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As yet another February 4th passes Ray Wijewardene, scientist, engineer and present Chancellor of Moratuwa University suggests that after 55 years, 'independence' is still a confusing word for most Sri Lankans.

On 'globalisation' and '...dependence'

Ever since the late '40s, the word 'independence', - and indeed its source in the word 'dependence' - have special and troublesome meaning for us in Sri Lanka. Are we independent?... to what extent?... and of whom?

...and of what? Clarification of this dilemma would, I believe, greatly help define directions for national progress... And thereby the direction which national scientific research should take for achieving those national objectives.

'Globalisation' Recently another troubling and - iniquitous - word 'globalisation' has emerged as a turbo-charged re-incarnation of the colonial era, to further confuse the context of dependence... But perhaps the word globalisation needs to be better understood as 'inter-dependence'.

Inter-dependence

No one... neither person nor nation... is truly in-dependent. We are all 'inter-dependent' upon each other. Parents and children, - even when adult, - are usually happily inter-dependent upon each other. It constitutes a warm bond of mutual understanding and help. As Shakespeare wrote of 'the quality of mercy'. It '...is not strained. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.' Friendship, likewise, is a happy state of mutual 'inter-dependence'.

Non-dependence

Yet, despite the warm and mutual desirability of interdependence, we all need, strictly, to preserve areas of non-dependence. Should either parent or children... or even friends... become over-dependent upon each other, then the bond suffers. It becomes 'strained'.

Likewise... while nations strive mutually to preserve the one-world (globalisation) principles of inter-dependence, there are certain areas in which it is expedient - and desirable - for each to be non-dependent. Such desirability has had to be faced by each nation from its very beginnings. By South Africa... by Israel..., by India..., by Cuba..., and by Pakistan... to mention just a few. And for each, the particular areas and their corresponding degrees of non-dependence have necessarily and critically to be defined according to their own perceived sensitivities and vulnerabilities.

World authorities on international relations within our midst, Gamini Corea, and J. B. Kelegama to name just two, have long explained that the ideal of 'globalisation' could only prevail between nations of comparable resources and opportunities... That those less privileged would necessarily have to safeguard and protect their integrity in well-defined, critical and vulnerable areas. In fact most new nations have been very firm in defining the areas in which they would - for strategic reasons - preserve non-dependence... For to compromise in these would mean compromising their integrity and a need to succumb to greater and greater external pressures. Beggars are never choosers!

Directions for development

A clear definition of these areas of 'non-dependence' is essential for providing a direction for national development... and thereby to provide a direction for national scientific research. While there must also be the societal (political) commitment towards these objectives, such needs to be initiated by the scientists, physical as well as social, rather than dictated to them by the politician.

Defining 'Non-dependence'

While accepting the broad ideals of 'globalisation' - of mutual 'inter-dependence', - we in Sri Lanka need, as mentioned earlier, to be aware of a re-incarnation of the colonial era... now in more subtle form. We need clearly to define those areas in which - for national integrity - we develop and maintain strict non-dependence... Areas such as:

a. Food and nutrition for all our people.

b. Health and wellness for our people.

c. Energy for national development.

d. And perhaps even arms for strategic integrity.

Food and nutrition

In this area one necessarily refers to the basic principles of nutrition for all ...Not the 'cornflakes' nor the 'Scotch'... nor the 'marmalade'... but rather the 'bread-and-butter'... or more specifically the 'rice-and-curry' basics for sustaining very adequate levels of national nutrition. And these basics need to be both available and affordable.

Both agricultural scientists as well as nutritionists have affirmed the technologies by which such basic needs can be achieved... provided a political and national commitment is made. And commensurate with such an objective would be non-dependence upon the 'inputs' for achieving such a state of nutritional non-dependence. But no such commitment, nor direction, presently exists! Our scientists have failed to assert that such objectives ARE achievable.

It has been easier to acquiesce... to accept the dictum that food, and the inputs therefore, would need to be imported... History has, however, proved this untrue, - and non-expedient!

A firm political commitment towards non-dependence for food and nutrition would very quickly galvanise the re-direction of scientific endeavour towards this end. As it has in Israel, in Cuba, and in the host of other countries when their backs came against the wall. But is it necessary that we wait until...?

Health and wellness

Sri Lanka once justifiably acknowledged to a high index in Quality-Of-Life (QOL) and we were proud of our standards of 'health'. But the most erudite in this area would sadly affirm that our state of 'wellness' has declined since then, - and even over the past half century, and despite heavy (and often mis-directed) expenditure on 'health'!... Most crucial is the growing awareness that even such decline in 'wellness' is poised critically upon an imported technology and inputs which we, as still a 'developing' nation, are hard pressed to maintain.

We in Sri Lanka, have a lot to learn from India which faced a similar predicament and circumstance several decades ago. A firm but subtle political commitment towards achieving REAL self-sufficiency in health has supported a rapidly growing restoration of both indigenous as well as nationally-sustainable technologies, despite the endeavours of the World-Trade-Organisations (WTO) to topple them. India has proven too large to topple that easily.

By no means is the medico-health technology of the west inappropriate... What is inappropriate (and dangerous) is the tendency for its adoption in a non-sustainable manner, rather than its adaptation towards the goal of sustained national wellness. A clear definition of, - and political commitment to, such ideals is necessary for a re-direction of scientific endeavour towards non-dependence upon external resources for the wellness of the nation. We should also remember that pollution, for example, is sourced almost entirely from 'imported' commodities.

Energy for national development

There can be no argument but that in the present era ENERGY is very necessary for national development... for domestic lighting, for industry, for transport. But the present tendency for increasing dependence upon external sources for a major - and critical - portion of this energy makes us most vulnerable... It is inadequately appreciated that while 'hydro-power' is nationally renewable resource, its availability has peaked.

A very limited quantum of solar-energy (photo-voltaic) and wind-power can be harnessed - albeit at very high cost - for remote areas... However, this does not yet, nor for the foreseeable future, appear to be available in the larger quantities and at prices needed for national development. Therefore our future increases in energy will necessarily be 'thermal'. (i.e. some fuel will have to be burned).

Two options - oil and coal - for thermal energy have been heavily debated for propriety as well as location. Both are heavily polluting the environment. And the cost for the imported coal (now acknowledged as the cheaper of the two) to meet the country's future (and even present) needs of thermal generation would require the expenditure of vast amounts of foreign exchange. In fact, the exchange required for imported coal to meet the country's anticipated grid-electricity requirements by 2006 would utilise all the country's earnings from the export of tea, rubber and coconut, combined!

Short-Rotation-Coppice (SRC)

Fortunately for Sri Lanka there is a local and fully sustainable source for thermal energy from fuel-wood. Termed SRC (Short-Rotation-Coppice). Not to be confused with the cutting down of forest trees, it is the systematic and dense growing of identified, fast-growing, trees (nearly all are indigenous and nitrogen-fixing such a gliricidia), in which only certain branches (coppices, or prunings, or pollards) are rotationally lopped.

Most of the green-foliage of the tree is retained to continuingly absorb all the CO2 which would be produced from their combustion. Loppings also provide valuable fodder and soil-protecting mulch. Such environmentally benign conditions do not pertain to thermal energies evolved from any of the imported fuels, either coal or oil. Further, the costs for generating thermal energy from these (sustainable) fuel-wood plantations is less than the costs for coal-powered electricity... and will be even lower in the future with the costs for these imported fuels continuing to escalate dramatically.

Interestingly, the growing of SRC for fuel is now recognised the world over as a highly appropriate farm crop (rather than just as 'forestry')... And particularly in the humid-tropics with year-round sunshine yielding year-round growth. It provides an ideal source of steady 'background' income for farmers (in the order of Rs. 90,000 per year per family on a three-hectare fuel-wood-lot) in those parts of the country which are the least developed; and without any interference, whatever, with their traditional cultivations. It is also a very viable industry for the vast areas of our lesser-developed dry-zone regions, as most SRC fuel-wood trees thrive even where food-crops do not!

The availability of cheap fossil fuels over the past century had deluded even the developed nations! Renewable energies fuelled the needs of the world in earlier times, and will certainly be relied upon in the future. In all of the 'developed' world... in Europe, USA, etc. as well as in major countries of the developing world ...in China, Brazil, India etc... very considerable incentives are being directed towards the use of renewable energies in place of fast-declining fossil fuels.

And let us remember that major world powers have shown willingness even to go to war to preserve their own access to dwindling fossil-fuel resources!

A political commitment towards the goal of non-dependence for energy could well accelerate such achievements in Sri Lanka too. But this needs that our scientists and engineers, to whom politicians naturally turn for guidance, themselves acknowledge the need for re-direction of policy towards this very desirable... and achievable goal.

Strategic integrity

For the present, three facts may be presented.

1. Several countries which are very much smaller than ours have - for strategic expedience - developed their own arms industry, and likewise the training, disciple and ability to use them with deadly effect. It has long been a saying about Switzerland... 'No-one messes with a hornet's nest'. While located at the centre of two world wars Switzerland enforced its neutrality throughout. And let's accept it, well within the past two-hundred years Sweden and Switzerland, both substantial producers of arms, were acknowledged as 'poor' countries.

By far the major portion (well over 70 per cent) of an arms industry comprises hand-arms... automatic fire-arms and RPGs.

3. Such weapons can be (and have been) made in Sri Lanka.

Our near neighbours all learned, to their own cost, the strategic vulnerability of dependence upon external sources for arms...

New horizons...

In his book 'Technology for Development', the renowned Harvard scientist Nawaz Shariff has written "...the capacity to produce and adapt technology is more important than mere technology itself. The prosperity of a nation depends not on the quantum of technologies it has amassed but on its ability to adapt and generate technologies." ...and such 'adaptation' must necessarily mean... 'to our own natural and sustainable resources, as well as to our social and economic circumstances'.

Science in Sri Lanka must necessarily commence with scientists taking a lead in helping exploit the vast resources with which this country is blessed... And not only to the extent of 'writing a paper for an esteemed journal' or publishing pious recommendations; but ensuring that their research is both socially and financially sound in the context of this (their) country.

While very few of our scientific research papers meet these criteria, it needs also to be accepted that there has NEVER - SO FAR, been a clear statement of national development policy nor of the complementary goals towards which science and engineering can be directed.

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