Download Introduction: The Mauritian Miracle In 1972, Nobel laureate V.S.

Introduction: The Mauritian Miracle
In 1972, Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul traveled to Mauritius and found “an
overcrowded barracoon” overpopulated with a starving people, idled by
unemployment and plagued by despair. At the time of his visit, Mauritius had
only been independent for three years, and its economy and social structure were
“still that of an agricultural colony, a tiny part of an empire.” Many Mauritians
spent their days in supplication at government ministries, competing for deeply
coveted posts as expatriate nurses in the wealthy countries of Western Europe.
Others had already given up hope and whiled away the hours near the docks of
Port Louis. Mauritius, Naipaul wrote, was a country without joy. It bore little
resemblance to the idyllic paradise Mark Twain saw during his earlier travels
around the globe, when he wrote that Mauritius must have been the utopia upon
which Heaven was based. Denuded by European colonists, who extinguished the
indigenous dodo, razed the native hardwood forests and blanketed the island with
sugarcane, Mauritius entered the post-colonial era like so many newly
independent nations, islands of poverty whose “problems defy solution” (Naipaul
1972).
Yet Mauritius somehow managed to do the unthinkable: it transformed
itself from a hungry, hopeless nation to one of the only success stories of the postcolonial era. The ‘Mauritian Miracle’ that occurred in the years following
independence has fundamentally transformed politics, economy, and society on
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the island. From inauspicious beginnings, Mauritius has become a beacon of hope
in the Indian Ocean.
The Political Miracle
In the mid-1960s, deep social cleavages contributed to an extremely
negative prognosis for democracy in Mauritius. Ethnic groups squabbled over the
shape of a new government, and nearly two-fifths of the population voted against
independence from Great Britain (Simmons 1982). Ethnic riots erupted in 1964
and 1967, threatening to plunge the country into civil war. Violence between
Muslims and Creoles killed at least twenty-five people and wounded over one
hundred others just six weeks before Mauritius declared independence (M etz
1995). Prime Minister Ramgoolam clamped down upon political dissent and
suspended elections almost immediately after assuming office in 1968, igniting
suspicions that the much-feared “Hindu Peril” of Indo-Mauritian political
domination had arrived (Mathur 1991).
Despite its unencouraging debut, democracy has grown and thrived in the
years since independence. Over the last thirty-four years, Mauritius has completed
six democratic elections, and the winning coalitions have shifted nearly every
time (Mukonoweshuro 1991). Political contest is alive and well, evidenced by the
colorful and provocative posters plastered ubiquitously across the island. Though
ethnic discourses regularly surface during elections, several broadly-based parties
that lack significant ideological distinctions attract the vast majority of votes.
Mauritius ranks among the most stable countries in the world, and its citizens
enjoy political and civil rights comparable to citizens in Belgium, France or
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Germany (World Bank 1998, Freedom House 2001). Even though Mauritians
regularly express frustration with the quality of their government, disenchantment
with politics is certainly not a uniquely Mauritian problem. In the years since
independence, Mauritius has developed from a socially fractured, unstable, and
potentially authoritarian system to a functional, multi-party regime ranked among
the most democratic in the world (Freedom House 2001).
The Economic Miracle
At the time of independence, Mauritius was a poor, monocrop economy
where sugar production claimed a larger share of aggregate economic activity
than in any other country of the world. In his seminal study of the Mauritian
economy, James Meade (1961) predicted that Mauritius would collapse into a
Malthusian poverty crisis due to rapid population expansion and the limited
growth prospects of the dominant sugar industry. Yet between 1973 and 1999,
real GDP grew by approximately 5.9 percent each year, and per capita income
increased by 3.2 percent annually. In the same period, per capita income in the
rest of Africa grew by less than 1 percent each year and declined markedly in
several countries (Subramanian and Roy 2001). Mauritius defied observers’
expectations by outperforming its neighbors and many other developing countries
around the world.
Economic growth coincided with a drastic structural shift from agriculture
to manufacturing and services. In 1970, agriculture accounted for 47 percent of
employment and over 62 percent of total exports. By 1995 it claimed less than 15
percent of total employment and only 24 percent of Mauritius’ exports (MEDRC
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1997). Tourism and light manufacturing took off in the 1980s, helped in part by
local investments in hotel facilities and the creation of an Export Processing Zone.
From 1970 to 1995, industry’s share of GDP rose from 25 percent to 33 percent,
and its share of employment expanded from 9 percent to 35 percent (MEDRC
1997). Over the same period, inequality in Mauritius declined substantially. The
Gini coefficient, measuring inequality of income distribution, fell from a peak of
0.445 to 0.387. Mauritius now ranks among the middle-income developing
countries, and in 1998, the World Economic Forum named it Africa’s most
competitive economy. Whereas most plantation economies have remained largely
agrarian well into the post-colonial era, Mauritius overcame Meade’s doomsday
predictions with a successful program of diversification and development.
Table 0.1: Gini coefficient in Mauritius
1975
1980-1
1986-7
1991-2
1996-7
0.420
0.445
0.396
0.379
0.387
Source: ILO 1998
The Social Miracle
Social policy in Mauritius has embraced the principle that economic
growth is merely a means to the satisfaction of human needs (MEDRC 1997).
Housing standards, measured by the proportion of dwellings with concrete walls
and roof, have improved markedly over the past three decades, an important
achievement for a country susceptible to violent oceanic cyclones. In 1972, 52
percent of homeowners possessed cyclone-safe housing; by 1990, 72 percent did.
Health and education statistics also reflect social development in Mauritius. Infant
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mortality has fallen from 57 per 10,000 births in 1970 to 18 in 1994. Life
expectancy has increased from 66 to 73 years for women, and from 61 years to 66
for men over the same period. Enrolment in primary education has reached 100
percent, and secondary school enrolment more than doubled between 1970 and
1995 (MEDRC 1997). With extensive redistributive and social programs,
including a universal pension scheme, housing aid and means-tested welfare
assistance, Mauritius has eliminated the most crippling forms of absolute poverty.
In sum, Mauritius has stabilized its political institutions, engineered three
decades of uneven but rapid economic growth, and translated these gains into
substantially better living standards for broad sections of its population. Given the
generally dismal socioeconomic performance of developing countries in the postcolonial era, these accomplishments alone are cause for wonder. But the
Mauritian experience is even more surprising because most observers predicted
that severe ethnic conflict would engulf the island in an endless cycle of
destructive violence. Indeed, ethnic riots rocked the island on the eve of
independence, an inauspicious beginning for a country that seemed to need no
assistance in its march toward disaster.
Horrifying genocides in Rwanda and Burundi, violent putsches in Fiji and
civil wars in Nigeria and Guyana demonstrate that ethnic diversity is frequently
the key ingredient in a recipe for economic and political collapse. In Mauritius,
three centuries of plantation-based colonial rule brought populations from three
continents together and crowded them into a tiny volcanic island in the eastern
Indian Ocean. Rapid population growth and the seemingly inevitable struggle for
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scarce resources heralded tragedy for a country already divided into mutually
antagonistic communal segments. The 1967 riots, which left both Creole and
Muslim opponents dead and mutilated in the streets, seemed to presage still
darker times ahead.
Thirty-four years after independence, the Mauritian experience seems
miraculous indeed. Mauritius entered the community of independent nations a
politically unstable, ethnically divided and desperately poor ‘sugar bowl.’ Today,
it is hailed around the world for its social, political and economic
accomplishments. With an uncanny ability to achieve the impossible, Mauritius
has repeatedly proven doomsday prophecies wrong. Understanding the social
dynamics behind the Mauritian development experience is the central goal of this
thesis.
Chapter One will develop conceptual tools for analyzing the political
economy of ethnicity in plural societies. Chapter Two will establish a historically
informed relational taxonomy of ethnic groups and cleavages in Mauritius. In
Chapter Three, this taxonomy will provide the context for a deeper exploration of
ethnic political economy in Mauritius. Chapter Four will argue that integrative
and centripetal institutions have helped Mauritius to manage social conflict and
develop growth-enhancing policies, allowing the island to navigate the turbulent
waters of the post-colonial era. The thesis will conclude with a discussion of the
global implications of the Mauritian experience.
In a world full of ethnically divided and poverty-stricken states, explaining
the success of the Mauritian Miracle is not just an important goal for social
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science—it is an important goal for humankind. By applying the tools of political
economy to the Mauritian Miracle, this thesis will attempt to demystify a
historical experience with important implications for countries hoping to work a
little magic of their own.
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