Ramesh Gampat, Essays: Guyana – Economics, Politics and Democracy [Bloomington, Indiana, Xlibris, 2022, 635 pages].
The discovery of oil will produce unprecedented economic transformations of the Guyanese economy. It is unlikely though that the newfound national wealth from the oil and gas will guarantee a reduction of ethnic tensions even if it promotes economic prosperity and human development. That is, oil and gas could in fact be a curse rather than a blessing but more the former than the latter. That is one of Dr. Ramesh Gampat’s main thesis in Essays and other works: that economics is not the solution with Guyana’s dilemma. The extent of the benefits of Guyana’s newly discovered resource is dependent, in large part, on two inescapable factors that have and will continue to impact the Guyanese economy, namely political development and demographic shifts. This is another central thesis developed and examined in the 600-page book by Gampat, a former United Nations Development Programme economist who worked for three decades with the organization. Gampat’s study, titled “Essays: Guyana: Economics, Politics and Demography,” takes a serious look at the Guyanese experience, with these three factors (economics, politics and demography) playing central roles in his collection of essays that examine Guyana’s post-independence struggle to establish a functioning democracy amidst its ethnically divisive and contentious politics (he calls it tribal politics).
There are several crucial points made in the author’s arguments that shed light on the Guyanese experience, all of which receive extensive treatment in the study. Some are worthy of examination. A central theme of the author’s research centers around the definition of wealth and the question of how wealth can be empirically measured in Guyana, particularly considering the absence of reliable statistical data on which such studies are based. The question of who controls private wealth is not to be taken lightly because of its political implications in an ethnically divided society. Questions regarding perceptions of who controls wealth, who benefits from government policies and perceptions of which group remains poor measured against the perceived wealth of others can impact the nation’s fragile democracy if ethnic conflicts are reinforced over time based upon these perceptions. Although, I might add, wealth is not the main driver of ethnic politics.
The author measures private wealth based on six data sets, namely, the value of the country’s building stocks, private fixed capital formation, net financial position of the private sector (savings minus loans), the stock of vehicles, value of farmlands, and net foreign assets. Existing data for each data set are sometimes incomplete, but certainly the data amassed by Dr. Gampat presents an analysis of private wealth that represents pioneering work in this area. The absence of data obviously makes some of the estimates tentative and exploratory, and raised other related questions. For example, how reliable can the national data be for wealth accumulation particularly when the mechanism for collecting the data for hinterland regions may not be entirely reliable? Or, how much of an impact does corruption and the underground economy have on wealth accumulation and distribution?
The question that naturally arises is this: How reliable is the author’s measurement of wealth and wealth creation in Guyana? This question is no doubt compounded by the fact that data is simply not available to conduct such studies. In fact, measuring wealth in Guyana has never been attempted before, as far as I know, at least not in a credible and convincing manner by our notable and prominent economists. The data simply does not exist. As Gampat notes, “Guyanese scholars have not devoted much attention to estimating the value of private wealth, its distribution by ethnicity and across the ten administrative regions”. The author, recognizing these limitations, has skillfully amassed data that narrows these questions down to an understanding of wealth distribution within each of the ten regions of Guyana, bringing into stark contrast the unequal development and wealth accumulation in the various administrative regions.
The author did four estimates of private wealth, ranging from a low of US$17.86 billion to a high of US$29.30 with the latter being the more realistic of the four. These estimates constitute from 3.9 percent to 6.36 percent of Non-oil GDP. The nation’s stock of buildings account for 65-70 percent of private wealth. Private wealth per capita range from US$35,000 to US$51,000. Here, I am reminded of a paper Professor Clive Thomas presented at an ACDA Conference in March 1997, using “poverty and related data” to argue that Africans were discriminated against in terms of general employment and senior positions, housing, composition of boards, the allocation of land, government contracts and development expenditure under a PPP government. Unequal distribution of wealth has the potential of stirring up emotions of economic deprivation, especially when those arguments are not informed from using reliable data. Some commentators have even gone so far as to provide irresponsible statements that reinforce the dangerous myth that Indians controlled 90% or more of the wealth of the country, but others including Gampat and myself, have rebutted these tribal perceptions.
The importance of private wealth and its accumulation is demonstrated by the author’s preoccupation with this issue in the initial three chapters of the book. Four chapters towards the end of the book focus on the nature of Guyana’s shifting demographics, and their economic impact at the national and regional levels, but eleven chapters are dedicated to the politics of Guyana, specifically addressing the tribal issue associated with the politics of Forbes Burnham and Cheddi Jagan. Regarding the shifts in demographics, one of the main takeaways from the analysis of the geographical distribution of ethnic groups in the ten administrative regions is that between 1980 and 2012, Indians, Africans, “Mixed” race, and Amerindians together constituted 99% of the total Guyanese population. It is expected that this demographic trend has continued over the last decade, but we will not know for sure, at least not until after the next census (scheduled for this year) is completed and the data scrutinized. But the fact that these four groups represented near 100% of the country’s population obliterates another prevailing myth – that Guyana is a land of SIX races.
Another interesting task attempted by the author in consideration of the demographic shift is an attempt to marshal data since 1960 to estimate the size of the Guyanese diaspora and its ethnic breakdown. No formal estimate of migration exists. Gampat attempts to fill this lacuna by employing what he calls the “Beautiful Population Identity”, which shows that 681,249 persons migrated from Guyana during 1960 to 2018. Since migrants do not live forever, gross migration must take deaths into account. Doing the sums, Gampat calculates that the Guyanese Diaspora numbers 628,550 persons or about 82 percent of Guyana’s domestic population. It is difficult to comprehend the magnitude of the Guyanese Diaspora – few countries in the world have such a huge Diaspora. Indians comprise the largest component, about 60-70 percent. This means, the author concludes, that more Guyanese Indians live abroad than in Guyana. That is a shocking finding, but it is difficult to contest its veracity.
Dr. Gampat’s book adopts a mix of chronological approach, coupled with an analysis of key issues associated with the leadership of both Burnham and Jagan as political leaders by paying special attention to ideological and geopolitical factors, both domestic and external, that guided their behavior since the rise of Guyana’s first mass-based political party, the People’s Progressive Party. Extensive coverage is given to the split in the nationalist movement, and the politics of the years following political independence. But this is not your typical historical rendition of the facts that led to the conditions that brought the country close to the brink of being a failed state due to Burnham’s political dictatorship or its associated economic downswing. Rather, Dr. Gampat, a Guyanese who is himself a part of the Diaspora, relies on existing released information from American and British intelligence to examine the triangles of power that held the strings to Guyana’s future: Burnham/Jagan, Britain and the United States.
Great insights are gleaned from a careful examination of released information by the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), shedding a bright light on Jagan’s relation with the other points of the triangle, and Burnham’s relationship with the US, as seen through the eyes of the members of the US “303 Committee” who oversaw Burnham’s close relationship with the CIA and the United States attempt to rid Guyana of “the Jagan problem”. One cannot fail to observe the detailed discussion that is associated with Burnham’s relationship with Peter D’Aguiar and the events leading to the 1968 elections – the most crucial election that established the very foundations for the future Burnham dictatorship. Extracting from declassified British and American files, the author argues that the West maintained a “darker, more sinister” view of Jagan as being “politically naïve, an ineffective leader, ideologically confused, a bumbling administrator, a Marxist, a Communist but dangerous to US interests”. But from the perspective of the Guyanese people, while Burnham was obsessed with the pursuit of becoming the maximum leader, Jagan was a much more complex political personality.
Clearly, Dr. Gampat’s book is as much about economics as it is about the politics of Guyana. Other books, including those by Stephen Rabe (2005) and Colin Palmer (2010) have become classics in their examination of Guyana’s politics, but they fail to take into consideration the nuances of the domestic teleological leadership of the two leaders and their detailed relationship with the United States, as gleaned from declassified information. Moreover, an examination of Guyana’s tribal politics is not glossed over, but it is presented in a reader friendly manner, allowing readers to better understand the role of the British and the Americans in their manipulation of Guyana’s politics. The author presents a fresh new look of Guyana’s ethnic politics, with a level of frankness that does not miss a beat when considering the wealth of sources, including the actual words of both Jagan and Burnham as protagonists in determining the future of the independent country.
This book is data-driven, both economically and politically. Upon reading this study by a Guyanese, one who clearly cares deeply about his country’s future, I find myself asking the question: How would Guyana’s economic and political development, and its future, have been different had the US turned a blind eye to Cheddi Jagan’s Marxist ideological orientation and his pro-Soviet loyalty in the early 1960s? In many ways, Jagan’s progressive policies were deeply beneficial to the nation, particularly when one examines the policies that contributed to national development that took place during the years following the 1957 elections. It’s an interesting question, but one that will remain in the realm of the imaginary. It is not a question addressed in depth in this book for obvious reasons, but the author has a draft paper (which he is willing to share) that argues that Guyana would probably not have been better off.
Studies on ethnicity and politics, including most studies on Guyana, tend to rely on the voices of the power brokers, and the national leaders who shape Guyana’s politics, and in the process, ignore the voices of the ordinary people or the people whose lives really matters. However, the author has compensated for this by engaging readers in a frank and open discussion on the central issue that keeps the nation divided – its ethnic politics. Readers will certainly have a better understanding of Guyana’s “tribal” issue because it is extensively dealt with by the author. Credit must be given to the author for bravely taking on this task, in addition to the other issues examined in his essays, all of which opens an arena for further discourse.
