ON the disturbing side of Guyanese society, there is the ethereal dimension. On Wednesday night, Swami Asksharanda was the guest on the Gildarie-Freddie Kissoon Show. The morning of the same day, I received a video clip of a speech Melinda Janki gave at Moray House owned and administered by Stabroek News co-owner, Isabelle DeCaires
What I heard on that tape was ghoulish, Faustian and incredibly sickening. So, I was upset the Wednesday afternoon and spent that afternoon trying to get the angles to my reply to Ms. Janki.

The evening had its redemption moments. The Swami explained that there is an orphanage in Cornelia Ida where, in that same West Coast district, he runs one of Guyana’s most successful private high school – Saraswati Vidya Niketan (SVN).

The swami said that SVN takes 15 students from the orphanage each year into the school without payment.
The Swami went on to explain that, as a policy, the school selects a quota of its most successful students to go to UG at the expense of SVN and that SVN also, as a policy, sends its brightest that went to UG to foreign universities at the expense of the school. Now contrast this kind of contribution to Guyana with what Ms. Janki had to say.
In May 2018, at a symposium moderated by Ms. DeCaires, Ms. Janki, in a deep British accent (I know Ms. Janki lived a long time and still does in the UK, as to if she is a British citizen, I don’t know).

She asked the following question, and I am quoting her exact words; “What will oil do for Guyana? The answer is oil will make Guyana poorer not richer.”
If you don’t believe that, in today’s world, a person can say that then please contact me at fredkissoon@yahoo or call at 614-5927. I’ll send you the clip. Those were the words of Ms. Janki.

But if you think Ms. Janki was unimaginative to make such an utterance, wait until you hear the reason she offered. For want of a more moderate word, I would say the reason stood on incredible ignorance, ignorance that in my estimation you will not find even in a 16-year-old.
Guyana should not engage in oil production because the disaster accruing from an exploded well or oil spill will wipe out any gains and will make Guyana a crippled economy (my two words) because recovery from such a disaster will not be an easy one. Ms. Janki said this explains why we will not be richer but poorer
What is the ignorance in that adumbration? As I wrote above, not even a schoolboy would use this kind of corrugated perspective in assessing life. Here is the philosophical flaw in Ms. Janki’s ideological output.

She is saying life is about uncertainties. You cannot predict the future and since you cannot predict life, then there are things individuals, people and countries must not do.
Civilization has never paid any attention to such gloom and doom in looking at life for the reverse reason. If you cannot predict what life will bring then how can you abstain from building and inventing and acting?
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Crazy drivers kill people on the roads, then why travel in a car. Trains derail and people die, then why travel in a train? Untold numbers have died in plane crashes; why countries continue to manufacture planes? Millions over the past hundred years have been robbed while shopping, why go out and shop then?

I advise you to listen to Ms. Janki if you want to see with graphic potency what society in Guyana has to contend with. It has to contend with people like Dr. Janet Bulkan who appeared in front of the OAS asking that body to intervene to stop oil production in Guyana because Guyana is ill equipped to handle oil exploration at this time.
Obviously, the question is; since May 2018, when Ms. Janki delivered her talk, has Guyana become poorer? The answer is no of course.
We have become richer. Professor Clive Thomas in an interview with David Hinds said in the coming years there is going to be so much oil revenues that the government of the day will not know how to handle it.

African rights activists in Guyana believe that oil production will bring wealth so they are demanding that African people share the wealth. So, how is it Guyana that will be poorer? Well, don’t miss the core of Ms. Janki’s reasoning.
The wealth we now have and will get will disappear in a second should there be an environmental disaster, so it is best to avoid oil exploration. This lady is funny; very much so.