A Guyanese of Some Substance By John Mair London, June 2003: The scene. The very epitome of the British Establishment. The RAC. A St James Club.Right in the centre of government and hard by the Royal palaces. It's where the ruling class of Britain go to lunch with each other. Our felllow diners,a narrow spectrum from Digby Jones, head of the bosses' organisation,the Confederation of British Industry to Gerry Robinson, the Anglo-irish media mogul. This is serious stuff.Jackets and ties compulsory (anathema to this writer), no removal even in the sweltering July heat and no business over lunch. Not written anyway. This is Olde Englande. I am breaking bread with a Guyanese who has made it to the Establishment on both sides of the Atlantic;Prof Bishnodat or Vishnu Persaud. His Road to the RAC club has not been paved with gold. Vishnu's come along way from his birthplace in Berbice. Today, he is a well respected economist, writer and diplomat. Not in Guyana to his eternal grief. Yet he retains an affection for his mother's land. That is shown by his frequent contributions to the national debate in the letters column of the Stabroek newspaper. He is speaking from a position of some knowledge and experience. For twelve years he was the Director and head of the economics section of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London then a Professor at UWI in Jamaica. His start in the UK nearly five centuries ago was somwehat more modest. His first job on landing in the colonial motherland in 1954 was , like that of so many other migrants, a menial one on the London Underground. He stopped reading timetables and started reading books. He studied hard in his own time, made it to the Queen's University in Belfast and then to Reading University for a doctorate before that glittering career in the public service. Sincel leaving UWI has not stopped. Serving as an UN Consultant and the technical adviser to the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery under his old boss at the Commonwealth Secretariat , his fellow Guyanese Sir 'Sonny' Ramphal. He's tried to serve Guyana too. One short spell as an economic adviser back in1999 ended in tears. He would still like to give.Pro bono. Today he is wealthy - probably one of the wealthiest Guyanese in the UK', he tells me.Vishnu may be an achiever but that is naught compared to his family. Son Raj is quite simply the best known psychiatrist in Britain. A broadcaster on both the BBC-domestic and world-and ITV, he is a widely published and popular author who has made a name and a fortune out of the secrets of the mind. Raj's wealth shown by the fine Nash Terrace he and his wife own in a very chi chi London address-Regents Park NWI. Vishnu's second son, Avinash, is equally rich but less high profile that the 'People's Psychiatrist'. A banker in the City of London with State Street Bank, Avi is a dollar millionaire earner. To honour his father, he has endowed a scholarship for West Indian students at the LondonSchool of Economics, his own alma mater. Vishnu's wife Lakshmsi is making a splash as an author. Her new novel is due out in the not too distant future. Breakfast time cher Persaud must have been a challenging experience!! One the very day that we were meeting in the rarefied air of St James, Professor Persaud was due to deliver the post opening feature address at the Wilton Park Conference on Guyana. That Foreign and Commonwealth sponsored experience was designed to get the warring tribes in Guyana away from base and conversing with each other rather than shouting.Whispers not megaphones. It was aborted much to Vishnu's chagrin. His diagnosis at Wilton Park would have been clean and clinical. His prognosis for the country is grim. He says it is ' a failing state' but that passive might become an active unless the government does something, very soon, about economic growth. In his view Guyana is stagnating. One to two percent growth based entirely on revenues from the extractive industries, revenues that will not continue forever and which , if not carefully invested in capital goods, will lead to economic doom. GOINVEST needs to live up to its' name and not its' local nickname of 'NOINVEST'.' Its no good attracting fly by nighters and chicken farmers, Guyan needs real long term industries' he tells me. But businessmen need stabilty to invest;t o date that has been lacking in the country. It is long overdue. In his view, Guyana and the Guyanese need to make imaginaitive economic and intellectual leaps. The latter he is not convinced is possible with the current human resource personnel available in the country. Hence, the need to call on some of the best brains int he diaspora, including his. Like so many who have left , he wishes his native land well. He wants to help but on his own terms. In his considered view, no action now is no option. Unless Guyana can pull itself up by the economic bootstraps, it is lookng down the dark tunnel of migration and de-population as its people continue the flight north to the richer pastures of North America. Has Washington more Guyanese now than Wismar? Has New York more than New Amsterdam? How long before both are the case? Over the cool glass of Sancerre and deftly fried calves' liver, our conversation about our native land varied far and wide. It is somewhat ironic to be sitting in the belly of the British Establishmen beast discussing a country four thousand miles away. But, as the Guyanese say, Vishnu still has at least some of his mother's navel string left planted in Berbice soil. This man is a Guyanese of some style and much substance.