Another resounding ‘first’ for Sri Lanka

Close on the heels of Sri Lanka overcoming the seemingly gargantuan task of defeating LTTE terror, it has scored another resounding ‘first’; this time on the human development front. As should be well known by now, Sri Lanka has been placed first in South Asia in terms of human development in the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2011 titled, ‘Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All’. Equally notable is the fact that it ranks 97th in the world with regard to the same index. This stands at 0.691, while Norway’s reads 0.943; the first with regard to human development worldwide.

Some of the principal indices where Sri Lanka has scored heavily, considered in compiling its human development ranking are: life expectancy at birth (74.9), expected years of schooling (12.7) and Gross National Income Per Capita (US $ 4,943). All these and more indices tell us a wonderful story about a country on the rebound, reviving steadily from years of carnage and destruction triggered by the LTTE, which was prepared to savage everything on its path to its elusive goal. However, just two years after the LTTE was done away with, Sri Lanka is recovering awesomely and making-up remarkably for the 30 year blight which was forced upon it.

These achievements are a tribute to the abilities of the political leadership and those of the economic managers of this country. While parts of Europe have entered a Winter of Deep Discontent, from the viewpoint of economic management, and are crying out to be bailed out, and when even the more buoyant economies of Asia are not emerging front rankers in terms of human development, Sri Lanka could be said to be an exemplar of the correct combination of socio-economic policies. We have a long way to go before proclaiming ourselves as being in the developed countries bracket, but we seem to be heading steadily in that direction, provided our policy framework remains the correct one and policy implementation is carried out apace.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa made some thought-provoking points in relation to providing Sri Lanka greater opportunities to forge ahead on the development front recently, when he told the international community that the holding of the Commonwealth Games in this country in 2018, would act as a further catalyst of growth. That is, the holding of the Games here would be an important fillip to growth by helping to energize the productive sectors of the economy. This happened in Malaysia and could replicate itself in this country too. It is important, therefore, that developing countries are provided opportunities and incentives to keep their economies in fine trim. Hopefully, Sri Lanka’s efforts to host the next Commonwealth Games would be evaluated in this light and this country provided the additional thrust for sustained dynamic growth.

Meanwhile, constant attention would need to be paid by our policy and decision makers to the factors that have enabled this country to forge ahead on the development path, the daunting obstacles to progress notwithstanding. One of these is our steadfast commitment to a more social-democratic approach to national development over the years. For instance, social welfarism has never been allowed to die out, although the degree of commitment to this growth model has varied between those administrations which favoured an out and out neo-liberal approach to material advancement and those that came into being after 1994, which tended to be more social democratic in their development options. Nevertheless, even the more rightist of governments never veered away completely from social welfarism and the advisability of having stuck to this policy seems to be in the process of being proved now as never before. Our achievements on the human development front, bear this out, for instance.

Therefore, the policy of developing our human resources and of meeting the essential needs of the people should never be diluted. Mere growth is no development. The multiplication of material goods and services is a pointer to growth but this is not development by any means. For development to be achieved, growth should combine with redistributive justice and this should be the cornerstone of our development process. We need to forge ahead within these parameters.