Xenophobia – what’s the cost?

‘They will colonize us… invade us...enslave our children and their children, eat the juvenile tuna swimming in our seas, take over our resorts and preach Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and a whole of other ‘isms’ to our children to the extent that they will completely obliterate even the last bastion of ‘iman’ within us’. For more than one reason, I believe that this thought is almost ubiquitous in our country - its there in the papers, the harangue of our politicians, our Friday sermons and our Majlis debates.

C’mon, wait a gosh darn second. Who wants to colonize us? Who wants to invade us? Who wants to preach the ‘sms’ to us? The answer is NO ONE. (I’d like to remind you again that I’m someone with very average cognitive powers).

I think as a nation we’ve paid already paid a huge price for this ‘xenophobia’ thingy. My father was unable to learn the language I’m bogging now because the authorities back then made him and our people believe that learning this ‘faranjee / vilaathu’ language would make him a ‘kafir’. Our policy makers haven’t been able to debate on the issue of 99 year resort leases only because of their ‘xenophobia’. It is also one primary reason why we have lagged behind in our legislative, judicial, political and civil society developments. We haven’t been able to open up our country to foreign investments (I’m talking about a number of legislative and regulatory bottlenecks here) like several other countries have done also because of our fear of foreigners. We’ve been pussy-footing on several important economic reforms and liberalization of a number of areas for FDI for the same reason. I know I don’t need to remind you here about all that Dubai has done and the economic benefits they are reaping from their openness to foreigners.

Maldives - without an army?

We've all been observing stark criticisms of the institutions of our Army and police for a while. As we spend about 6-8 Laari out of every Rufiyaa we get on these, it is definitely bound to be a cause of concern for a lot of us. But then these are very important institutions for a country. So, how can you do away with them? After all they are there to defend our nation and safeguard our public safety. How can we even think of going on as a nation without an army?

How many states in the world are able to maintain their nationhood and sovereignty without an army? Liechtenstein, (a principality – well, is it very different from a sovereign country?) the richest country in Europe with a per capita income of US 54 thousand doesn’t have one. Mauritius, located not very far from us, with a population of 1.2 million people and per capita income of USD 3,700 doesn’t have one either. Iceland, (which incidentally has a population the size of Maldives) the fifth richest country in the world in terms of per capita income also does not have an army. Some other countries that do not have armies are Andorra, Costa Rica, Dominica, Kiribati, Marshall islands, Micronesia, Monaco, Nauru, Palau, Panama, St Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, Samoa, San Marino, Solomon islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Vatican city.

Now, I’m asking myself this question. Could the Maldives continue to be a nation if we were to do away with the institution we call our army? This is perhaps an issue we should open for a public discussion.