Blog: What makes Ramgoolam’s Leadership?

A country’s history is written everyday: but the tale of a nation’s march reaches critical heights on certain occasions. There are evolutions that emanate from the mass under the impulse of opinion leaders. In all the plots of the story of a nation’s progress there is one who acts as a protagonist.

These days are witnessing the majestic contribution of one man to the emancipation of a nation. Freedom is not a simple act of liberation at a single epoch of history. In fact the first liberating act releases energy towards sporadic acts of liberation that take place over a long period. Human consciousness is like a spiral.

A society is made up of different miscellaneous groups of people who have achieved differing degrees of self awareness, attained differing releases from of the ephemeral and the long lasting, of the fanciful and the realistic. We are never living in a single epoch of our history even if we reside together under the same sky in the same year.

The tussle between sugar producers and the union of workers is another echo of the same call of liberation that has reverberated throughout history since the abolition of slavery. The history of capitalism is chequered with spasms of revolt of the worker against the closefisted arrogance of those who possess wealth. Somehow every act of liberation has had lasting effect on the relationship between capital and labour. In fact, it is only relationships that have changed. The victims of the past soon become the oppressors of the present because money has learn to travel and wherever it gathers it gives strength to the sinews. New oppressors have emerged and new vocabularies have been used. But while the phraseologies have changed the meaning of the historical conflict of capitalism has remained the same.

The man who spearheads this modern version of the epic battle between those gifted with heritage and the heirs of hard work, industry, perseverance and the undaunted capacity to bear pain is the Prime Minister. It is he who has made terms like “democratization of economy” popular in the Mauritian landscape.

It is he who helped us to discover a truth that has remained hidden from the laymen for forty years of independence - the extortionist cost at which the CEB buys electricity from traditional producers of energy. It is he that has made it possible for a common man to produce electricity for his own use and to sell the excess to the CEB. Even though ILLOVO land has been exploited by the rich, which they should in order to provide more wealth, the common man, and particularly, the worker has had access to land and has become an owner. Navin Ramgoolam is the first leader to have effected a system that allows accessibility to land.

History does not imply the conversion of traditional land owners to pauperism while the proletariat is promoted to landed gentry. These mythological scenarios happen only in the mythomaniac minds of those who fabulate about men. Navin Ramgoolam has done more than what a single nation put together can do. While colonisers excised a part of our territory at independence, he has added thousands of kilometres squares of blue territory to our motherland. In terms of land he has made Mauritius vaster than U.K itself.

The Mauritian has lost a capacity for generosity. Many readers who have become hardcore and diehard cynics and pessimists will find in this article an attempt at supine sycophancy. It is unfortunate that we are no longer capable of appreciating the greatness of someone with no ulterior motive in mind.

History may be written after an event has left its footprints on time. But I am the historian of the present and I have nothing to lose or to gain at a time of our life when the human fibre has become fragile and his sensitivity has been blunted to the point of becoming dull to right and wrong. Have we reached the stage of the muddle that makes us say “Everything exists-nothing has value”? Yes, today’s society is consumerist. Shopping malls mushroom, debts increase, savings decline.

Crime is on the increase. Instead of uploading all on the shoulders of this government, let us realise that the whole world has become a hostage of economic systems that make the rich invent stratagems to siphon off billions for themselves while the mass is forced to bail out the Robin Hood of jungles of gold. The question we ask is - what is the PM doing to combat crime? It is only then we shall assess the PM’s endeavours for their real worth.

It would be edifying to find yet another country that has demonstrated a more inclusive view of economy that ours. No other country has done more for the under privileged than we are doing currently. Nothing is flawless. We are dealing with the human who is the most unpredictable, and the most sensitive of creatures. He is wicked just as he can be full of kindness.

Navin Ramgoolam will be the pre-eminent Mauritian who will remain in our memory as a person who gave the independence of his country a constructive meaning, and created a model of government which believes that however small we can achieve the best of what faith, passion and patriotism can produce.