To some it is a marauding monster while to others it embodies the finest creative spirit of a community. It easily ignites into uncontrollable violence out of proportion to the rational goals that impelled it to act in the first place. 6 Ethnic groups are, however, not always negative social entities as their well-reported outbursts suggest. They are more frequently very rational bodies which act as pressure groups in pursuit of the programmatic interests of their members. They may seek limited ends following legal procedures and provide a host of solidarity services for their members.
Common ethnicity can create bonds between bureaucrats and citizens.
If impersonal criteria of treatment and impartiality are novel, suspect or imperfectly understood, then protection deriving from the very partiality of ethnicity can provide a cushion against arbitrariness. Ethnicity, moreover, provides a convenient handle for political organization to press claims on government and to interpret government to group members. In short, members of an elite group need not face a new environment, an untested system of relations, or a situation requiring help all alone. The importance of Fiji consists of a demonstrated case where multi-ethnicity has engendered sectional consciousness which in turn has rendered efforts at development difficult if not impossible. Few empirical instances exist where the contours of the aroused ethnic phenomenon have been so available for open scrutiny as the Fiji case.