“The restoration of trust, integrity and transparency is non-negotiable…

Interview: Nita Deerpalsing, Founder of Lavwa Lavenir

… without trust, reform has no foundation; with it, much more becomes possible”

* ‘Scrutiny is the very lifeblood of accountability. The greater the power entrusted to an executive, the stronger the institutions required to scrutinise that power’

* ‘If, a decade from now, Mauritians feel greater agency over their lives and greater confidence in their country’s future, that for me would be purposeful change’

In an era where public discourse is increasingly shaped by short-term electoral cycles and political rhetoric, the launch of Lavwa Lavenir on September 16 marks a deliberate attempt to bridge the gap between intellectual debate and concrete policy action. This week’s interview with Nita Deerpalsing explores the platform’s newly released manifesto and its vision for nation-building, institutional integrity, and democratic renewal. From depoliticizing public appointments and strengthening parliamentary oversight to rethinking social democracy for the 21st century, Nita Deerpalsing outlines how Lavwa Lavenir seeks to transform ideas into purposeful, long-term change for Mauritius.

Mauritius Times: You launched Lavwa Lavenir on September 16 with the ambition to “transform ideas into purposeful change.” What gap in current political and civic life is this forum designed to fill, and how will it translate intellectual debate into tangible policy impact?

Nita Deerpalsing: I think our country does not suffer from a shortage of opinions and citizens who care deeply about the direction of the country. What is missing, in our view, is a sufficiently strong space between ideas and action — a space where citizens, professionals, academics, entrepreneurs, young people and people with lived experience can come together to think seriously about the long-term challenges facing Mauritius and, crucially, turn that thinking into practical proposals.

Too much of our public conversation is inevitably shaped by the electoral cycle: who is in power, who is in opposition, who said what about whom. Yet some of the challenges confronting Mauritius — the quality of our institutions, the erosion of trust, our economic model, education, demographic change, the aspirations of young people and ecological resilience — require thinking beyond a five-year horizon.

Lavwa Lavenir seeks to occupy that space. We do not want to become another talking shop producing interesting discussions that disappear when our meetings end. Our ambition is to build a bridge between reflection, evidence, policy design and civic action.

That means bringing different forms of knowledge around the same table: academic research and international experience, certainly, but also professional expertise and the lived experience of ordinary Mauritians. From that process we want to develop concrete policy propositions, test them, refine them, publish them and place them in the public domain.

Our manifesto, launched on Wenesday, is the result of a long process of dissecting issues to get to the root of the problems, applying “Upstream thinking” on our own work before we penned it down.  While the manifesto is very rich, it is not intended as a finished product. It is an invitation to a continuing national conversation. 

* Does treating the manifesto as a conversation mean core policy commitments remain open to negotiation?

When we say that our manifesto is the beginning of a conversation, that does not mean that everything in it is negotiable. There are some foundational principles on which we will not compromise: the fight against corruption, radical transparency in public life — including transparency in political financing — meritocracy, and the integrity and independence of our institutions.

For us, these are not simply one set of reforms among many. They are the foundations on which everything else must be built. We cannot create a fairer economy, restore equality of opportunity or ask citizens to believe in the future if they do not trust the institutions governing their lives.

So, we are completely open to debate about the details of how we build the Mauritius we aspire to. But the restoration of trust, integrity and transparency is non-negotiable. Without trust, reform has no foundation; with it, much more becomes possible.

Ultimately, the measure of Lavwa Lavenir will be whether good ideas gain traction, whether they influence public debate, inspire civic initiatives and expand what Mauritians believe is possible for their country.

That is what we mean by transforming ideas into purposeful change.

* Early nation-building in Mauritius was driven by broad political movements. In 2026, how far can platforms like the Lavwa Lavenir go in shaping national policy compared to traditional political parties?

The broad political movements that shaped early Mauritius performed an extraordinary historical task. They organised people around major causes — political representation, workers’ rights, universal suffrage, independence, education and the construction of the welfare state. We should never underestimate what that generation achieved.

But every generation has to develop political instruments appropriate to its own challenges.

In 2026, nation-building does not mean reproducing the political methods of the 1960s or 1970s. Our society is more educated, more connected and more complex. Expertise is dispersed throughout society, while many of the problems we face — institutional trust, productivity, artificial intelligence, demographic change, climate resilience, education reform — require knowledge that no political party can monopolise.

That is where the potential of Lavwa Lavenir lies. We want to create a much more porous relationship between politics and society.

Traditionally, parties often develop policy internally, and that too on the eve of a general election; and then present it to citizens. We want to reverse some of that logic: start with ideas, evidence and listening; bring citizens and expertise into the process; debate propositions openly; and then translate the strongest of them into a coherent programme for action.

But a platform of ideas has its limits. Ultimately, in a parliamentary democracy, changing laws, budgets and institutions requires political power and democratic legitimacy. Ideas alone cannot govern.  So, we are not proposing a choice between intellectual engagement and political action. Lavwa Lavenir is deliberately trying to connect the two.

Our manifesto is therefore a starting point, not something cast in concrete. We intend to take it across Mauritius, listen, challenge our own assumptions and improve it through engagement with citizens.

Perhaps that is the evolution we need in our political culture: not politics with all the answers already written, but politics capable of saying, “Here is our vision. Now help us make it better.”  For me, that too is nation-building.

* Wouldn’t it be more effective to push for policy reform from within the Labour Party — the very movement SSR nurtured — especially now that it holds power and has the actual machinery to enact change?

I have enormous respect for the historical role of the Labour Party and, particularly, for what Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam represented in the building of modern Mauritius. I spent an important part of my own political life in the Labour Party. I do not erase that history simply because I have chosen a different path today.  In fact, yesterday in our opening slides, one of the pictures I had generated by AI was a black and white picture of SSR on Independence Day, standing in front of the mast where our Mauritian flag (in colour) was being raised.  He was the only political figure present in our launch presentation yesterday and that was deliberate – in honour of his political engagement for the country.

The Labour Party that was set up in 1936 built a political vehicle that the founders believed was necessary to bring the change needed given the realities they were confronting at that time.  For me, the loyalty to the very values that originally animated the political vehicle that started to be built in the time of Rozemont, Anquetil, Pandit Sahadeo and SSR is absolutely intact.  What they were fighting for was Justice and Human Dignity.  You will find these to be at the very core of Lavwa Lavenir. 

In my opinion, if we genuinely want to honour that legacy, we have to ask ourselves the same question today: what does Mauritius need today?

Of course, a party in government possesses the machinery to enact change. But having the machinery and actually bringing the transformation that was promised are not necessarily the same thing.  As evidenced by the sorry state of affairs for all of us to see.

Lavwa Lavenir is not being built out of hostility towards the Labour Party, nor towards any other party. It is being built from a conviction that Mauritius needs a new political conversation and, ultimately, a new political offer. We launched it with a manifesto centred on institutional integrity, shared prosperity, human flourishing, youth empowerment and a state that works better for citizens. 

The early founding ideas of the 1936 Labour Party are always a source of great inspiration.  I just don’t want to be encaged in a vehicle that today certainly doesn’t provide any inspiration – to say the least.  Therefore, while I respect where I came from, I need to be completely free to ask where Mauritius needs to go next. For me, Lavwa Lavenir is the answer to that question.

* Publishing this interview on the 126th birth anniversary of Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam invites reflection on foundational values — universal welfare, social justice, and nation-building. How does the vision behind your new forum align with SSR’s early social-democratic ideals?

There is something particularly meaningful about having this conversation on Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam’s 126th birth anniversary. The enduring significance of his generation and those before him lies in the values that motivated them: social justice, human dignity, equality of opportunity and the conviction that government has a responsibility to enlarge the possibilities available to ordinary people.

In that fundamental sense, there is a clear and strong philosophical continuity with Lavwa Lavenir. The challenge for today is answering this question: what does social justice mean for today and tomorrow?

For us, protecting universal access to education, healthcare and social protection remains fundamental. But the next stage must go further — from providing services to expanding people’s capabilities and agency.

A child may have free access to school, but if the education she receives does not equip her to flourish in the world she will enter, formal access alone is not enough. A young person may possess qualifications, but if opportunity depends upon connections rather than merit, we cannot call that genuine equality of possibility. A citizen may receive public services, but if institutions are inefficient, opaque or unaccountable, citizenship itself becomes diminished.

This is why Lavwa Lavenir speaks about human flourishing. Social justice in the 21st century must mean giving every Mauritian the real capability to learn, to work, to create, to participate, to contribute and to live with dignity.

There is another aspect of the Labour Party’s legacy that matters profoundly to us: nation-building. Mauritius cannot claim to have a socially sustainable future if any one social class or community flourishes at the expense of another.

That is why our central idea is Flourishing Together.

So, we are seeking to bring answers to the question as to how the emancipatory values of 1936 can help us build the Mauritius of the next generation.

* A key pillar of nation-building is strong, trustworthy state institutions. What specific structural or governance reforms should be prioritized today to ensure meritocracy and transparency in public life?

For me, this goes to the heart of nation-building. Citizens must be able to believe that the institutions of the Republic belong to them — not to whichever political party happens to be in government.

The first priority is therefore to depoliticise public appointments. For senior positions in state institutions, regulatory bodies and state-owned enterprises, we should move towards transparent, competency-based selection: vacancies advertised, clear qualification and competency criteria published beforehand, properly constituted selection panels, and greater disclosure of the basis on which appointments are made.

Mauritius already has institutions on paper designed to protect meritocracy. The task is to ensure that this is a lived reality, that there is not a single iota of perception that this is only nice words on paper which do not translate into citizens’ experience of these institutions.

Second, transparency must become a default rather than something citizens have to fight for. Mauritius needs effective freedom-of-information legislation, stronger disclosure requirements around public procurement and public expenditure, and easily accessible publication of decisions, contracts and performance information.

Third, oversight institutions must have genuine independence, adequate resources and the capacity to act.

But institutional reform is ultimately about culture as much as architecture. We need to bring an end to the idea that political victory confers a right to distribute public positions.  We cannot walk into the future with this becoming so entrenched that people think this is actually the norm.  Otherwise, all we will be leaving to the future is building networks of influence rather than institutions.  I hope everyone sees that there is a stark difference between the two.

And this is fundamental to Lavwa Lavenir: strong institutions should not depend upon good people being in power. They should be strong enough to constrain whoever is in power.

So that even when all of us are gone, what we have built for the future remains standing tall.

* You have often argued that politics should be a battle of ideas rather than identities or patronage. How will Lavwa Lavenir work to elevate public discourse and engage younger generations in substantive policy debate?

We cannot complain that public debate has become dominated by personalities, identities and patronage while continuing to use precisely those instruments ourselves.

Lavwa Lavenir wants to help shift the centre of gravity back towards ideas. That means creating spaces where disagreement is not treated as disloyalty, where propositions can be challenged on their merits, and where evidence matters more than who happens to be speaking.

But we also have to recognise that the way people engage with public life has changed profoundly. Younger Mauritians are not necessarily going to attend traditional political meetings or sit through lengthy speeches. They inhabit a faster, more interactive information environment. The answer, however, cannot simply be to reduce politics to slogans and thirty-second videos. Our challenge is to make serious ideas accessible without making them simplistic.

We therefore envisage Lavwa Lavenir as a platform for continuous engagement: public conversations, workshops, youth dialogues, digital forums and accessible policy explainers. We have already started with the dearMoris YouTube channel (link: https://www.youtube.com/@dearMoris) where we have tried to make accessible the political history of Mauritius to everyone.

We want to take individual propositions from our manifesto and ask young Mauritians directly: What do you think? What have we missed? How would you improve this?

Most importantly, the youth should not be treated as a demographic category to be courted at election time. They should be co-authors of the Mauritius they will inherit.

That requires giving them genuine agency — opportunities to research problems, design proposals, challenge established thinking and see good ideas travel from discussion into actual political programmes.

We also have to earn their trust as well as all those who are envisaging leaving Mauritius because they do not perceive their future to be here.  If we only stick to performative consultations, and performative politics, we will only deepen rather than repair the disengagement they are currently experiencing.

That is the political culture Lavwa Lavenir wants to help build.  We want to take le pari de l’intégrité et de l’authenticité, rather than succumb to a performative politics in which packaging gradually becomes more important than substance — where political leadership is increasingly projected through carefully choreographed displays, entourages, songs glorifying leaders and extravagant fireworks, while the ideas, values and policies that should be at the heart of political engagement recede into the background.

For us, the strength of a political movement should lie in the quality of its ideas, the integrity of its conduct and its capacity to improve people’s lives — not in the spectacle it can manufacture around its leaders.

* Early social democracy placed economic democratisation at its core. From a policy perspective, what key economic levers should be prioritized today to address growing inequalities and preserve the social safety net?

We need to have a broader understanding of economic democratisation. Social democracy cannot simply mean allowing an economy to generate ever-widening disparities and then asking the welfare state to repair the damage afterwards. Redistribution matters enormously, but we must also address how opportunity, income and wealth are created and distributed in the first place.

There are several priorities we have identified in Lavwa Lavenir.

First, we need an economy that rewards productive value creation — innovation, entrepreneurship, skills, manufacturing, technology and investment — rather than one in which disproportionate returns can flow from scarcity, privileged access, protected positions or rent extraction. Growth matters because without wealth creation there is ultimately nothing sustainable to redistribute. But the quality and distribution of that growth matter just as much.

Second, we need to broaden economic ownership and opportunity. That means improving access to capital for SMEs and young entrepreneurs, encouraging employee participation and profit-sharing where appropriate, strengthening competition, and ensuring that access to economic opportunity does not depend upon who you know.

Third, we must address inequality at its roots through education and skills. In the 21st century, perhaps the most powerful economic asset a person can possess is capability. A genuinely progressive economy therefore invests heavily in early childhood, education, vocational pathways, lifelong learning and digital capability.

Fourth, we need a fair tax system and a strong social safety net. Universal healthcare, education, pensions and protection for citizens facing vulnerability are not luxuries; they are part of the social compact that has held Mauritius together. But preserving that compact requires economic dynamism and fiscal sustainability as well as social commitment.

Finally, we should increasingly measure prosperity beyond GDP. We should ask whether wages are rising with productivity, whether young people can access housing and opportunity, whether social mobility is improving, and whether citizens feel economically secure.

The objective is not equality of outcome. It is a society in which the circumstances of your birth do not determine the possibilities of your life.

For Lavwa Lavenir, that is what shared prosperity ultimately means: creating more wealth, creating it differently, and enabling many more Mauritians to participate in creating — and benefiting from — that wealth.  And not just eternally be the mere recipients of redistribution of a wealth creation that is strictly confined – by policy design – to a selective few.

* On this historic anniversary, looking ahead at the journey of your new initiative, what would “purposeful change” look like for Mauritius over the next decade?

For me, purposeful change is not change for its own sake. It means being clear about the Mauritius we want to become and then having the courage, discipline and collective will to move deliberately towards it.

Ten years from now, I would like the country to be able to look back and say that Mauritius recovered something immensely valuable: trust. Trust that public institutions serve the public interest. Trust that merit matters. Trust that rules apply fairly, regardless of status, connections or political affiliation.

I would like to see a State that works — where citizens no longer experience unnecessary complexity and frustration in dealing with public services, and where technology is used intelligently to make government more efficient, responsive and humane.

Economically, purposeful change would mean moving decisively towards a country that creates rather than merely distributes value: a Mauritius known for innovation, entrepreneurship, productivity and excellence, where prosperity is more broadly shared and young people can see compelling reasons to build their futures here.

It would mean an education system that does more than produce qualifications — one that develops capability, curiosity, creativity and character. And a society in which every child, whatever the circumstances of his or her birth, has a genuine opportunity to flourish.

It would also mean recognising that prosperity cannot be separated from our natural environment. On a land territory as well as our ocean territory, the quality of our development and the quality of the world we leave to future generations are ultimately the same question.

But the deepest change I hope for is cultural.

I would like Mauritius to rediscover a sense of collective possibility — the belief that our future is something we can shape together rather than something that simply happens to us.

That is why the central idea running through Lavwa Lavenir is Flourishing Together. We are not proposing a Mauritius in which some succeed while others are merely protected from failure. We are imagining a country in which people, communities, institutions, the economy and our natural environment can flourish together.

If, a decade from now, Mauritians feel greater agency over their lives and greater confidence in their country’s future, that for me would be purposeful change.

And perhaps the most important measure of our success would be this: that the next generation once again looks at Mauritius and sees not a country to leave, but a country worth building.

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Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 18 September 2026

Tags:Accountability, Civic Action, Economic Democratisation, Education, Equality of Opportunity, Flourishing Together, governance, Human Dignity, Human Flourishing, Institutional integrity, Lavwa Lavenir, Mauritius, Mauritius Times, Meritocracy, Nation Building, Nita Deerpalsing, Parliamentary Oversight, Policy Reform, Political Culture, Political Engagement, Public Institutions, Purposeful Change, Shared Prosperity, Social Justice, Transparency, Trust, Youth Empowerment