REALITY IS THE ARBITER OF EVERYTHING

The opposite editorial page today carries an article by Swapan Dasgupta, who was a member of the Indian Bharatiya Janatha Party delegation that was in Sri Lanka on invitation by the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies. Mr. Dasgupta takes an outsider’s view of the situation in the Northern Province, and it is clear that he is amazed by the fact that there is little resonance among the Tamil speaking public -- except the politicians -- for the implementation of the 13th Amendment in its so called pristine form with police powers intact.

If there is little appetite on the ground for the Provincial Councils in the way the ‘framers’ of the 13th Amendment intended, the predictable response to the proposed amendments now seen, is highly questionable. The dissenters say that the government which needed either a two thirds majority or the concurrence of all Provincial Councils to enact legislation that could take away powers of the PCs, can now do so with a simple majority, if the intended proposals are made into law.

These are tenuous arguments. The fact is that as Dasgupta writes, there is little appetite on the ground for far reaching changes, and for anything other than the peace and the development that is now seen in the North. He accurately seems to put his finger on the ‘casus belli’ - the fact is that the politicians want some things badly for their own reasons, and so they say there is disaffection about ‘land grabs’, and this that or the other, but the reality on the ground is quite different.

Legally, nothing is being taken away from the Provincial Councils. If the majority of the PCs do not want certain powers to be retained these provinces could vote en bloc and mount resistance to any contemplated changes to the Provincial List. Then the government should get a two thirds majority to pass such legislation.

There is no violence done therefore to the concept of power devolution though the analysts and the spin doctors with vested interests predictably say that the PCs are being shorn of all powers before the Provincial Council election for the North.

Dasgupta reserves his choicest epithets to those who say to anybody who sees the reality on the ground that they are ‘stooges of the Rajapaksas.’ In which case, he says, the Tamil businessman in Colombo who said that the Tamils control 70 per cent of the business in the city should be a stooge of the Rajapaksas as well.

There is such a wide gulf between the reality and the prejudice fuelled perceptions on the outside, particularly in parts of India and in the so called international community. The Provincial Councils are not being shorn of powers at all -- they are being right-sized to fall in line with the reality on the ground which is perceptibly different from the time the 13th Amendment was introduced along with parippu droppings from the air.

People will get used to the idea that reality changes everything. Look at the North-East merger. Now, there are very few who say that the merger of the North and the East and the option to merge two provinces if the provincial administrations are consenting, is viable.

The worst detractors of the government are ready to concede that this issue is not of concern to them; that this part of the proposed amendment to 13 A does not bother them. Why so? It is because the North East merger was abrogated many years ago and people got used to that reality.

The reality is self starting, and self propellant. This is the pith and essence of what Dasguptha says as well, and it is best not forgotten that he is a member of the India BJP opposition who therefore is responsible for a large swathe of the Indian electorate and who perchance may be in the Indian government very soon. All that can be said is that the reactions to the proposed changes to the 13th Amendment are premature. They will surely be muted when the full import of the reality hits.