Travel Chapter 18. Mauritius:What a difference an island makes.

As we now approach India, I have been musing about why there is such a great difference between India and Mauritius. Mauritius is a small island with a population of about 1 million. India is a continent of around 1 billion people. Yet the differences are not only physical but they are also visible in the economic situation of these two nations.

Mauritius is a small nation but has managed to build up its economy to the point that it is a successful example of how a country can be well managed. India is an example of a country where chaos is the rule, where bureaucrats run almost every aspect of life, where a social caste system stifles upward mobility, where nationalism stifles competition by protectionism and socialism add its own level control and state intervention. The result of these layers of control and chaos makes life very difficulty and keeps the economy from growing at anywhere near an acceptable level rate.

In Mauritius, one sees clean streets, painted buildings and streets where one can actually walk at ones own pace rather than at the pace of the crowd which covers the whole sidewalk space. The noise level is no higher than in any other part of the word. The traffic in the small capital cities of Port Louis is heavy but moves smoothly with traffic lights, pedestrian crossing and pedestrians who respect traffic rules. Horns are not constantly blaring. It is actually not a hustle to drive in the countryside. The roads are paved, painted and well maintained. One does not see thousands of motorized vehicles from two wheelers, three wheelers to four wheelers including bikes, chuck chucks, taxis, buses, trucks etc. There are no cows ambling around the cities or towns. There are no bull carts in the streets. There are no elephants in the street. There are no dogs in the streets. Everybody in Mauritius speaks English and French in addition to Creole and many also speak another language.

I have spent the days since we left Mauritius thinking why there is such a huge difference. The one thing these countries have in common and that is both of them are governed by Indians. Why do Indians do so well managing the small Mauritius while Indians in India have not been able to move their country out into the 21rst century? Mauritius has spent the last 20 years developing a plan on how to make sure that the small island can earn its living and grow. In Mauritius huge amounts of resources have been dedicated to educating its population to allow them to compete in the open international markets. Mauritius used to depend totally on exporting sugar. Today, Mauritius has passed through phases where they specialized in textiles, tourism and now banking. The country has installed very high speed internet connections. The telephone system works, internet cafes are high speed and readily available, even in small towns.

In India, most of the above items have not happened. Economically, the country has made some progress in recent years, but many decades have been lost due to government policies which do not allow Indians to compete due to protectionism which only protected inefficient local industry. The result is that India is still looks and maybe also living in the 19th century. The existing caste system which defines people’s social system by who their parents are. This means that if you are born of poor parents, you probably are in a lower class and the cast system does not allow people to rise out of their caste. It means that children of higher castes will get educated whether they are smart or not. It means that if they are children of lower castes, they probably will not get educated even if they are much smarter than people in the upper classes. It is such a degrading system which I would say is far more drastic than the segregation system of the US or the Apartheid system of South Africa. It is justified in the religion of many Indians which claims that one is reincarnated and appears in a new form. Thus, if one is born into a lower caste it is because that is one’s fate and therefore one has no option but to accept it and work as a slave or be exploited by the higher castes. The government’s positive discrimination laws may have been passed but I would imagine that the attitude of the people still has not changed.

What I conclude from this long text is that if India could rid itself of the caste system, promote its private sector energy and open the economy it could make giant steps and let its people improve their standard of living and move out of one of the lowest level of poverty in the world. Amazing things could happen in India if they would free themselves of these self imposed limitations, the continent of India could be as prosperous as or even more prosperous than Mauritius. Both places are run by Indians. Indians have emigrated for decades from India frustrated by the limitations successive government have imposed on them. Indians abroad thrive in almost every country of the world. If India does not wake up soon and take drastic steps to ramp up its economy by freeing up the talents and energy that Indians possess, the world will see this continent being passed by China which has already made more progress in 20 years than India has ever made in modern times. India needs to reclaim the leadership position it held so often before in history. The price being paid by its population for the lack of decision of its leaders is a tragic chapter in the history of this rich continent populated by people who deserve more than being dependent on outside financial and economic support. Examples from Mauritius and elsewhere show that Indians can do it and can do it well.

Tomorrow we arrive in India and I will be fascinated to see what progress has been made in the 5 year since we were here in 2004. We will meet our son Nick and his wife Milena who arrived from Montreal earlier this week.We will team up in Pondicherry and do day trips to visit the lovely sites of the area. Emmett is excited to see Nick and Milena.

More on that when we get back to sea in 6 days.
Cheers