60 Years of Travel Along Ethnical Arrogant Path

February 4th, 2008

By Kusal Perera

In all probability, this year’s Independence Day celebrations would be a show of military might with a strong call for patriotism. It would be a call to bear difficulties with a promise to end terrorism once and for all.

[Members of Sri Lanka military release balloons during the country’s 60th National Day ceremony in Colombo, February 4, 2008-via Yahoo! News]

Out of all those who would watch celebrations, those who would have their date of birth as 04th February, 1948, would turn out as pensioners from the following day. They would be 60 years old. This country would be as old as those pensioners.

Looking back, most pensioners would say they have not much to grumble about. But looking back, can this country retire without grumbling ?

For a third world country that was under colonial rule and was given the political right to define its own destiny, 60 years of independence is no small period and we are still a ‘developing’ country. We thus have a question we need to find answers for?

The balance sheet we could draw after 60 years of our own rule is pretty pathetic and miserably chaotic too. Last December, the Treasury had to draw loans at 22% interest from different banks to pay salaries, overtime and monthly pensions of public servants, a monthly ritual by now.

Government contractors it is said have not been paid their due installments for work done, valued in billions of rupees. Inflation is galloping at the rate of 26% and the CoL increases with equal speed. Time and again in the past, we have had comparatively more saner and softer periods, but never been in control of our destiny.

Looking at more important issues like education, transport and health, the picture is nothing less than depressing. The Supreme Court had to intervene in Grade I admissions and almost one month into the New Year, the issue is yet to be sorted out. Police often have to tear gas protesting undergrads to get Colombo roads cleared.

Railway is archaic in its operations. Tiny cardboard tickets are still manually punched into an ancient iron contraption at the railway station in just the same way it was done a hundred years ago, to puff on rail tracks that have shrunk in length. In time, it now takes the same or more time to travel from Dehiwala to Fort in very much faster, computerised cars, as it took 50 years ago to travel from Kalutara to Fort in an old fashioned Morris Minor car.

We now have very sophisticated hospitals in the cities with all the modern technology for a big price while in the periphery, government hospitals have wards full of complaints and shortages. What then are the improvements ? Sixty years and we have had two savage armed uprisings in the Sinhala society, both of which had to be brutally suppressed at the expense of democratic social life, apart from worthy human life lost. After few years of haggling, we went into open conflict with Tamil politics from 1957 and thereafter into a protracted war.

Out of the 60 years since independence, 24 years have been spent waging an internal war. We have over 600,000 refugees now and thousands almost permanently living in Tamil Nadu, from where we had illicit immigrants swimming across the Palk Straits in search of greener pastures here, 50 years ago.

Fifty years ago Lee Kwan Yu was looking at this ‘Paradise Island’ with awe and wanted his little Singapore to be like ‘Ceylon’. Thirty years after independence, J.R. Jayewardene said he would turn Sri Lanka into a ‘Singapore’.

Of course, ‘WE’ have everything the modern world has turned out for luxury living. In fact we got colour TV even before India. We have IT and cyber cafes even in rural towns. We have 4.2 million mobile phone users and CDMA phones sold over the counter.

We have all the brands of luxury cars from Porsches to Aston Martins on our roads and any designer label to be worn with the best of French perfume. It’s not the majority who could afford such life. The larger society has lost the social values and morals, lost democratic rights there were before, lost social mobility and lost its voice in the social discourse. It would suffice to add that on a very conservative estimate, 60 years after independence this country has over 37% of its citizens living in official poverty.

There is no single political party that can wash their hands off from this chaos that we are living today. ALL leaderships are equally guilty of creating this mess. JRJ, the only pre independence political leader who survived to see all the changes in post independent Ceylon and Sri Lanka, writes in his book “Golden Threads” For the youth of Sri Lanka to whom the torch must pass” that politically ‘there were no further goals to achieve’ (p/22) with independence.

According to him we had ‘freedom of speech and assembly, regular elections on a multi-party basis and cabinet of government’ (p/22). Better still, we were a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. So that settled everything for post independent Ceylon. This was precisely what the more urbane of the political elite in the country during independence, who were to steer this country to prosperity thought of independence.

What use is ‘freedom of speech and assembly, regular elections on a multi-party basis and a cabinet of ministers’ if we cannot achieve a Nation State that could ensure stability and achieve development ?

The State we inherited was a State that was comfortable in English, could think in English and deliver in English. It was a State that left out the majority of its own citizens from ‘political power’. We had to therefore achieve a Nation State that was pluralistic in lingua, in religion, ethnic presence and in culture.

The very first government in independent Ceylon under D.S. Senanayake’s Premiership negated this. The ‘Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948′, the ‘Indian and Pakistani Residents Act No. 3 of 1948′ and the ‘Ceylon Parliamentary Elections Amendment Act No. 48 of 1949′ resolved and made into law by the first parliament, turned all plantation workers and people of Indian origin ’stateless’.

This disfranchising of Tamil citizens in hundreds of thousands overnight, sent shivers of suspicion within the Tamil political leadership in the government and paved for the split in the only Tamil political party, the ACTC and gave way for the ITAK, wrongly labelled as the Federal Party. It thus proved that of all who negotiated independence for Ceylon, no political leadership in that government had a vision for the future of Ceylon.

We thus embarked on a very sectarian communal journey, with the Sinhala elements within the UNP breaking off to form the SLFP under Bandaranaiake in 1951, just 02 years after independence. To cut short a long mangled history to a few sentences, Bandaranaiake engineered the ‘Sinhalisation’ of the State from 1956 that developed a ‘State ideology’ which made political power the bastion of the Sinhala polity.

The State could only think, plan and work with Sinhala. That is plain reason why the State could not think of ‘Ruhunu, Wayamba or Northern’ military regiments. Instead it could only think of Sinhala heroic names and we ended up with ‘Sinha, Gemunu, Gajaba’ regiments and very lately with the ‘Nandimitra’ regiment.

Over the years the State became so much fanatically Sinhala thinking, it could see only the Sinhala dominant areas as Sri Lanka. We therefore had almost all the State owned corporations installed in the South. Mahaweli development wasn’t designed for the North.

But Udawalawe in the far South that had nothing to do with Mahaweli diversion and was by then under the Udawalawe Development Scheme, was made a Mahaweli zone. On the other side, dry areas North of Vavuniya including Killinochchi that cried for agricultural water was simply ignored.

It is true that all of the IRDP(P) implemented from1974 June in Sinhala dominated districts for over 20 years with billions of dollars coming in as foreign assistance are total failures.

But the fact is this Sinhala State did not think it obligatory to include any of the Northern or Eastern districts for IRDPs. It wasn’t simply that the Tamil people were given letters written in Sinhala and their statements recorded in Sinhala. It was that the Sinhala State left out the Tamil polity from its decision making and implementing process. They were not included in the economic life of the country where the State was making decisions. And this was a period the whole economy was being owned and controlled by the State.

When a society that has its own distinct language, its own culture and geographic presence giving them an ethnic identity different to the other society which takes over the State, it is not coincidental that a ‘left out’ social feeling acquires a political meaning.

That political meaning then translates itself into a demand over decades of agitations to seek a ‘State’ of their own to achieve what they feel wasn’t made available to them by the State that had to be legitimate in serving all. For 60 years we travelled on this ethnically arrogant path aggravating and growing with the conflict that by now has turned into one of the most notorious conflicts in the world.

Can a political leadership that is incompetent in establishing a Nation State acceptable by all sections of the society, develop a country ?

It is futile to expect development from such political leaderships and the past 60 years of political rule in our country has proved all leaders incompetent and short sighted in achieving such development. It is not that we were lacking in resources to begin with.

When we gained independence in 1948, we had foreign reserves in excess. The Korean War in the very early years of the decade of 50 was a very profitable market for rubber and we earned good foreign exchange. By 1953 we were spending 35% from our GDP on welfare only, while there were no serious development programmes to generate new capital. All what the political leaderships saw was a traditional agricultural society in Ceylon.

D.S. Senanayake’s Gal Oya scheme was a case in point while it engineered a change in the traditional demographic pattern in the East. Everything else moved with no governing and what ever that took place was based on inherent social dynamism that had no plans for the future.The change that was thereafter effected by the Bandaranayake’s from 1956 and after was with more and more State controls on the economy that stifled the market on one side and gave way for total politicisation of the society on the other side.

Economic life of the society was therefore decided by the government and implemented by the State. The philosophy of this political regime was based on localisation that closed all doors to the developed world as “imperialism” and as influences that would corrupt our Sinhala heritage.

We accordingly developed a social ideology that was introvert and avoided all new achievements in the modern world.Perspective of socio-economic development was thus modelled on State centred Soviet type projects with “left” political justification. Technology and equipment that was brought for State ventures were all dependent on production meant for mass consumption that had no consumer choice. Quality, design, durability and consumer preferences were no criteria for production during this period. Worst was that they were State sponsored and State supported and therefore had no necessity of profit making and sustenance.

With no market expansions that generated employment, governments were compelled to use them for provision of employment. They thus became heavy economic burdens on the State.With the State made the most important political tool in management of all ventures within a closed economy, all governments were compelled to use the widely spread public administrative system for management of development.

This was a system that was put in place as an office based system by the Colonial rulers for their administration of the country and was never meant to be used for development activities. What was done with this public administration system locally after independence was change of designation names from DRO to AGA to Divisional Secretary and GA to District Secretary.

The system as such never changed from Administration to Management. It was this office administrative system that was given the responsibility of designing, planning and implementing all development activities they were never capable of handling. One good example of their inability in handling development is the IRDPs. All IRDPs were implemented under Government Agents / District Secretaries and all were total failures.

Even after they were extended for a “second phase” there is no institutional memory and no experience and social systems left for future use. No IRDP in any district had ever been able to utilise more than 32% of the funds committed for the project and what ever utilisation of funds there had been, they had been mainly for “office rent, salaries and consultancies, vehicle purchase, office equipments, work shops in star class hotels” and the like.

Worst is that most IRDPs had been designed with no serious concern for actual rural development. No project had seriously taken into consideration the issue of employment generation within the rural economy for which there has to be market expansion in rural society. Ever since independence all through out our 60 year history, rural economic development remains a major issue.

We have over 300,000 youth who enter the labour market every year after G.C.E O/L exams from rural society, who have to be gainfully employed within the rural economy. With no rural development, most grudgingly adopt themselves to rural poverty while others migrate to urban centres in search of employment.

This is being met with politicisation of the system by every government. Over the years jobs, promotions, transfers and small time local contracts all turned out to be political decisions within a stagnant economy. Worst was when consumption too was brought under political supervision during the Madam B led Coalition government of the 70–77 period.

The change over to a crazy free economy since 1978 did immediately expand the economy, but not on productive capital. The economic boom that came about was mainly based on construction, commerce and trade, while it did allow new technology to come in. Economic growth was restricted to the urbanised Western Province while the rural economy was again left out.

The old and common “mantram” that free economy allows for “trickle down effect” had been proved “useless” by the World Bank itself by 1989 with Nick Stern calling the infamous “Washington Consensus” a dead policy. President Premadasa was one leader who felt this disparity in economic growth.

But his efforts in alleviating poverty through the “Janasaviya” programme lacked any programme in providing the poor with social mobility and his decision to shift the garment industry into rural areas lacked infrastructure and human resources necessary to sustain them in the provinces without political patronage. They too thus became insufficient interventions in rural economic advancement.What instead kept the rural economy going was the war and migrant labour together. Almost all soldiers were from the lower strata of village life. With the escalation of the war when the military opened up its ranks for women, again it was for village girls.

The war required expansion of the military swallowed huge numbers from rural society and over 110,000 house maids found employment annually in the Middle East were the two processes that brought a cash flow to villages, sans any production. If not for them, both of which are not employment generating methods in a civilised productive society, we would have had a more eruptive youth unemployment issue in rural society.

What with universities also continuously turning out graduates who are misfits in the urbanised labour market ?

To conclude a long history of 60 years since independence that has led to fiscal mismanagement, politicisation of the State and society, ruthless uprisings, a protracted ethic war, curbing of democratic rights, stagnant development, marginalising of social segments and rampant poverty, increased bribery and corruption, waste, nepotism, increasing crime and eroding social faith on law enforcement and with every thing else that should not be seen or felt in a healthy society, we are compelled to accept the urgent socio political need in going for a paradigm shift in the most important areas that calls for,

1. a total restructuring of the State within a new Constitution that would give the national parliament more powers and provide necessary checks and balances to establish a healthy executive Presidency, that could work closely with the parliament, while there should also be constitutional provisions to restrain the central government of interfering in the devolved powers to the provinces.This would mean we accept constitutional provisions for power sharing as a fundamental right of all people in democratic governance, in every part of the country irrespective of ethnic, religious or other differences. Such democratising of the State with devolved power is accepted as the system that would give the people an opportunity to be participants of hitherto absent socio-economic development in the Southern provinces as well. This also means a negotiated conclusion to the North–East conflict on the basis of power sharing with a system that would go beyond the existing 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

2. developing a market economy that would provide Sri Lanka an advantage in international trade and commerce, in accessing new technology that support advancement of production, ITC and emerging global knowledge, while also establishing national policies with required regulatory mechanisms for socio economic development especially in the rural society with safety nets for the poor who would not be able to compete adequately in society to gain social mobility, as “trickle down effects” are not adequate to address the issues of helping the poor in a competitive market.

3. establishing an era of good governance rid of all corruption, fraud and waste of public funds and democratising society through depoliticising of all state structures within a restructured, devolved State. This would provide for the effective implementing of the Assets and Liabilities Act relevant for all public officials and all elected representatives of the people and strengthening the core essence of the 17th Amendment in establishing an independent Constitutional Council at national level while also strengthening citizen participation in planning and decision making at local government level. A social discourse for such a paradigm shift is what is now required after 60 years of apathy and failure with fragmentation of the Sri Lankan society, ruled by people who had warped visions for Sri Lanka, if they had any.

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