BHS and the Budget
By Dr. Winford James
Column for Sunday, July 04, 2004
One of the major observations on Tobagonian society I have been making over the years is that its infrastructural insufficiencies have been causing a routine migration of critical human resources, more or less on the threshold of adulthood, to Trinidad and beyond for a better standard of living. In my last column, for example, which treated the homecoming of past BHS students to a reunion next Sunday, I put the matter this way: 'They will come from Trinidad, those that have been forced by the island's limiting personal, social, educational, occupational, and commercial opportunities, to pick up their bundle and their bed and migrate. They will come from [the rest of the world] - wherever their expertise, wanderlust, and hunger for the better life have taken them.'
It would be a great thing if a series of impromptu debates on a variety of issues of Tobagonian import could be arranged for July 11. Topics could include 'Tobagonian migration - An irreversible phenomenon?', 'Tobagonian land - Falling out of local hands?' and 'Where is BHS in the budget?', with speakers given no more than five minutes by a time-watching chair to take the microphone and present their thoughts and sentiments. Since I have this medium to air my stories and might, on that account, be prevailed upon not to take the podium, let me here pronounce on the last of the three suggested topics.
BHS must have been in the budget the Secretary for Finance, Anselm London, recently presented for fiscal 2005. He himself did not go to Bishop's (did he not go to one of the top schools in Trinidad?), but other people working in the Assembly did and must have worked on the budget, including Chief Secretary Orville London and Chief Administrator Jerome Dumas. Through people like the latter, Bishop's was in the budget in the sense that it laid a foundation which they inevitably built on and which enables them now to contribute to the body of ideas and figures that constitute the budget.
But their involvement is not a sufficient answer to the question. Orville and Jerome belong to the category of past students who went out to university and returned to give service to the island, the former especially in education and political administration, the latter especially in agriculture and public service administration; they are now in positions where their ideas are critical to the budget. But what about those past students who taught or are teaching in the schools of Tobago and Trinidad? What about those past students who are studying and lecturing at the University of the West Indies? What about student associations like TOSS - the current Tobago student society at UWI? What about those past students who have gone abroad and distinguished themselves in one way or another, and who are possessed of ideas and experience that could be marshaled for Tobago's development?
Where are they in the budget? Did they contribute to the body of ideas in the budget? Have they critiqued the budget, examining its philosophy and its proposals against the background of the island's history and in anticipation of a certain kind of future? Have they been publishing their views in position papers in the media and on the internet? Are they organized to do so?
Have they been using the budget as an annual opportunity to hold a vigorous conversation on how money has been used to develop the island, on the relationship between limited human resources and the demands of development, on whether and how current budgetary structures and foci are meeting the structural needs of the society, on whether and how the budget is designed to create wealth for Tobagonians?
If they have, where are the papers? When were the conferences? Where are the records? Who are the personalities? With whom can you associate any well-publicised thesis? What's the fruit of all this scholarship that Bishop's has founded? Or is it that the alma mater has produced, for export to other places, a host of individuals who are forced into self-centred development by an economic and political dependence on Trinidad which, in the absence of purposeful social conversation, they consider themselves incapable of reforming?
The get-together on Saturday, July 11 would do well to seize a moment or two to hear a variety of voices on these and other matters. Indeed, the prospective alumni association would do well to include them as a critical part of its agenda. They might start by putting the diasporic BHS, not just Orville and Jerome and people like them, firmly in the budget.
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