GIVING AN INCH AND BEING THEN ASKED FOR A YARD

Sep 20, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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There is only so much that a government can do. There is equally so much that a government should do.
There was a time when it was said that there was free education from nursery to university in Guyana. Parents did not have to pay tuition nor did they need to buy text books. The buying of books did not last too long because like most things, money became short and the government could no longer meet many of its obligations.
Of course if the finances were available to continue to do what was envisaged at the inception, parents may have begun to demand other things. They may have asked for free transportation, then having got that they may have wanted free lunches. Then having got that they would have asked for some stipend to help buy uniforms and if they got that they would have asked for an electricity subsidy to help their children study. And if that wish was granted, they would have asked for a vacation allowance.
And you can bet that for each one of these demands, there would have been reasons given supporting why the requests was very important for education, thus necessitating more government assistance.  In Guyana, we say if you give a man an inch he will ask for a yard.
The government can only afford, in many instances, to give only an inch. There are many competing demands for scarce resources and while we may argue about which demand deserve more, there is thumb rule that government cannot provide everything that is needed. Those who benefit from government support must also make a counterpart contribution.
Take for example the literary field. There was a time when no support was given to this field. Then one day, Desmond Hoyte decided that there was a need to support our writers, poets and dramatists. And so he launched what was known as the Guyana Prize for Literature.
The awards were, for many years, dominated by foreign-based writers and poets. This led to some criticism, including from within this column, that the awards were mainly rewarding writers and poets who lived outside of Guyana and whose works were already published by established publishing houses.
In short, non-resident Guyanese writers were beginning to dominate these awards and this, it was said, was doing nothing to encourage writers resident in Guyana. Fair criticism! But the dollar value and prestige of the awards themselves, it can be countered, can motivate local –based writers to up their game and challenge for the prize.
Other things were done to try to encourage and lift the standard of local writing. These may not have been anything spectacular- a few workshops and training sessions here and there, then and now- but at least something was done. It would have been wonderful if every writer who wants to write a book was given a hefty grant to start writing their masterpiece but even the richest countries in the world cannot afford that, much less a  country like Guyana where there are so many other competing needs for national resources.
The government also in support of the literary arts launched what was known as the Caribbean Classics. This has allowed many previously unpublished works to be published. A number of such works have been put in print and previously printed works were republished under the Caribbean Classics Collection.
This undertaking however attracted its fair bit of criticism after it published what was said to be a modern classic, a book by the daughter of a Minister of the government. The criticisms centered not on the merit of the work but on the criteria or lack of published criteria for publication by the Guyana Classics.
The criticisms was no doubt fueled by the fact that there are many good local writers, and perhaps a fair deal of pretenders, who believe that their works should equally be eligible for publication under the Guyana Classics Brand.  Ironically one of the criticisms made was that a book recently written could not qualify as a classic.
Another related criticism was that the very idea of a modern classic was oxymoronic.
By the time the 2013 Guyana Prize for Literature Awards came around, most of our outstanding foreign based writers who are internationally known had put down their pens and this left the field open. And local based writers dominated the 2013 awards.
At this stage it is hard to conclude whether any of the shortlisted works compare in quality with what went before but an award is an award and it was a refreshing change to see locally-based writers doing so well.
This development of course has led to calls for more to be done to ensure that the works of local based writers are published. In other words, the government should do more to publish local writers. Well, that surely is a case of giving an inch and being rewarded with a demand for a yard.
The Guyana Prize for Literature is a prestigious award. If an unpublished or self-published work is good enough to win an award, then it should be good enough to be published by the more recognized publishing houses, should it not? Not necessarily.
But it is for those whose writings carry the backing of the Guyana Prize for Literature, to undergo the litmus test about the commercial worth of their writings by seeking to have these works submitted to reputable and recognized publishing houses and see whether they will be published.
If they are not, then perhaps these works are good enough for the Guyana Prize but not enough to be published.

 

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