Happy New Year, Mother Lanka!:

Embracing the future with confidence

Lionel Wijesiri

As we prepare to step into another New Year, before anything else, the first item of our agenda should be to spare a few minutes to silently mourn and honour the valour of our soldiers, sailors and airmen who sacrificed their lives in the past three decades to liberate us from terrorist fear. We should never forget these brave people. To really honour them, let us solemnly promise ourselves to do what they wanted us to do - go move forward without fear or apprehension and make Sri Lanka a peaceful and prosperous country.

The second item of the agenda should be to sit back and review the progress of our nation in the past six decades. Let us speak honestly of unfinished work and set our sights on the future. Only then, we can make our nation move, firm of heart, united in spirit, powerful in pride and patriotism.

History is no captive of some inevitable force. History is made by men and women of vision and courage. Today, freedom in our country is on the march and only by lifting the weights from the shoulders of all poor people, we can truly prosper and have peace among all races. We have done well in the past few years, but we cannot stop at the foothills at Himalayas when Everest beckons us.

Challenges

In just over a month’s time, Sri Lanka will mark 62 years of independence. Those years have seen the country surmount many challenges and achieve remarkable development in some spheres. As we move in to a New Year, it is, therefore, an appropriate time to reflect on some of the success and failures of those years of self-rule and determination.

At independence, the first leaders of the nation envisaged a country where every Sri Lankan would have access to water, medical care, education, food and freedom from poverty at least by the end of the 5th decade. Twelve years past the deadline, when the noble goals were to be achieved, some shortcomings still present serious challenges to millions of Sri Lankans.

However, we can be happy that very good progress has been made in some fields. Sri Lanka has been celebrated in development economics literature as a model low-income country - one that has achieved extraordinary success in attaining high levels of male and female literacy, school enrolments and health outcomes, despite low levels of per capita income.

Only a handful of developing countries, such as China, Vietnam, Cuba and Costa Rica, can list as many achievements as Sri Lanka on the social front. Data from the UNDP’s global Human Development Report suggests that Sri Lanka has one of the highest ranks of all the countries in Asia when its performance on the human development index is compared relative to its performance on GDP per capita.

However, poverty in Sri Lanka is still high and widespread and the country is still classified as a low-income food-deficit country, with a relatively high global hunger index in South-East Asia. Sadly, with an increasing population and limited employment opportunities, more people are joining the ranks of the very poor every year.

Food Security

Food availability depends predominantly on rice production and marketing in Sri Lanka. Despite significant improvement over the past few years, the country’s net rice production remains insufficient to meet household demand. Of course, there were reasons for the shortfall. In recent years, the Sri Lankan people have endured some difficult times that have affected the livelihoods for thousands of families, such as the tsunami in 2004 and the resumption of the long armed conflict between the Tamil Tigers and the Government Forces in the North and north-East of the country.

Spatial disparities in rice self-sufficiency still exist among districts, with the main rice surplus areas being located in the conflict-affected districts. As a result, inter-provincial trade opportunities from surplus to deficit areas were limited. The experts tell us that the lack of market information and isolation from supply chains remain significant barriers for trade operations and very few operators are integrated into well-coordinated supply chains, limiting access to wider markets and their capacity to respond adequately and timely to additional demand.

And, while some regions of Sri Lanka can boast of development in terms of infrastructure, schools and health facilities, there are many marginalised areas that still lack the most basic services. This not only creates a disillusioned section of the populace but also severely compromises the opportunities of the residents of such areas.

Future

Fortunately, and as the President noted in his speeches, Sri Lanka’s sickness has been accurately diagnosed and mitigation measures are being rolled out.

Confident in our strengths, and secure in our values, we must strive to embrace the future. We see it already happening not only in our social standards, but of falling crime rates, as families and communities band together to fight alcohol, drugs, and lawlessness, and to give back to their children the safe and innocent childhood they deserve.

In the New Year we must speak directly to our younger generation, because they hold the destiny of our nation in their hands. With all the temptations young people face, it sometimes seems the allure of the permissive society requires superhuman feats of self-control. But the call of the future is too strong, the challenge too great to get lost in the blind alleyways of dissolution, drugs, and despair.

Never has there been a more exciting time to be alive - a time of rousing wonder and heroic achievement. As they said in the film, Back to the Future, “Where we are going, we don’t need roads.” Well, today physicists peering into the infinitely small realms of subatomic particles find reaffirmations of religious faith. Astronomers build a space telescope that can see to the edge of the universe and possibly back to the moment of creation.

Prosperity

Therefore, let us speak of our deepest longing for the future - to leave our children a land that is ethical, free and just. We know that peace follows in freedom’s path and conflicts erupt when the will of the people is denied. So we must prepare for peace by bolstering prosperity, liberty, and democracy however and wherever we can.

What we accomplish the New Year, in each challenge we face, will set our course for the balance of the decade, indeed for the remainder of the century. After all, we’ve done nicely so far. So, let no one say that this nation cannot reach the destiny of our dreams. Sri Lanka believes, Sri Lanka is ready, Sri Lanka can win the race to the future - and we shall.

The Sri Lankan Dream is a song of hope that rings throughout the year. Vivid, tender music that warms our hearts when the least among us aspire to the greatest things - to venture a daring enterprises; to unearth new beauty in music, literature, and art or to discover a new universe inside a tiny silicon chip. In this land of dreams fulfilled, where greater dreams may be imagined, nothing is impossible, no victory is beyond our reach, no glory will ever be too great.

So now, it’s up to us, all of us, to prepare Sri Lanka for that day when our work will pale before the greatness of our champions in the 21st century. We shall have to work hard. But let us not doubt our success.

We hope to be worthy of the memory of the victims and the greatness of the war of national liberation. We shall therefore continue their tradition, which is reflected in the values of freedom, culture, resourcefulness and courage. It is common belief that we will be successful. We have self-confidence. We need only add our heartfelt joint efforts. And that is possible, too.

Happy New Year to you, Mother Lanka! Lead us over the stormy weather, guard us and guide us to become a happier and peaceful nation in 2010.