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by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

A couple of weeks back I attended a workshop organized by the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce on what the business community could do for the peace process. I had not intended to contribute but as I heard various theoretical perspectives, followed by what I would call tinkering, I became impatient. My suggestion was that we should be thinking of more radical measures given that the established patterns of activity had proved so signally unsuccessful over the last half century.

My argument, in short, was that when it came to rehabilitation and reconstruction, the private sector should do most of the running. And I refer not only to special projects, but also to those the government has considered routine, but on which it has signally failed to deliver. I had been struck by a report I had received just that morning from my monitor in Jaffna, which indicated that English in Jaffna College for instance was a total mess whereas the Anglican schools had managed to maintain at least a respectable pass rate. Government schools simply had no English teachers, I was told, and English trainees at the Teacher College were in single figures.

What prevents some of these institutions from being privately managed, for example those responsible for the training and social service programmes several speakers had noted as essential if the peace process were to be successful. What prevents the Kopay College of Education for instance being handed over to the Colombo International School or even to John Keells? Why should the main hospital not be given to a consortium of doctors or perhaps to Apollo?

My intervention led to the Chairman of the Chamber, Chandra Jayaratne, a generally ebullient sort of chap, whose enthusiasm and commitment would have been given a tighter focus by now by any enterprising government, to declare that this was precisely what the Chamber had been discussing with the powers that be. He asked me to keep quiet about the idea for a while, in case people should think the concept was mine, when it was what the Chamber had been planning for a while.

I agreed not to raise the point again, since credit for that sort of enterprise is not really my scene. In any case, I thought, my off the cuff conceptualizations were likely to be much less effective than the concerted programmes of the Chamber. However after a couple of weeks in which nothing has transpired, I feel released from my vow of silence. I hope though that these comments will spur the Chamber to swift action, for which it must be granted they deserve all the credit. If that is they are allowed to act. They may be rearing to go (or some of them, at least, those in whom the entrepreneurial spirit has not been killed dead by the cushions and cudgels of the state). The Prime Minister, who is not at heart a statist (nor, certainly, is Chari, who made a very useful contribution to the workshop), would probably want them to start soon, if he gets a moment to concentrate on the peace rather than the process. But the problem is the various statist institutions that exercise so much power at present. None of them is likely to want to yield an iota of this.

And for such a programme to succeed a conceptual change is necessary. Not only does executive power have to be given up, so should regulatory power. Now this may sound odd from a modern liberal since some regulations are clearly necessary even in an ideal market situation, but the problem in Sri Lanka is that most regulations have validity simply because they were promulgated at some unidentifiable point in the past. No one has bothered to check whether they are useful or even relevant any longer.

So only in Sri Lanka, I believe, would a new constitution that introduced modern concepts of fundamental rights have also included a proviso that all existing laws were valid even when they violated such rights. Only in Sri Lanka would a subject as important as education rely on an Ordinance introduced in 1939, and concerned largely with the status of assisted schools, a phenomenon of no importance whatsoever today. Only in Sri Lanka would payment vouchers designed a century ago still be required by all government departments, the only development being the need for five signatures instead of four before any action can be taken.

So, even though government might agree to ask for bids, and allow an institution to be managed by a company that would be far less expensive than government itself (given the excess staff so recently highlighted by the Ministry of Public Administration Reform the extravagant overtime payments, noted most obviously in the railways the absence of punctuality and an output oriented approach), one can just imagine the contortions that company would have to go through to satisfy government regulations.

"I say Chandra, the voucher you sent to the Ministry of Education has been returned it should have been addressed to the Secretary, Ministry of Human and Subhuman Resources Development, Territory, Vocational and Schools Education and non-Buddhist, non-Hindu, non-Muslim and non-Christian Cultural Affairs. What do you mean, the Secretary's abroad ? Of course he's abroad he has to learn, doesn't he ? And he may be back next month. Don't be silly, of course no one opens his letters while he's away, and there would be no point even if they did, because no one else can sign the vouchers. I think he's allowed to sign eight vouchers every day, but there's no limit on the number he can return.'

'No Jagath, if you want transport refunded you can't send your chap by bus, he must hire a car. But remember the most you can claim for a kilometre is Rs. 7.50. Of course I know you can't hire a car for 7.50. You think it's cheaper to send him by bus and pay for it yourself ? But then you can't claim anything, and there's this big transport allowance we have to use.'

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