Celebrating International Year of Cooperatives

Nalaka GUNAWARDENE and Vindana ARIYAWANSA

‘Chori Chori’ - 1956

The United Nations, in which Sri Lanka is a state member, has designated 2012 as the International Year of Co-operatives (IYC). This is an acknowledgement by the world community that co-operatives are an important force that can drive the economy and respond to social change. They are also resilient to the global economic crisis and are successful businesses creating jobs in many sectors.

The broad definition of a co-operative is any business entity owned and operated by a group of individuals for their own mutual benefit -- it can be producers, traders, consumers, artists or professionals peddling any kind of goods or services. In today’s complex world, there are many different kinds of co-operatives, some of them with members who are geographically scattered over a vast area but networked via the Internet.

Today we salute the co-operative concept and movement with a few related questions.

1. While loose cooperative arrangements have existed for much of history, Britain is considered the home of modern-day co-ops. In 1844, a group of 28 weavers and other artisans in a certain English town set up a society to open their own store selling food items they could not otherwise afford. They were also first to articulate the principles for such self-help groups. Within a decade, over 1,000 cooperative societies appeared across Britain. What is this town, now considered the birthplace of the modern co-op movement?

Nelson Mandela

2. Established in 1895, the International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) is the apex organisation for co-operatives worldwide. In which European city is the global headquarters of ICA?

3. The Sri Lanka Cooperative Movement celebrated its centenary in July 2011. In addition to the multi-purpose co-operative societies, there are many thematically focused co-ops in Sri Lanka, e.g. hospital, housing, transport, school, youth and for various crops in the agricultural sector. According to the Department of Co-operative Development, over six million Lankans hold membership of a co-op society. The British rulers introduced co-op concept to promote thrift and savings among the rural poor. The Cooperative Movement in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) began in 1906 at which town in the Kandy district, before it was legalized in 1911?

4. When it comes to co-operative societies of agricultural producers, the main benefit to its members is that a number of small scale producers or small-holders can pool their produce and engage in collective bargaining for better prices and other terms of trade. In 2011, a cooperative of rubber smallholders in Sri Lanka became the first such group in Sri Lanka to win ‘certification’ for its latex from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in the United States, which promotes responsible management of the world’s forests and forest plantations. FSC certification, granted for the 2011-2016 period after rigorous investigations, ensures global recognition and better prices for rubber made by this cooperative’s member producers. What is this path-breaking society’s name?

Alexandre Dumas

5. ‘The Three Musketeers’ (original title in French ‘Les Trois Mousquetaires’) is a novel by the 19th Century French writer Alexandre Dumas. It was first serialised in a newspaper in 1844. The story is set in the 17th Century and recounts the adventures of a young man named d’Artagnan after he leaves home to travel to Paris, to join the Musketeers of the Guard, the a fighting company of the military branch of the French monarchy. The three musketeers of the title are actually friends of the protagonist, inseparable friends who live by the motto “all for one, one for all” (in original Latin, it was: ‘Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno’). What were the names of these three?

6. ‘Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno’ is a Latin phrase that means “One for all, all for one” -- the motto of Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers. But it is also the traditional motto of which European country that has a long history of collective governance?

7. Which well known art historian said: “Nations are made by artists and poets, not by traders and politicians. Art contains in itself the deepest principles of life, the truest guide to the greatest art - the art of living.”

8. This Hungarian artist and animated film director dealt with ambiguous or impossible scenes, and is often held in the same esteem as Escher. His works include ‘Corner House’ and a Möbius Strip of hands flipping pages called ‘Books’. He was born in 1951 in Kecskemét, Hungary, and has created a large collection of etchings and illustrations that contain anamorphoses (distorted projections or perspectives that require special devices or a specific vantage point to see properly) and optical illusions. He has also directed seven films, the most recent being ‘Time Sights’ in 2004. Who is he?

9. Who was he? Born in 1898 at Thiruvalla in Kerala, southern India, and educated in botany and zoology in Calcutta, he became a junior professor in his native Kerala. He settled down in Sri Lanka, where he taught botany in several schools before retiring in 1959 as a teacher at Thurstan College, Colombo.

It was his post-retirement activism that he is best remembered for: free thinker, rationalist and psychologist, and as founder President of the Ceylon Rationalists Association in 1960. Based on his intensive scientific investigations, he showed that there was no objective truth behind such claims and beliefs in all types of alleged psychic, para-psychological and spiritual phenomena including astrology. He lectured and write widely to teach people to go by reason and scientific verification, not by supernatural claims or superstitions. He died in 1978.

10. The International Gandhi Peace Prize, named after Mahatma Gandhi, is awarded annually by the Government of India given to ‘individuals and institutions for their contributions towards social, economic and political transformation through non-violence and other Gandhian methods’. The Prize in 1995 to mark the 125th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, and the first awardee was Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, and the subsequent winners have included Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Václav Havel. Who is the only Lankan to have received this coveted honour, when he became the second winner in 1996?

11. UFO is a well known acronym which expands as Unidentified Flying Objects – a basket term for all sightings that cannot be explained by known phenomena for that place and time. The abbreviation UXO is used in relation to explosive weapons (bombs, bullets, shells, grenades, land mines, naval mines, etc.) that did not explode when they were first released, and still pose the risk of detonation years or even decades later. In this context, what does UXO stand for?

12. The Song of Ceylon (38 mins, 1934) is a well known British documentary film that documented cultural life and religious customs of the Lankan people and how modernization was slowly changing their ways of life. One Ceylonese critic called it the film that has “best projected the image of the country, the soul of its people, and the endless beauty of the landscape with a subtle touch of magic for the world to see and admire.” This black and white cinematic creation was produced by John Grierson for the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit (later the British GPO Film Unit). Who was the film’s director and cameraman?

13. The Song of Ceylon has stood the test of time and is still admired worldwide as one of the finest documentary films made. While it was largely an enterprise of British film makers, a key role was played by a Ceylonese who was at the time island’s finest still photographer, and knew his country intimately.

This man accompanied the film’s director and crew almost everywhere during the seven-week shoot. Later, it was his voice that narrated the documentary. When this individual died in 1944, the film’s director said in tribute: “Without him I don’t think Song of Ceylon would have been what it is. For here was a man who knew Ceylon as few men did, and he was in touch with the avant-garde cinema of those days and he knew what the documentary people were doing.” Who was this man?

14. In 1941, responding to the threat of rising Japanese naval power in the Indian Ocean, Britain’s Royal Navy started developing a secret naval base in the southernmost island of Addu Atoll, which is also the southernmost island of the Maldives, then a British protectorate. The British built large oil tanks, a harbour as well as an airstrip (later upgraded to an airport). For many months, the Japanese and other outsiders did not know about this base, always referred to by its code name ‘Port T’. In 1957, the base was transferred to the Royal Air Force and was intermittently used until 1976, when the British withdrew completely. What is the name of this island, which now gives the name to the second international airport of the Maldives, and being developed for tourist and garment industries?

15. This 1930s movie is considered the forerunner of all the screwball comedies of that era, characterised by fast-paced repartee, farcical situations, escapist themes and plot lines involving courtship and marriage. It was the inspiration for the 1956 Raj Kapoor Hindi movie ‘Chori Chori’. As of 2011, this Hollywood classic is the only movie in Oscar history to win best picture, best director, best actor, best actress, best cinematography and best screenplay for the same movie. What is its name?