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by E.A.V. Naganathan

In the not so distant past it was always the unstated policy of all government not to unduly urbanize the country, but instead to maintain the traditional rural mould of society. So was it under the Senanayakes, Kotelawala and Bandaranaike.

Living on the margins in Colombo

Colombo may have paid the price with 50% of the population living in tenements, both as in 1951 when Ahlip compiled his famous Report, as well as in 2001 when Dinesh Gunawardena had a fresh study done.

But the answer lay, as Premadasa rightly showed, by providing decent dwellings, vertically configured 2 or 3 - storeys high at most, as in the case of the Maligawatte flats, and which were affordable to the common man.

The answer, also, did certainly lie in cutting through the barrier of the marshes and grasslands, which had confined Colombo to a ribbon development along the coastline, by Jayewardene's bold step in linking Colombo to Kotte, which had the effect, at one stroke, of opening up the hinterland and converting the suburbs to the east of the city into satellite towns in their own right.

As in the case of his constitution, which, to my mind, grapples with many of the concerns of Augustus Caesar, in seeking to reconcile inveterate antagonisms and intractable disparities, while strengthening the executive arm of government in the furtherance of political stability and economic development, he was in the final reckoning, right.

More recently, however, there has been unfortunately a reversal of the policy of avoiding the megalopolis mania that has ruined many a South American and South Asian country.

To begin with there has been an over-development of Colombo, beginning with the port. In my view there was no need to extend the Southern breakwater by lengthening the Queen Elizabeth quay so expensively and, incidentally, controversially.

The out-ports i.e., Galle, Beruwala, Kalutara, Negombo, Kalpitiya, Mannar, Kayts, Kankesanturai, Trincomalee, Oluvil, Hambantota, etc. should have been built up, and shipping diverted to these out-ports.

This would have reduced the undue centripetalism of trade and commerce in all its ramifications i.e., transportation, storage, packaging, banking, brokering, insurance, etc. with its attendant social implications of the disturbing flight of talented and industrious individuals away from their ancestral villages and towns to the metropolis.

I well remember that, within living memory, Galle, Mannar and Kayts were busy centers of entrepot trade and shipping. My maternal grandmother's family, the Mudaliyars De Coste, were leading ship-chandlers in Galle in collaboration with the Abeysundera family - the two being closely inter-related - under the partnership named and styled "De Coste & Abeysundera".

The Thambiayah family of Kayts and the Annasamypillais and Mariampillais and other families in the North owned fleets of ships trading between Indian, Burmese, Malaysian, Thai and Gulf ports.

It is well to remember that Lourenco de Almeida was bound for Galle when contrary winds blew him to Colombo, and Galle continued to be the premier port on the west coast till the building of the Colombo breakwater in the early 20th century.

It was perfectly consistent with the centralizing objectives of the colonial government in support of the plantation and market or import-export, comprador economy they established in the country, and the unitarianist, centralist administration they introduced, for the first time in the island's history (by the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms) to complement it, to have consolidated everything in Colombo, stripping the out-ports of their business and, as I have said, the provinces of their most favoured sons and daughters.

But it is equally totally incongruent with the present and universal trend towards devolution, to continue to preserve Colombo's position of primacy in this and other respects.

I was horrified to read recently that the extensive premises of the former Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving Mills are to become the venue for a "City of the Rich" (the like of which Bishop Bosseuet warned Louis XIV against, when he was a-building Versailles, and only 65 years later the French monarch, the strongest in Europe, was pulled down by its own people), the Havelock City, which shall, says the blurb, have "residences" (not houses or apartments), "parks" (not play-grounds), "landscaped gardens" (shades of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon), "restaurants" (not boutiques), "malls" (not shops) etc.

This is all wrong. It is typical that a Singapore financier, a species only slightly less rapacious than its counterpart in this country, should be involved in this enterprise.

I say firmly "No" to this proposition. Rather should that area be developed like the Maligawatte flats or even the Bambalapitiya flats for accommodating, at least, a modicum of those slumming it out in their tenements, people of modest means, living quietly by the sweat of their brows, not car but, possibly, 3-wheeler-owning, with plenty of green spaces around each apartment block for the children to run about and play.

The inset model of the new "complex" gave me the same headache that assails me whenever I am compelled by circumstances eg., weddings of the rich, etc. to visit one of the present 5-star or any other number of stars, hotels, especially the Hilton and Galadari which have taken over and planted themselves in the dear old Echelon Barracks in their step-wise formation, where I drilled my platoon on Tuesdays as a 2nd Lieut. in the Artillery Volunteers under the demanding eye of my Battery Captain, Bob Poulier.

No, the existing system must be put an end to. The socialist countries of the world have shown the way by providing workers housing as a priority and we should follow suit. Let those who are ignorant of the fact visit Cuba for a change.

Admiral Geoffrey Leighton gave us the cue when he issued the "big" Colombo schools with just 24 hours notice in which to clear out to make room for his troops.

In like manner I should like to see these same schools and "big" clubs re-located outside the city and their extensive acres utilized for many more Raddolugamas and Mattegodas.

It will go a long way in putting paid to the class system with all its atrocious snobbery and privilege which came in with the British and super-imposed itself on the existing, repulsive caste system, which deformed both the minds and bodies of those affected, thereby weighing the people down with another unconscionable burden.

I remember as a boy, my role model at that time, the late Mr. P.O. Fernando, C.C.S., asking me whether I was aware that there were slums in Colombo 07.

At that time of my life whenever asked by anyone what I hoped to be when I grew up, I used to reply, "A civil servant like uncle P.O." unfortunately, Desmond disabused me by saying that his father's advice to his two sons had been anything but that i.e., enter government service.

But now I can think of several options for planned workers townships - not slums, in such superbly situated and road-fronted, extensive schools premises.

As anyone knows, who has been to the residential campuses, these schools are deservedly regarded as centers of privilege and snobbishness rather than simply learning.

I recall Ranil telling me in connection with the second and final acquisition of the Mackwoods Mills that if he had had his way, as Minister of Education, he would rather have spent that money in providing science and laboratory facilities for all the peripheral schools, including his own Biyagama electorate, thereby pre-empting the need for spending unnecessary time, money and fuel in carting the children of ambitious parents from those districts to the Colombo "big" schools.

All that bare land stretching along the Stanley Wijesundara Mawatha opposite the Colombo campus, now serving as playing fields for elitist clubs, as well as the stretch incorporating the C.C.C., N.C.C. and S.S.C., as, also, the Police Park and adjoining Pedris Park and adjacent open land would, also, serve as first-class sites for workers housing schemes.

I remember Dr. Naganathan commenting how when the Tamils asked for land for the Tamil Union they were palmed off with a swamp in Wanathamulla, which it took all the time, money and energy of P. Sara and his team of devoted members to bring up to scratch.

The advertisements of those monstrous edifices rearing their ugly shapes and blotting the landscape, passing off as "luxury" condominiums in the so-called "fashionable" neighbourhoods of the city, are in deplorable taste.

We must turn our backs very firmly on all these megalo-tendacious tendencies.

Senanayake never liked the idea of tourism. He had the notion that it wasn't quite decent for the country to be dressing itself up to attract the attentions of foreigners, in the manner of a woman of easy virtue. It was a cultural value that he was asserting.

As I said before, it is, basically, a cultural question and it operates at all levels eg., the media-driven obsession with cricket, the game of our former white masters, in preference to volleyball, the game of the rural masses.

The Sports Ministry has been virtually the ministry for cricket and I am wondering whether Jeevan will continue with that tradition. Certainly, Vijaya, if he had lived would not have.

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