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. |