Social Responsibility

May 11, 2011 Editorial

Even though the date for the elections has not been announced, the various political parties, especially via their Presidential aspirants, have been quite vociferous in rolling out their solutions to our not inconsiderable social ailments. If one were to cull those views, almost uniformly a common thread emerges – an insistence that it is the role of the Government to cure all the ills of society.
This newspaper holds otherwise. However, it has been said that “If men define things as real, they become real in their consequences.” Our fear is that if our politicians project all accountability on the state to deal with ever increasingly smaller and local predicaments, in the process they will be exculpating the citizenry from all responsibility. We would have defined ourselves as having no agency, and then inevitably will become exasperated when the “big brother” we have created, just as inevitably falters. The consequence that has become real is we are reduced to whining and whinging, even as the problems metastasise to overwhelm the society.
For it is a myth, and an insidious one at that, to define the government as the most suitable agency for resolving all of the people’s problems, and that we as individuals bear no responsibility for sorting out our own lives. For as long as this myth persists, ‘social problems’ will continue to grow and just as surely, government budgets will continue to expand, and job opportunities for “social policy experts” will continue to multiply.
In the development of stable democratic governance in the west, a key innovation was the spread of voluntary organisations throughout the populace that identified services that were necessary for the better functioning of society – and then went on to provide those services. This volunteerism among the ordinary citizens fostered a spirit of independence that was a crucial counterpoise to the inevitable predisposition of public officials to throw their weight around. The more opportunity that citizens offer those officials to exercise power over their lives, one can be assured that to an increasing extent their liberty can be curtailed.
Take for instance the social problem of alcoholism, highlighted during the “Rum-Chutney” debates. Every religion has taken an official, text-sanctified position against this cancer in our society; every social group has railed against its anomic effects on group solidarity, yet there are only two private groups that have made an effort to deal with alcoholism in this country. What is worse is that many of these organisations, even religious ones, permit alcohol at their fund-raising functions. We have to do better than this.
One group in which alcoholism is endemic is sugar workers. This is primarily because of the historic provision of alcohol to them by the plantocracy as a weapon of control – rum-shops were permitted not far from every pay-office in the sugar industry and a broke worker was more motivated to return to work the next Monday.
In Trinidad, before their sugar industry wound down their operations, the sugar workers’ union had an alcoholism rehabilitation program which was offered free to all its members. Surely, our sugar unions can replicate that intervention here.
The most effective program to confront alcoholism is the support system of regular meetings pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous, which reinforces the alcoholics’ commitment not to drink. Such programs can be sponsored by the religious and social groups that are ubiquitous in our midst. We can extrapolate the problems of domestic violence, drug abuse, truancy etc. into the above framework.
We want to stress that we are not advocating the abdication by the government of a role in the treatment of social problems. But that is all it must be – a role, and not the sole role.
A society in which we actively cultivate the spirit of literally caring for each other – not by mere exhortations but by concrete actions – will eventually become one in which we can live out the true meaning of the freedom for which our forefathers fought so heroically.

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