Walking together to restore the old grandeur

Lionel Wijesiri

For nearly three decades, Tiger terrorists fought the government forces in Sri Lanka, once controlling its Northern and Eastern regions. In May 2009, the Sri Lankan military finally crushed the rebels, ending one of Asia's longest-running conflicts. The threat of terrorism abated, and for all Sri Lankans, life began to take an unbelievably good turn. People's aspirations triumphed.

To his credit, President Mahinda Rajapaksa has pressed a point that terrorism must be rooted from our soil completely once-and-for-all, and the people were there to back him. Yet, the President never treated the success as a personal victory. He knew, rather, it was the time for him to turn this success into an opportunity for racial reconciliation, particularly with the Tamil population and the political formation that it leads. The process of dialogue and consensus was set in motion in right earnest. He understood that it is that, and not confrontation, should be the way forward for national politics.

It created the right conditions for the lifting of the emergency, the conduct of the general elections in an atmosphere of mutual trust, and installation of a duly elected government for another term.

In GDP per capita terms, it is ahead of other countries in the South Asian region. The economy started to grow at a higher rate of 8.0 percent in the recent years.

It is common knowledge that the country's private sector is an extraordinary one that has produced many global champions - both individual and corporate - relative to the size of its economy. Planning ahead and having a clear road map while partnering with the private sector could enable more holistic and geographically balanced industrial growth. The government has understood it well. The private sector can bring grounded and realistic knowledge on the best suited locations for industrialization. The role of the government should concentrate on serving as planner and regulator of land use, while the private sector can provide efficient management and infrastructure development.

Agriculture

The breakdowns in international supply commitments for essential food commodities during periods of sharp price spikes, seen both in the run up to the global financial crisis as also lately in the recent past months, have exposed the limitations of globalized world trade as dependable means of access to essential commodities. While at normal times import of an essential food commodity may be more cost effective than its local production; during a sharp price spike due to crop failure or disturbances in major source countries, external trade in the commodity tends to freeze up altogether, jeopardizing food security of countries heavily dependent on imports.

This is why we must place high priority on supporting and promoting adequate agriculture sector output in food grains, dairy, poultry and fish farming.

The government has quite appropriately placed agriculture high in development priority, and one of the main thrusts of Sri Lanka's campaign promoting financial inclusion is to channel adequate credit flows to the agriculture sector. Engagement in agricultural financing is now encouraged for all commercial banks; partnerships between banks and micro-finance institutions to innovate cost saving, risk mitigating and financial service delivery modes suited to needs of farmers in remote rural regions.

Growth management

The global financial crisis also laid bare the perils of unbalanced one sided strategies of economic growth and management. The post-crisis global economy on two track recovery path warrants some shift of emphasis in growth strategy for Sri Lanka, from export led to domestic demand driven growth. To this end the government is steadily expanding social safety net expenditure outlays in annual budgets. Employment and income generation by new private and public sector investments are continually augmenting domestic demand; rise in wage levels for rural labour, and revision in wage structures for workers have also helped underpin domestic demand.

The urgency of supporting emergence of employment generating small and medium scale enterprises has heightened further in the context of recent influx of migrant workers returning from the trouble-hit Middle Eastern countries.

The needed higher emphasis on the domestic demand driven component of growth does not of course negate the need for supporting our export sector.

Sri Lanka will need to continue with her pursuit of export led growth. As demand in our traditional markets in the West will take time to recover to pre-crisis levels, we shall need to look for geographical diversification of our exports to newer markets including the fast growing emerging economies in South and East Asia. Strategists and policy makers in the government are already cognizant of these, and are designing policies and work plans accordingly; a substantial number of commitments of favourable access for our exports have already been obtained in trade negotiations with some fast growing economies in East and South Asia including India and China. Despite the risk factors from recent events in the global scene like the unrest in Middle East and the sequence of earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster in Japan, Sri Lanka is well on course for near eight percent real GDP growth of broad-based, inclusive nature in FY11.

South African experience

In 1994, at the dawn of a democratic era in South Africa, a group of 35 South African leaders from a wide spectrum of their society gathered together to probe their country's present, and to consider possible futures. They wanted to create a space and language for open, reflective and reasoned strategic conversation among South Africans, about possible futures for the country, and the opportunities, risks and choices these futures present.

They came up with three scenarios.

‘Walk Apart’ was a scenario where extremists trump moderates because of political factionalism and weak, unaccountable government at the Centre.

‘Walk Behind’ was a scenario in which the state intervenes strongly in the economy; but the results are mixed due to lack of service delivery breeding a sense of complacency and dependency among the citizenry.

‘Walk Together’ presumed a government that encourages an active citizenry which feels empowered to do things for themselves, but sufficiently united not to get in each other's way. It was a scenario of give-and-take where citizens’ groups, business, labour and broader civil society actively engages with the state and form partnerships to improve performance in the public sector.

As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, I believe, that the flags which would signal the 'Walk Together’ scenario is coming into play; the flag being a rising of inter-communal harmony. Without unity of spirit - or an enhanced sense of patriotism - if you wish to call it that - our economic prospects are bleak. Out of this mutual respect for each other, there will obviously be a genuine fusion of lifestyles of the various groups. This is true integration.

Sri Lanka, one of the fast-developing countries in Asia, now has a national agenda for progress. Both the government and the Opposition must join hands in this great, gargantuan task.

They will be letting down their nation if they carry forward with their personal agenda against each other and ignore the people’s hopes and aspirations.

It’s easy to complicate matters and aggravate confrontations, but difficult to act wisely and with equanimity, surmount hurdles and take the nation to new heights.