Pulling out the woollens when it is winter elsewhere, still

By N Sathiya Moorthy

President Ranil Wickremesinghe recently said that he took over the Titanic after it had hit the iceberg, and now he is trying to move the ship off the iceberg. The comparison is apt when it comes to his taking over a sinking ship, but still the comparison with Titanic sounds odd and odious. For the world’s largest ocean-liner of its time, the brand-new ship did not survive the hit, way back in 1912. Sri Lanka is a nation and it would remain afloat.

There is another difference. How Ranil guides its course in the coming weeks and months, if not years, will be as much scrutinised and verified as the ignorance of ineptitude of his scores of predecessors were ignored.  From his prime ministerial stints, he too would be one of them. Yet, it might be enough for the current skipper to boost the morale of those on board even if he is unable to chart out a safe course. He could then hope to be made vessel’s captain for a longer term and on merit, but with the set goals for delivery, comprising expectations and aspirations, as against ground realities and attendant promises, if any.

Yes. That is going to be the problem for Ranil in the coming weeks and months, whatever be the shape and outcomes of his 2023 Budget as Finance Minister. It will be so for successive governments for a very long time, whether or not he is at the helm.

Second freedom

In more than one way, the multiple crises overwhelming the nation and leading the nation out of it, whether by this leadership combo or another, is a repetition of the post-Independence transition. Now, as then, multiple aspirational groups and individuals have their own ideas about what freedom and independence from a colonial ruler entailed. It’s not about what it is and what is possible – but about what it ought to have been in individual and individualist perceptions.

If anything, Ranil’s job as the Titanic’s skipper is even more unenviable than those of his worthy predecessors, going as far as to the early days. Whether it was centre-right, father-and-son Senanayake duo, or ‘left-nationalist’ (?) S W R D Bandaranaike, they all also enjoyed more than a substantial share of positivity in the public approach to a new governmental experiment and experience that was devoid of the colonial past. That comfort zone is not now available to Ranil, nor would it be to his successors, whatever the time-lag and succession order.

The fact is that the post-Independence generation, cutting across class and caste-divides instinctively trusted their new leaders. The intervening presidential form, which was readily attributed to J R Jayawardene’s self-centric and at times selfish approach to political and administrative leadership destroyed the nation’s faith in the ‘em all, though not necessarily the nation’s faith in the system. Hence also the fact that people continue to swear by electoral democracy and discharge their minimal democratic duty by casting their vote, periodically, whatever be the outcome for the self and the nation.

Colonial hang-ups

The problem is that Sri Lanka, unlike northern neighbour India, did not fight for its freedom, even in the non-violent way as the other did. There was no question of or occasion for a violent uprising against the British, as the local elite allowed themselves to be co-opted to administer the nation for the western masters. The Tamils, who demand equality, not stopping with equity, were equally guilty as the majority Sinhala elite. They made the clerks and officers, including police and military hierarchy, which is also what they have been missing since ‘Sinhala Only’.

For Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, Independence rather came on a platter and was taken by those that in such other nations would have been dubbed ‘silent collaborators’ of the colonial masters.. Whatever that be. The colonial hang-up not only continues decades later but has also become an anachronistic symbol of growth, development and acceptance even outside of urban and urbanised Colombo.

So much so, having westernised breakfast is an arrival statement for the urban middle class and those in urbanising rural towns, fighting shy to become cities, themselves. As for as the feudalistic private sector corporates are concerned, they still insist on their staff, from office attenders upwards, to wear a neck-tie, in Sri Lanka’s tropical weather. Worse still, even government officials seem to link their status at all levels to the neck-tie that their wear, not to their qualifications, expertise and experience.

The government that has been setting out ‘dress code’ for female staff and school teachers in these days of lop-sided priorities, should have given a serious look at a similar dress code for the male staff, beginning with the government sector, at Independence itself. This does not mean that they all should come to office wearing the traditional ‘sarong’ or ‘veshti’ (for the Tamils).

Men could wear trousers as they are more functional as a skirt or churidar-suit may be for female staff when compared to a sari or the Kandyan sari or ‘osaria’, but expecting them to wear a neck-tie is abominable in terms of local culture, to put it mildly. Yet, multiple trade unions of government employees, swearing by their earthy approach to staff welfare, and their parent political parties, do not find anything amiss.

Time used to be when under the colonial rule the Colombo Seven elite of the times used to pull out their woollens when it was winter in London. Then, they shifted the gears to travel to Washington, where they are still fixated. The other side, the centre-left types, even while claiming to be rooted to the soil and the people, drew their inspiration from Eastern Europe. Even the JVP, at formation, thought and acted like a Muscovite in winter, maybe owing to the ideological roots of the founder, Rohana Wijeweera.

That President Ranil should still talk about the Titanic for a parallel is the product of a mindset and attitude of a generation, which has successfully and successively imbued them in future generations. This of course is outside of the accidental example that Ranil might have pulled out of memory, without second thoughts.

Atrociously high

Nothing explains the current plight better than the finding of Parliament’s Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) that Sri Lankans have failed to secure highly-paid jobs overseas though there were opportunities aplenty. This is because the Sri Lankan skill-sets or lack of them, did not measure up. Something as simple as proficiency in English, the spoken language in the US, from where some of those jobs were offered.

According to COPA chairman and SJB parliamentarian Kabir Hashim, only three nurses could be sent against a specified demand for 425 from the country in 2017 because the rest could not clear the ‘English language proficiency test’ (IELTS).  It is shocking to know that over the past eight years since 2014, a total of 1.6 million jobs for skilled and trained personnel were on offer from developed nations and emerging markets, but only 37,000 Sri Lankans qualified and were recruited.

Japan alone, according to the COPA chief, has 1.4 m vacancies in the IT sector but none could be sent. According to him, even in 2021, when Covid-centric economic crisis was at its peak, the nation could meet only 33 per cent of overseas jobs that were available for Sri Lankans to try.

It is in this background, the Ranil government recently offered five-year leave-without-pay for government servants to try their luck overseas. The specious argument was that they could send back the critically-needed forex.

But going by past performances of centre-right leaders in government, it was also a way to try cut down government employee strength and pay-outs on their count, which under socialist regimes had become atrociously and astronomically high – over 1.4 million public sector jobs from and for a population of 22 million.

Atomic guilt

Yet, the real trouble lies in the Sri Lankan policy-maker class, both politicians and bureaucracy, who want the country to continue producing clerks for the East India Company. A university degree is still the ultimate aspirational achievement for the urban and rural middle class even today.

Both government and private sector employers are happy with a A-Level for most jobs. The nation still trains diploma candidates for accountancy and management courses conducted by British institutions, without caring to have internationally-recognised degrees, instead, is these and other streams.

Worse still, Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans, who have had a lot of business with war-ravaged Japan during its days of resurrection and re-orientation, did not learn the lessons that should have been learnt from them. Owing to the ‘atomic guilt’ flowing from the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing during the Second World War, the US helped Japan revive its old glory, not militarily but in untested ways of the technology.

Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, could have looked at the bigger picture to re-orient itself for the future, by attracting overseas investments for manufacturing exportable finished goods like motor cars, as Japan did, and also provided the required skill-sets. Instead, the nation was satisfied with its early achievements in basic literacy and healthcare, where it excelled against the Third World average.

And in Elections-2005, rival presidential candidates, namely, today’s President Ranil and the victorious competitor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, heading the SLPP competitor of this government were competing only over the number of Sri Lankans that they would sent out for overseas jobs, as chauffeurs, mechanics and housemaids.

The nation is paying for it all still, and even the COPA is only talking in those terms, without using the occasion also to look at broader, long-term possibilities!

(The writer is a policy analyst & political commentator, based in Chennai, India. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorhy.com)