Destiny of Mauritius

A Glimpse into 1961

By Lady Selwyn Clarke, Fabian Society

The problem of rapid population growth dominates over half the world. But there are three special features of Mauritius which make this problem especially hard to resolve. First there are already over 650,000 people in an island which is only the size of Surrey. Secondly, there are no easy opportunities for large economic developments in an island which is without any special raw materials and is so remote from the main markets of the world. Thirdly, forty per cent of the population is Roman Catholic.

The government which has to grapple with the problem is the first to be elected by adult suffrage and to have complete authority over home affairs (subject to the reserved powers vested in the Governor.) The Mauritius Labour Party won a substantial majority in the 1959 election. Before embarking on specific new plans for economic and social development it was decided to seek advice and two teams of experts have visited the island. Their reports were published simultaneously last month. Professor James Meade headed an economic mission while Professor Richard Titmuss led an enquiry into the social services. The other members of this last team were Brian Abel-Smith and Tony Lynes. For once economic and social development were reviewed at the same time.

The population of Mauritius was fairly stable at around 400,000 for the first forty years of the century. The rapid growth of the population to over 600 000 in less than twenty years can be attributed primarily to the abolition of malaria. And further growth to over one million by 1980 seems inevitable.

If present trends continued, the island would have to support some three million persons by the end of the century. There is no possibility of solving the problem by emigration. Not only are there no countries willing to accept unskilled immigrants, primarily of Indian origin, on the requisite scale, but the cost of such a policy would be prohibitive. Mauritians are coming and will continue to come to Britain, but the reports stress that migration cannot solve the problem of population growth.

The only alternative to starvation is family limitation on a massive scale and both reports have the courage to say so. Clinics must be established all over the island offering such means of birth control as each prospective parent will accept. The Titmuss Report recommends that an approach should be made to a consortium of foundations for generous financial aid and skilled help. Research is needed to find the means of propagating family limitation which will prove most effective in Mauritius. This recommendation is certain to be fought by the Catholic Church. But as the report says, “The illiberalities of some must not thrive on the courtesies of others.”

The Titmuss Report contains detailed recommendations for a gradual development of services in a number of phases, but all the recommendations are dominated by the attempt to establish the pattern of a three-child family which would stabilise the population of about a million in the long run. The report recognises and faces up to the central dilemma of social policy. Poverty is greatest among young children. The low level of health of the Mauritian workers, which is noted by doctors, and the low work output which is noted by sugar magnates are both attributable in part to malnutrition in early years. Yet the more that is done to raise the living standards of children, the greater the danger of increasing population. The report recommends limited nutritional services for schoolchildren and pre-school children, but the most original suggestion is for a family benefit payable in cash to nearly every family with three children, with no addition for further children and no benefit at all for less than three children. This would emphasize the government’s support for the three-child family and provide no incentive for further births.

The family benefit would be non-contributory. Non-contributory benefits are also recommended for widows and orphans. In a country with largescale seasonal unemployment, the authors of the report see no merit in connecting the welfare of widows and children to the work records of husbands and fathers. There is already a modest old age pension on a non-contributory basis; and no change is recommended in this system of finance. The introduction of family planning clinics and non-contributory benefits constitute the first phase of the Titmuss plan.

Apart from the non-contributory old age pensions, at present the main bulwark of income security is a costly and abused public assistance service based on the principles of the old British Poor Law. And as assistance is available to the sick but not to the unemployed, the understaffed government medical service has been coping with an intolerable burden of work. It is not practicable for doctors to diagnose sickness in any hard and fast way in a community with a low general level of health. To relieve the doctors of part of the burden of certification, it is recommended that some form of financial aid should be given to the unemployed.

The form this should take is a contributory scheme of social insurance to cover not only unemployment but sickness as well. The collection of contributions will provide records of employment, and these are essential for distinguishing between voluntary and involuntary unemployment.

The introduction of social insurance is to be the second stage of the Titmuss plan, and the formidable administrative problems are not underestimated. The main need will be to establish labour exchanges all over the island which are able to operate an acceptable work test. It is, however, emphasised that unemployment benefit cannot operate without waste — and abuse in a country with a high level of unemployment. The only really satisfactory answer to the problem of unemployment in Mauritius as elsewhere is to create more jobs. And this is the major concern of Professor Meade’s report.

At present, the sugar industry employs half the island’s population and provides nearly all the island’s exports. The secure market and relatively generous prices under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement make sugar the most attractive crop to grow. But there is little prospect of the industry providing much more employment or of finding markets for very much greater production. The Meade Report wants to encourage the many other crops which can grow in Mauritius — tea, tobacco, nuts, potatoes and other vegetables. And it proposes to do this by tax on sugar production and the establishment of a marketing board to give guaranteed prices and storage facilities for other products.

To stimulate the growth of industries in Mauritius, the Meade Report recommends the development of technical education, the abolition of tariffs on raw materials, heavy duties on imports, the expansion of the electrical power industry, the construction of trading estates, and tax concessions for new enterprises. In addition, an industrial development board should be set up to provide expert advice. And to make room for capital expansion there should be high taxes and greater efficiency in government administration. The Meade Report believes that in total all these measures could find employment for a larger population but not for the “explosion” of population indicated by present trends.

The Titmuss Report makes some very frank comments on the health services. It identifies two central problems which are not peculiar to Mauritius. The first is the shortage of doctors and the second is the low standards of ethical behaviour of some of the existing medical and nursing personnel. The report recommends the establishment of bodies to exercise professional discipline, and a variety of suggestions are made to increase the recruitment of doctors. The report notes that there are believed to be more Mauritian doctors practising In Britain and France than in Mauritius itself. The critical problem is to make it attractive for doctors to return to Mauritius after qualification. How far is the British National Health Service attracting away the best medical talent from the under-developed countries?

The other recommendations on the health services are intended to establish proper priorities for the use of the limited number of doctors. The emphasis is given to preventive work and family planning. Only after these needs are met can further developments in the hospital and general practitioner services be undertaken. Detailed plans are set out for the organisation of a new family doctor service on a different basis to that operated in Britain.

Mauritius possesses not only an outdated system of public assistance, but also a battery of residential institutions that are strongly reminiscent of the general mixed workhouses condemned by Beatrice Webb in her minority report on the Poor Laws of 1909. In extreme cases, delinquents, mental deficients, unmarried mothers, orphans, and infirm old people are accommodated in the same ward. The report makes an urgent plea for the boarding out of orphans and for classified institutions run on a more humane basis.

It is not possible to do justice to these two reports in a short summary, but throughout both of them the need for family planning is stressed and stressed again. “We would plead,” write Titmuss and Abel-Smith, “that our recommendations should be accepted or rejected as a whole. They stand or fall together.” Politically it will be tempting for the government to accept the popular recommendations and postpone indefinitely the question of family planning through fear of dividing the nation and losing the electoral support of the more devout Catholics.

But this is the road to disaster.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 18 September 2026