Covid19 has shown we can get things done

kmmpub@gmail.com

Our society is trapped in a morass of inertia fuelled by decades of oil and gas and bigger and bigger government. This has been repeated so often that it is now beyond a cliche.

Want another cliche? That we can’t change anything. Almost every segment of society from business to government to non-profits, from tycoons to street sweepers seem to agree that very little can be done to change society. We are complicit in our own inertia.

You ask for a bank loan, the answer is no. You need faster service in the store, the answer is no. You want to build a house, the answer is no. You want to get a government form stamped, the answer is no.

Now no one expects an automatic “yes” to everything. It is right to criticise. It improves ideas and actions. Healthy scepticism should be encouraged. But too many have left behind scepticism and settled into cynicism.

Cynics are always comfortable because their views require absolutely no action from them. They often criticise but conflict is not how most cynics work. Quite the contrary, the cynic is most often the one that stays quiet in the meeting and agrees with everybody else.

But I don’t believe that cynicism is entrenched in our country. Any one of us can throw it off today. The proof: covid19.

If the pandemic has exposed the truth about societies the world over, what is one truth that has been exposed here? That shockingly enough we know how to get things done!

Almost overnight the government decided to act. Bills were passed in one day that might usually have taken months or years. Policies have been rolled out in days or weeks. This is almost unheard of.

We are using data to make decisions about the covid19 healthcare response. Historically, any data was completely ignored in favour of instincts. I am no prophet of the future (my last name aside) but the truth is that the government has been incredibly successful so far with this approach.

Covid19 has proven that with enough will, we know how to get things done.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that there are no historical or structural impediments to change. A century of regulation and a history of colonialism cannot be changed overnight. The bottom 20 per cent of society still need help.

But a hell of a lot of our problem is just a lack of will and it is time somebody said that.

Covid19 has exposed the dark and terrible truth that we can, all of us – in government, in business and in our private lives – actually be very effective and productive if we want to. We can grow if want to.

But we have to want to.

We need to stop saying “no” and start saying “yes.”

We must overcome the fear that is preventing us from saying “yes”. It may seem absurd that I am writing this and I understand that it sounds like something out of a fortune cookie or a badly written self-help book, but it comes after writing almost a hundred articles about specific problems, solutions and policies.

I’ve gone through all the technical stuff, translated the jargon and spoken to most of the (very wise and brilliant) people who are doing things in this country. The solutions to our problems are not new. We have long had all the answers about how to fix the country. I haven’t even bothered to quote anyone or cite anything in support of this view because the list would be hundreds of pages long.

When all is said and done, more was said than done. We just never do anything about it. It is time to channel some of the energy currently going into “the overproduction of opinion” (as political economist Albert O Hirschman puts it) into action.

We are not the only nation facing this problem but it is particularly acute in TT. I never get tired of citing billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreesen: “The problem is desire. We need to 'want' these things. The problem is inertia. We need to want these things more than we want to prevent these things. The problem is regulatory capture. We need to want new companies to build these things, even if incumbents don’t like it, even if only to force the incumbents to build these things. And the problem is will. We need to build these things.”

This is a call to action.

Kiran Mathur Mohammed is a social entrepreneur, economist and businessman. He is a former banker, and a graduate of the University of Edinburgh