That's not the way!

April 28, 2004

The Cabinet has been quite overwhelming in its pronounced awards in honour of Brian Lara's new world record of 400 runs in a single Test inning. Nothing can be deemed too much in honour of such a magnificent feat. What is infuriating is our continued failure to comprehend the dynamics of "process."

In our approach to development, in our constant rush to appease the clamour of the immediate "now," we seem always to want to start at the "end" rather than start at the beginning and work the various stages of the coherent process towards sustainable development.

We seem unable to delink ourselves from the culture of the "spectacle." Everything for us is about erecting edifices or finished monuments at which one can look, marvel and be lost in wonder and admiration but which tend to be unrelated to our precise stage of social development and our needs for the next five, 10, 20 and 25 years.

We keep failing to invest in the process of development which has its own inherent dynamics, opting instead for the erecting of structures of bricks and mortar, pretty to behold, but woefully inappropriate for the industry of transforming people and moving them from the preliminary stages of amateurism to full-fledged professionalism.

What is important is how we engage people to overcome the challenges of life and not necessarily the erecting of huge, pretty, expensive buildings. It is the industry and the engagement that comprise the core value.

Cabinet has proposed to erect a Brian Lara International Cricket Complex on 52 acres at Union Park. It is suggested that this will be completed in time for the 2007 ODI World Cup to be hosted by the West Indies. Such a complex will involve huge expenditure. To what avail?

Surely it will be a place to behold. But after 2007 and the glamour of an ODI World Cup final, how will such a complex serve to enhance, develop and extend our cricketing prowess and our technical capabilities?

Will it not make more sense to upgrade the Queen's Park Oval by extending a grant to this private club and spend the bulk of the proposed expenditure for this Union Park complex on hiring full time the best coaches available regionally and internationally to work at the already established cricket academy and to work with all the various local cricket clubs and leagues that are at present ongoing?

And all this can be easily and efficiently expedited through the instrument of a Brian Lara Foundation for Cricket Development, operating from a simple strategically located office that manages the painstaking, daily grind of development that warrants no spectacle or to which spectacles are really distractions and disruptions.

And at the end of the day which option do we really believe will be more meaningful to the country? And a similar case can be made for the development of our football and other sporting entities.

Imagine we built five football stadiums for one international tournament, spent over $450 million, and today these are all white elephants, permanently locked-up with security all around, save and except for the occasional school sports. We sometimes feel that probably our craving for "spectacle" is a side-effect of the culture of Carnival.

It was also announced that the Brian Lara Cantaro playfield will be transformed into a full-fledged international complex to host international matches. Now, that is even more ridiculous!

Certainly, no technical team from the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs prepared such a note to Cabinet. Why take that ground away from the community? Because that is certainly what will result from this proposal. Certainly upgrade and modernise the facility but leave it for the use of the community, as the home-base for the cricket and football club there, and for the general engagement of the youth in the area.

Can anyone imagine the logistical nightmare of mammoth crowds attempting to access Cantaro via the narrow, winding roadway through the Maraval and San Juan/Santa Cruz valleys, if that playfield were to become international in scope?

Why would anyone want that and then be faced with the extenuating circumstance of generally undeveloped surrounding infrastructure? Again an example of us attempting to start at the end and putting the cart before the horse.

We should be building communities through sporting engagement and social interventions, rather than be destroying the few genuine communities left, such as Cantaro, by erecting grandiose, inappropriate physical complexes.

Given George Bovell's world record swim, the Cabinet, in the course of awarding Lara, announced the establishment of three Olympic 50-metre swimming pools; one in South, one in the North, and another in Tobago. Now, really! How many swimmers of Olympic standard do we have at present in T&T to justify three 50-metre pools which are quite exorbitant to maintain?

We are at the stage of now developing a cadre of swimmers. One strategically located 50-metre pool will suffice. What we need now are training pools, which are 25-metre pools. The big joke is that we already have a few 25-metre pools but none, repeat, none of them are operating due to the lack of proper maintenance. And that in itself is another lesson for us.

In fact, none of the spectacles, that we so love to erect, are ever maintained. Again, probably another throw-back from the culture of Carnival in which we create manifestations only for the spectacle of the moment and then we discard, so there is no need for the concept of a maintenance plan.

That's why we can build a $400 million Hall of Justice that within a year almost grinds to a halt. Or build a wholesale market facility in Tunapuna that is declared obsolete the morning that it is first opened for business-wholesalers almost killed each other fighting for the too limited space available for business transactions.

All this is possible because, of course, there is not science to spectacles that are unrelated to needs. When will we change our way of seeing and doing? When?