Dear Editor,
ONE July 7, I viewed Dr David Hinds’ programme on YouTube, where he played a very fine speech by Mr. Ravi Dev to a group of Hindu businessmen and investors trying to sell Guyana to them as a destination for making safe and profitable investments.
Indian businessmen and expertise gravitate to UK, USA, Canada and Europe, where they find greater returns and profit from their investment and demand for their skills.

In fact, Indian businessmen are the biggest investors in UK. The five million Indian diaspora stands out as the highest earners and among the most educated among American minorities.
They are one-third of Silicon Valley and supply CEO’s for many of the most important American companies such as Google and Microsoft. They are increasingly making their mark in the Federal Government structure.

Ravi Dev is trying to tell the Hindu business group that Guyana offers certain advantages which the more profitable developed world does not offer – In Guyana they would find an Indian ambiance, a business-friendly government and investments where they could make as much money as in the developed world.

He used the analogy of how Indian businessmen in ancient days had brought their capital and culture to Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia, etc… and such culture still exists.

Every day, government ministers are even more emphatically giving the same call to American and western investors to come to Guyana, but Dr Hinds says nothing about the various ministers’ call, but because of his unconscious village contempt and bias against Indo-Guyanese he picks at Ravi Dev. He does not bother that investment is denied in the nation once his prejudice is satiated.

One of Dr Hinds’ regular supporters asked him in the comment column: Dr Hinds, why don’t you approach African countries and businessmen and ask them to invest in Guyana and in particular Afro-Americans as Dev is doing? But racism and development never go together, so Hinds sticks to what he obviously knows best.
Yours sincerely
Paul Validum Ramlochan