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Saturday, 2 October 2010

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Modern fairy tales

Sri Lankans are good storytellers. They have been traditionally good dreamers too. This art of dreaming and story telling has been perfected today by politicians. In fact their sayings and doings, if recorded in print would fill several bulky volumes much larger than Pansiya Panas Jatakaya.

They could also rival the wit and humour of Nasrudeen, Mark Twain or our own Andare and Mahadena Muttta.

It would be worthwhile to record these stories, the achievements of our modern day heroes. Unlike in the days of yore much effort is not needed for it. One has only to go through the past newspapers or rummage through the recordings of the electronic media to find them.

The media has duly recorded these dreams. Whether it be building cable railways to scale Sri Pada, monorail from Colombo to suburbs to ease traffic congestion, a lovers' park to entice the youth and produce world beauty queens, a parallel road to the Colombo-Matara road further inland to avoid damage from tsunamis, the use of Dutch-built canals for passenger and goods transport, the construction of flyovers at busy road intersections in the Greater Colombo area, the construction of the world's tallest Buddha statue or flying the world's largest kite such dreams and tales have all been faithfully recorded and the gullible public have enjoyed them with hope and disbelief. Incidentally, flying kites figuratively rather than literally is a favourite pastime of our politicians.

Dreaming, specially day-dreaming is not bad. In fact, it was through such day dreams that mankind has progressed so far. For example, imagine where the world would have been if Faraday didn't dream of electric lights and the Wright brothers gave up dreaming flying through air.

The only difference is that our politicians are endowed with only the faculty of dreaming and not the faculty of perseverance to make dreams a reality. At best some of the projects dreamt take off with a bang to be abandoned midway. It has been a favourite pastime of the media to highlight some of these lapses which occur at every level from the national to the provincial and local. One could notice how the media relish to display foundation stones of buildings or projects with overgrown weeds covering them or half finished construction that resemble more the ruins of Polonnaruwa.

There is a culture of abandonment that has grown up throughout the years. Neither the public nor the media has pursued these matters in earnest. In fact both have become gullible partners in this process of abandonment.

The culture of abandonment could be further seen in the return of unused foreign aid and annual financial allocations. The abandonment of this culture of abandonment is a sine qua non for accelerated development which could take the country forward or else it would be another dream unfulfilled.

Speaking of foreign aid one has to keep in mind that most of it comes in the form of loans for which the present and future generations will have to pay. Hence, they should be prudently and expeditiously made use of it. To use them for foreign jaunts or tamashas at five-star resorts is a crime that the public could ill afford. In this respect the blame should also be shared by local and foreign NGOs too.

What is required is not to stop dreaming but to dream more rationally and pursue them in earnest with commitment and dedication so that they would be brought to fruition without undue delay.


Treating the drunk and the sick

Government has decided to recover hospital expenses incurred on the sick, if the sickness is certified by doctors as an effect of consuming liquor. Good, all teetotallers would applaud. How could the government ensure that the patient pays? Will he be kept in hospital till he pays? If he has no means to pay will he be incarcerated?

A majority who fall into this sad state are poor working people in the estates, cities and villages. The affluent classes would patronise private sector hospitals most. Will the new regulations turn out to be anti-poor in reality?

Research, technology vital for development

Research and technology development is essential for the development of the country. In the plantation sector, vast strides have been made through the adoption of technologies generated by the four crop research institutes.

Full Story

The Morning Inspection

International Adult Day yesterday but it need not be so

As I wrote the world was celebrating ‘Children’s Day’. By the time you read this, the world would have lapsed into its usual childless state of being, i.e. if child were giant today in terms of media presence tomorrow,

Full Story

On My Watch

Optimism key word of Ed Miliband

New Labour is rubbish and deserves to be buried sooner rather than later. It is now the Labour of Optimism. That is the message of the new leader of the British Labour Party Ed Miliband,

Full Story

 

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