Dear Editor,
Emile Mervin in a letter in SN dated May 26, captioned ‘How can a country develop without its most precious resource: people?’ writes, “perhaps there is precious little to actually celebrate,” and asks whether “we are better off as a result of being politically independent of Britain.”
Mr Mervin blames the situation on “…post-independence ethnic-driven divisive and corrupt politics.” Is he giving the impression that things were well under colonialism? I recall it was terrible, but improved as our people struggled for betterment. We did not have the right to vote. Maybe he can tell us how many could have gone to school and how many could have gotten a degree then. He can also tell us about the logies and the salt riots. In any event the West was quickly moving from colonialism to neo-colonialism, where what was obtained was gains without responsibility. The West fashioned a structure that locked us into a world that shifted wealth from the ex-colonies to their previous masters.
Mr Mervin says, “How ironic that while we are politically independent we have grown economically dependent on former colonizers and their enabling political associates.” This is precisely what neo-colonialism is about. We operate within their system and strive to achieve what they have within an economic structure that gives them the clear advantage. What we have achieved is dependent capitalism. Their education system also fashioned our minds.
With regard to his say on ethnic divisiveness, I am sure he remembers the divide and rule policies of his beloved West. He would remember that the USA masterminded the overthrow of the PPP government, the main strategy of which was the incitement of racial riots. He would remember their support for the subsequent dictatorship that lasted for twenty-four years of the post-Independence era.
This is not to be construed as a defence of the present governmental leaders. And if Mr Mervin wants he can read then go to the CIA archive which describes the deeds of the West. He wrote about the “ill-advised pursuit of an anti-West left-wing agenda by both the PPP and the PNC that basically shut out major Western investors during global economic boom times.” If he had done some homework he would have found out that by 1973, three years before the first nationalization the country was already facing deep and chronic balance of payment and budgetary deficits. That was the year when the army first seized the ballot boxes.
I wrote before about the deepening inequality between the rich and poor countries. I will post the figures again, “The spread between the richest and poorest of the 56 countries… increased from 35:1 to 40:1 during the first period but for the period 1973 to 1992 it increased from 40:1 to 72:1.” With one-fifth of the world’s population the North obtains four-fifths of world’s income and consumes 70% of the world’s energy, 75% of its metals and 85% of its wood. According to Cde Cheddi this unjust global economic order robs the South of about US$500 billion annually in unjust, non-equivalent international trade. Also the poor South finances the North by US$418B in the 1982-90 period as debt payments – a sum equal to six Marshall Plans which provided aid for the rehabilitation of Europe after World War II also another $400B in capital flight to tax havens. Those payments do not even include outflows from royalties, dividends, repatriated profits and underpaid raw material. And Mr Mervin should remember how much money had to be paid by post-independence Haiti to France.
With regard to the emigration of skills, Mr Mervin says, “And instead of Guyanese acquiring knowledge and skills for Guyana’s development, they are taking their knowledge and skills to develop already developed countries and even other developing countries.” Well, we cannot stop all of them. Also the West has immigration policies that facilitate this. The same way rural folks go to the cities to find better employment so also do the people in the global rural communities (GRC) travel to the global urban centres.
Apparently Canada, Britain and the USA, three of the global urban centres mentioned by Mr Mervin, seem unable to train enough of their people to service their rich economies and so they offer attractive wages to those trained in the GRCs.
There is no way the GRCs can compete and so the brain drain takes place throughout the world as the investments of the GRC taxpayers in education are siphoned off to the benefit of the rich countries. Of course I am mindful of remittances.
While some have opted to remain, who can blame the vast majority who readily succumbed to calls of better salaries and living conditions. I guess the pioneering qualities that were possessed by the Americans who went into the West and spread out and worked hard to develop their country is absent from countries like ours. Of course we have this strategy that says education to get out of poverty and so we spend a lot on education and so after education they do not want to go to the soil and so they travel to find jobs in the global urban centres. The strategy works for the developed centres.
Mr Mervin asks whether any Third World historian can write insightful pieces on pre and post-independence issues and analyse how former colonized countries have fared since attaining political independence. He should try reading How Europe Underdeveloped Africa or any book on neo-colonialism and cultural hegemony.
He might ponder the fact that the USA alone has 11 million illegal immigrants not mentioning the legal ones. If indeed the Third World that they came from became developed enough for them to return, those global urban centres would collapse. It calls for sacrifices, something most of us are unable to even contemplate.
Yours faithfully,
Rajendra Bissessar
