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Cooperatives as cures for the market's ills

Those readers of the sixties and seventies generation cannot be faulted for thinking of the Cooperative Movement with some mixed feelings. In those times, when market forces were on a tight leash, it was to the local cooperative store that one turned for one's daily provisions. The 'Cooperative' was always there for the consumer but the task of acquiring one's essentials from these institutions, whose interiors were invariably 'suffocatory' and stuffy, proved agonizing for most citizens. Besides, quite a few of these establishments were hit by financial and corruption scandals which tended to alienate the consumer from them.

Those times have gone down in the post-independence economic history of this country as the 'queues and quotas era.' It is a misnomer to characterize those years as pertaining to a 'closed economy' as such, but the average consumer certainly did not have much of a choice when it came to satisfying his needs. With severe restrictions on the import of consumables and other essential requirements, coupled with tight exchange control regulations, the economic environment was seemingly stifling and the grouses of the consumer were understandable.

In those not so promising times for the average consumer, the neighbouring cooperative store or outlet stood out like an oasis of sorts in the dreary desert, despite its numerous blemishes and shortcomings. What was so positive about those times was that everyone was assured of his or her plate of 'daily rice', making good the election boast of a Prime Minister of those days that she would go to any lengths to keep the masses fed, even if it meant 'importing rice from the moon.'

Come 1977 and the economic policy of the state underwent an explosive revolutionary change. With a seeming suddenness which was staggering for the man of the street, almost all economic controls were relaxed and Sri Lanka entered what is referred to as the 'open economy era.' Almost everything a consumer's heart desired was there for the buying and at a price, from grapes and apples to the most dazzling and alluring attire, sporting the most prestigious brand names, and the best of shiny cars from the busiest factories of the West and East Asia.

The 'open economy', in other words, was a rich man's delight. If one had the means nothing could get in the way of one satisfying one's heart's desires. But a critique that was trenchantly leveled at the liberalized economy, and which still holds water, is that it does not ensure the economic well being of the poorer sections of society. It is said that when a one time Minister of a Leftist persuasion, who was in the administration which regulated the 'closed economy', was told, at the height of the 'open economy' in the mid-seventies, that people no longer had to search garbage bins for a morsel of food now, since the times of hardship were no more, the former Minister had quipped that such searching 'would prove futile today, because even the bins did not have food remnants'. Such were the economic rigours, apparently, which the liberalized economy introduced for the poor of the land when it manifested itself in the seventies.

The quotable anecdote illustrates the seeming extremes of economic policy. It just would not do to rush from one policy extreme to the other. In these times, when the economy could be viewed with the wisdom that time brings, it could be seen that a middle course in the handling of the economy is best. While economic controls should not prove stifling and be intolerant of economic and business entrepreneurship, we cannot swerve to the other extreme and imagine that the 'market' would take care of everything.

All this drives home the advisability of persisting with our humble cooperative establishments and with the time-tested Sathosa, which has proved so handy in our time of need. Prices would have proved unbearable, for instance, for the less privileged and wealthy, at the time of the National New Year in April, if Sathosa did not prevail and deliver the goods.

Some satisfaction could be derived from the fact that the Mahinda Rajapaksa administration's commitment to the 'Cooperative' is remaining and that political leaders are continuing to pledge their allegiance to the system. Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne, only the other day went on record that 'internal trade could prosper through the cooperative system.' The government would, indeed, do well to sustain cooperation. The law of the wild cannot be permitted to penetrate the human sphere.

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