FROM WHERE I STAND: We seem to be Performing Progress

Dec 07, 2025 Features / Columnists, News

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By Janelle A.N Persaud

(Kaieteur News) – There is much to commend about Guyana’s ongoing transformation. I see it in the pace of road construction, the push for digitization, and the political will to build schools, hospitals, and infrastructure across regions. I see ministers showing up. I see effort. And as someone who has never taken pleasure in criticising for criticism’s sake, I long for the day when I can write a column filled only with praise; an earnest celebration of a government hard at work.

But today is not that day.

Because development that fails to address the human and social realities of the people it claims to serve is not development at all. It is the performance of progress without its substance.

Two days ago, I watched an ambulance break down mid-transfer with no jumper cable, and not even a spanner to change the battery. I have watched a man with what appeared to be a cracked skull placed into the backseat of a private car, still in trauma because the hospital could not provide functional emergency transport. I have spoken with teachers who never had full textbook sets for their students. I continue to encounter children who are progressing through primary into secondary school and cannot read.

All of this is taking place in the same breath as smart classrooms and biometric IDs.

Such is this contradiction that gnaws at the heart of our nation’s development story. One where we leap to build the visible before fixing the functional. We are all too eager to check the box that we forget to ask whether the people we claim to serve can even read the forms we’re digitizing.

From where I stand, development in Guyana is sadly performed for public consumption and rarely grounded in people’s lived realities. And the people, understandably disillusioned or perhaps distracted, are seemingly more invested in influencer gossip and social media quarrels than in the policy decisions that shape their everyday lives. There is a danger in this distraction because it leaves space for governance without accountability.

And so we find ourselves here; building fast, but not always well. Moving forward, but not always together. The data confirms this story. According to the Inter-American Development Bank’s 2023 working paper titled “Ten Findings about Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean” by Julian Chang, David K. Evans, and Carolina Rivas Herrera, an estimated 58% of Guyana’s population lives in poverty, with 33% experiencing extreme poverty. These figures are visualised in the report’s comparative chart on “Percentage of Population by Poverty Status,” and Guyana stands out starkly; not only surpassing the regional average of 33% in total poverty, but nearly doubling the rate of extreme poverty. While the study also analyses how poverty disproportionately affects women, children, Afro-descendants, and Indigenous peoples across the region, Guyana-specific disaggregated data was not provided. Still, the overall finding is a sobering one: more than half the country remains in poverty, even as the national economy experiences unprecedented growth. What’s most troubling, however, is the way these realities are often met with deflection rather than reflection. Whenever data like this surfaces or whenever citizens raise legitimate concerns, the instinct is to attack the messenger. But we cannot selectively embrace the opinions of international financial institutions when they praise our projected growth and then discard their findings when they reveal that more than half the country still lives in poverty. If we are serious about building a truly inclusive and resilient nation, then these numbers must not be dismissed. They must be acknowledged, openly and honestly, and allowed to inform policy.

And while it is true that constructing hospitals, schools, and other public infrastructure can be essential tools in addressing poverty, they are not silver bullets. Access without quality solves very little. A new hospital means little if it is understaffed or under-equipped. A new school does not solve the learning crisis if it fails to address why so many children still cannot read. We must go beyond concrete and contracts and begin investing in capability and care.

Listen, I understand the political urgency to deliver on party manifestos. Elections are won not just on plans, but on what can be seen: roads, buildings, digital IDs. The electorate demands delivery, and politicians must be seen as doing. The need to “tick the boxes” is real, and I do not dismiss it.

But development that is visible is not always development that is transformative.

This tension between the performative and the substantive in development has long been critiqued by theorists across the Global South. Arturo Escobar, in Encountering Development, warns of how development is often practiced as a “technical, depoliticized” process—measured by outputs rather than outcomes, by form rather than function. When development becomes about appearances, the lived needs of people are obscured by the aesthetics of progress.

Amartya Sen, too, reminds us that true development is about expanding people’s capabilities—their actual freedoms to live lives they value. A road is not just a road; it is meaningful only when it leads to access; access to healthcare, to education, to opportunity. Otherwise, it becomes what James Ferguson described as “anti-politics machines”, projects that look developmental but do little to address the structural inequalities on the ground.

And so I ask: can we afford to digitise public services when the human infrastructure to manage them is still absent? Can we call a hospital “modern” when it lacks a functioning ambulance? We must be careful not to confuse the velocity of development with its depth.

Guyana is at a historic juncture. We have resources, attention, and momentum. But we must resist the temptation to develop just for the photo op. That means listening and co-designing with communities, not just announcing projects on their behalf. That means moving beyond a model of charity, where help is given as favour and returning to a model of leadership that assumes responsibility, that recognises public service as a sacred duty, not a stepping stone to self-enrichment. And that shift from service to self has profound consequences for how we approach development, for how we see accountability, and for how the people experience the state.

Leadership used to mean service. It used to mean that I, by virtue of my education, my access, or my platform, am in a position to help, and therefore I must. Today, it seems the definition has shifted to which party I’m aligned to, how can I secure for myself and those closest to me, and everything else I do for the public apparently is a favour.

We must ask: development for whom, by whom, and to what end? Are we building to transform lives or to decorate a narrative?

If we are serious about development in Guyana, we must be equally serious about social systems, human capital, and participatory processes. That means rethinking what we call success and understanding that development, as I said last week, must be done with us, not to us.

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• Janelle Persaud, performing, progress, transformation

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