Sri Lanka’s umbrella for relief from rough weather

The rain ceases and visitors leave:

Wendell W. Solomons

News reports tell us that Sri Lanka’s civil strife winds down. Where should Sri Lanka now proceed? What next shelter or umbrella must people seek? How can the country overcome a trading gap created during decades? Singapore nearby, rose beyond its communal riots of the late 1950s and by year 2,000 entered the rank of rich nations in per capita income.

In addition to Singapore, a large development example is available for consideration in the civil-war torn USA of the 1860s. There, Abraham Lincoln and his contemporaries chose a development model successfully.

What of Sri Lanka’s present model?

I must reveal that the question of any model for Sri Lanka has reached my ears just twice in two decades. It suggests that (a) high heaven or (b) the monetarist model has bestowed a legacy of opportunism and pettiness where scamming the other person has become commonplace.

Apathy and indifference to the general interest arose in consequence next. If we take up the decades of monetarist “structural adjustments,” we discover they have distanced people from each other like so many Robinson Crusoes on individual islands.

In this myth, ending the war means each man will now sit in comfort in a coconut grove or in similar amenity. Why really should this man plan?.

At that time of the war, the city hotel in Colombo was called the Oberoi. At a German National Day celebration there, I went across the hall to the Army Commander. I wanted to mention that radio direction finders could pin-point where militant chieftains were using walkie-talkies and similar equipment. The Army Commander not only gave me his ear but also asked me to provide him with a brief, typed on two pages. I finished it during the following morning and his aide-de-camp sent across a jeep for the brief.

Spin doctors

Is direction-finding technology new? It was used in World War II but my proposal collapsed. An Army Colonel, who saw my name as the author of the brief, remembered me from school and passed on to me that my brief was discussed. Still later I was to learn that the purchase of equipment that could potentially be used at HQ in Colombo to detect field radios in the jungle had been discussed years before. It came up under State Security Minister Lalith Athulathmudali but was set aside. Did someone want armed separatists roaming the country freely?

When he retired from service, the Army Commander could speak with me openly. He said that military secrets were being sold for millions to the separatist force.

A Brigadier or Colonel could hand over military secrets if he imagines that he would not suffer the consequences on his independent island (of monetarist fable. That is a de-coding of the “Grab as much you can” motivation that blistered the world from 1976).

Spin doctors using such slogans that emanate from the “Free to Choose” video, erase social consciousness, place us at sixes-and-sevens, break down our productivity and make us weaker.

They expose us like sheep to the wolf. The introduction of that model of behaviour is dangerous everywhere. In using behaviour control with US mass media as epicentre, the monetarists tore apart the fabric of market regulation. Financial scammers were then able to take a toll of billions of dollars - and the IMF finds no easy solution.

Focus on technology

We must now take up issues of focus for peaceful development in Sri Lanka.

It was President Premadasa who found a means of getting people to focus. The first focal point he used was shelter. He promoted - housing for all. He next invented the 200 garment factories program without any professionals to consult.

Like other people with a background in technologies, in the late 1960s I had seen that Sri Lanka would have to import fashion fabrics and accessories and compete on the slim sewing component against numerous producers around the world.

Therefore, I did not hold out for developing garment industry. I was then in the Foreign Trade Department of the Trade Ministry headed by Minister T. B. Illangaratne and busied myself with export product development for the Ceramics Corporation because Sri Lanka has excellent raw material (gems arrive from a related resource).

I was in Iraq doing this product development and Sri Lanka’s first-ever ceramic exports appear in export statistics (the island’s Customs Returns) in years 1970 and 1971 as going to Iraq. Japanese porcelain leader Noritake then observed the logic and began production in Sri Lanka. The porcelain sector brought in revenue for 30 years.

The war is winding down at a time when above 100 countries will need help from overseas; this list includes Hungary, Latvia, Poland and the Ukraine. The recession adds to the need for the island to focus on technologically sound objectives. Although none of the preceding countries have suffered the cost of civil war, the recession explains why Sri Lanka must not anticipate large external help.

Vladimir Ulyanov Lenin, a lawyer, on the advice of his professionals brought forward the country objective of electrification in post-revolutionary Russia.

Abraham Lincoln, a lawyer, took his country out of the ruin of the US civil war, on the advice of Henry Carey, by focusing on railways. Carey had suggested railways as a means of linking in machine building, metallurgy and mining together with the easily demonstrated purpose of providing intercontinental passengers and goods transport.