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The Lakshman Kadirgamar Memorial Conference on Indo-China Relations:
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There was high level participation from the principal collaborating institutions, the New Delhi Centre for Policy Research and two Chinese Institutes of International Studies, the main one in Beijing and the one in Shanghai, along with excellent inputs by other scholars and journalists.
The different presentations in each session were informative and stimulating, and led to fascinating and forceful discussion. Here are some of the inputs in terms of the lessons that might be useful for Sri Lanka too.
Economic parameters
A compellingly argued paper by the Chief Editor of the China Review for instance divided Chinese economic policy since the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949 into three periods that are recognizable in this country too.
The first, which lasted till the mid-seventies, and could be described as Maoist, laid stress on equality, through redistribution and pervasive central planning.
The second, which was inspired by Deng Zhao Peng, but continued until well into the present century, was concerned exclusively with growth.
Though such a system might seem unusual under what continues after all to be a Communist Party in a People's Republic, it was justified on the grounds that growth would inevitably benefit all the people.
More recently however, it was suggested, policy makers had felt that the system needed to be modified.
Earlier, the devotion to economic growth had seemed to produce a win/win situation, where everyone benefited, but during the nineties it was realized that in some instances a zero sum situation had been created where, though some did well, others suffered badly.
There had been for instance around 60 million layoffs in the decade since 1995. The current leadership of the Communist Party had therefore recognized the need for change, and introduced certain safeguards for those who were at risk, a minimal income programme, assistance to agriculture, stronger commitments to health and education.
The parallels with Sri Lanka were obvious, given that we too had, in the days of what might be called the socialist consensus of the Third World, concentrated on equality at the expense of growth.
Given the economic stagnation that had resulted we had then experienced the JR years, which had introduced what is sometimes termed economic liberalism, while ignoring social considerations or, rather, assuming that they could look after themselves.
As in China, though for a shorter period and with markedly more shortcomings, that had initially been very successful.
However, as Premadasa realized, given the tremendous social unrest of the eighties, targeted subsidies and welfare programmes were also essential, to ensure that, while private sector led growth increased prosperity in general, the weakest did not suffer.
This of course is what, as John Rawls made clear in identifying the maxi-min principle in his 'Theory of Justice', modern liberalism demands of economic policy, the commitment, while accepting a theory of general growth through freeing the economy, to ensure through targeted state intervention the maximization of benefits to those who began in the worst off or minimum position.
Chandrika's governments worked in essence on the same lines, and was comparatively successful, as the Central Bank's Consumer Survey Report of development over the last decade indicates.
However, in that her priorities were different, and there was no continuity with the Premadasa years, for instance in his careful targeting of areas in the Northern and Eastern Provinces which were under government control, progress was neither smooth nor consistent.
And even more disruptively, we had a return to the JR philosophy during Ranil's two years in office, when economic growth was seen as the panacea for everything.
Now this was perhaps excusable in JR, given that he was reacting against socialist excesses at a time when they seemed unsuccessful worldwide, and when the opposite extreme was generally in vogue.
But those excesses, represented most prominently by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, were also in time seen as problematic.
By the mid-nineties, libertarianism had been replaced by what might be termed a social democratic consensus. And certainly by then the exaltation of authoritarianism, the argument that democracy was dispensable as compared with economic growth, was completely discredited.
Ranil however was allowed, by a party that has never really studied the concepts they claim to represent, to revert to outdated excesses, not only in his economic policies, but in his pronouncements.
That preposterous speech in Chennai, in which he suggested that India and Sri Lanka had taken the wrong path in upholding democracy, as opposed not only to Malaysia and Singapore, but even to China and Vietnam and South Korea during the days of its military dictators, went largely unnoticed by those who inveigh against left-wing extremists, let alone the elements in his own party, assuming they really exist, who have actually studied international trends.
Chandrika however intervened to put a stop to all that, and the electorate made it clear that Ranil's aberrant approach was unacceptable. Despite his hamfisted attempts at populism in his last manifesto, the country has fortunately decided to stay with a more enlightened approach.
Of course things will not be easy, but it was heartening to note that China, trumpeted to us as a success story on libertarian and authoritarian lines, has moved in a similar direction.
And even more heartening was the clarification by one of the Chinese academics of the claim that Deng Zhao Peng, in enunciating the initial change of policy, had said, 'Let people get rich first.' We were reminded that he had added the qualification, 'through honest means and a legal system.'
Comparing that with Choksy's appalling tax amnesty, with JR's infamous 'Let the robber barons come', one realizes why Deng and his successors continue to be respected in China, while those who claim to follow them have made such a mess of things here.
Concepts of democracy
Understandably enough, democracy or rather various aspects of democracy figured largely in the Lakshman Kadirgamar Memorial Conference on Indo-China relations that was held last week at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies.
When I say aspects, what first comes to mind is the period when our standard view of democracy, as involving the people choosing their government, was challenged by the communist concept.
Those were the days for instance when we had what seemed the quaintly named German Democratic Republic, where there was no question whatsoever of the people exercising political choice.
That nomenclature sprang from a selective interpretation of the meaning of the word, as springing from two Greek words meaning 'people' and 'power'.
The communist argument then was that democracy meant empowering people, which was not through abstract notions such as the franchise, but through providing all the citizenry with the wherewithal - food, clothing, shelter, education etc - to live their lives productively.
We have now I believe all moved well beyond that sort of notion, which allowed authoritarian regimes to claim that people who could not exercise political choice were nevertheless empowered.
At the same time we should recognize that our standard view is coloured by the British experience, which assumes that a multi-party system in which the people choose which party takes office for some specified period is a necessary as well as a sufficient condition for democracy.
That can lead to authoritarianism on the part of the elected government, or even more seriously on the part of its leader, has not been seen as worrying in this country.
We accepted blindly after all JR's claim that he could do anything he wanted, and indeed let him alter the constitution at will, with regard most brazenly, on several occasions, with regard to our exercise of the franchise.
The Indians were much more aware of what democracy means, and the response of Indian Civil Society to Mrs Gandhi's Emergency made it clear that the world's largest democracy fully deserved that title.
Those, paradoxically, were the days when America, which claimed to champion democracy, was hostile to India and supportive of China, which was clearly an authoritarian state.
Now however, not entirely I am sure for altruistic reasons, America has recognized that India is democratic, while China is not.
But, while that basic distinction can be granted, in that Indians have the ability to change their government while the Chinese do not, there are other aspects of democracy, in the sense of empowering people to exercise choice, in which the Chinese system may have advantages.
One speaker at the Conference, an Indian it should be added, advanced the view that India was an open society with a closed mind, while China was the opposite.
In political terms, as one of the Chinese pointed out, though the Communist party exercised total authority, it included within itself different strands of thought, and had indeed in recent years created space for new interests to exercise influence.
In that respect, it occurred to me, Chinese democracy was developing as British democracy had done in the long period during which an initially very limited franchise moved with tortuous slowness to becoming universal.
The ruling elite then opened its doors to more and more segments of society as these became active members of a rapidly changing political economy. In the process, the major political parties changed character, with different interests coming to the fore at different periods.
Unfortunately for the Chinese communist party, our image of one party states is based on that of one leader parties. This is turn springs from the hegemonic hold party leaders have over their parties, much more so now even in Britain than in the past, even though there we still find some limitations.
In Sri Lanka however, and in Indian political parties too, though perhaps not so unquestionably, the authority of the leader is supreme.
Hence indeed the enormous problems now plaguing the UNP, where the concept of internal party democracy, never very strong, was totally abolished by JR, most obviously through his subordination of members of parliament to the party and the disciplinary control of its leader, rather than to their constituents.
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