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382 pages

English

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This book argues that Guyana presently operates a system of domestic colonialism (DM). DM builds on institutions established during imperial colonialism, strengthened and expanded since independence in 1966, and regionalization, which balkanized the country into ten administrative regions. Regionalization is a flexible instrument that enables political and economic control, with one strengthening the other, further empowering Region 4 where the “metropole” is located, and enhancing the dependency of the nine satellite regions. Both political parties exploits regionalization when in power, the PPP principally through financial strangulation and discrimination, the PNC and its various incarnations via political control. Regionalization is the symbol of domestic colonialism.
PPP-I (last six years of its previous regime, 2009 to 2014) allocated an annual average of 11.1 percent of public funds to the regions, the APNU+AFC 14.1 percent from 2015 to 2020, and PPP-II, the current PPP administration, 12.5 percent during its first two years in office. Over the fourteen-years from 2009 to 2022, the four largest agencies consumed 42.5 percent of total Central Government expenditure. Under PPP-I, these agencies spent 15 percentage points more on capital costs than they did under APNU+AFC. However, under the latter government they spent more than 10 percentage points on the amorphous category “Other Charges.” These anomalies are hard to explain because there were no functional enhancements or reach of coverage by these agencies. Incredibly, the Ministry of Finance (MoF), the largest agency for all but one year, spent 46.1 percent of what the Ministry of Public Works incurred on public infrastructure for the entire country.
An important avenue of political patronage is the employment of contract and temporary workers, who are hired outside of the public service legislative framework. These workers comprised half of the MoF’s workforce over the fourteen-year period and the last six years of PPP-I; for the Ministry of Health, that figure is around 37.0 percent for both periods. Employment patronage rose during APNU+AFC’s term of office, to 53.8 percent in the MoF and to 41.8 percent in the MoH. Employment patronage at these two big agencies was lower during PPP-I than the six years of the APNU+AFC Government.
“Patronage employment” is considerably lower with the PPP-II than all previous regimes. The strategic deviation is explained by the rise of three separate categories of low- and unskilled workers, who account for 48.5 percent and 57.7 percent of workforce of the MoF and the MoH, respectively. These figures are more than 10 percentage points larger than those of all previous administrations. In effect, the PPP doles out patronage away from hiring outside of the public service legislative framework to hiring within it. Not only has the PPP “legalized” patronage, it has also increased it significantly.

Sujets

Economics

Business

Guyana

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Publié par	Xlibris US
Date de parution	30 mars 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781669864769
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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Also by Ramesh Gampat
Perspectives on Corruption and Human Development, Volume 1 ( co-edited with Anuradha Rajivan )
Perspectives on Corruption and Human Development, Volume 2 (co-edited with Anuradha Rajivan)
Guyana: From Slavery to the Present. Volume 1: Health System
Guyana: From Slavery to the present: Volume 2: Major Diseases
Sanatana Dharma and Plantation Hinduism (First edition)
Sanatana Dharma and Plantation Hinduism, Volume 1 (Second Edition)
Sanatana Dharma and Plantation Hinduism, Volume 2 (Second Edition)
Guyana’s Great Economic Downswing, 1977-1990
Essays. Guyana: Economics, Politics and Demography
DOMINATION BY REGION 4

DOMESTIC COLONIALISM AND REGIONALIZATION IN GUYANA

RAMESH GAMPAT

Xlibris
Bloomingdale, Indiana

Copyright © 2023 by Ramesh Gampat.

Library of Congress Control Number:
2023901680
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-6478-3

Softcover
978-1-6698-6477-6

eBook
978-1-6698-6476-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Front cover : picture of the east side of the Demerara River (from Stabroek Market going towards the Pegasus Hotel), taken from inside of a speedboat crossing from Vreed-en-Hoop to Stabroek. Picture taken by author on 20 October 2022.

Rev. date: 03/29/2023

Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
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For my remaining siblings
Ram, Amar, Prem, Vishnu, my only sister Kamal, and Murti
Whose homes and hearts always warmly welcome me

Real wisdom lies in linking everything together – that’s when the true shape of all of it emerges
— Olga Tokarczuk (check spelling of name)
A system is never the sum of its parts; it is the product of their interactions
— Russel Actoff
Synthesis is about understanding the whole and the parts at the same time, along with the relationships and the connections that make up the dynamics of the whole.
— Leyla Acaroglu
AUTHOR’S NOTE
When I was working in Asia, I was struck by the frequency with which the word “system” was used, particularly among those who worked with international organizations and to a limited extent by locals who spoke English. “It’s the system,” “the system is corrupt,” “the system is not working,” “the system is slow,” “the system works slowly but surely,” or some similar formulation. These sentences offer an insight into how the government apparatus works and, more to the point, of how it does not work to benefit all fairly. Instead, those who have power, understand or “work” the system benefit the most – to such an extent that a very senior government official in one country was referred to as “Mr. 10 percent.” Most of the time, the reference was to a male government official.
From a deeper, analytical level, the fundamental insight of the “system” approach is that processes, things, and events are linked and thrive on feedback loops, and that there are always ways to game the system. There is a structure made up of parts that are dependent upon each other so that tinkering with a single piece of the “system” rarely improves the “system” significantly and thus does not close loopholes completely. Further, vested interests skew the “system” to benefit certain people more than others,” which can lead to a range of illegal activities, including corruption.
Even in Guyana from around the mid-1970s when corruption, particularly of the petty variety, became endemic as malaria was pre-mid 1940s, similar sentences were, and still are, popular in everyday language. “You can’t beat de system, man,” “everything corrupt,” “join de system, man,” “hang you mouth whey de soup a leak” – sentences such as these indicate that there is a structure, a framework bounded by a silent code that operates to deliver public service. To minimize frustrations, red tape and long wait times, we all know what has to be done. We do it, reluctantly cough up the “grease,” and accept it as part of the cost of doing business.
In an important sense, Dr. Cheddi Jagan was a system man. He saw imperialism as a system of exploitation and wanted to understand its parts, linkages and how they worked together. In fact, he saw systems everywhere, in the sense that there is some underlying principle about how a particular thing – colonialism in his case – hangs together and functions. During his third summer studying in the US, Cheddi became obsessed with horseracing. “Like my father,” he wrote in “ The West on Trial ,” “I thought I would make a small fortune betting.” The young man was more rigorous and analytical: he researched and purchased “how-to” books. One such book Cheddi purchased was “ How to Win Races ,” in the hope of discovering “a system” that would reveal the secret of betting accurately. The book taught him “it was impossible to win and exposed all the elementary mistakes I had made. That experience taught me a lesson on the value of research!” (Jagan 1997 [1966]: 53). Apparently he was a poorer gambler than his father!
Long before I began researching this book, around 2019, I, too, was fascinated by the “system.” In my case, the “system” was the structure of regionalization in Guyana, which was established by President Forbes Burnham in 1980. I saw regionalization as an element of an elaborate system designed to fortify Burnham’s power and to keep him in power for the rest of his life. More than that and especially from last decade or so, I began to see regionalization as a system of domestic colonialism and wanted to understand how imperial colonialism prepared the ground for regionalization to function as domestic colonialism. I needed to understand the elements of imperial colonialism and regionalization, how the former laid the foundation, including the institutional foundation, for domestic colonialism. I needed to understand how the domestic system works.
This background supplies the rationale for the book you hold in your hand, dear reader. The research journey took me though selected periods and elements of (imperial) colonialism, those that are integral to my purpose. But it also led me into a prolonged, tiresome, time-consuming and frustrating dives into the three volumes of annual budget estimates to understand the distribution of Central Government expenditure to agencies, including ministries and the regions, as well as its distribution across expenditure categories. Most of the data used in Part II of the book was extracted from Volume 1 of the annual Estimates from 2010 to 2022. Those 13 years of Estimates run into 10,311 pages! A good deal of the data punctuate this part of the book as tables and charts, but I have also included an annex with detailed tables that may be of use to other researchers. While Part II of the book relies upon a mountain of statistics, I did not, hopefully, use statistics to “prove” anything I wanted. I mostly allow the data to speak for itself, but also draw inferences as appropriate.
My hypothesis is that the Central Government financially strangles the 10 administrative regions. If true, financial strangulation enables the consolidation of power at the center but it also strengthens domestic colonialism. Be that as it may, I argue that regionalization is the “glue” that ties Region 4, institutions established there by colonialism, strengthened and expanded after Independence in 1966, and ethnic politics into the “system” I call domestic colonialism. That was the “system” I wanted to understand and the book documents my journey and, hopefully, enlightenment.
Books published by Henry Bolingbroke, Henry G. Dalton, and James Rodway were extremely useful to my “colonial journey,” which is recounted in Part I of this book. I stood on the shoulders of these giants and acknowledge my enormous debt to them. Always encouraging of my work, Dr. Baytoram Ramharack read the draft manuscript and offered several insightful comments. The title of the book is a variation of his suggestion. I extend my deep gratitude to him. Dr. Somdat Mahabir and I have had several conversations while I was researching and writing the book. His pointers, advice and comments on the draft are much appreciated. I remain grateful to Swāmī Aksharānanda, who has been an unending source of inspiration to me.
I owe a “big thank you” to both sides of my family tree, those blood relatives who have been instrumental in shaping my values, moral compass, philosophical outlook, work and life. On my father’s side, I am indebted to several members, especially my Aja and his two brothers; chaachaa (cācā) Eng, “Flattie,” and Son; and phoowa (phūā) Gin-Gin, Nargis, and Baba. On my maternal side of the family tree, I’d like to thank Aunts Shakun, Edna, Baba and Lena; and mamoo (māmā) K. V. Jairan, attorney, and Seenath Jairam, Senior Counsel. The latter two will never know how much I am indebted to them for providing both the inspiration and role model via my mother’s voice. I am extremely grateful to them, and I know they have provided material support to other family