Aubyn HillIn his 1993 book, Post-Capitalist Society, Peter Drucker declares that the primary resource in the post-capitalist society will be knowledge and the leading social groups will be "knowledge workers". Since the publication of this book globalisation has advanced and has changed our world and the way countries and people deal with each other. The demand for knowledge workers and the requirements of globalisation mean that for countries to pull themselves out of poverty they must train their people to the highest international standards.
Jamaica must seek to train its professionals with a 'fit for export' stamp on each one. It does not mean that everyone will leave the country, but some definitely will. Twenty years ago Ireland decided to meet the challenge (at the time the Irish still left Ireland in large numbers) and has moved very quickly ahead. Ireland is well on its way to becoming one of the richest countries in the world. Today most Irish people stay at home.
MARKET AND CONSUMER
(CITIZEN) DRIVEN
Aubyn Hill
The moment anyone raises the subject of training Jamaicans to the highest international standard and making them 'fit for export', there is a hue and cry about brain drain. Many of the loudest screamers should know better than to compare the 'brain drain' of the 1970s with the purely economic and calculated decision to train our people to the highest international standard so that they can make the best choices for themselves in a globalised world. This is devoid of political confusion and hubristic sovereignty. The countries and cultures that place a large premium on pervasive, really high standard education, without a strong political bias, have all progressed more quickly than those that do not.
The brain drain of the 1970s was a result of a political populist push, was traumatic for those who were pushed and in hindsight was utterly destructive in terms of its economic effects on the country. The political action that caused the dash for cover had a much larger negative economic effect than the proportion of the people who were pushed out.
As opposed to the political push, the training of Jamaicans with the 'fit for export' stamp is essentially the required response to the pull and demand of the marketplace. The ageing of the baby boomers in the developed countries means that there is a strong and continuing demand for nurses in these countries. Jamaican nurses are respected abroad and we should capitalise on the respect and economic need in these overseas countries. Similarly, Jamaican teachers are needed and we could certainly develop markets for engineers, masons, carpenters and joiners not to mention training our young Jamaicans in accounts, actuarial sciences and computer skills for those markets that require these skills.
unemployment
The unemployment and underemployment of many of our people suggest that unless we grab on to the Peter Drucker principle of preparing our people as knowledge workers we are once again going to miss the economic boat. This time we would be missing the boat in a much more populated world that has little or no time for people who are not well trained and productive. When training is proposed for Jamaicans, the first response cannot be 'brain drain' when the country does not have the capacity to employ all the people who now have some sort of training.
In any event, many of our countrymen vote with their feet and airline tickets to go to other countries to work because they perceive opportunities where they are going compared to where they are.
Training people to attain the highest international standards will require a significant increase in the investment in educational facilities. Much of this should be done by the private sector with the government facilitating through the granting of land and or unutilised buildings, the construction of some infrastructural facilities and granting appropriate tax incentives. In order to find sufficient and properly prepared Jamaicans to enter these tertiary institutions (we have enough Jamaicans but not enough are properly prepared), a sort of backward integration into the high schools, primary schools and even kindergarten would have to take place.
Once we set our objectives as to the criteria we need in the tertiary institutions, then we put programmes in place to encourage headmasters of these lower preparatory schools to train their students in math, the sciences and English (and a useful foreign language) so that they can enter these universities. The new universities, and the existing ones, will have to take on a new marketing programme to parents to let them realise the benefit of getting their children into schools in order to give them a chance at these universities that will prepare their kids for the globalised marketplace. Government will also have to invest in our children to get them ready to be knowledge workers in a globalised world.
When I visited India for the
first time in 1979, nearly every educated worker I met was trying to leave the country to go to the United States of America. That ambition to 'escape' was part of the result of the three decades of socialist policies of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, and his successor his daughter Indira Gandhi. Most people would prefer to stay in the countries of their birth. Those who choose to leave as emigrants do so because of political oppression, or the threat of political oppression, crime, or the desire to secure better economic circumstances and results for themselves and their families. The Indians who left India during the '60s, '70s and '80s that have become the treasured 'Indian Diaspora' left largely because of terrible economic conditions at home.
While recognising that the developed world has a tremendous stake in the development of the Third World, or the former will be flooded with emigrants from the latter, Drucker made a stinging indictment of Third World leaders in his 1993 book. He wrote the following:
But the forces that are creating post-capitalist society and post-capitalist polity originate in the developed world. They are the product and result of its development. Answers to the challenges of post-capitalist society and post-capitalist polity will not be found in the Third World. If anything has been totally disproven, it is the promises of Third World leaders of the '50s and '60s Nehru in India, Mao in China, Castro in Cuba, Tito in Yugoslavia, the Apostles of 'Negritude' in Africa, or Neo-Marxist like Che Guevara. They promised that the Third World would find new and different answers, and would, in fact, create a new order. The Third World has not delivered on these promises made in its name.
The eminent historian, Paul Johnson, in his book A History Of The Modern World, levels a further biting critique at Nehru whom he called "an appeaser and a unilateral disarmer. But of the process of wealth-creation and administration, by which 400 million people were fed and governed, he knew nothing."
BRAIN DRAIN: BAD POLITICS
AND BAD ECONOMICS
That was the India and the leadership that drove so many millions of Indians into the diaspora. Scholars may now look back and say how much India may have grown if those entrepreneurial-type Indians had stayed in India. The data will never capture the pain of poverty, the frustration of not being able to use the skills at home which you have acquired, and the liberation and freedom to earn and be independent that beckons in a country that has the economic capacity and growth rate to use those skills. So the diaspora Indians left India. So have Jamaicans.
What is clear is that under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, in the early '90s, and then finance minister, Manmohan Singh, who is now prime minister, India changed its absolute socialist approach and allowed entrepreneurs and business people to get on with the business of creating wealth. In the late '90s Prime Minister Vajpayee made the now famous observation that the only reason the Indian software business grew so well in the country's software capital, Bangalore, in Karnataka state, was simply because the government never understood it! The Indian government left it alone through ignorance. Thank heavens.
Many Indians of the diaspora have returned home to start businesses and the Indian software and related industries are now running short of trained people at home and have started to recruit from overseas. This is quite an amazing turnaround in a very short period of time. The very high concentrated investment in education with extremely stretched academic standards (sometimes beyond and above First World levels) is really paying off. This (private-sector led) heavy investment in fit-for-export education in Jamaica can reward Jamaica as handsomely.
There are other benefits that come with this extensive and very educated and quite wealthy Indian Diaspora. In October 2000 India issued a Millennium Bond which was sold exclusively to non-resident Indians (NRIs). Within about 10 days the entire US$4 billion was fully purchased and oversubscribed by these NRIs. NRIs send home billions of dollars every year to their families. But there is also another key benefit. The NRIs in the diaspora are a very well-informed and effectual lobbying group for Indian issues, in the United States and Britain. The truth is, the value of the Indian diaspora to India is quite incalculable.
GLOBAL DESTINATIONS
NOT JUST THE USA
When we think of training Jamaicans with the stamp 'fit for export' the first, and sometimes only, destination we tend to think of is the United States. There is no doubt that historically and till today that is probably the destination of choice for most Jamaican emigrants. Our current training institutions and the new ones that we expect to be established must orient our graduates to look at other labour markets. For instance, we need to look first at countries like Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Guyana and elsewhere in the English and Spanish speaking Caribbean as places where well trained and properly behaved Jamaicans can make their mark. Sending our fit-for-export-stamped Jamaicans to CSME destinations will be a good test as to whether the Single Market and Economy is really working.
But the need for well trained workers exists in not only the traditional destinations such as the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Fast growing economies such as those in the Baltic states, the Middle East and Asia do have need for well trained workers, especially in the service industries such as nursing, teaching, engineering and alternate health services.
Apart from the Jamaican economy, training Jamaicans with the 'fit for export' stamp will help us grasp an opportunity for our people that is beckoning to us from a globalised world with many destinations at which well trained Jamaicans can work. The benefits that will accrue from this focus-on-training approach are many and substantial. It will bring tremendous help and assistance to the Jamaican economy and socially through the reduction of illegitimacy and the delay of childbearing by too many teenagers; it will serve to replenish, strengthen and enhance the Jamaican diaspora.
This diaspora will continue to grow as a tremendous source of lobbying power for the nation as well as for sending remittance and investment funds back into Jamaica. Well trained Jamaicans will go overseas to gain experience and save funds to return to Jamaica as experienced managers and investors. Until our economy can handle a greater number of trained citizens, Jamaicans, like other nationalities, will seek to improve their economic conditions by travelling to destinations where their labour can be used for a profit and benefit to them.
As a nation, we owe it to our people to prepare them well and that means training them to the highest international standards and with each one stamped with the 'fit for export' label.
