Shall we say ‘Thank You’ to the public sector?

Ask any economist in Sri Lanka about restructuring and how to go about it, and you are bound to be told about the public sector being inefficient, about being corrupt, about being bloated and that ‘restructuring’ would correct these flaws, these obstacles to ‘economic take-off’ (take-off where to, they will not tell us, like they won’t tell us that those that have taken off have nose-dived and all but taken the earth down with it).

Some of this is true, however. The public sector has a lot of dead-weight. There are inefficiencies. Corruption. Like the private sector, one might add. Still, there are redeeming features of the public sector that these ‘Restructurists’ will either footnote or be silent about in abject deference to the masters of restructuring in the World Bank and IMF.

Take doctors for instance. They make money. That bugs some people, I know. Medical students who in their first year talk about the services they want to render to fellow human beings, talk about securing a good PP (private practice) by the time they are ready to graduate. It’s the same in other fields of course. So yes, docs make bucks. But even those who earn a lot of money from PP, do the hard hours in Government hospitals, seeing hundreds of patients every day, serving in the most difficult areas of the country. That’s public service and for paltry remuneration. There are also doctors who don’t do PP, not because they can’t, but they don’t want to.

What got me thinking about the State sector is a photograph I received this morning with the title ‘Ela Service Eka’ (Great Service). It’s of a policeman knee-deep in flood water, directing traffic even as he is about to get drenched by a passing vehicle. I don’t know who took the picture, and I hope he/she contacts me through this newspaper for due acknowledgment. It is a great picture quite apart from its relevance to this particular essay. It is clear that the policeman is not ignorant of the fact that he’s going to get drenched. This is duty-consciousness. No. It’s more than that and I don’t think a term has been coined to describe it all.

I’ve written about traffic police officers before; how they suffer the dust, the noise, the smoke, the abuse and run the risk of being run over every single moment they are on the road, day in and day out, year after year. These are no sunny days. We are talking floods here. I can’t helping thinking of all those people who are hard on police officers, those who love to insult them, sneer at them, talk down to/about them etc. I was thinking, ‘will any such person have what it takes to do one fraction of the service rendered by these police officers?’

I have seen emails which poke fun at the tag ‘Asia’s Miracle’, but have noted that those who author them and pass them around haven’t stopped to ask how Sri Lanka survived two insurrections, a 30 year war, a tsunami and many natural disasters over the past 40 years (that’s over 300,000 lives lost by the way and millions of rupees worth of money spent on their education, health etc gone to ash or dust).

How did we get over the tsunami? How did we get over floods and droughts? Part of it is due to a key element in our national ethos that is traceable (to the extent that such things are traceable) to Buddhism and the concepts of daana (giving) and upekkha (equanimity). We didn’t need any NGOs or UN agencies to tell us what should be done, and considering how such outfits have been operating and continue to operate in places like Haiti, we should congratulate ourselves that we are still independent. We recovered also because of our public sector, which, despite inefficiencies and corruption, stood up to be counted, again and again, whenever it was necessary to stand up.

Today, if it happens to be raining hard when you get on the road to go home after work, if the roads happen to be flooded, if traffic is slow, check out what the police officers are up to. Check out what the Army, Navy and Air Force personnel are doing.

Natural disasters/calamities are not just about managing traffic under terrible conditions. It is also about saving lives. It also entails post-disaster-moment work. Once the rain stops and the roads stop looking like rivers and become the familiar entities that take us to work, to school, to weddings, funerals and other functions, all does not become sunshiny and pretty. Floods displace people. So too tsunamis. There’s the displaced to look after. The sick to be attended to. The houses to be repaired. The dry rations to be distributed. The hot meals to be cooked.

It is not enough to forego a lunch packet and make sure a less fortunate person doesn’t go hungry. It is about ensuring they get three solid meals a day, that the children can attend school, that relief such as medicine, food, water, clothes and books get through so that no one is left behind. Who does all this? Who coordinates, who distributes, who thinks that which has to be thought, who plans, who corrects flaws? The public servant! Whether it is a Divisional Secretary, a lesser regional official, a Grama Niladhari, a Serviceman, a teacher, a principal or a police officer, it’s all done by State sector employees and NOT BECAUSE IT IS IN THEIR JURISDICTION!

Someone’s getting wet out there and not because he/she doesn’t have a house to call his/her own. You might have seen him/her. If you did, did you say thank you, I wonder? I did not. I will, in future.

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