Title:Reclaiming Development: Independent Thought and Caribbean Commentary
Author: Kari Levitt
Reviewer: Raymond Forrest
Publisher: Ian Randle Publishers
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT has seemingly disappeared from the forefront of Caribbean economic thought, given the battle to curb external debts, cope with rising fiscal deficits, and deal with the economic fallout from the loss of guaranteed preferential markets
Professor Kari Levitt's book, Reclaiming Development, drags its back into the picture.
While quite lengthy (it comprises 411 pages), it is easy reading because it is broken down into four clear parts, with 15 separate chapters, drawn from various lectures and papers, done between 1989 and 2002.
Kari Levitt is one of the authors of the Plantation Economy Model (in collaboration with distinguished economists Lloyd Best and Alister McIntyre).
As such, this book gives valuable insight into the development of the pure plantation economy (Model I) and the only one that was published; the post-emancipation model (Model II); the post-colonial industrialisation model (Model III); and the yet to be developed Model IV the anti-model, of a self-sustaining economy that transcended metropolitan dependence.
EXAMINING GAINS AND LOSSES
With heavy focus on Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago, Prof. Levitt reviews the Caribbean economic and social structure over the last four decades, looks at the gains and losses since independence, and how such state will cope in the post-WTO world.
She is not one to pull punches, hence sentences like "Foreign investment does not generate growth; it follows growth. It is now more 'market-seeking' rather than was the case when peripheral countries attracted 'resource-seeking' investment".
This is just one of the gems as she criticise the political management of the various economies, especially for their debt burden legacy and failure to resist some of the numerous conditionalities that come with IMF, World Bank and IDB loans.
Her critique of the loss of social capital and the widening of income inequalities in Jamaica, following structural adjustment and liberalisation, should be read by all.
The most delightful exchanges in the book, however, come in Part III when, after a scathing attack on the Manley legacy, from the George Beckford Memorial Lecture of November 1995 (reproduced in this book as Chapter 4), there followed a series of exchange of some 16 letters between Prof. Levitt and ex-Prime Minister of Jamaica, Michael Manley, between December 1995 and July 1996.
It reinforces the view that we must cajole our ex- prime ministers, when they have retired and are away from the daily political struggles, to put down for posterity sake their own recollections of the part they played, as key actors in significant events, so that many others can learn from them when they are no longer with us.
