In honour of Sir Shridath Ramphal whose ashes were laid to rest at the Garden of the Seven Ponds last week this Column is dedicated.
In 1991 and 1992 when I was working with the West Indian Commission a feature of many of the presentations made by scores of experts and academics and businessmen and educators was how often they cited other countries as influences we needed to recall or examples we should strive to emulate. The Commission was constantly hearing about a dominant American influence, the New Europe, the Japanese example, the Singapore model, the world-shaking dynamism of China and India.