Forward-thinking leadership

DEVELOPING this nation has a lot do with engineering, the designing, planning and drafting of ideas into workable blueprints before actually building and maintaining systems, structures, and safety nets.
Scores of Guyanese work behind the scenes to build new roads and repair and maintain old ones, and to do the hard work of clearing virgin land to construct new housing communities, ordinary citizens doing menial jobs to make Guyana move forward, each one carrying out the execution part of projects and programmes, following the planning phase, the blueprinting of what is envisioned. It is a process, this idea of socioeconomic development, starting with an idea, moving forward with a mapping out of the plan on paper, and then execution, followed by maintenance.

That cycle of building the Guyana dream is worth consideration, because one tends to think of it only on the physical plane, whereas the social aspect, the spirit and soul of the land, is what really determines the way of being of Guyanese, the quality of life and happiness and peace and prosperity of the ordinary citizen, souls out there toiling day in and day out to make society work for everybody’s benefit.
This country is not only about its leaders and government officials and public servants and bureaucrats and business owners, but, significantly, this nation functions on the back-bending labour of its construction workers, gardeners and farmers who toil the land in hot sun, the fishermen who risk their lives to sojourn out to the ocean and rivers to bring in fresh fish, the forestry workers working in the jungle, miners who go away for months to the wild hinterland, leaving their families at home until they return, and on sturdy sugar workers and patient rice planters and taxi and bus drivers and labourers across the length and breadth of this land.

Making all this happen, this hive of activity that starts early in the morning every day, is the work of engineers who plan projects out, who map blueprints, who design on paper and computer the parameters of projects and programmes. Thus, the task of socioeconomic development involves a slew of crucial, important inputs from a wide range of people. Society tends to see the physical side of things, with the visible world commanding one’s attention, with the building of things like housing, roads, bridges and drainage and irrigation and the physical world receiving detailed planning, engineering and mapping out.
However, the intangible underbelly of society demands strong consciousness, with that socio-cultural side of socioeconomic development, a particularly vital aspect of moving the Guyanese nation forward, of achieving the great potential of the Guyana brand.
This way that the physical side of society works, with necessary blueprinting, designing, followed by building and operating, is exactly the way the social side of society works, the intangible inner working of society, the social spirit of the country.

First, visionaries imagine what is possible, design the idea on a mind mapping exercise, and brainstorm to consider all aspects of execution, including pros and cons. For example, before President Ali could express his conviction to the nation that government would generate 50,000 jobs, 20,000 scholarships, and 10,000 house lots, him and his team had to envision that possibility, and map out the parameters of executing this promise to the Guyanese people, of how to make it happen. So when near-sighted critics balked at the futuristic announcement in the elections manifesto of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), they did so from the position of not being privy to the nuts and bolts of how it would work, of the blueprinting of the idea, of the engineering of the plan. However, the PPP/C had done the homework, the research and engineering of how to make it all happen, and so their pronouncement came with assured confidence and firm conviction that not only would this plan come to reality, but that engineering the path to achieving this state of the society is what it takes, as a necessary task of government and its experts.

As Guyana moves into deeper seas in its socioeconomic development, the skills set to engineer the social side of the society becomes of crucial importance. The task is not only government’s, but also the arts and culture community, and the sporting fraternity, and the teachers in the education system who cultivate the minds of the nation’s next generation. Just like the private sector exists to build businesses and the economic lay of the land, and the non-governmental agencies exist to carry out charitable work, the socio-cultural organisations exist to cause the social side of the nation to grow and develop. And, just as the government drafts policies to empower the private sector and the NGO sector, government’s job is to inculcate a vision for the society, a social engineering blueprint of what the society should be like. Indeed, government is on the right road, with the One Guyana vision a real blueprint for national progress, peace, and prosperity.

This idea of a national social engineering worldview, of planning and mapping the society’s progress and development on the level of the intangible needs of the Guyanese nation, calls for a keen sense of where the nation wants to be, both today and in the future, and what kind of people Guyanese want to evolve into as the country becomes a big player in the world with its clean climate and pure air quality, and with its oil and gas sector as one of the development pillars.
Engineering the social progress and development of the Guyanese people stands on equal footing with drafting the economic prosperity of the nation.

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