The power of Ramracha’s little statistical confession

Apr 02, 2013 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
Vassan Ramracha is a Trinidadian who belongs to an Indian supremacist group based in New York and Guyana consisting mostly of Guyanese. The de facto leader of the cabal was and still is Ravi Dev (who stubbornly refuses to admit that he writes regularly for the Guyana Times) and has names like Vishnu Bisram, Anand Boodram, the hierarchy of the Indian Arrival Committee, Prem Misir etc., and Devanand Bhagwan who lives in India
Ramracha’s latest response on my statistical outlay on the ethnic ownership of Guyana which favours East Indians by millions of miles, contains some patent mockeries which should be cleaned up before we move to the substantial points.
First, he referred to my air conditioned office at UG when I worked there. It was only in 2007 that the general office of the largest faculty at UG, Social Sciences, got air condition units. All other offices in the building do not have AC. I doubt whether lecturers’ offices have phones muchless AC. I worked at UG for 26 years until 2012 and my office and other lecturers’ did not have telephones.
Secondly, only an immensely ignorant human being would describe Guyanese public servants as having superior retirement benefits and government benefits. One must be glad when people like these Indian supremacists write, because it presents golden opportunities to raise consciousness in the Guyanese people. Guyana’s public salaries and retirement benefits are the poorest in the entire Caricom jurisdiction. I repeat, the worst. No wonder the World Bank puts it at 84 percent – the recipients of a tertiary education that permanently leave Guyana.
I wouldn’t dwell on retirement income in the Guyana public service because Ramracha, a New York-based Trinidadian is not familiar with Guyana’s sociology. He therefore would not know of the case that made headlines and caused national revulsion when it was revealed that the former UG Vice Chancellor, Professor George Walcott’s retirement money was six thousand Guyana dollars a month. Our esteemed Professor Clive Thomas can tell Ramracha what his pension will be like, because it is public knowledge how you compute pension benefits. I doubt in his forty-five years at UG, Thomas’ salary ever exceeded over 275,000 dollars
Now for a repeat of my statistical outlay. Only an indecent mind would look at the economy of Guyana and deny that East Indians own roughly about 85 percent of its wealth. Only a shameless researcher would live in this country and not see that in the areas of ownership of land, physical properties, business capital, financial houses, medium, large scale and super investments, the import-export trade, the mining industry, the construction industry, ownership of assets like vehicles, industrial machinery etc., heavy commercial activities, retail trade in downtown Georgetown, the  transformation of Sheriff Street into a business park, the hotel and restaurant industries, agricultural investment, private infrastructural investment, the retail jewellery business that Indians predominate to the point where you can put the percentage at around ninety percent.
People like Ravi Dev have gone silent on this humongous ethnic imbalance because African Guyanese are beginning to show energy in calling for ethnic balance in these areas. The newly formed organization, 1823 Monument Coalition, along with people like Mayor Green, ACDA, Barrington Braithwaite, Leonard Craig, Tacuma Ogunseye, Dr. David Hinds, etc., are reenergizing themselves to confront the monster of ethnic imbalance in Guyana. We hardly hear these days the perennial cry from Dev about ethnic balance in the security forces, because he knows we will ask why not in ownership of Guyana’s resources too. We can refer to it as ethnic balance in the political economy of Guyana.
Now for the stupid conclusion that Indians cannot be in the majority of the ownership of Guyana’s resources when there are poor Indians in Guyana. Ramracha doesn’t and cannot see that he has answered his own question and in the process has made us all the more scared for future stability in our homeland.
Here is Ramracha in his own words; “Obviously, Kissoon is totally wrong as only a minuscule percentage of the total Indian population is successful by visibility… the visible success of a few cannot mask the impoverishment of all Indians.”
Ramracha’s little statistical confession should now galvanize us into wanting to change the economy of Guyana using greater exigency. If the majority of resources are owned by Indians and Ramracha now tells us that of the Indian population it is only a tiny percentage that possesses Guyana’s wealth, it means that this abominable state of affairs must be changed and done so immediately.
Finally, I feel sorry for Ramracha after his letter. The party (the PPP) is going to kill him. Ramracha admits that a majority of East Indians in Guyana are impoverished. Thanks for informing us. The Indians in Berbice will remember this Mr. Ramracha and vote accordingly.
Frederick Kissoon      

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