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The storm's Eye by Prof.Rajiva Wijesingha

A couple of weeks ago I had to present a paper on current trends in South Asia, to a meeting of Asian and European Liberals. I was assisted in this by two position papers prepared, one by a bright young lecturer at Sabaragamuwa, on the political situation in the region, the other by the head of one of the more innovative Indian think tanks on developments in the economic field.

In reflecting on the composite document I registered, not for the first time, but more sharply than previously, how odd it was that I should be the only South Asian at this meeting, representing the only specifically Liberal political party in the region. Of course I can hear my friends and relations scoffing at my calling it a political party, given its size.

I console myself however with the thought that, when we were first discussing the formation of the Democratic People's Alliance way back in 1988, we used to be amused by Mr Ashraff and his entire politburo turning up to the meetings - initially held at Kumar Ponnambalam's palatial home in Gregory's Road - in a trishaw.

I would like to think therefore that the Liberal Party too is a force whose time is yet to come. Unfortunately I am not the right person to achieve that, not having either the singleminded commitment or the burning intellectual zeal of our founder, Chanaka Amaratunga.

But there is at least the simple fact that the Liberal philosophy is certainly on the ascendant now in the region and, as Parth Shah's paper indicated, will surely dominate, if not Sri Lanka, the subcontinent over the next few decades.

It will of course have problems, in the form of the sectarianism that is burgeoning in Pakistan and to a smaller but still substantial extent, given its size, in India too. But I think one can safely assume that in both those countries, and also even more markedly in Bangladesh, the statist authoritarianism that held us all in thrall for so many decades after independence is definitely on the way out.

And in thinking on these matters, I began to understand better too the historical accident that has so stultified development in this region, while our fellows in South East Asia, achieving independence a decade later, were able to move far more quickly.

Those countries, which even so recently as my boyhood were far behind us, are now light years ahead, and moving on with increasing rapidity.

Sri Lanka, which was far ahead of almost everyone else in Asia with regard to literacy, is now in eleventh position, having improved very little in the last fifty years. Of course people in Sri Lanka still believe we are first or second, fed by a complacent educational establishment that hides its head in the sand whenever developments elsewhere are mentioned.

And so we, who used to export judges and administrators to South East Asia, now clamour for jobs as maids, and wonder why even the Philippinos are paid more than us for such work. What happened? Ignoring my text, and noticing that people were nodding since it was an afternoon session, I proceeded to blame the British - which allowed the Europeans to do so too, when it came to their turn, so we all had fun.

The Scotsman, who led the delegation, said that he would have liked to claim it was just the English, but he felt forced to admit that it was really the Scots who had dominated the imperial enterprise, while the English had simply contributed a few administrators.

But that was in a sense my point, coupled with the fact that the British so carefully built up in the subcontinent, and particularly in Sri Lanka, administrative and political systems based on their own. The only difference was that, whereas by the 20th century Britain had developed democratic pluralism, with institutions that provided rival centers of authority to the governing power, in the colonies nothing challenged the absolute power of the central executive. Michael Roberts, it should be noted, suggested that this fitted in with the subcontinental psyche, given what he termed the Asokan paradigm that centralized absolute authority. But instead of going so far into the past, I think we can see how easily the total power of the Governor was transformed into the total power of the Prime Minister.

And unfortunately this took place in a context in which the dominant political ethos was state socialism. India had Nehru, for whom idealism in his student days in Britain had been represented by the Fabians.

We jumped onto the bandwagon even further down the road, somewhere between Beveridge and his welfare state and Laski's heady interventionism. 'Man-bap' colonialism, of the I-am-your-father-and-your-mother variety, turned into the all-embracing state which took charge of all things, and was expected to provide everything.

Ten years later, all this had changed, and Singapore and Malaysia - which had not so strenuously been training up mock British dominators - were able to pursue less comprehensive social ideals. Welfare activities never became state monopolies as they did here (though India too, it should be noted, always allowed private education and choice to flourish at various levels).

The private sector was treated as an asset to be encouraged, not an exploitative mechanism that had to be suppressed. The old Labour Party clause 4, so beloved of Laski, about securing to workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their produce - which was interpreted as ownership by the state - never had a chance of wreaking havoc there as it has done here.

Who has benefited by all this? The politicians who can control so much, distribute jobs and receive adulation if not more material benefits. The bureaucrats who have secure jobs and privileges without necessarily having to work.

The trade unionists who have easy targets to attack, and several different types of pressure they can exercise to achieve their demands. And with an education system geared to celebrating the benefits of state socialism, and decrying individual initiatives and incentives and the promotion of excellence, we will be without either the motivation or the capacity to change things.

Who will benefit? We have seen one beneficiary in the form of Mr Prabhakaran who has achieved not only absolute power but also doglike devotion from his followers in the little - or large - patch he has carved out for himself by virtue of the excesses and inadequacies of successive Sri Lankan regimes. We will likely see another soon in the form of a massive increase in support to the JVP, which has always benefited from the closed Colombo circuits of the UNP, Dudley Senanayake in the late sixties, JR in the eighties.

The fact that they both promise an even more intense version of the authoritarian centralization beloved of the bourgeois parties too simply confirms my point that the mindset is too entrenched to be changed. The LTTE / JVP argument is that a good government can satisfy all requirements, it is just that the governments we have had so far have been bad.

The whole world outside has now learned that it is too much government that is the problem, and that people can generally look after themselves if governments provide security and the rule of law that are their primary purposes.

India that sleeping giant is at last waking from the stupor in which Nehru's British ideals kept it after what should have been liberation. Sri Lanka however is likely to prove the exception in this as in so many other respects.

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