OPINION: Addiction to the statistical help in dismissing the human condition

Last Updated on Sunday, 8 September 2024, 19:29 by Writer

by GHK Lall

With the permission of SN’s editorial team, I am writing to preempt its weekly Cost-of-Living series that comes out on Mondays. The objective is not to steal a march on SN, but to register what is anticipated as the grim cost-of-living (food) reality of Guyanese in another place visited and another 10 Guyanese sharing their pain felt at varying levels of intensity. In so doing, I lay their circumstances at the feet of Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, chief decisionmaker and controller, and Dr. Ashni Singh, a man who knows even more than the vice president does about how the technical aspects of mathematics and statistics work.

I assert upfront that at least five, if not as many as seven of the 10 Guyanese interviewed and speaking the truths of their punishing conditions today, will be about how rough things are. On a bad week, it could be as many as 10 out of 10. It is all about food. Food is the driving fear factor, and its prices a stake in the heart of those at the bottom of the local economic pyramid. Food basics that are already steeply unaffordable slipping further away from the frail grasp of villagers or urbanites. Food that has to be done without. Food items that must be looked at, and then left behind by the many with a pit in the stomach. That’s real pain and real shame, it is my humble duty to inform Dr. Singh and Dr. Jagdeo. That’s the suffering nature of the food condition, the human condition, of too many Guyanese, Dr. Singh and Dr. Jagdeo. Not one whit of gaudy statistic can diminish or wish away that condition that afflicts and drains the life out of many Guyanese.

From the mists of memory that is more than a quarter century old, I can dredge up and put out cold statistical and analytical conventions that may comfort some. Conventions such as the Sharpe ratio, covariances, regression models, Durbin-Watson statistic, log-linear models, and Black-Scholes model, are among a host of other such calculations. The Black-Scholes model can be used to compute volatility in a staggering array of areas. Perhaps, the Bank of Guyana, the Bureau of Statistics, and the Ministry of Finance, could employ that to refine their cost-of-living (food inflation rate). But what would be the point of all this? It can only be to prove how much I know; how smart I think I am. And that Dr. Singh and Dr. Jagdeo are seeking refuge in statistics, when they should be offering structured and sustained relief to Guyanese who are short of buying power, and hungry and letting the world know their food tribulations through SN’s channel? The unforgiving reality for many Guyanese in the most lavishly spoken of country in the world is that they have been reduced to living like economic, emotional, and psychological zombies. The resident experts (so-called self-appointed, and so, for sure) and their masters are in love with themselves and their calculations and interpretations. Right alongside, there is the irony of Guyanese living in fearful numbness about how they will make it, and from where their aid will come. It is what makes paranoiacs of many citizens, because they have been driven to it by the callous indifference that is now the norm.

I am damned if I know how any display of financial acumen (such as is rare here) and proving of points help one shorthanded Guyanese crying for help get that help. In the richest country per something (head, GDP, barrel of oil), there is the shame of Guyanese public calling in the wind for a listening ear and a helping hand. I am ashamed when their pain goes unanswered. Because Guyana has at its disposal today, the levels of assets and the mental levers that know full well what must be done to assist Guyanese in managing their day and life better. Endless and pointless arguments about luscious statistics are exercises in evasion and obfuscation. Whether a point is scored (or not) about the truth of inflation, there are still too many Guyanese living not too far from the brink of starvation. The fact is that in a time of abundance, numerous poorer Guyanese across this country are gasping for economic breath. I think that the honest in Guyana (the truly honest, and not what passes for analytical or political honesty) will discern and acknowledge that our people grapple with not having enough, and that should be a blot on our conscience. When poor Indians, poor Africans, poor Amerindians, poor mixed combinations, and poor Venezuelans, are hungry that is a stain on whatever intellect we claim to possess. And when their anguished moans go unanswered, each one of us who is doing better should feel smaller. I do. As has been said, people can’t consume roads and bridges as tempting as such may become. Similarly, citizens have no use for arguments with impressive charts and graphs that stand in support of doing nothing for them. While some may get psychic value from such subterfuges, I regret that I can’t. When people are hungry, I can’t be happy.