Blip

About this episode

Flying from Nadi to Nausori we get to see a little of Fiji's main island from the sky. I had a voiceover for this but I started to prefer the weird music... what I wanted to say in the voiceover was that the land is obviously fundamental to Fijian society and culture, but society is divided between Fijian natives and Indo-Fijians brought here originally by the British, but who have of course since become intrinsic to Fijian economy, agriculture, society and culture.The main component of the Fijian economy is agricultural, that's sugar cane production. (The sugar I've tried is soft, sweet, delicious!) But Fijian native people own the land - the titles and deeds - for historical, colonial reasons, and Indo-Fijians are subordinated to this arrangement, causing ongoing tension and distrust between the two communiuties who, in turn, have a very different relationship to The Land.One solution to this ongoing tension is for the government to legislate itself into a more central role in managing land rights, ideally moving towards a more liberal, market and innovation-driven philosophy. But government itself is riddled with distrust between the two ethnic groups, and if one group takes more power, the other reacts. This forces the army to take a sometimes odious role of self-appointed referee, seeing itself as the guardian of the constitution, which is not all that difficult to understand given the recent coups. In any case, sugar production has been steadily declining as the world markets change, reducing the revenues to landowners, tenants, farmers, and the government itself. The solution to the problem of The Land will have to come sooner or later because of this economic reality. A smart, enlightened government would be proactive in these circumstances, and would be re-tooling the agricultural base to cultivate the production of ethanol, molasses, and other crops that will help boost the Fijian economy in the coming decades on world markets. Like most countries though, even democratically elected governments have to be blinkered and myopic and concerned with petty internecine BS that only has adverse effects on the people and The Land.Thanks to Kalinka Smerti

• Release Date

  Mar 1, 2006

• Runtime

  02:45