“The poor cannot sleep because they are hungry,” the Nigerian economist Sam Aluko famously said in 1999, “and the rich cannot sleep because the poor are awake and hungry.”

It is not my intention to get into the debate of whether our poor are going to sleep on a full stomach and are able to feed their children or not. If you listen to the government side, everything is rosy and those who are complaining and protesting are doing so because they are being manipulated by the opposition and used to disrupt social peace. If you listen to Minister of Finance Renganaden Padayachy, all is well: people are living better than in 2008; there is no inflation to worry about and there isn’t any shortage of foreign currency in the country; our debt – R426 billion without counting the SPVs – is manageable; we are getting ready to receive 1 million tourists this year; the Dubai exhibition that he and his army of colleagues spent a fortune of our hard-earned money visiting will yield “a minimum – I repeat ‘minimum’ – of Rs4.5 billion in Foreign Direct Investment” he pontificated! Notice the minister’s love for the future tense but don’t bother remembering these figures; you won’t get a chance to confront him with the real figures when the time comes.  

You can listen to him and continue bathing in a cesspool of lies and half-truths so fetid that it’s almost impossible to know what’s true anymore. Or you can pay a short visit to the nearest supermarket and watch the despair in people’s eyes. You may notice the increasing number of people who get to the till and have to return items they can no longer afford to pay for! And we are talking about items of basic necessity. Forget about the fact that they will go home without those items. Think about their feelings of humiliation and shame as they do so.

While this is going on, notice how cut off the government is from reality. They are busy planning to build…a racecourse after deliberately trying to destroy the one we have and which has been serving the purpose it was meant for! What will happen to the 500 or so employees in the Mauritius Turf Club? No lessons have been learnt from the British American Investment, it would seem. If not, maybe a 50-storey building in Côte d’Or? Or perhaps extend the tramway to cover that area too? None of this is going to contribute towards food security to lessen the burden of the poor. As for creating jobs for Mauritians, don’t even go there. All this while third grade ministers are travelling first class and amassing per diem equivalent to what some people make after several years of work. 

But it isn’t just the government. Importers and retailers have to show some restraint too. I can understand the urge to maximize one’s profit, particularly when there is a total laisser-aller and when consumer associations are moribund. It is however wiser to resist that urge. Even considering the slide of the rupee, the increase in freight and in prices internationally, things don’t add up. Some items are selling at four to five times what consumers are paying for even in countries like the UK. What is the profit margin of our importers and traders? For how long will the profiteering continue?

I think it is in everyone’s interest to contribute to social peace by thinking of ways to lift the poor out of poverty. That means each one making money off them has to contribute towards that. Suggestions like giving them money from the Mauritius Investment Corporation – or what is left in it – are rather misplaced. It is akin to suggesting selling the family silver to feed oneself and, considering the opacity of the whole operation, giving the money out with little or no control.

The poor and the impoverished – and there are many of those – have to be able to eat, feed their offspring and sleep carefree. No one else can sleep peacefully unless the poor can wish their children good night.