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by Afreeha Jawad

To risk one's self to the point of dying indicates the country's high level of social frustration - certainly not of any recent political outcome.

Revealing this to the Daily News recently was a sociologist in reference to the boat people whom we hear of, who off and on daringly face the onslaught of mid sea danger to reach out for life's 'betterment'. But then the other side of the coin is mysterious if not saddening where high rates of development culminate in suicide.

So 'development' itself is a questionable matter.

As globalization and liberalization progresses, labour exploitation and sexploitation is consolidated.

Work! Work! and work! for whom are we working and what for? Production? Pah! Produce for whom? He seemed to squash the whole idea of 'survival' and make a living' - a sort of big joke.

"Just two hours - yes just two hours of work is enough. More than enough," he shouted. Come to think of it, the Professor was right. Poverty props up the global economy. We in the designated 'Third World' - (a serial designation itself is much food for thought) are dumps for the First World's discarded we decides and their industries itself. Having gone through the agony of industrialism - they now find the 'Third World' fresh disposable arenas.

So it is believed our girls may have to work more - over time or time over-and our boys in construction sites and road building for smooth transportation, for, it is believed that a 'good road network' speeds up transport - 'a quick access' to port and airport to see our products soaring sky high with a soft landing at Mark and Spencer.

Female docility - an essential ingredient towards industrial capitalism-could be capitalized to the hilt. Much of the Sri Lankan population and perhaps the world being women - they cannot be kept at home to facilitate a male workforce that was. So women are encouraged into more work while newer household gadgets are at their disposal for greater output in economic production.

Newer, broader, macadamized roads will speed up tourist movement. Tourism they say brings in the much adored dollars. Sri Lanka's shores except the North and East - all dotted with hotels and restaurants only to culminate in the break up of the coral reef, a narrowing of the coastal belt and putrid beaches. Children are the paedeophiles' delight.

The Eelam bus service would have had no place what with private bus killers on the run like in the South. The rural wayside thatched 'kade' - typical of the one time Sri Lankan village has its presence felt only in the North. LTTE says 'no' to whatever is South - understandably, for its Western oriented socialization - be it in the legal, educational, medical and political spheres. This writer's Colombo University batch mate - a northerner - recalled how the half saree was made compulsory for all school girls.

Through its courts, the LTTE rejects the Western imposed legal system so readily accepted by the South. Among other things is the widely practised 'Siddha' system of medicine - no stranger to the Tamil people. Perhaps a good anthropologist, Prabhakaran wants to retain what is indigenous - certainly a lesson for those in the South, whose open arms welcome all things foreign. While the South collects taxes to maintain a Western imposed centralized administration, Prabhakaran resorts to tax collecting to keep his indigenous administrative system going. Besides all this, the present cry against LTTE de-proscription should not worry anyone at all, for didn't the colonial masters proscribe all that was indigenous in Asian countries and introduce a system most suited to them which to say the least culminated in the present hotch potch not only in Sri Lanka, and in other one time colonies as well. Did we raise even a hare's cry against the British (except the much forgotten 1848 Kandyan rebellion) for imposing their system of education, medicine, culture and legal assignments.

So then why continue with LTTE proscription which otherwise would be a prescription for a community's own style of living falling in line with their own customs and traditions? Perhaps something to be taken note of by the South.

On the other hand, the LTTE need not make such a fuss on proscription for it only came from a centralized administration which in turn is a replica of the international administrative system. By insisting on de-proscription, the LTTE fails to remember that it is only recognizing a decision that sprang off a centralized administration.

In fact this system's introduction was the spring board to ethnicity until which time the North minded their business through their kings - Sankili and Pararajasingham to name a few and the South with their kings, ironically some of them being Tamils themselves.

Studying political developments from a sociological / anthropological perspective - interestingly or otherwise we find the gradual replacement of all that was indigenous of the different communities in their respective geographical areas with an alien centralized system of government through its divisive and structured features that introduced class in place of caste (though the latter is not totally extinct but exists in a discreet way) and ethnic divisions in place of the Ceylonese identity.

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