Deceptions and truths of Sri Lankan economic development
Manoj Akmeemana
Any patriotic citizen of our country would not disagree that as a
nation, we Sri Lankans could proudly rejoice in the wake of new era of
peace and harmony by defeating the LTTE, after three decades of
brutality and blood bath by Tamil-Nazi terrorism.
After 500 years of colonial rule, we Sri Lankans seem to be obsessed
with a rather dull, defeated and backward mentality prevalent until our
cricketing heroes brought the honour of the world cup to our nation in
1996. It gave us vigor and vitality to form a more positive mentality as
a nation, at least in the field of sporting.
Today, at this very moment, a historic opportunity is being created
to stand up and march as a winning nation in the world. Today we are
fortunate to observe that all over the country - North to South; East to
West; remote villages to affluent cities; a wide spectrum of Sri Lankans
without differences of race creed or religion, proudly talk about
defeating terrorism and a new hope for a new country.
The historical political leadership of President Mahinda Rajapaksa
and the incomparable professionalism and bravery of our armed forces for
creating this positive, victorious mind set among a wider section of our
nation.
With new hope for a new era, we ought to look at the many challenges
facing us as a nation in a new perspective. Over a long period of time,
intellectuals, policy makers and politicians talked about the Sri Lankan
economy with a negative, backward-looking connotation.
Even today, in a gloomy world economic crisis, this negative is
fueled and nurtured by many a person in a superlative degree.
War against terrorism
Some politicians pray for a failed economic front to satisfy party
politics and the hunger for power, despite winning the war against
terrorism. New terminology is a trend to wrap these negative economic
perspectives and most policy makers, politicians and intellectuals talk
about ‘winning the economic war’.
Some assume that the connotation of winning the economic war may be
negative when comparing our economic development with regional
counterparts.
The most popular comparison is the 1956 Sri Lanka and Singapore and
Lee Kwan Yu’s achievement to show how backward we are as a nation.
This Singaporean comparison obviously fuels the negative mindset
especially when comparing the experience of lager cities, its
architectural and infrastructure marvels, underground railroads, massive
expressways and colossal shopping malls which are sometime much larger
than some our suburban towns.
No doubt Singapore has achieved a lot and is a success story, but is
it the correct example to compare ourselves and assess our success or
failure?
Today the greatest challenge is not winning the economic war, but
rather defeating the backward pessimistic mentality of interpreting our
development. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to defeat the
“Singaporean syndrome of development comparison” if we as a nation are
serious in building a new country for future generations.
We need to understand and appreciate our achievement in economic
development during the last three decades and compare it with other
regional counterparts and developed nations such as Singapore as well to
fully understand where we stand.
Those who talk about ‘economic development’ sometimes forget that it
has wider and more profound meaning than simply economic growth (GDP
growth) and per capita income. But development has many facets such as
improving the quality of a human life; social, ecological, political,
cultural development and equality in many aspects. It’s also more
meaningful to compare how much we have grown during the last three
decades compared to the other nations.
It is obvious that Sri Lankan achievement over the last 28 years is
commendable compared to many of the other developing nations and is
closer to Singapore’s growth than India. However, this achievement of
Sri Lanka becomes somewhat incomparable when we consider the setbacks
during this period, which include two JVP insurrections, four Eelam wars
of the LTTE, and the worst natural disaster in modern history, the 2004,
Tsunami.
The Sri Lankan economy has shown extraordinary resilience to all
these man-made and natural disasters. During the past 30 years, Sri
Lanka has hardly had any peace due to uninterrupted terrorist attacks in
various forms by the LTTE.
But in contrast to the popular argument that military expenditure had
dragged the economic development, it can be argued that rather, it had
helped create the resilience of the economy in the face of the worlds’
most ruthless and sophisticated terrorist outfit.
It is evident that considering the regional resources as well as the
security threat level for the country, Sri Lanka has managed its
military spending within acceptable norms, as shown in the graph above.
Another important aspect is to analyse the manner in which a
country’s economic benefit or growth is distributed or shared within its
population. This factor reflects the level of inequality and poverty of
a nation. Sri Lanka has been able to cascade its economic benefits to
lower levels of the society compared to many other countries in the
Asian region.
Sanitation facilities
From another point of view, just imagine, if one can live a healthy
life and comparatively longer life span, have access to a decent
education, healthcare and sanitation facilities, are these not the
factors to identify the quality life. If one can look at the ‘quality of
life’ of an average Sri Lankan without prejudice, we can see that it has
improved over the last 30 years in several aspects compared to most of
the other nations.
Critiques, both local and international including donor agencies and
nations criticized the ‘subsidies’ given to health, education and other
public expenditure as non required expenditure for the state.
The local promoters for ‘market economies’ have extensively
criticized using the taxpayer’s money without having a ‘proper price
tag’ for it. But the indicators above reveal that as a nation, we are
deriving the dividends of our investments through these subsidies.
As a nation we can be proud that we have achieved a comparatively
significant development during the last 3 decades despite the fact that
we still do not have large manhattans and skyscrapers, expressways, and
reliable underground rail road’s and other infra-structure.
But in a way, one could argue that Sri Lanka is the best achiever in
the Asian Region in showing a resilient, but determined growth,
considering the level of destruction and instability that had prevailed
during these 3 decades.
The author’s motive for this article is not intended to infer that
the country should relax and day dream in a comfort zone, especially
during the worst global economic downturn in recent times.
Winning mind set
Instead it is to share a few facts and appreciate the progress made,
and invite all countrymen to be motivated to build a winning mind set to
face the new realities and opportunities created for us and to be rid of
the Singaporean syndrome of development comparison.
It is said success breeds success, and a winning mind set brings
victories! As we have proved to the world that terrorism can be defeated
by a localized solution, we as a nation should have our own model for
economic development and to secure a sustainable position in the global
development.
Patriotism in the war front should be extended to the front of the
economic development. The winning habit and the strategic military
mentality need to be extended to the socio-economic front. The change in
the mindset will then help us as a nation to reap the new opportunities
and take our country to the zenith of economic development. |