At the stroke of midnight into August 31st 1962, down came the Union Jack and up came the crackling images of television, opening up a new trade route beyond sugar and oil, direct to the imagination of a million new consumers in the newly independent country of Trinidad and Tobago. In no time flat, we were hooked.

For 50 years, the technology that has spawned global industries, employed huge numbers of creative people, built fortunes of wealth and promoted technological invention in other countries, has strapped Trinidad and Tobago to the couch, mesmerised by the days of other people's lives. From the very first moment, our fate at the consumer end of the production cycle was sealed. Between the fear that kept the power of TV firmly in the hands of the State, and the economic model based on low cost, imported syndicated programming, any aspiration for building a viable indigenous television industry was doomed to fail.

Back in 1962, Lloyd Rohlehr and his team could never have imagined the whimpering destiny that awaited Trinidad and Tobago Television (TTT). The Guyanese Federal civil servant who would become this country's first television news producer, had led a team burning with the passion of pioneers into that shining dawn of possibility.

The TTT story (http://tttpioneers.org/) itself would make a gripping, even heart-tugging dramatic film with its birth in hope in the sixties, its degradation under the iron fist of censorship in the seventies, its confused mandate with two new channels in the 80s, its trauma under hostage conditions in the nineties and, ultimately, its evaporation in the first decade of the 21st century.

Despite the many valiant and visionary men and women who would pass through its halls from time to time, Trinidad and Tobago Television never truly lived up to its name, its early energy dissipating under the weight of the heavy hand of political interference. On January 14, 2005, it was unceremoniously closed, giving way to the Caribbean New Media Group which has never been Caribbean or new.

Someday, we will calculate the cost of fifty years of state-owned media and evaluate the consequences of subsidising our own alienation. The calculation in dollars and cents should be easy enough; the toll on identity, social harmony and creative possibilities—beyond price.

In a country where communities remain invisible in plain sight, where culture is harnessed as the prop of power, and validation must await external blessing, the longing for belonging continues to burn like an open wound. It's there in the slogans of the national movement, national unity and one love. It can be found in the faces of perennial hope, the easy and quick embrace of the other and the willingness to believe.

Yet, over and over, at the first disappointment, suspicion returns to haunt, feeding ghosts of hurts past, whether real or imagined. At every moment of doubt, the instinct to protect self and preserve turf kicks in, blocking communication at the gate and shutting the door on understanding. With the faces of all "strained and anxious", we flirt dangerously in a prelude to Martin Carter's season of oppression, dark metal and tears, choosing to reject Tagore's clear stream of reason as it recedes in the distance. In a competition of entitlement, we reach into the past to battle over who among us was hurt more.

Only knowledge, of Self and of the Other, will dissolve the walls, erase our anxieties and free us from historic fear. Here then is a raison d'etre for the media, and above all, for state-owned media, entrusted with national purpose and endowed with public funds.

It is simply unconscionable that after 50 years of television, the many worlds of our world remain unknown to us, leaving room for doubt, confusion and, sometimes, mischief. Unexplored in this virgin galaxy are all the stories of who we are, beginning with Banwari seven thousand years ago. Who will unlock her story? And who will recall that dawn in Mucurapo on September 13, 1533 when the combined tribes of native Indians launched an assault against the Spanish in a do-or-die battle to reclaim their beloved island of Iere? Who will testify on behalf of the African Sandy in Tobago who insisted on his humanity at the possible price of his life? Who will explore Don Chacon's state of mind as he prepared to surrender to Abercrombie? And who will resurrect the story of the unarmed East Indians, intent on their Hosay procession, standing their ground at Mon Repos only to be cut down by Captain Baker's bullets?

Who will explain the existence of street names like Chaim Weizmann, Golda Meir and David Ben-Gurion in the Spanish-named town of Diego Martin? And how will we understand how families in the deepest rural communities came to acquire chenille bedspreads from the suitcases of perspiring Syrian traders? And who will bring to life the gruelling adventure of Randolph Rust and John Lee Lum as they sailed from Port of Spain to Guayaguayare, cutting their way into the thickest forest, determined to raise oil and pipe it out, only to succumb to the rigours of the tropics? How will the parandero families of Lopinot discover the singing families of central and south Trinidad including the phenomenal Yankarans and Girdharies? Who will take us back to a ringside seat to witness Anthony Williams beating out the first do-re-me from the small Sunshine biscuit drum and Bertie Marshall solving the problem of crowded notes on a single steelpan?

Who will take us to the Blue Emperor in the Northern Range and the manatees in Manzanilla? Who will turn Lagahou and Soucouyant loose on the screen and bring back Papa Bois to protect our forests? Who will take the entire school curriculum and transform them into audio-visual magic for all those laptops in distribution?

How will we re-fashion our relationship with the land and learn to love every contour of this place?

As we witness the daily wastage of red ink dripping from the Treasury, while creative talents starve on freelance rates, we know that the time has come for a cultural revolution on terms that are free, inclusive and encased in artistic integrity.

The time is now to release the vast resources allocated to culture, stashed away in State agencies of every kind, into the service of a structured, well-articulated and integrated knowledge industry. With a dash of political will and the metaphorical stroke of a pen, we could launch the process and reclaim our imagination with the transformation of the hijacked resources at CNMG and GISL.

Sunity Maharaj is the editor of the T&T Review and Director of the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies

sunity.maharaj@gmail.com