AS this Diwali weekend unfolds with its usual devout explosion of celebration and reflection, it must be useful for all to reflect, indeed, upon certain negative developments over the immediate past few weeks. Our country, as a nation, has experienced an unwelcomed upsurge in domestic spousal abuse crimes, unacceptable murders and robberies per week from the hinterland goldfields to the Corentyne coastal villages, fires that burn down poor citizens’ homes and futures; strange maternal deaths in our hospitals’ delivery rooms and Road Traffic accidents resulting in unprecedented carnage.

That is one primary reason why the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) welcomes the Hindu Festival of Diwali at this time.

If ever the illumination of hope, happiness and cleansing of Mother Lakshmi’s diyas was needed, it is now!

Let the little and the big lights, the illuminated motorcades shine on increased exports of our rice, gold, bauxite, beverages, seafoods and sugar so that foreign exchange is earned to keep Guyanese in employment. Let the Diwali lights shine to reveal and reject the evils of local crime, corruption and disease wherever they seek to take hold.
And let the lights shine on increased productivity in all our economic sectors – from the brand new Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) which will bring rewards for keeping our forests standing with the lowest possible carbon emissions – to the construction of roads, bridges and drainage and irrigation works to facilitate national development.

Just last Diwali, GAWU reflected upon the Festival’s linkage between the agricultural and the spiritual. Diwali is traditionally the period when Asian Hindu cultures conclude agricultural harvesting, pray for better yields in the future and close agricultural accounts.

But Diwali has the even greater spiritual significance of the inner light of ATMA – the purity of mind, eternal and infinite.

GAWU joins the Hindu community, as a union filled with Hindus and agriculturalists, hoping the celebration bring to reality the manifestation of illuminated peace, brotherhood and outward and inner enlightenment so needed in Guyana at this time.

A Happy, Sober, Peaceful Diwali to All.