Go Lean…Caribbean

Go Lean Commentary

The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean truly believe that the Caribbean is the “greatest address in the world”. But where there is a reference to “greatest or greater”, there must be “lesser” too. The unfortunate reality is that Caribbean people have fled their homeland with all the greater attributes to relocate to lesser destinations.

🙁

Why? While the beauty is here in the Caribbean region, so much more is missing and/or defective in our homeland.

Where are these lesser destinations that have teased the Caribbean citizens away? As previously depicted in a full series of blog-commentaries, the following locales were detailed as follows:

1. 10 Things We Want from the US and 10 Things We Do Not Want
2. 10 Things We Want from Canada and 10 Things We Do Not Want
3. 10 Things We Want from the UK and 10 Things We Do Not Want
4. 10 Things We Want from Europe and 10 Things We Do Not Want

There are other “lesser” destinations, that despite this status are doing better than the Caribbean at progressing their societal engines (economics and security). We can benefit by considering these other countries, take the examples of India and China. These ones are doing so much better at economic growth and homeland security. Already, we have considered …

What Things We Want from China and What Things We Do Not Want.

Now we need to examine:

What Things We Want from India and What Things We Do Not Want

The Caribbean has a unique relationship with India. While Caribbean people are not fleeing their homeland to relocate to India, there is a historic Diaspora issue associated with Caribbean-India relations: Indentured Servitude. At the end of the era of Caribbean slavery (1830’s to 1840’s), the plantation system required a replacement labor source; many Indian nationals were thusly “recruited” as Indentured Servants to the region (British, Dutch, and French colonies). This history is detailed in the Go Lean book as relating to one British colony, Guyana; see the reference here:

The Bottom Line on Guyana’s Indentured Indians
The British Empire abolished slavery effective August 1, 1834. But to appease the plantation/slave owners’ need for labor in the Caribbean colonies, Parliament allowed them to continue extracting more labor from these victims for 4 more years. As 1838 approached, there was a need for a new source of cheap labor. The solution was the introduction of indentured servants from India – the first 396 arrived on May 5, 1838 – thus starting a flow of immigrants to the British West Indies that resulted in such large numbers that the populations of Guyana and Trinidad are near 50% for those countries today.

The majority of Indian immigrants were drawn from North India with smaller batches coming from the Tamil and Telugu districts of South India. They were recruited, very often on spurious promises, by professional recruiters, largely assisted by paid local agents. Intimidation, coercion and deception were very often used to recruit Indian laborers. Women, in particular, were very vulnerable. When laborers were difficult to enlist, the recruiters resorted to such illegal practices as kidnapping and forced detention. This program continued from 1838 until 1917 with over 500 ship voyages for 238,909 indentured Indian immigrants coming to Guyana; while 75,898 of them or their children returned to India.

Today, the population of Guyana is over 772,000, of which 90% reside on the narrow coastal strip of approximately 10% of the total land area of Guyana. The largest ethnic group is the Indo-Guyanese (known as East Indians), descendants of the indentured laborers from India; they now make up 43.5% of the population, according to the 2002 census. They are followed by the Afro-Guyanese, the descendants of slaves from Africa, who constitute 30.2%. Guyanese of mixed heritage make up 16.7%, while the indigenous peoples (Amerindians) make up 9.1%.

The descendants of this Indian Diaspora have grown in numbers and power (economic and political) in the region; they form a large demographic in Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica, Suriname and other islands; see Appendix. They are part of the fabric of our society. They are home in the Caribbean; and we are at home with them. These ones, as a Indian Diaspora, want a connection with their Indian ancestral homeland. They have to remain conscious of the Good, Bad and Ugly from India. They desire the Good and want to be on alert for the Bad – influences that they do not want. 

We can truly benefit from a place like India … if we apply these 5 L’s in this competitive analysis:

• Look
• Listen
• Learn
• Lend-a-hand
• Lead

After centuries of sub-standard living, India is on the move – on the rise – even emerging as an Economic Power. We can look, listen and learn from the Indian eco-system; their mainland (the Republic of India) and Diaspora. We can lend-a-hand in reforming and transforming our own Caribbean region – as India has had to do – and we can eventually lead a reboot and turn-around of Caribbean society; again as India has done.

So here is a laundry list of the Good and the Bad and how (in italics) the roadmap to elevate Caribbean society, the book Go Lean…Caribbean, describes how the lessons should be applied in the implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU):

Indian Imports

 Indian Imports (cont’d)

Like it or not, the Caribbean has to be constantly aware of our competitive analysis with the rest of the world; we are currently losing in any “race to the top”; this is the peril of globalization. Economically we are Third World; many of our people live a sub-standard life. Then we lose even more when our people flee to go to more prosperous countries – brain drain – at the expense of societal abandonment to our communities. This abandonment rate is 70% for our college-educated classes. Communities cannot thrive with such a disposition; the “race to the top” becomes even more imperiled.

The premise of the Go Lean book is that the Caribbean does have a fighting chance for the globalization “race to the top”. We have one huge advantage:

We have the “greatest address in the world” in terms of terrain, fauna/flora, hospitality, culture, food, drink (rum) and tobacco (cigars).

This is the quest of the Go Lean movement, to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. It urges us to study the good, bad and ugly of our society and that of other places and then to apply lessons-learned in our efforts to transform the Caribbean. India has been a frequent topic for considerations from the Go Lean movement (book and blogs). The opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14) recognized that there is value in considering the Good and Bad examples of places like India, with this statement:

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities…. On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/communities….

In addition, the book specifically addresses the disposition of India – and other similar emerging economies – with these direct references of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocates:

In addition, this subject of India and our Caribbean trade empowerment has been directly addressed and further elaborated upon in these previous blog/commentaries:

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the CU. India is out-of-scope for the CU/Go Lean roadmap. Our scope is to impact the Caribbean’s economic, security and governing engines, not Indian society.

All in all, there are Good lessons and Bad lessons that we can learned from India. As a region, we can also be an emerging economy as India is designated. Yes, we can!

So let’s pay more than the usual attention to the developments of India. Everyone is urged to lean-in to this Go Lean/CU roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation, to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

Appendix VIDEO – The Caribbean East Indians (Part 1 of 2) – https://youtu.be/oxFrQd6lVzA

Published on Apr 29, 2015 – The “East Indians” of the Caribbean and Caribbean rim countries are the descendants of immigrants from the Indian sub-continent. Despite their name they are no relation to the indigenous aboriginal “Indians” who inhabit or formerly inhabited the area. The East Indians are, along with Black Afro-Caribbeans (“West Indians”), one of the two major ethnic groups in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname. There are also East Indian communities in Jamaica (one estimate for 1980 gives the East Indian population as 50,000), Grenada and the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

Indians were first brought to the Caribbean from the mid-1840s to work on white-owned sugar plantations as indentured labour to replace newly freed African slaves. The majority of immigrants were young men; later disturbances on the plantations forced the authorities to try and correct the imbalance. Indenture was usually for five years and the labourer was subject to restricting and paternalistic regulations which were sometimes described as “a new system of slavery”. After an initial number of years it was possible for the labourer to return to India but since many were offered land in order to entice them to stay near the estates, most stayed in their new country.

The racial tensions and stereotypes of later years were formed during the colonial period. Indians worked for less than Africans and were regarded as cheap and malleable labour. There were differences of culture between the Hindu and Muslim Indians and the Christian Africans. While the Africans, who were more likely to be literate in English, filled the jobs in the urban and commercial sectors, Indians were most likely to remain labourers and small farmers.

See Part 2 of 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qeM2BecjNI