves be put off by thoughts that seem "congested" with intertwined ideas. We should give them a second and deeper look. Once the gist sinks in, we may or may not agree. Otherwise, we contribute to dumb ourselves down.

The devil is in the detail.

Reform As Propaganda

“There is no magic bullet. A country's economic institutions are a richly textured fabric. There would be big disappointment if a government abolished a quick employment regulation or two before breakfast and expected great things to happen. There are hundreds of things that have to change.”
Edmund Phelps, winner of the 2006 Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

In spite of the social, economic and political instability it entails, globalisation continues to gather momentum. When assessing how different countries cope with globalisation in order to anticipate and mitigate the resulting imbalances, the quality of leadership proves critical.

As expected, Singapore tops the Globalisation Index 2006 measured by the consulting firm A.T. Kearney. Ireland and Denmark are among the five best performers. A closer look at how the three countries operate is revealing: it debunks many fallacies disseminated by members of Tina F.C., i.e. the “There-is-no-alternative” Fan Club.

One dogma suggests that if a country wants to successfully integrate global capitalism, its government must keep its “hands” off the economy and privatise its business activities. Ironically, the state-led approach has been the Singapore model. Today Temasek Holdings, the investment arm of the Singapore government, powers many global flagship companies. Another dogma suggests that when a country embraces economic liberalism, the Welfare State becomes redundant. Both Ireland and Denmark emphatically demonstrate the opposite.

According to the Quality-of-life Index 2005 established by The Economist, Ireland is the country that best reconciles economic and social imperatives to meet the aspirations of its citizens. Material well-being alone does not adequately reflect quality of life. Ireland would never have enjoyed such a quality of life had it not contained the impediments associated with modernisation, namely the breakdown of traditional institutions and the erosion of family values. After all, is not Ireland the land that swings blissfully between melancholy and joie de vivre?

Viewed through black and white lenses with no shades of grey, as in the case of members of Tina F.C., all our woes can be resolved in a sleight of hand; for an instant relief of our existential crisis, repeat religiously “république laïque”; to recharge our flawed “democracy”, simply “cut” a piece of “proportional representation” and “paste” it to the mechanism of “first pass the post”; to salvage our failed educational system, deride obsessively the streaming test at the end of primary schooling; to balance our abysmal national accounts, target everybody but the networks of patronage and fleece them.

Followership under the influence of the IMF
We are in the creative age. Only those nations groomed to “think global and act local’ will thrive. In a globalised setting your edge is basically how much more creative you are than your competitors because that is where you differentiate yourself. To the members of Tina F.C. faking to “think outside the box”, Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple Computers, hailed as the most innovative company by Business Week, offers a candid rebuttal: don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

The transformation of Mauritius is tributary to the inclusion of the following elements of change management: a project in which all stakeholders believe passionately in, the creation of an environment that stimulates a shift in mindsets and attitudes, the building of a strong and committed top team to drive the process and a leadership by example. Post-independent Mauritius has hardly experienced anything that even brushes with that. Or maybe, our successive governments, barring a few mavericks within, should jointly patent the ultimate brand of leadership; one exclusive of integrity, foresight, vision and empathy.

It would indeed be more appropriate to talk about followership than leadership. That Singapore has never been under International Monetary Fund (IMF) programmes from 1980 to 2002, and till today for that matter, speaks volumes. Mauritius, on the other hand, has spent about 23% of its time over the same period under the influence of the IMF. These figures, arguably much higher today as far as Mauritius is concerned, are excerpted from the findings of William Easterly in his latest book “The white man's burden: why the West's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good”.

The book by William Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University,  shall make a far more enlightening reading for our policymakers rather than say, “Globalization and its discontents” by Joseph Stiglitz, “The end of poverty” by Jeffery Sachs or even “The world is flat” by Thomas Friedman. If top-down transformation by outsiders is self-defeating, a combination of domestic top-down policies with bottom-up reciprocity has the potential to unleash the crucial synergy.

As long as the government does not question the status of insiders of our system, who live by entrenched privileges, policies are doomed because they are opposed by insiders, who fear that they may be the next on the list, and outsiders, who consider them as discriminatory and continue to dream of becoming themselves insiders. A doctrinaire approach to policymaking may foster short-term economic expansion but when it simultaneously disintegrates social cooperation, it inhibits value creation through productivity gains and retards competitiveness growth.

The bogeymen setting the cart before the horse
In conformity with the bigotry of the IMF and the World Bank, members of Tina F.C. believe that a violent disruption in the form of a “shock therapy” is a quick fix that will reap rewards in a couple of years. “Reform” as spun by the government in reality refers to a few half-baked measures expected to revive our ailing competitiveness. This bland and reductive thinking, that confuses means and end and vice versa, is alienating citizens and polarising the Mauritian community further. “Democratisation” and “Empowerment”, at their worst, are akin to window-dressing.

The government rightly claims that our labour market must be revamped to become more flexible. But where are the evidence and the benchmark? When “hiring and firing” of employers can happen from one day to the next, companies surely get a decided competitive edge over rivals. Is it the one and only factor in the “flexibility” paradigm?

Denmark’s “flexicurity” blends a flexible labour market, generous social security and an active labour-market policy with rights and obligations for the unemployed. Workers pay high taxes, but trade job security for a guarantee, should they be laid off, of time-limited but generous unemployment benefits that they can live on and a promise that they will get new jobs fast. About a fifth of Danish workers lose their job in any given year but most find a new job quickly. The mechanism rests on perpetual dialogue and mutual trust.

The implementation of the National Pay Council (NPC) is a glaring example of how despicable a government can get. The concept per se is sound. But the NPC should not arbitrate the dispute regarding compensation for declining purchasing power that is not, as the government would have us to believe, totally inflicted by global capitalism. Despite the annual inflation-adjusted compensation granted to them, the majority of Mauritians has been subsidising uncompetitive players through a wage cut as persistent and self-inflicted rupee depreciation feeds into a vicious circle that offsets the compensation.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) basket of goods and services identified to compute CPI inflation does not have the same relevance for people with different pay levels. As their expenditure patterns vary, so does the weightage of the items in the basket. That is why the Singapore Department of Statistics regularly publishes CPI inflation for different income groups instead of relying on a general average figure. What's more, because of the high income divide, an inflation rate of 10% largely under-estimates the impact of price hikes on low-income earners.

In an open economy like ours, the exchange rate is the main determinant in the variation of consumer prices. To make things worse, the current government provoked a massive currency slide coupled with a sudden removal of subsidies on flour with all its knock-on effects. Under these circumstances, it would be criminal to link the compensation of an ever-declining purchasing power to productivity and the capacity of employers to pay the compensation. Reasonably, to be coherent with its policies, the government should have settled for a non-negotiable full compensation for incomes below Rs 16, 500. As for the NPC, it could show its mettle by arbitrating a collective bargaining for end-of-the-year bonuses.

The need for a makeover starting at the top
A lean and efficient government is the incarnation of a clean and smart government. That is a far cry from what the IMF and the World Bank actually promote. When “leaders” indulge in the blame game, like flying the “economic patriotism” flag or grumbling about the “laid-back workforce”, they unwittingly reveal their incompetence. One of the roles of a government is to provide more certainties for households and businesses alike. Gross Domestic Product growth, no matter how dazzling, is futile when it is unable to dent joblessness and inequalities, to overcome structural mismatches and distortions and to boost purchasing power and morale.

Mauritius will be poised for globalisation after an extreme makeover starting at the top. Our civil society and media are still too weak a fourth estate to offer a counterbalance. Neocons of all hues will continue to sell the illusion that they are the genuine progressives and those who do not bow to their proselytism are self-hating citizens, but the Internet and its tools such as the Blogosphere, Wikipedia and YouTube are creating a new reality, where information flows less asymmetrically.