MY THOUGHTS ON COUNTRY DEVELOPMENT

…managing a family is a benchmark for running a country

Triggered by lack of resources as a key reason given for lack of project implementation, I hold the strong conviction that leadership can be rendered ineffective by its inability to recognise the benchmark proximity of managing a family unit- with that of running a country. In fact, recognition by leaders, that a family is a microcosm of a country, would assist them to avoid rigid textbook manuals of how to run a country and thus permit pragmatism, realism, innovation and astute decision making.

Family units have no option but to maintain the fold amidst acute financial and other material constraints. A family has no choice but to feed its young and helpless; a family has no option but to meet its largely unanticipated health situations of all sort; for a family, there is no option but to pay school fees, pay utility bills, meet mortgage obligations and other installments. To exist, a family unit recognises that resource constraints cannot be an option over its continued existence, development and investing in a better tomorrow. That’s the family unit: the microcosm of a country. It goes without saying, therefore, that effective leaders would benefit a lot from using family units as benchmarks for the greater development landscape of a country….and that a country is just a bloated family unit.

If countries wait to have sufficient resources to carry out development projects, invest for posterity and improve the welfare of citizenry, little to nothing can be developed. When a family unit needs transport as in the acquisition of a vehicle, it exploits existing avenues for purchasing one based on the family’s income and expenditure spread sheet. Few have purchased such critically essential transport by making full cash payment. It takes planning, managed risk and assertive decisions for the family to acquire such a necessity. Family units live in homes for which they pay for most or all their lives because there is no option to the provision of shelter. Offspring are afforded the necessary educational opportunities through payment of school fees regardless of the imbalances in the income and expenditure equation; most families have successfully managed their balance of payments and developed themselves without upsetting the equilibrium, into bankruptcy.

Governments must see themselves as heads of this magnified family unit called country. Most countries have substantial resources acquired through exploitation of natural resources, taxes and other forms of revenue generation. Almost all countries have their budgetary considerations and balance of payments schedules to which they want to accord the imperative equilibrium. It would, however, be misleading and short-sighted for any government to be intimidated by the equally imperative demands for infrastructural development, health provision to citizenry, maintenance of projects, provision of essential services and sustenance of public service structures on the basis of resource constraints. The basic tenet of running a country is to make life a priority, and the aforesaid imperatives are life giving and life sustaining. It is a perilous indiscretion and a personified example of impotent leadership for a government to give priority to accumulation of revenue rather than the balancing of the savings and needs of its people. The former is tantamount to abdication of responsibility; the latter is life; reality.

Just as much as a family would be driven to debt and abject poverty if it did not pay its helpers, postponed purchase of a house as a home or skipped mortgage payments, deferred payment of bills and schools fees etc, a government that prioritizes a bulging purse over investment in the development of a country, is postponing the inevitable that will return with crippling effect. In developing a country, like in running family, what is not done today at current cost- albeit in the midst of resource constraints- will be done tomorrow at greater cost when even the accumulated savings would basically have lost the value existing at the time of postponement. It is abdication of responsibility and even negligence on the part of governments to postpone the must-do while thinking they are accumulating savings because development priorities increase faster and disproportionately than whatever interest may accrue in savings. 

It is only an astute saving if it can be used tomorrow at tomorrow’s prices.

Deferred investment action in development, is also a dangerous enticement for maladministration, misappropriation, theft and other forms of corruption because the façade of abundance tempts illegal diversion of resources for personal development; just as a parent who made savings from non-payment of essentials would be tempted to have a false sense of abundance and most likely spend the savings on non-essentials, governments may be prone to similar creations of negative debt.

Debt is good if it is balanced with regular payments until the owed property is fully owned; it must not be feared to the extent of halting self-development. Debt must be respected and serviced proportionately; that is the view of a family unit graduate and beneficiary.

In the case of Botswana, my conclusion is that every single road or other public projects that were postponed, every single infrastructural development project that was deferred, every payment of imperative productivity payments, and all undeveloped development plans were a transfer of negative burdens and imbalances for the future generations. What was supposed to be done then will be done later, at greater cost; whatever savings were made, will later be expended at a diminished value.

This is my personal opinion...I am not sorry to have opinions.

Andrew Sesinyi

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