Dear Editor,
EAST Indian leaders in Guyana have consistently pointed to the continual decline in the East Indian population, post 1980, and also noted a significant numeric decline of 13.9 per cent (215,269 to 185,439) in the Hindu population between 2002 and 2012, and a corresponding decline of 7.0 per cent for Muslims.

The Pentecostal group increased its national numerical strength by 33 per cent (from 128,007 in 2002 to 170,289 in 2012). The decline in the East Indian Hindu population post 1980 was due to outmigration and to a lesser degree, religious conversion.
A good picture on population growth (or decline) of the East Indian population of Guyana is presented when a comparison is made with the East Indian population of Trinidad and Tobago (Trinbago).

Historically, the East Indian population size of Guyana continued to rise from 1946 to 1980, but began to decline from 1980 to 2012. The East Indian population of Trinbago also continued its rise from 1946 to 1980 (at a faster rate than Guyana) but its rate of increase slowed down from 1980 to 2012.
Nevertheless, Trinbago’s East Indian population in 2012 was 57.5 per cent higher than the Guyana East Indian population, even though Guyana received a net (difference between those who remained and those who returned to India) of 48,930 more East Indian indentured labourers than Trinbago. To better understand the dynamics at work, two periods are identified: pre 1960 and post 1960.

Before the 1950 decade, the difference between the size of the two East Indian populations was due to natural increase [NI] (difference between births and deaths per 1,000 population). An extrapolation is made from the respective country’s general Natural Increase (NI) and applied to the East Indian population.

Data for Trinbago in the 1950 decade shows an average annual NI of 48.039 per 1,000 population, compared with 33.625 per 1,000 population for Guyana. This translates into an average annual NI of 4.8 per cent for Trinbago, compared with 3.4 per cent for Guyana in the 1950s. Thus, the higher East Indian population 34,106 (or 12.7 per cent) of Trinbago in the 1950s, compared with Guyana, was due to Natural Increase.
From 1960 onwards however, the NI for Trinbago had begun to decline continually. It fell from 28.303 per 1,000 in 1950 to an annual average of 7.174 per 1,000 in 2012. In Guyana, the NI from the 1950s onwards also began to decline continually from an annual average of 30.223 in the 1960s to 14.093 in 2012.

Thus, the higher NI for Guyana should have theoretically provided this country with a distinct population advantage over Trinbago, but it did not. Trinbago still had 171,031 East Indians more than Guyana as of 2012. Since this disparity could not be explained by the higher Guyana Natural Increase, the explanation must, therefore, lie in the other component of population change, migration.

While out-migration has played a key role in reshaping the demographic structure of many countries, this had not necessarily been the case with the East Indian populations of Guyana and Trinbago up to 1960.
There was intra-regional migration between 1870 and 1910 into Trinbago, and later, there was the outmigration of the Windrush generation (post 1947), but East Indians’ role in those movements was minimal.
The strong Trinbago economy (its per capita GDP in 1960 was 2.12 times that of Guyana; in 1980 it was 7.13 times; in 2000 it was 6.52 times and in 2012 although the gap had closed, it was still 3.5 times that of Guyana) neutralised “push” and “pull” factors and lowered the motivation of Trinbagonians, including East Indians, to out migrate.

During the period 2000 and 2011 it was reported, for example, that 5,455 Trinbagonians out migrated. For the comparable period in Guyana, the US alone granted 70,373 immigrant visas to Guyanese. About 42,000 of those visas were issued to East Indians.
Guyanese out-migration was fuelled by those “pull” factors (liberalisation of the US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the Canadian Immigration Regulations of 1962-1986), as well as “push” factors at home (political/constitutional upheavals in the 1970s when 122,911 Guyanese out-migrated: Ramraj: 2003).

Outmigration gathered momentum and it peaked in the 1980s with an implied out migration of 185,559 (TSingh: 2024) in response to the high level of political alienation and the downturn of the economy.
With the capture of state power by the PPP/C in 1992, the out-migration flow continued, but below the 1980s rate. Increasingly, from the 1990s onwards, family ties have begun to replace political alienation and economic woes as a key determinant in the out-migration stream.
Whether the diaparity (N=171,031) between the East Indian populations of Guyana and Trinbago would narrow or widen, the answer to this resides in the 2022 Census results.
Yours sincerely,
Dr Tara Singh