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

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

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

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, industrys 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 Africas most competitive economy. Whereas most plantation economies have remained largely agrarian well into the post-colonial era, Mauritius overcame Meades 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 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 0.420 0.445 0.396 0.379 0.387
Source: ILO 1998

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

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

scienceit 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.