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Wednesday, 15 August 2012

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The sham and the real in development

President Mahinda Rajapaksa's visits to the provinces currently, may not be having any surprises for him on account of his long years in politics, but for many of those who are concerned with this country's development experience, these excursions are most revelatory. Principally, they would enable the observer to separate the sham from the real in what is being done in the name of development.

A few days back the President was compelled, in Kegalle, to detail to the personnel and agencies concerned with grassroots development in Lanka's rural areas, how they should go about their duties, because, apparently, the development effort had gone awry in the areas concerned. Whereas one would have expected hard and coordinated work on the part of grassroots personnel engaged in implementing development projects, this, apparently, was not the case and the President had to take on himself the responsibility of guiding these sections.

It should not come as a surprise if development in the truest sense is just not happening to the desired extent in the provinces in particular, since 'development work' is sometimes fragmentary and disjointed. Besides, it should not be considered out of the ordinary if quite a few state agencies are sleeping on the job. If development work was proceeding apace, and our officials were up and about, the President would not have felt obliged to remind the state personnel concerned about what was due from them. However, the factual position is that things are, often, 'at sixes and sevens' on the 'development' front.

Compounding the bottlenecks in development is the tendency on the part of some politicians and state personnel to announce development projects with great fanfare but not see them through. This prompted the President to observe, while on a visit to Galle, that foundation stones should not be laid for development programmes unless and until the necessary funds are found to fully implement them.

Going by this event, the predilection seems to be great on the part of some politicians to announce grandiose projects but not go through with the implementation part of the programmes, may be due to an inadequacy of funds or because they only intend to seek some publicity. It could also very well be the case that they are engaged in a deception game. Apparently, there is more than meets the eye on this country's development front. The issues just outlined indicate that the scope of current discussions on development in this country, if there is substantial discourse at all, needs to be vastly expanded to cover the multifarious but not easily observable grassroots bottlenecks in the development process. To be sure, there is unprecedented development in the area of infrastructure and the people are benefited a great deal by it, but the challenge is to truly empower the people at the rural level in particular.

In other words, people need to be at the centre of development. It is to indicate this that the President is taking it on himself to visit the provinces and indicating to the personnel 'on the ground' how the people could be further aided. Hopefully, state personnel and politicians would get this message with utmost clarity and go about the task of initiating development which is truly human-centred.

Unfortunately, the human-centred nature of development is very often forgotten. We in Sri Lanka have been witness to numerous grandiose projects over the decades, purportedly developmental in character, which bring prestige and vainglory to politicians but mean very little to the people. Besides, slums are made to uncomfortably co-exist with skyscrapers, indicating that governments have got their priorities wrong. At this juncture, it is vitally important that attention is paid to the important aspect of bringing people to the heart of the development process. More information is needed on how material advancement is affecting the people. For instance, is wealth-generation benefiting the wider masses? If not what could be done to enable the people to gain concretely from the process? Development programmes should also be closely monitored to ensure that they get off the ground and prove assets to the country, rather than damn themselves as money-gobbling white elephants.

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One way of linking VET and higher education is through what the UK calls a foundation degree and Australia calls an associate degree - higher education qualifications which are offered by VET providers and which provide for specific skill development, broad vocational knowledge and clear guaranteed pathways into undergraduate degree programmes. Both in the UK and Australia, these qualifications are designed in consultation with industry and offer flexible entry requirements,

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