A man with diverse ideas

Lalit Godamunne has accomplished much in life. He has always had a sense of individuality and with his acumen he has chiseled an image of himself in society. It is the image of a man who wielded considerable power during his career. A real trailblazer, he had his own mind and opted for his choice of vocation without following the beaten path and didn’t look back. Reminiscences of Gold met up with Godamunne who has had great foresight and etched his name in business and charity circles in the island.

“I was born in Ampitiya where we still have our ancestral home. It dates back to 1818 A.D. when my great grandfather had to move there after the Kandyan rebellion against the British. He had led the rebels in Hewa Hata and when the rebellion failed they captured him and his army. He was condemned but was not beheaded. He was ordered to report to the British captain in Kandy every day. They were then living in the village of Godamunne, about ten miles from Kandy town. Our ancestral home there was acquired by the British and converted into a fortress. Therefore, he settled down in Ampitiya on the land the Godamunne family had been given by Keerthi Sri Rajasinghe. The monks in the Suduhumpola temple and Sagama temple were all Godamunne family members and they had been teaching royalty. So when the British threw them out of the Godamunne village, he moved to Ampitiya and built a new house. That was the house where I was born. The house is still there and I’ve given it to my son who maintains it now,” said Godamunne.

Public service

“I schooled at Trinity College. I sat for the SSC at Trinity and then I moved to S. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia, from where I did my university entrance examination. We were the first batch at Colombo that was moved to Peradeniya in 1952. I followed a special degree course in Economics in Peradeniya and graduated in 1956. After graduation I wondered if I should follow 'the beaten track' of all my colleagues in joining the public service. I always had this yearning to do something or learn something off the beaten track and that was what attracted me to the private sector. I didn’t go behind anybody asking for a job but I did a search on my own.

There was the Ferguson’s directory or the red book published originally at Lake House which listed out all the big companies that were operating in Sri Lanka. I picked out four or five of the top companies.

Two of them were petroleum companies – Shell Company and Standard Vacuum and then I picked up two trading companies - Colombo Commercial Company and Whittal Boustead. I was called for an interview by all four companies and finally I decided to join the Colombo Commercial Company. I worked there as a Personal Manager till 1968. By that time I had become a member of the Institute of Personal Management."

In 1968, Godamunne joined a new organization which was established under the purview of the Industrial Development Board. It was an ILO funded project and the new Unit was called the Management Development and Productivity Centre. He was one of the pioneers who was instrumental in setting up training programmes of the new organization and served as a Director there. With the change of government in the early 1970s, the new unit was taken away from the Industrial Development Board and set up as a separate business centre and was renamed as the National Institute of Business Management. In 1971 Godamunne got a scholarship for postgraduate training. “I went to Switzerland to a place called ‘Institute of Management Education and Development.’ It was one of the best in Europe at that time and was very expensive, but I had the ILO Fellowship. It was a very intensive diploma course in Business Management. I had never worked so hard not even for my degree. So I completed my training and did my diploma and they enrolled me to do the doctorate. But I came back since I had no money to do the doctorate. And at that time Sri Lanka had very strict foreign exchange controls and it was difficult to transfer money from the country."

In early 1976, the Minister of Industry Subasinghe offered him the chairmanship of the Tire Corporation. He refused it but once again he was asked to take the post of Chairmanship of the Hardware Corporation.

"He is a wonderful gentleman. I just couldn’t refuse him. He respected me as a public servant and not as a political appointee. " While continuing his work at the NIBM, he worked as the Chairman of the Hardware Corporation."

In 1979 he was appointed the Secretary General of the Mahaweli Authority.

"It was one of the best jobs I have had. We could accomplish a lot thanks to two people: Gamini Dissanayake, the Minister of Mahaveli Development, and Mr. Panditharatne, Chairman of Mahaweli Authority as both of them understood how to keep politics and management separately. They laid down the policy but did not poke their fingers into every detail. They appreciated our professionalism."

Godamunne left the authority by end of 1988 and was offered a job with the World Food Programme in Rome. “First I started off as a senior advisor. They posted me to Pakistan and then from Islamabad after two and a half years I was transferred to Rome. And then I served as the coordinator in charge of monitoring and evaluation of all their programmes in several countries. And then I was posted to Africa as the country director in Eritrea, a new country created in 1993.”

Non-profit organization

With his vast experience, Godamunne was full of innovative ideas and there were other like-minded people who could share his enthusiasm. The birth of an organization called IDEAS (Initiatives in Development of Entrepreneur Approaches and Strategies) is a result of such collective efforts. Several individuals who had reached the zenith of their professional careers in the public and private sector got together to form a non-profit organization to promote business skills of the underprivileged strata of the society. Among this group of individuals were Godamunne, Dr. S. Tillekeratne, Prof. K.K.Y. Perera, Ronni Weerakoon, Sakuntala Kuruppu, Nanda Abeywickrema, and Manel Abeysekera. "We were all senior people with a lot of experience in diverse fields. We wanted to help people set up small businesses to stand on their own feet.

At the beginning IDEAS did not have capital so we started with our private contributions. Initially we had a meeting once a month and looked at various applications for funding. We came across very enterprising people, and we helped them with working capital, basic equipment, and technical advice. As our work expanded, we had to find new sources of income. So we thought of doing personal consultancy on our own steam and contributing our earnings to IDEAS. Fortunately we were able to collaborate with INFOTECH and establish a consultancy service in 1999," explained Godamnne. Infotechs IDEAS Pvt. Ltd. is a multi-disciplinary development assistance consultancy company which provides consultancy and project management services in Sri Lanka and the South Asian region.

When the Tsunami struck Sri Lanka in 2004, IDEAS responded by providing immediate relief to the victims. However, as a long-term rehabilitation strategy, IDEAS did not deviate from its original plan of getting people to help themselves. They selected a small village of Duwe Modara in Kosgoda which was devastated by the tsunami and started a housing project with local and foreign assistance. People were provided financial and technical assistance to build their own houses.

Assistance also provided to help young people to start their own businesses. Projects were also initiated to help the community as a whole. Lalit Godamunne is still a very busy man heavily involved in diverse activities. Last year he was elected as the President of the Coconut Growers’ Association.