ACCORDING TO CALYPSONIAN Adonijah there is more than one Barbados.
When your electronic gates glide open and you come home to your swimming pool, after vacationing in Europe, it is pretty clear which Barbados you live in. When you come back to your pit toilet after bathing at the standpipe, you can be sure you don’t live in the same Barbados as the first guy.
For some it is not that clear cut.
Some of us are not so sure which Barbados we live in. Some return home to debt after a shopping spree in Miami or after taking out a Carnival loan.
Some have an indoor water toilet, but are fetching water from the standpipe to flush it.
Between the “haves” and the “have nots” are the “haves, but at any minute might not.” They used to be called the middle class, but that group is under such pressure, it may soon be called the middle gas. Gas under too much pressure explodes.
Barbados is not unique in this. Middle classes are rumbling all over the world, like air in an empty belly.
An upper middle class Indian woman, Premlata Bhansali, recently made headlines when she was caught travelling on a train without a ticket. She could have paid. She comes from a well-off family. But she didn’t. Instead of paying the equivalent of a US$3 fine she decided to take seven days in an Indian jail. Her reason? She argued that the government should first get back the $1.3 billion in loans owed by a prominent Indian businessman and politician, Vijay Mallya. Mallya has fled the country leaving his debts unpaid.
In America, the rumbling of the middle gas allowed Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, political outsiders, to emerge as serious contenders for the presidential nomination. Middle-gassy American voters, like Premlata Bhansali in India, sick to the stomach of politicians who are perceived to be in the pockets of the super-rich, are behind changes and shifts in political culture. In India they elected Narendra Modi to be prime minister, a former street vendor, who campaigns like a rock star.
But we had our time for change, two elections ago. The DLP campaign under the late David Thompson whipped up some hype. Neither the DLP under Freundel Stuart nor the BLP under Mia Mottley seem to be able to manage a hype train like a Thompson, Trump or Modi. Bajans, seeing promises breaking like bad gas, will not get worked up about a political party again anytime soon.
Unless you are a member of the ruling party you may feel like it is time for change again, but not change just for change sake. You will not trade six breadfruit for half a dozen. Especially when the six breadfruit are already in the bag and the half a dozen are on the tree. Breadfruit is breadfruit and all will make you release gas.
We may prefer to leave the breadfruit in the bag to rot, and the ones on the tree to drop, while we look for something else to eat.
In one Barbados options are vast. In another, you just take what you can get. It is the inbetweeners who are most off-balanced by political and economic instability. Where once the belly of Barbados was settled, it is now bubbling. Some in the middle will rise like a satisfied big-shot belch, and some will run, like diarrhoea.
Former Prime Minister Owen Arthur reportedly received a standing ovation from the Chamber of Commerce when he argued that Barbados needed a stronger medicine than what the present Government is willing to deliver.
This is like cheering when the family doctor informs you that your gastrointestinal distress is actually colon cancer. You may be fortunate and happy that she can make recommendations but you wouldn’t feel like standing and clapping. Unless of course you are not the patient but a proctologist or the pharmaceutical company who sees the illness of others as good business.
The members of the Chamber of Commerce would know which Barbados they live in. It is largely presumably at the top of the country’s intestinal tract. The pain of austerity measures is felt deeper in the gut and at the bottom of society. For those living in another Barbados, the pronouncement of Mr Arthur is no reason for celebration.
Change may indeed be required.
But it may not necessarily be a change in Government. There may first have to be a change in the people. Those with the gas in the middle may have to make some changes in their diet, consume more fibre to strengthen the resolve in their guts. So they can take a stand.
A middle-class African-American, Rosa Parks, took a stand and refused to be moved from her seat on the bus, bringing the civil rights movement new life.
The stand of the ticketless Indian woman on the train brought international attention to claims of alleged preferential treatment for wealthy Indian citizens.
Sometimes you have to say to those in power, “I shall not be moved.” Especially when they themselves can’t make a move against wealthy citizens who are cemented in.
Adrian Green is a creative communications Specialist. email [email protected]
