Essays: Guyana: Economics, Politics and Demography

By Ramesh Gampat

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669802457

Ramesh Gampat

Ramesh Gampat is an economist, who worked for about three decades with the United Nations Development Programme. He is the author of several books. The two most recent ones are Guyana’s Great Economic Downswing, 1977-1990. Socio-Economic Impact of Co-operative Socialism (2020); and Essays. Guyana: Economics, Politics and Demography (2022). Dr. Gampat has also published academic papers on inflation, poverty, international trade, human development, gender and corruption. He lives with his wife just outside Atlanta, Georgia.

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Rev. date: 01/06/2022

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CONTENTS

Author’s Note

List of Abbreviations

Chapter 1. The Argumentative Guyanese

Semantic Clarification

Popular Gyaffing Sites

Ethnic Composition of Population

What’s Ahead

PART I. ECONOMICS: ESTIMATES OF PRIVATE WEALTH

Chapter 2. Building Stock: Preliminaries

Population Dynamics

The Housing Market

Building Stock Data

Rate of Homeownership

Chapter 3. Building Stocks: Estimates

Estimation Method

Four Estimates

Distribution by Ethnicity

A More Nuanced View

Summary and Implications

Chapter 4. The Wealth of Guyanese

Stock of Buildings

Private Capital Formation

Financial Institutions

Private Vehicles

Land

Private Foreign Assets

The Big Picture

Annex 4.A1. The Wealth of Nations

PART II. POLITICS, 1: BURNHAM: STRATEGIC

PATIENCE OF AN AUTHORITARIAN

Chapter 5. The Break Burnham Wanted

Official US Policy: Jagan Out, Burnham In

The Uncomfortable Alliance

Flattery and Politics

Chapter 6. The Reward: Economic Aid Package

Brief Background

Aid, Lifeline of the Coalition Government

A Better Economy?

Chapter 7. The Critical Year and a Half

Constitutional Conference

Independence

Was Burnham a Puppet of the US?

Chapter 8. In Power Indefinitely

The Jagan Problem

Not Going to Happen

The British Guiana Program

The Disaffection Hypothesis

A Quietly Confident Man

Chapter 9. Election Mathematics, 1

Sizing Up the Problem

Financial Support for Burnham

From Orthodox to Unorthodox Methods

Jagan Was Doomed

Security and Secrecy

Chapter 10. Election Mathematics, 2

Burnham Goes to Washington, Again

Burnham Changed the Rules and the US Scrambled

The Fruits of Electoral Engineering

PART III. POLITICS, 2: CHEDDI JAGAN:

THE IVORY-TOWER DREAMER

Chapter 11. Groundings

Growing Up: The Ethos

Cheddi’s Family

Major Beliefs

Cheddi’s Hindu Values

Two Worlds

Port Mourant

From Country to City

To the US and Injustice Again

Chapter 12. A Momentous Discovery

From Disjointed Experiences to Total Understanding

Did the Marxist Purist Mellow?

Chapter 13. Science or Theology?

Priors

Scientific Marxism?

Two Creeds: Religion and Marxism

Socialism as Religion?

A Theology of Socialism?

Chapter 14. Three Views of the Man

A Principled Man

How the British saw Jagan

How the US saw Jagan

Chapter 15. The Political Wedge

Leadership Struggle

Decision: Burnham Must Go

Strategy: Overt Operation

Explaining the Political Divorce

Broken Wings

PART IV. DEMOGRAPHY: DISMAL

POPULATION LANDSCAPE

Chapter 16. Population Growth, 1831-2018

Data

Some Definitions

Brief Comparative Perspective

Guyana’s Population

Trend Population Growth

Annex 16.A1: Population Doubling Time

Chapter 17. Five Phases of Population Growth

Phase I, 1872-1911: Indenture-Driven Growth

Phase II, 1912-1923: Transition to a Lower Growth Regime

Phase III, 1924-1990: Take-off and Crash

Phase IV, 1991-2005: Presaging Future Negative Growth

Phase V, 2006-2016: Stagnating or Shrinking Population

Chapter 18. Population: Ethnic Composition

Population Mosaic

The Great Leap: Forward and Backward

Implications of the Great Leap

Chapter 19. The Guyanese Diaspora

A Beautiful Identity

Immigration as Driver of Growth: 1831 to 1917

Natural Increase Drives Growth: 1918-1959

Emigration Drives Decline: 1960 to 1999

Emigration Still Drives Decline: 2000 to 2018

Huge Stock of Migrants

Tapestry of Migrants

Indian Migrants: Religious Composition

Endnotes

References

Praise of Essays. Guyana: Economics, Politics and Demography

Numerous books in the social sciences on Guyana have been published but only a few have succeeded in bringing a convincing and dazzling narrative of economics, politics, and demography as Dr. Ramesh Gampat’s. The book offers a timely weaving, conversing, crossing, and mixing of historical and contemporary issues assisting readers to understand the tangled web Guyana has found itself in brought about by tribalism, politics of personality and corruption. This fascinating and prodigiously researched book demonstrates that Guyana may not be well-positioned to reap the benefits arising out of its newfound wealth from oil and gas unless its leaders address the deepening saga of tribalism, ethnic divisions, and party loyalty. Dr. Gampat’s thought-provoking arguments challenge us to rethink past conventional issues of Guyana’s economic, political and demographic landscape as the author has broken new ground regarding why and how Guyana has been held back. A marvelously delivered book destined to be a classic in the scholarship of politics and society in Guyana.

--- Dr. Lomarsh Roopnarine

Professor of Caribbean and Global Studies at Jackson State University

In this book, Essays. Guyana: Economics, Politics and Demography, Dr. Ramesh Gampat, a former senior economist with the UN, has undertaken rigorous research on a range of relevant issues, including economics, politics, and population growth. He has bravely addressed massive gaps in knowledge pertaining to estimates of private wealth in Guyana, including its distribution by race and geographic locations. He also comprehensively addressed ethnic population dynamics and trends, which show a substantial decline in the population, driven mostly by out-migration of the Indian segment of the population. This book provides context to the country’s political conundrum and its impact, a conundrum that stems from engagement with Marxism by Jagan, Burnham, and several top politicians from the two major political parties. The book concludes with a chapter on the Guyanese diaspora. Overall, this book is a roadmap to understanding the politics of the Jagan-Burnham era and its ongoing devastating impact on Guyana’s economic, political and demographic landscape.

--- Dr. Somdat Mahabir, Scientist and Adjunct Professor

Also by Ramesh Gampat

Perspectives on Corruption and Human Development, Volume 1 (co-edited with Anuradha Rajivan)

Perspectives on Corruption and Human Development, Volume 2 (co-edited with Anuradha Rajivan)

Guyana: From Slavery to the Present. Volume 1: Health System

Guyana: From Slavery to the present: Volume 2: Major Diseases

Sanatana Dharma and Plantation Hinduism (First edition)

Sanatana Dharma and Plantation Hinduism, Volume 1 (Second Edition)

Sanatana Dharma and Plantation Hinduism, Volume 2 (Second Edition)

Guyana’s Great Economic Downswing, 1977-1990

To the four extraordinary and selfless women in my life

My Mother, Bhu, Gitamrit and Kamal

Without whom I am no body

A great Hope fell

You heard no noise

The Ruin was within

--- Emily Dickinson

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not,

we are in a wretched situation

--- James Madison

Satyam eva jayate nānṛtam - truth alone conquers, not untruth

--- Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad III.1.6.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

In 2007, the United Nations Development Programme Team in Colombo was working on a Regional (Asia-Pacific) Human Development Report on corruption. We invited a group of academics, representatives of NGOs and research entities in the region to a conference in Bangkok, Thailand. A retired econometric Professor from the University of Delhi, who also worked with the Indian government in the housing department, was among the invitees. He began his talk with an anecdote that is still fresh in his mind even though it happened years ago.

One day, the Professor said, they were inspecting an apartment in a high-rise building in Delhi, a very tall building surrounded by slums, deep filth and stench: vast wealth amidst an ocean of crippling poverty, desperation and uncertain lives. The flat was on one of the higher floors and its water taps were not working. One of the slum dwellers was fixing them. It did not take long, and the water was flowing again. During conversation between the Professor and the illiterate, impoverished would-be plumber, the latter said to the former in Hindi: Sir, how come the water is flowing in the apartments in this tall building? We live in our hovels right on the ground and the water does not flow there. Have they suspended the law of gravity?

The Professor was puzzled but the plumber left it there. Reflecting later, the Professor thought that by the law of gravity the man meant that whatever goes up must come down. Clean water kept going up to the apartments in the high-rise building but did not flow down to the hovels on the ground. The most likely explanation for the apparent gravitational anomaly was corruption: slum-dwellers could not fork out the bribe necessary to get a connection to the watermain but networks, who knows you higher up the bureaucratic hierarchy, were also important. Wealth was a prerequisite for that sad and pervasive fact of life that hits the slum dweller the hardest.

The Professor’s story has remained with me ever since. The essence, it seems to me, is that staggering poverty and inequality is a life sentence to misery worsened by the inability to effectively partake in public service. In the case of Guyana, the public water supply is extremely lousy and there are no private operators in the water sector. There is probably no place in Guyana where public entities supply water throughout the day. Water pressure is low most of the time and too low to reach beyond the second floor; even there it arrives in little more than a trickle.

My brother’s office in Georgetown is on the second floor of a building on Regent Street and he always keeps a bucket of water in the bathroom to flush the toilet. The low pressure and erratic supply of water led to the ubiquitous huge black tank phenomenon: use of large black tanks in almost all buildings all over the country to store water (both rain and piped). A pump is normally connected to the tanks to push water to floors beyond the first. Decadence marks not only the delivery and access to water supply but also the whole a range of essential public services, including power supply, education, health, sanitation, transportation, and security. Even getting a simple birth or death certificate is a time-consuming and frustrating task, requiring weeks and grease (bribe).

Unlike India, Guyana’s problem is not a large and densely packed population. Nor is it deeper impoverishment as Guyana’s GDP per capita in current international dollars is three times as large as India’s. Rather, Guyana’s problem is the uneven and preferential access to public service, which is rooted in ethnic politics and not caste or class. Ethnic politics has now morphed into its most dangerous form, political tribalism, which will exacerbate the problem. This deep-rooted ill, political tribalism, manifests as a combination of incompetence, neglect, discrimination, corruption, long delays to get a problem fixed, insecurity, violence and destruction of property, and inequality. These ills are unevenly distributed and higher in certain places and among certain ethnic groups. The result is simultaneous collective dismay and collective exuberance partitioned by race, place and time.

The purpose for telling the Professor’s little story is that it led me to include a section of the book on population and another on wealth. Inequality and wealth, especially the latter, are difficult to study in Guyana because the requisite data is simply not available. Corruption, inequality, the fraying of the social fabric and violence are inextricably linked to tribal politics, all of which seem to defy gravity. Just as troubling, recently efforts have been made to connect wealth to tribal politics. It is most unfortunate that the government, both the PPP and the PNC, is not inclined to address the data lacuna. Absence of evidence in a data starved country serves the government more than the populace and renders useless calls for accountability and sound policies that are non-discriminatory across race and space. In a sense, the lack of data is weaponization of data.

Looking back, Guyana seems prone to all manner of infections and pathologies. During colonialism and until the early 1950s, the worst of the numerous infectious diseases was malaria (mainly Plasmodium falciparum spread by the Anopheles mosquitoes). Today the country is apparently heading for an infection of a different variety, aside from the epidemic of political tribalism. The discovery of an abundant supply of high-quality petroleum combined with tribal politics is paving the way for the natural resource curse, which may also be called the resource trap or the paradox of plenty. Among other things, the curse will deepen inequality and leave pockets of poverty untouched. In turn, these will fuel social discontent and ethnic anger and Indians will be at higher risks beyond their human and physical capital investment, as they have been historically.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a set of vicious, interlocking factors – a national cluster headache, if you will - operate to create chaotic governance, generate economic pathologies, social decay, insecurity, and human underdevelopment. Oil wealth, which is now flowing into the state’s coffers, may add fuel to the combustible dynamic. Hopefully, our kleptocratic, aggrandizing politicians on both sides of the tribal divide will come to their senses and put the interest of the country ahead of theirs.

Even if the country avoids the resource curse, the political model of development pursued by ethno-based governments prioritizes some areas over others – in the larger scheme of things, Coastland over Hinterland – and some people over others. For example, Africans comprise 55 percent of the population of Region 10, which, in turn, accounts for only 5.4 percent of the country’s population, but the region is the beneficiary of state largess denied to other regions. Guyana’s development strategy is reminiscent of China’s reform era, when Deng Xiaoping declared "Our policy is to let some people get rich first. Once that is achieved, the then-Chinese leader said, it is the obligation for the advanced regions to help the backward," (italics supplied).¹

In effect, Deng’s policy turned Marx and Socialism on their heads. That is precisely what is happening in Guyana: a small class of plutocrats and kleptocrats – the pro-rich class² - is sucking up the wealth, getting rich and filthy richer while the rest languishes in misery and fall victims to truncated lives. Instead of the richest and most advanced region - Region 4 which houses the capital city, Georgetown – helping the backward ones, it is behaving like a domestic metropole that siphons off the surplus from the nine satellite regions.

Economic development is essentially a process of creative destruction, as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter puts it in 1942, which is also known as Schumpeter’s gale.³ The PNC and its add-ons have shown that they are better at destruction, the PPP at creation. The problem is that the tribalism of the PNC and the greater greed of the PPP could end up being more destructive than creative. The bitter ethnic struggle for political power and its inextricable link to corruption coupled with the fact that Guyana is ill-prepared for the coming oil wealth is a recipe for resource curse. I am aware, however, that predictions are difficult, especially about the future, and that economist do not have a good forecasting track record.

Whatever the predictions, these essays do not suggest equilibrium, a stable state of the economy or society. If anything, they depict an evolution, punctuated by chaotic perturbations, with an uncertain future in some cases and a downward spiral in others. Our politics reveals more turbulence than some semblance of order; our demography, a downward slide; and our overall economic situation is more upbeat than gloomy but with deepening inequality, squandermania and moral decadence. Guyana’s political system is shocked every five years, which sets in motion destruction, creation, distributional conflicts, institutional capture by one political party and institutional impotence by the other. If these essays show me as a disobedient thinker, to borrow a term from Maggie Nelson, I make no apologies for I enjoy looking at things differently and taking controversial positions, if only to explore all angles of an issue.⁴ I like to think in terms of the optimization approach, which requires knowledge of all paths, all angles, as a prior step to decision-making.

Except for the three chapters on wealth, the remaining essays in this book were drafted in one form or another at least a decade ago but have been thoroughly revised and updated. The result is what you hold in your hands, dear reader, a collection of essays on economics, politics, and demography. In the main, these essays delve into history, and I have parsed the data to reveal, hopefully, structure, tease out messages and perhaps correct misunderstandings, distortions and myths. Whether it is presumptuous for a Diasporic Guyanese to offer readers his take on the tangled affairs of Guyana, even if grounded in logic and evidence, my critics will decide.

As with any piece of extended research, I have accumulated debts along the journey: debts of an intellectual nature, debts of material support, and debts of nurturing and other forms of invisible support. On the intellectual front, Parts II and III of the book, which contain essays on politics, draw heavily and extensively upon British Guiana documents recently declassified by the US Department of State and the British Archives, all of which are publicly available on the Internet. The CIA and the PNC were involved in a massive distortion of facts and figures during the 1960s, fake news six decades after the idea has colonized minds worldwide. I have also benefitted from the intellectual labor of several scholars and researchers and have cited their works in this book’s references.

Still on the intellectual side of the debt equation, many friends and colleagues have contributed to this book by reading and commenting on its arguments as the manuscript evolved. I owe an enormous debt to Professor Tarron Khemraj, Dr. Baytoram Ramharack, Dr. Somdat Mahabir, Swami Aksharananda, and Dr. Collin Constantine. The latter offered insightful comments that led me to think more deeply about the estimation of net private foreign assets (one of the six elements that comprise my definition of private wealth). I am also grateful to Dr. Vishnu Bisram, Dr. Ganga P. Ramdas, Dr. Lomarsh Roopnarine, Dr. Tara Singh and Dr. Gobin Ram Tarchand. All these friends and colleagues offered insightful comments, suggested areas that need additional research as well as research materials, and identified editorial missteps. I may not have been fully attentive to what my friends and colleagues have to say and have disregarded comments that, to my mind, are not entirely germane to the essays. All remaining errors in the book are no doubt due to my laxity in following up on their suggestions.

On the family side of the acknowledgement equation, I owe a deep and lasting debt of gratitude to the entire Badri clan, which includes my immediate and extended family. While the names are too many to list, I would like to acknowledge my paternal grandmother (Aji), paternal grandfather (Aja), his two brothers, their children, my parents, all my brothers and only sister, and my two children, Shivani and Chris. Family is central to our upbringing, values, education, emotional health and relationship with others in the wider world, and I am truly blessed to have such a wonderful family, a family, to invoke Pablo Neruda’s poetry, I feel in my veins every day.⁵ As always, I am thankful to my more significant half for her love, good humor, and willingness to cut me some slack so that I can focus on research and writing. She also has a hawk’s eye and can spot my sloppy writing and penchant for typos from afar.

Ramesh Gampat

Atlanta, Georgia.

November 30, 2021

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Chapter 1

The Argumentative Guyanese

To the uninitiated, Guyana is an incomprehensible country; even its name and geographical location baffle some. History, geography, demography, incredibly selfish and corrupt politicians, and strong foreign influence have intersected at several points in time and created a tangled web that is inherently unstable, enriching and immerizing at the same time. Adding to this calamitous brew are climate change and rising sea levels, which will devastate most of the narrow coastal strip where around 85 percent of the population live and work. One of Guyana’s two huge neighbors, Venezuela, claims two-third of the oil-rich Essequibo, while its Eastern but smaller neighbor claims a portion of Berbice. Guyana is also a resource-rich but troubled country that may very well end up with a resource curse that could ravage its economy for a second time since Independence in 1966.¹

As if these complex and knotted issues were not enough, the so-called land of six peoples confronts a long and bitter ethnic struggle between its two largest ethnic groups, Indians and Africans.² Together these two groups make up about 70 percent of Guyana’s population. Rather than a democracy after independence from Britain in May 1966, Guyana became an authoritarian regime headed by the charismatic Linden Forbes Samson Burnham and supported by the African component of the population (charismatic authoritarianism). He wrecked the economy and unleashed the many-headed monster called political tribalism that manifests itself as endemic corruption, discrimination, violence and destruction of property, mainly directed towards Indians. These ills spawned a massive wave of out-migration, which is the principal reason why the absolute size of the country’s population is now contracting. At any given point in time, about half of the population think that the system – the social contract – does not work for their benefit. Which half of the population holds that view depends upon which ethnic government is in power.

This book does not aim to untangle these knotty issues. However, these issues frame the background and tweak the lens through which the analysis and discussion is done. The book is a collection of essays that traverses economics, politics and demography and in the process discuss wealth, political manipulation, foreign influence in domestic politics, and listless population growth over the last 150 years or so. To some extent, the essays intermingle these three fields and at times cross into the domain of political economy. As an economist, I have endeavored to ground the essays on data, and I am skeptical of studies that are not data-driven and do not mine the data – to illuminate rather than to obfuscate and deceive - to generate metrics to help make good sense of the original data set.

The chapters on politics are historical essays that interrogate the past and hopefully smooth out some distortions about two politicians who are held by their respective tribe to be the father of a broken nation. These two politicians have been dead for a quarter of a century or more, but their ghosts continue to haunt Guyana and Guyanese. The essays on demography study population composition and growth over more than 140 years and a crucial, but not overly startling, insight is that population expansion is heavily dependent upon migration, in and out. One of these essays endeavors to estimate the size of the Guyanese Diaspora to move the discourse beyond wild guesses, speculation and confusion.

The three chapters on economics, while rooted in the past, are humble and tentative efforts to estimate the value of the nation’s stock of buildings and private wealth. Speculations about the distribution of wealth in a bitterly divided tribal society are prone to distortions, fanciful claims and heated contestations. Hopefully, the essays contained in the book, by plumbing the past, cast a tiny streak of light on the present that, after all, may not illuminate the tribal mind, which is fueled by emotion rather than logic, reason and data. Alas, Guyana’s politics has been seized and converted from the space where the common good was secured to one where the tribal good is pursued. As a corollary, tribal politics is eroding national trust in government, which is crucial to institutional health and human development. The rise of distrust – the politics of distrust - in Guyana is the outcome of tribal politics or, to put it more politely, partisanship.

These essays also address perceived gaps in the historical literature. These include gaps in the economic, political and demographic history that find their way in our current ethnic discourse, the separate narrative groups weave; that is, the story we tell about Guyana and the stakes ethnic groups claim. Narratives elicit and play on emotion by tapping into deeply held beliefs and values. There are numerous opinions on any given issue in Guyana and these largely divide along ethnic line, which strengths such groups and reinforces their collective identity. In this divided and contested context, my position is surely a contested one: are the gaps I see indeed gaps or fictions of my imagination? If there are indeed gaps in the historical literature, have I offer a plausible explanation for those I espied?

If I manage to get Guyanese to ask and deliberate on these and similar questions, I will not have written thousands of words to no avail. Perhaps the search for answers will lead to a more objective and nuanced examination of Guyana’s history, the role of ethnic groups in its problems and prospects for development, and their mutual dependence upon each. An enlightened understanding of these and other issues is necessary for peace, stability and material progress. The study of history, Hal Brands and John Lewis Gaddis recently wrote in Foreign Affairs, is the best compass we have in navigating this future – even if it turns out to be not what we’d expected and not in most respects what we’d experienced before.³

Semantic Clarification

As the title of this Chapter announces, Guyanese are an argumentative people but that is not news to Guyanese themselves. Just about every Guyanese has something to say on just about any issue under the sun, especially about history, politics and distribution, three issues that are clothed in emotion rather than hard evidence.

That deliberative habit of mind can be a good thing and, hopefully, the book supplies fodder for discussions and debates for hardly anything in Guyana is settled. Even as Guyanese hold divergent or opposing views or perhaps because of that they tend to have short and selective memories. Such a perspective minimizes the role of history in shaping our present condition and it is due, in the main, to the bitter ethnic rivalry between Africans and Indians. The rivalry, a long-standing one, is essentially a contest over prior claim to the national patrimony and from that stems our steady and ongoing arguments that is peaceful most of the times. The most notable exceptions come just before and after national elections if the People’s National Congress (PNC and its various add-ons) losses the election. In that case, mayhem breaks out and Indians are on the receiving end.

By the word argumentative I do not mean heated, cantankerous, structured or formal exchange of opposing views punctuated by screaming and shouting and in the process generating anger, hate and violence. Rather I use the term to capture a peculiar characteristic of Guyanese: our penchant to gyaff (gaffe). Browsing through several dictionaries, I gather that the word gaffe (n.) is defined as a social or diplomatic blunder, a clumsy social error; a faux pas; a foolish and embarrassing error, especially made in public, that offends someone. The origin of gaffe is uncertain but perhaps it comes from French where the word means a clumsy remark or probably from a Germanic source where it means to grasp. Maybe the modern English word derives from the British slang verb gaff, meaning to cheat, trick or the Scottish dialect where gaff means loud, rude talk."

None of the definitions offered by the dictionaries I consulted capture the word meaning of gyaff, which is definitely not a synonym for gaff or gaffe. In the local parlance, gyaff is a peaceful, mutual exchange of views, positions, ideas and perspectives oftentimes interspersed with humor. Gyaff is not a clumsy or embarrassing remark but a whole unbounded, non-specific discourse that can last hours. Gyaff is an exchange that is unplanned and unstructured and rarely leads to bad blood; that is, what leads up to anger, anger itself and its aftermath. Neither the word talkative nor argumentative better captures the meaning, mood, nature and color of gyaff. Since the word gyaff is unfamiliar to the world outside of the West Indies, I opted to use the word Argumentative rather than Gyaffing in the title of this Chapter.

Popular Gyaffing Sites

Evidence of gyaff exists galore in the most popular sections of local newspapers. One only needs to browse the daily letters, at least about fifteen each day, that appear in the four leading newspapers. Letters are mostly written by Africans and Indians who have something to say and argue with each other on almost any issue you can think about. Joining the fray is a host of bloggers, mostly in the Diaspora, who usually pounce upon whatever letter writers say but bloggers do that with certain news articles as well, particularly those that have ethnic implications. In effect, there is a consequential battle for ideas played out in gyaffing spaces and newspapers that is mostly peaceful.

Some bloggers blog for no reason other than seeing their words in the comments columns of daily newspapers, mainly the Stabroek News. Newspapers love letter writers because they help to enlarge their readership, especially those in the Diaspora, and thus their revenue stream. The major themes taken on by letter writers and bloggers alike is ethnic politics and the intense struggle between the two largest ethnic groups to capture and keep political power, distribution of house lots and other largesse of the state, discrimination, real or imagined, as well as perceptions of historical wrongs and injustice. Most of the time, the bloggers’ comments are superficial, racist, apologetic, meandering, sometimes hilarious, and oftentimes a mixture of English and the local dialect that better captures both the mood and substance of what we have to say. Guyanese do have a sense of humor and a love to tell stories, which is all part and parcel of gyaff.

Inevitably, letter writers and bloggers alike dig into history, sometimes to sanitize it, twist it, correct glaring omissions, selectively remind readers of major happenings and events, excavate things forgotten, draw inferences, support or not discussions of current happenings and issues, among others. Aside from tribal politics, which animate numerous bloggers, ideology also gets weaved into the conversation. To this day, after socialism failed miserably and market forces were reinstated in 1988, a few bloggers still long for a socialist regime. Commenting on an article in Stabroek News titled, "Guyana, Suriname to jointly develop gas reserves, dated 20 August 2021, one blogger wrote: Jagdeo’s and the PNC agreed Economic Model for Guyana Must be replaced back to the Mandate of 1953 - Socialism or Death."⁴ Obviously, some of us inhabit the present but live in the past.

The comments section of the daily letter columns offers the best and fastest insight into domestic politics, ethnic biases, pride and prejudice. One will hardly fail to notice that political tribalism infects almost every aspect of our lives and, in one form or the other, tribal politics confronts us daily; tribalism, the social fabric and the economy are deeply intertwined (Box 1.1). Aside from the local newspapers, bloggers and social media forums, one merely needs to take a walk in the countryside and observe. Groups of people, mainly males, usually gather on a bridge, a street corner or in someone’s yard to gyaff (idly discourse), mostly in the evening. In fact, gyaffing is not restricted to a particular place or time. It springs up spontaneously at a shopping mall, a stadium, a grocery store, the office during lunch break, in a ferry or in a speed boat that plies between Stabroek and Vreed-en-Hoop, Parika and Supenaam, Parika and Leguan, Parkia and Wakenaam, Parika and Bartica.

Gyaffing or informal discussions allow people to air their voice – a sure outlet to relieve stress - on just about any issue and there are usually numerous opinions on any issue. No one seeks to convince the other; gyaff offers a forum for people to express their opinions without fear or retribution. Even if there are arguments, and sometimes there are, temper do not flare. Gyaffing, or a large part of it, is a fun and peaceful pastime and only acquires a more controversial undertone when it involves Africans and Indians leveling accusations at each other.

That people discourse (argue, gyaff) frequently and anywhere on a consequential issue(s) means that they disagree but perhaps there is room for compromising, particularly if we put public – not tribal - purpose at the center of our politics and policy. I hope the essays in this book promote a discourse that goes beyond mere gyaffing, writing and blogging; one that spreads knowledge and not fake news, one that enlightens and not fosters discord. To be productive, such a discourse must draw upon both emotions, and reason and evidence but the goal must be the search for truth. The discourse should be characterized by the willingness to compromise, rather than an aversion to compromise, to move it beyond zero-sum games; the discourse must promote unity, social order, welfare, security and prosperity. The country has the means and resources to be rich and prosperous, but the political will is lacking for a simple reason: it is imprisoned by political tribalism.

Box 1.1. Political Tribe

A political tribe is an identity group that shares certain cognitive and behavioral attributes. These attributes endow the group with the ability to group-think and act as unit – herd imitation - exhibiting herd behavior and herd mentality and led by a very small group of persons or even a single, charismatic individual. The collective energy of the tribe has its source in perceived grievances and/or parochial ideas and beliefs that have little, if any, respect for logic, reason, data and science.

To put the matter differently, a political tribe is largely driven by emotion, which leads to the destructive idea of us vs. them. Book III of Thucydides states that "Party associations are not based upon any established law nor do they seek the public good, they are formed in defiance of the laws and from self-interest…"⁵ This astute observation captures a crucial aspect of political tribalism as practiced in Guyana: seek the tribal, not the public, good but tribalism also creates the opportunity for leaders and the well-connected to become wealthy.⁶ Guyana’s predicament seems to be a version of Sen’s Paretian Liberal paradox pitting tribal good against public good.⁷ That is, tribal notion of their rights can, and does, contradict, a basic rule of social choice: the Pareto Principle.

During the 1970s, the American National Election Studies, a quadrennial academic survey started by the University of Michigan, began to ask citizen to rate how they felt about members of either political party. Levels of affective polarization have risen more than two-fold since the 1970s, according to The Economist (2021c: 26). In 1978, the difference between Americans’ ratings of members of their own and ratings of members of the other party on a 100-point ‘feeling thermometer’ scale was 27 points. The gap widened to 56 by 2020. I propose that the term "tribal affective polarization" (TAP) could be used as a gauge for political tribalism in Guyana. The last two words of the term is borrowed from political science, and, in this context, TAP means the hostility members of one political party feels towards members of the other political party relative to the feelings they have towards members of their own party.⁸

While I do not have the data to gauge TAP, my familiarity with Guyana’s politics and economics leads me to posit that TAP by supporters of the PNC and its various incarnations for supporters of the PPP rose from 1992 to 2015, declined slightly or remained stable, and then rose steeply after the March 2020 general elections. TAP is at its highest level now. This means that members of the PNC have become increasingly hostile towards the PPP. Freddie Kissoon (2021b) puts it this way: "MoFyaah/slo fyaah heated up in the post-election violence in 2001 … Mo fyaah/slow fyaah by then had become the official name of the anti-Indian mayhem ... In September 2020 in Region Five, PNC, WPA, ACDA and elements from the AFC tried to resurrect mo fyaah/slo fyaah, once more to deny the PPP and their Indian supporters an electoral victory. Indians were brutally attacked and robbed. The cycle of Mackenzie continued" (italics supplied). For the sake of Guyana, it is imperative that the two political tribes appeal to both emotion and reason, that they each engage both the right and left sides of their collective tribal brains.

Note on corruption and growth: The impact of corruption, which increases as political tribalism intensifies, on Guyana’s economic growth is unknown. The standard literature holds that corruption affects growth negatively and this is likely to be the case in Guyana. But that is a parochial view. I posit – but do not have the supporting data – that, overall, corruption has positively affected growth by injecting into the economy investment, research and innovation and by bypassing the slow, incompetent and bloated bureaucracy. By boosting both aggregate demand and supply, corruption – the high-level variety types rather than the garden-variety types – has contributed to growth; it has also deepened inequality. This proposition takes into consideration the stage of economic development, the configuration of the economy, political tribalism, etc. Whether the overall cost of corruption exceeds its contribution to growth- that is the question.

Note: PNC = People’s National Congress; WPA = Working People’s Alliance; ACDA = African Cultural & Development Association; and AFC = Alliance for Change.

Sources: Gampat 2020; Kissoon 2021b; Sen 1970; The Economist 2012; Thucydides 2019[1835].

Ethnic Composition of Population

Tribal politics is at the heart of Guyana’s economic, social and political troubles. Since this pathology is the heartbeat animating letter writers and bloggers alike, a demographic background is warranted.

When African slaves were freed, emancipated, on 1 August 1838, the act created turmoil for the sugar plantations, which were mainly owned by British citizens. Emancipation restored to slaves their stolen freedom, but the British Government compensated plantations owners for the loss of their former slaves, who were deemed property with life in it. The final registration before Emancipation counted 84,915 slaves in British Guiana, the second highest in British territories (Jamaica had the most slaves: 311,692). The planters in British Guyana, secured the second highest compensation per head [of slave] in the Caribbean for the loss of their property in human beings.⁹ They received a compensation of £114 11s. 2.75d (about £7,800 or G$2,261,300 today) per slave. Out of the £20,000,000 set aside by the British Government for compensation, the planters in British Guiana received £4,297,117 (about £291,350,000 or G$1,245,803,800 today). According to Rawle Farley,

Labor, scarce under slavery, became even more so after slavery was abolished. It organized itself under the new conditions and used its increased bargaining power to secure higher wages, which were in turn used to extend the acquisition of village freeholds. The experience which slave labor had gained on the provision grounds prior to 1838 found full outlet. The abolition Act was, therefore, important in that one of its major results was to accelerate the development of village settlements (italics supplied).¹⁰

A decade after the former slaves received their freedom, Henry Barkly,

now a Member of Parliament and still an estate proprietor in Berbice, reported to the Select Committee on sugar and coffee planting 1847-48 that the emancipated peasantry had largely ceased to reside on the then existing estates, ‘except where land was sold to them immediately after emancipation by the proprietors.’¹¹

The resulting dire labor shortage and higher wages led to immigration from the West Indies, Portugal, China, India and other places. Between 1835 and 1917, a total of 339,264 immigrants came to British Guiana. Of this number, 238,960 or 70.4 percent of the immigrants came from India. Immigration radically altered the ethnic composition of the Colony’s population. By 1871, Indians made up quarter of the country’s population, rising to 45 percent in 1950 and peaking at over half by the late 1960s.¹²

The 1980 Census recorded 759,566 people living in Guyana, which declined to 723,671 by the next Census in 1991.¹³ This represents a contraction of -4.73 percent during the eleven years between the two censuses or a decline of -0.43 percent annually. A partial recovery (3.81 percent) followed as recorded by the 2002 census, which enumerated 751,223 persons, followed by another contraction of -0.57 percent that reduced the population to 746,955, according to the 2012 census (Table 1.1).

Between 2002 and 2012, the absolute size of the African population fell 3.78 percent; that of Indian by 8.82 percent. The Chinese, Portuguese, White and Other components all declined. On the other hand, the Amerindian population expanded by 14.29 percent while that of Mixed People did even better, growing by 18.14 percent. Looked at from a different standpoint – in relative rather than absolute terms – the share of the African to the total population slipped from 30.23 percent to 29.25 percent during the same period; the decline was steeper for the Indian population, from 43.43 to 39.83 percent. On the positive side, the relative size of the Amerindian and Mixed population grew from 9.14 percent to 10.51 percent and from 16.74 percent to 19.88 percent, respectively. Since the four largest ethnic groups account for over 99 percent of the country’s population, the combined demographic impact of minor ethnic groups is insignificant. That striking statistic – 99 percent – belies the claim that Guyana is the land of six races.

The analysis and data in the above paragraphs show that Guyana’s demographic landscape is a dismal one. The two largest ethnic groups, Indian and African, have been contracting; the former at a faster rate. The other two large ethnic groups, Mixed and Amerindian, have been increasing. While both groups grew rapidly, Mixed People increased at a rate 1.27 times faster than Amerindian. The robust growth rates of these two groups notwithstanding, Guyana’s population continues to fall, which underscores the depressing demographic pressure exerted by the Indian and African populations. If past trends continue, Mixed People and Amerindians seem set to become Guyana’s demographic and political power factors that could shift the political zero-sum game that has dominated since Independence in 1966 to a brighter zone, hopefully.

Ethnic Population Distribution

Given the overwhelming size of the four large ethnic groups, how are they distributed across the ten administrative regions? To impose some semblance of order, we consider ethnic groups that account for least 15 percent of a given region’s population (Table 1.2).

The African population is highly concentrated in Regions 4 and 10, where they are the largest ethnic group, accounting for 40.56 percent and 49.02 percent of the population in 2012, respectively. These figures represent a decline from 2002, which was small in Region 4 (1.11 percent) but relatively steep in Region 10 (5.96 percent). Despite the decline, 66.82 percent of all Africans Guyanese lived in these two regions in both years, and more than half of them (about 58 percent) live in Region 4. Africans were the second largest ethnic group in Regions 5 and 6, comprising about a third and slightly over a fifth of their population, respectively, for both years. The central message is that the African population is highly concentrated and more than half of them live in a single region (Region 4). The heavy urban concentration of the African population enhances their tribalism, organization and mobilization power, and propensity for, and scale of, violence and destruction.

The Indian population is more dispersed and, like Africans, live primarily on the Coastland. Indians were the largest ethnic group in four regions: Region 2, where they made up 44.57 percent of the population in 2012, down more than 3 percentage points from a decade ago; Region 3, where they comprised 59.55 percent of the population, about 6 percentage points less; Region 5, where they accounted for 54.66 percent of the population or slightly over 3 percent smaller; and Region 6, where they constituted 66.03 of the population or 2.65 percent smaller than 2002. A total of 184,684 Indians lived in these four regions in 2012, which is approximately 62.08 percent of Guyana’s Indian population, 1.15 percent less than the previous decade. Clearly, the Indian population is far more dispersed than that of the African. Unlike the latter, they are also mainly concentrated in coastal rural areas. Mainly because about 37 percent of the Indian population live in Region 4.

People of mixed races, the third largest ethnic group, comprised 16.74 percent of the population in 2002 but expanded to 19.88 percent a decade later. This ethnic group is more evenly distributed across the ten administrative regions than any other ethnic group. Unlike the other three large ethnic groups, Mixed People were not dominant in any region in 2002 even though they are present in all regions. They became the dominant ethnic group in a single region in 2012, Region 7. Given their rate of growth, the next national census, which is due in 2022, will likely reveal that Mixed People markedly increased their presence in several regions but are unlikely to become the dominant ethnic group in any region besides Region 7.

Amerindians, the fourth major ethnic group, are concentrated in the Hinterland. They were overwhelmingly dominant in Region 9 and 8 and 1 (in that order) in both census years, as may be seen from the table. They were also the dominant ethnic group in Region 7 in 2002 but lost that place to Mixed People a decade later. In these four regions lived 69.02 percent of Guyana’s Amerindian population, just under 1 percent larger than 2002. It is unlikely that Amerindian will become the dominant ethnic group in any Coastland region in the next four decades or so. As of now, they are the dominant demographic group in the Hinterland and are unlikely to be toppled from that position any time soon. Little wonder, that the Amerindian, also called buck, are known as bush people, not so much in deprecating terms as in geography.

Summing up, the single striking feature about the Indian population is its decline, both in absolute and relative terms, in all four regions where they are dominant. In addition, their population contracted in Regions 4 and 10. The African population also declined in the two regions where they are dominant, as well as in Regions 2, 5 and 6. The Amerindian population fell in Regions 6 and 7 but rose in the other eight regions. The Mixed population is the only demographic group that grew in all ten regions.

Clarification

It is necessary to clarify that ethnic dominance in a region does not necessary mean that most people of that particular ethnic group live in that particular region. For example, Indians are the largest ethnic group in Regions 2, 3, 5 and 6 but none of these regions have more Indians than Region 4. About 37 percent of the total Indian population live in Region 4 while their combined strength in Regions 2, 3, 5 and 6 is about 62 percent. Mixed People were the dominant ethnic group in Region 7 in 2012 but their numbers in that region was 7,514, which was only 5.06 percent of their total population. In fact, the largest number of Mixed People live in Region 4: 66,844 or about 45 percent of their total population. Region 9 has the double distinction of having more than 85 percent of its population as Amerindians as well as the largest number of people of this ethnic group living within its boundaries.

While Africans are the most populous ethnic group in Region 4, the region has other demographic distinctions. More Indian and Mixed people live there than in any other region. Not only does almost 58 percent of the total African population of Guyana live Region 4, but 37 percent of the total Indian and 45 percent of the Mixed population live there as well. The dense clustering of the three largest ethnic groups in this region adds up: slightly over 41 percent of the population of Guyana live in Region 4, as can be seen from Figure 1.1. They add up in another way as well: economic power and dynamism.

Main Messages

The main takeaway messages from the analysis of the geographical distribution of ethnic groups in the ten administrative regions are:

1. National Myth: The four largest ethnic groups, Indian, African, Mixed and Amerindian comprised 99 percent of Guyana’s population from 1980 to 2012. This statistical fact dispels of the myth that Guyana is a land of six races

2. Demographic reconfiguration: There is a great ongoing demographic rearrangement that is favorable to Mixed People and Amerindians but not to Indians and Africans. As evidence, the Indian population contracted by almost 25 percent from 1980-2012 and African by 6.7 percent. On the other hand, the population of Mixed People rose by 75.23 percent and that of Amerindians by 94.56 percent (see Figure 1.2)

3. Indian, more dispersed: Indians are the dominant ethnic group in Regions 2, 3, 5 and 6 even though their population, absolute and relative, in these regions (and the country as a whole) has been declining since 1980. About 62 percent of the Indian population live in these four regions in 2012. The vast spread of Indians means that they are not geographically concentrated, which makes mobilization for political purpose less easy and more costly

4. African, more concentrated: Africans are the dominant ethnic group in Regions 4 and 10 but their population share fell in both regions. Since about two-thirds of the country’s African population live in these two regions (and close to 60 percent in Region 4 alone), this ethnic group is more geographically concentrated than Indians, which is an advantage to political mobilization. There is political strength not only in numbers but ethnic population density as well, both of which favors Africans in these two regions

5. Mixed People, most dispersed: Mixed People are more widely dispersed across the ten regions than any other ethnic group. They were not the dominant ethnic group in any region in 2002 but arrived at that status in Region 7 in 2012, as can be seen from Table 1.2. For both census years, their population in this region made up only around 5 percent of their total population in the country. Mixed people accounted for more than 15 percent of the population in all regions except Regions 5 and 9. However, they are most populous in Region 4 where about 45 percent of them live

6. Amerindian, hinterland people: Amerindians were the largest ethnic group in Region 1, 7, 8 and 9 in 2002; this was still the case 2012, except in Region 7. Around 69 percent of the Amerindian population live in these four regions. From another standpoint, two-thirds of the people who live in the Hinterland are Amerindians.

Guyana’s peculiar demographic arithmetic, thanks to slavery and indenture, fostered ethnic distrust and ethnic conflict between Africans and Indians, who together comprised 82.75 percent of the population in 1980 but only 69.08 percent in 2012. Ethnic conflict and ethnic politics are two major factors affecting Guyana’s continued underdevelopment more than half a century after its independence from Great Britain.

Figure 1.1. Percent of Guyana’s four major ethnic

population living in Region 4, 2012

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Source: Based on data from Bureau of Statistics 2016a; 2007.

Figure 1.2. Growth of the four major ethnic groups, 1980-2012 (percent)

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Source: Based on data from Bureau of Statistics 2016a; 2007:

What’s Ahead

The book is divided into four parts, not counting the opening chapter. Part I contains three essays on wealth, Part II, six essays on Forbes Burnham, Part III, five essays on Cheddi Jagan, and Part IV, four essays on demography.

Part I, "Economics: Estimates Private Wealth," explores two separate but connected issues: the country’s stock of buildings and total private wealth. Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to the task of estimating the value of the nations’ stock of buildings. A few studies have been done on income/consumption distribution but none on wealth. As in other poor countries, building stock is a crucial element of private wealth in Guyana but its use as means of storing value is not a conscious and deliberate choice. It simply reflects peoples’ desire, especially Indians, to own property. The total stock of buildings numbered 187,696 in 2002 and 219,509 in 2012. This means that 31,813 new buildings were constructed during the decade, which translates into a growth rate of 16.95 percent. Of these new buildings, 27,400 or 86.13 percent were built on the Coastland and 4,414 or 13.87 percent in the Hinterland. The expansion is a remarkable achievement given that the country’s population fell by 0.57 percent during the same decade.

Guyana confronts a serious shortage of houses that traverses the entire income spectrum. Despite the rise in the housing stock, the cost of owning a home today is very high. Few private developers, government organizations, and NGOs offer low-income housing for sale or rent. There is an exceedingly high demand for good quality housing by the local upper class, the Diaspora and the influx of foreign workers, consultants and specialist unleashed by the emerging oil industry. The supply of attractive housing for this component is very, very limited, constrained by both supply and location. The inevitable result is skyrocketing prices particularly for North American type houses. Housing shortage and rising prices are accompanied by growing mortgage indebtedness, which more than doubled during the decade from 2011 to 2021 (March). As an indication, mortgage per person consumed about 9 percent of income per person in 2011 and around 14 percent in 2021

Chapter 3 presents four estimates of Guyana’s stock of buildings. These estimates range from a low of US$17.86 billion to a high of US$29.30 billion. The variation is explained by different pricing assumptions and not by the number of buildings. Given the assumptions about prices, the value of the national stock of buildings is larger than the country’s gross domestic product, ranging from 6.36 times (highest estimate) to 3.27 times (lowest estimate) non-oil GDP in 2020.

The issue of the ethnic distribution of the value of building stock is an intractable one, given the unavailability of the requisite data. Chapter 3 assumes that the proportion or relative share of each ethnic group in the population at the regional and national levels proxies the ethnic distribution of the value of the country’s building stock. According to the regional approach - sum of distributional shares across the ten administrative regions - Indians account for 44.00 percent of the value of the nation’s building stock, which is 4.17 percent more than their national population share.

Another 30.88 percent of the value of building stock is in the hands of Africans, which is 1.63 percentage point larger than the relative size of this population component. The two proportions are roughly about the same for people of mixed ethnic group, which is less than a fifth of the value of the nation’s building stock. The regional approach disadvantaged the indigenous population whose share of the value of the nation’s building stock is 5.04 percent smaller than its population share. The ethnic distributive shares of the value of building stock by the lowest estimate (Estimate 1) is not much different from that of Estimate 4 (highest estimate). Put another way, the shape of the two distributions is the same but their height – proportions – are different.

Likewise, the distribution of the value of the stock of buildings at the national level assumes that it is the same as the ethnic distribution of the country’s population. That is, 39.83 percent of the value of building stock is attributed to Indians, 29.25 percent to Africans, 19.88 percent to Mixed people, 10.52 percent to Amerindians, and the rest, 0.53 percent, to other minor ethnic groups. These proportions are the same for all four estimates, but the absolute amounts associated with each estimate is different. The national approach dictates that each ethnic group gets the same share of the building stock pie, regardless of the absolute size of the pie.

In sum, the ethnic distribution, in percentage terms, of the value of country’s building stock at the regional level is not the same as the distribution at the national level. There is no logical or mathematical reason to expect that the two spatial distributions would be the same. The reason lies in price differentials of building stocks across the