Politically-motivated lamentation over 75 years since Independence
By C. A. Chandraprema
We now live in a digital world dominated by the social media, where information or disinformation coming through our mobile phones has more to do with forming public opinion than the plainly visible and palpable reality and well-established facts and data. Sri Lanka recently marked the 75th Anniversary of its Independence in the midst of an organised campaign in the social media to propagate the view that all those who ruled Sri Lanka in the past 75 years had ruined the country and that political power should go to the hands of a party that has never held power during this period.
We have all heard various stories about where Sri Lanka was at the time of independence. One story is that at the time of independence the per capita income of Sri Lanka was second in Asia only to that of Japan. Another story is that the first post-independence Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake lent money even to Britain. As a result of such stories being unquestioningly repeated over time, many people especially among the youth, are under the impression that Sri Lanka was heaven on earth at the time of independence and that due to the fault of those who ruled the country in the post-independence period, Sri Lanka had steadily declined to the present position of being officially bankrupt.
The declaration of bankruptcy in 2022 is a matter that will have to be dealt with separately and cannot be gone into here. But is there really any truth in the rose-tinted stories we have been hearing about Sri Lanka at the time of Independence? Long before the Second World War, Japan was a country that had built up its technological, industrial and economic capacity to a level where they could go to war with the Western imperialist powers. Hence any attempt to compare Sri Lanka to Japan in 1948, would be grossly misleading.
The 1948 report of the UN
Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East had described Sri Lanka as a mainly agricultural, industrially underdeveloped economy characterised by low productivity and poverty with a shortfall of resources in comparison to its population. That was the actual reality in the year we gained independence. It is certainly true that in the first years after independence, Sri Lanka was able to complete even large-scale development projects like the Gal Oya scheme without any foreign loans. However, this was not due to any inherent strength of the Sri Lankan economy but due to the good prices that Sri Lankan exports like rubber fetched during the Second World War and the Korean War. Once those wars ended and the windfall profits stopped, Sri Lanka’s resources also dwindled.
Realities at the time of
Independence
The British colonial masters built an economy in Sri Lanka that was useful for the British Empire but not necessarily for the people of Sri Lanka. At the time of independence, the majority of the Sri Lankan population lived in extreme poverty in wattle and daub huts. Electricity, water supply and telephone facilities were available only to a small minority. The countrywide road network was sub-standard and poorly maintained. Today however we don’t see the extreme poverty that prevailed in this country at the time of independence. R. Premadasa built up his entire political image by providing people who lived in wattle and daub huts with permanent brick houses built with tiled roofs.
By today’s standards these were small, crude abodes sneeringly described as petti gewal even by Marxist politicians, but at that time, they contributed to improving the lives of the ordinary people. Today, virtually all houses have electricity. A substantial proportion of the population have water suppliy as well. We now have a carpeted road network second to none in the world. The professional grades even in government service get good salaries. Our internet facilities are on par with that of a developed country.
For many years after Independence, those leaving Sri Lanka to take up permanent residence abroad would have experienced a sharp difference between living in Sri Lanka and living abroad. At that time, Sri Lanka did not have many of the things and facilities that people living abroad took for granted. Even something as basic as television came to Sri Lanka only in 1979. But now anything that is available in developed countries is also available in Sri Lanka. The lifestyle of the majority of the population has seen vast improvements. Even in rural areas there is hardly a house without a TV, a fridge, a washing machine, fans and a fuel driven vehicle of some sort be it a motorcycle, trishaw or a mini-truck. All young people have smart phones.
Many people still see Sri Lanka as a living hell and migrating to foreign countries as an entry into paradise. Even the class that has everything in Sri Lanka wishes to migrate to a foreign country. Several decades ago this sentiment did have some justification. For example, when we were university students, many of our lecturers and professors used public transport. Only those who had private means had cars. But today university lecturers get good salaries and drive luxury vehicles. If a professional in such a category migrates overseas today, he will experience an immediate and sharp drop in his standard of living. Migrating overseas may have made sense until around the turn of the century, but whether it is of any benefit now, is something that each individual will have to decide for himself.
A professional migrating overseas with his family today can only hope to buy a house and a car on mortgage and to pay off those loans over about 25 years and upon retirement to try and survive on the retirement lump sum he gets. The same people could have done the same thing in Sri Lanka as well – only better. If a migrant family to an overseas country is dependent on a fixed income, they will not be able to become wealthy even by Sri Lankan standards.
Today the only people who can go overseas with their families and become rich at least by Sri Lankan standards, are those who are not limited to fixed incomes and who can charge good fees for their services or those who make profits from businesses. The only approach that would make sense today would be to go overseas as expatriate workers to earn some capital which can be invested in Sri Lanka to benefit one’s family.
Stumbling forward
It is an incontrovertible fact that in the past 75 years Sri Lanka has moved forward despite all obstacles and pitfalls. During this period, we have had governments that have contributed to this forward march and governments that have stymied it. It has to be borne in mind that we have come this far while also safeguarding and preserving the democratic system of government. None of the countries in Asia that have achieved a certain level of economic development since World War II have had democratic forms of government during the most important period of their economic advancement. This is true not only of Japan, South Korea and Singapore but also of Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. It is very difficult for a country to develop with a democratic form of government. This is one reason why India is so far behind China. This why Sri Lanka could never become a Malaysia let alone a Singapore.
A democratic form of government spawns political parties that are willing to do anything or to say anything to get into power. Many things are based on this power motive and not on the basis of what is beneficial to the country. The people of the country are susceptible to manipulation by local villains as well as foreign ones. Then there are trade unions with mafia like power over the sectors they control. There are NGOs implementing foreign agendas in the country. During the entirety of the past 75 years we have observed a tendency to appease the various forces that emerge from among the masses rather than doing what it takes to benefit the economy of the country.
More than all of the above, one of the main obstacles to the forward march of Sri Lanka over the past 75 years was the terrorism that engulfed this country for over half that period. On the one hand there was the Tamil separatist terrorism from 1970 to 2009 which shook the entire world. In 2008 the FBI declared the LTTE to be the deadliest terrorist organization in the world. Then there was the mindlessly brutal Sinhala terrorism of 1971 and 1987-89 motivated by a desire to capture state power through violence. The 2019 Easter Sunday attack in Sri Lanka launched by Muslim terrorists is second only to the 9/11 attacks in terms of the number of fatalities among the terrorist attacks launched against civilian targets worldwide. The terrorist attack of 9 May 2022 which saw the houses and properties of over 70 sitting members of Parliament burnt to the ground in the course of a single night was also a world record. Throughout its 134 year history, the Inter-Parliamentary Union has not heard of an incident like that from any other country in the world.
We are where we are today after all that has happened in this country. The journey that Sri Lanka has traversed over the past 75 years, while taking the consequences of the shortsighted policies of political parties, sabotage by trade unions, conspiracies of foreign funded NGOs, disruption caused in higher education by student unions like the IUSF, the loss of life and property caused by Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim terrorists and ever the present foreign interference, is indeed a remarkable story of resilience. Looked at from that point of view, the real wonder of Asia is not Japan, South Korea or Singapore, but Sri Lanka. The generation that forms its opinions on the basis of what is directed at them by organised groups through the social media will have to learn to look critically at what they see on their mobile phones or risk making decisions that they will bitterly regret sooner rather than later.
