Some historical notes for understanding PNCR and WPA economic policy since 2015

In my reading of Guyanese history and political economy, the issue of land distribution has psychic and perceived economic value for all Guyanese. Land distribution bears a special place in the intellectual authorship of those associated with the PNCR and the WPA. I already noted in a previous column that at the core of Minister Greenidge’s thesis is the notion that differences in land allocation between African and Indian Guyanese during the colonial period determines variation in contemporary income distribution. Indeed, the independent anthropologist and sociologist, Leo Despres, in a 1969 journal paper confirms this historical conflict when he observed that competition between the two main groups was mainly over village lands. The competition for places in the civil service intensified by 1960 but it was brewing since the 1930s. The independent historian, Roy Glasgow, also made a similar argument while focusing more on cultural factors. However, in my own academic research I have rejected cultural factors as explanation for differences in economic outcomes. In a sense, the whole literature coming out of New Institutional Economics has an underlying core that there is one best culture.

Unfortunately, no Guyanese or foreign scholar has ever settled this assertion that historical differences in land distribution accounts for contemporary variations in income and assets at the inter-group and intra-group levels. Therefore, these days we have misrepresentations by bloggers, politicians and a newspaper columnist that Indians control 95% of the economy. I concede that the boors in the Jagdeo PPP helped along this perception. We also have to go back into history to get a feel for the rationale given for the re-marginalisation and re-discrimination as at the level of October 5, 1992. We have to change the rules of the game and systems of government instead of re-marginalising and re-discriminating.

The competition over land is understandable since a sizable chunk of the abandoned plantation lands on the coastal plain was bought by Africans after emancipation. It was a remarkable historical event in which newly liberated people bought lands individually (proprietary land as the example of Cudjoe McPherson) and as a group by pooling savings (communal land).  The purchases would leave little capital afterward for land development. The incomes for land purchase came from small-scale farming prior to 1833 and from meagre pay during apprenticeship. One aspect of this extraordinary period was the high savings propensity of Africans of around 0.21 to 0.41 out of modest incomes. That means, on average, 21 cents to 41 cents of every dollar earned was saved to buy land.