Nine-point-five theses for a new Sri Lanka

YOUTH: new hope – Pic by Shehan Gunasekara

WE HOLD THE TRUTH TO BE SELF-EVIDENT. That Sri Lanka is still a sovereign state despite power-hungry eyes watching us. And its people are paramount over political playbooks despite the worst efforts of its would-be despots and woeful demagogues. It should be obvious who is intended.

So Sri Lanka goes to the polls in a little over a fortnight, swinging between an insidious ‘heaven-gate’ and a not-so-imaginary ‘hell-gate’. 

On the one hand, a smooth-talking possibly populist demagogue with crooked colleagues in the most corrupt high places who’s gone from young pretender to crown prince in two shakes of a clenched fist. He’s been promising peace with justice and death to the drug addicts and other denizens that his political dynasty – if not his powerful dad – created in the first place. 

On the other, a hardly eloquent self-professed disciplinarian: the erstwhile strongman-bureaucrat with a long shadow reincarnated as a national saviour with a short memory as regards alleged war crimes, abductions and assassinations in a reign of State-controlled terror. He has been thumping the table with a shoe à la Nikita Khrushchev on national security while planning to liberate jailed ‘war heroes’ and ‘wrongfully imprisoned’ military intelligence operatives. 

Do Colombo liberals feel like they’ve been caught between Scylla and Charybdis? Is it sandwiched by a rock and a hard place that prompts these tired or trite clichés about “Hobson’s choice” and “the lesser of the two evils”? Shall we dare essay that this is no doubt why the cycle of evil is perpetuated? And that the false dichotomy between easy good and hard bad – or is that the other way around – gives rise to more of same, business as unusual, with the usual suspects?

Even if a third force takes bit-sized chunks out of the green side, or a fourth horseman reins in his budding nemesis on a white charger (I almost said van), the result is likely sealed. And it is arguably in the medium term – in the long run (or the short, if certain grim realities transpire) we are all dead – that incremental change can creep upon this petty pace and entrenched political culture.

Can we take a step or three back, perhaps, to dream a little in the midst of all this realpolitik: maybe a light relief from the visions of the past turned sour in five years and going on six? And would it be idealistic or irresponsible to envisage the emergence of another, altogether lovelier land… a Sri Lanka as it was meant to be: this semi-paradise, the other Eden? Not wishful thinking; but wisdom’s trappings: and wonderfully tactical to boot… 

Cost of living (and dying) in Sri Lanka

Since Independence, some 500,000 lives have been lost to civil war and civic insurrections. In the wake of this, an estimated 3,000,000 islanders have left our home country’s shores in search of not so much greener pastures or the proverbial pot of gold under a brighter rainbow’s arc, but simply safety and security and self at peace. And the nation-state struggles to cope with a 12-15 year cycle of violence (1956, 1971, 1983/1987-89) that sets our blessed isle back by ages… every which way, from widows and orphans to a war wounded manhood in living hell… I hesitate to mention the fiduciary cost…

The bottom line first: Sri Lanka must prioritise its people and their peace over growth, development and progress without justice. (#1) 

It’s the economy, stupid!

By all estimates – and especially the ones that matter (vide the IMF’s downgrading of Sri Lanka’s 2019 economic growth rate to an abysmal 2.7%) – we are possessors of a mediocre and failing economy! If the promising manifestoes of a slew of contenders are anything to go by, deliverance is round the corner. But such salvation, as the experts or even the realists know, is simply round the bend… because they’re unreal, unrealistic and undoable. We’re looking forward without looking around to take stock practically.

Take two: the administrators of our nation-state must get real about consistent polices rather than pandering to their constituents and their egos. (#2)

And it’s getting worse 

Looking back: Sri Lanka’s GDP in 1960 was $ 1 billion. By 2017, it had bulked up to 89 times that figure. But rather than pat ourselves on the back as government propagandists are bound to do – no matter which administration is entrenched, the tendency is to crow about their present prowess and do the dirty over others’ past mismanagement – we must ask how much better we could or should have done. 

Especially if we had been spared the vagaries of a long-drawn-out and crippling war and the vicissitudes of two armed insurgencies, to say nothing of sporadic ethnic tension and related violence like an ominous undertone all along!

A new tripe-bottom-line: Generosity. Decency. Punctuality. (#3) – see also #8 below

We suffer by comparison 

In contrast: Malaysia’s GDP in 1960 was almost twice as much as ours, at $ 1.9 billion. But by last year, it had hit an upper orbit of $ 314 billion. Singapore was in a slightly more stellar league, with its corresponding figures being $ 704 million (1960) and 325 billion (2018). So where did we go wrong?

Lesson: let’s grow our own. Comparisons can be odious. Lusting after being a Singapore is what makes us yearn for a dictator’s rod. (#4)

The poverty of our vision 

Malaysia was a very poor country in its post-independence period, with 49% of its population living below the poverty line as late as 1970. However, it redeemed itself admirably by driving that figure down to 0.4% by 2018. Sri Lanka still suffers 4.1% of its populace to go homeless, hungry, harassed and helpless every day – despite (or perhaps partly because of) the extravagant lifestyles of its elected representatives and economically privileged citizenry hoping to secure their tax bracket with perks galore for them or theirs. Singapore, amazingly, enjoys zero poverty while some of us still fantasise about ‘zero civilian casualties’.

#5 Poorer we will be for all our highfalutin principles if we don’t walk the talk – whether on suspending trickledown in favour of more equitable distribution now, or being truly ‘socialist’ in the sense of being a ‘democratic socialist republic’. 

Debt burden brief

Hold your breath now, it’s 82% of GDP. The bottom line is also that the individual debt burden – the precise personal amount by which you and I are living beyond our means – is a staggering Rs. 600,000+ per person. In 1948, it was nil, null, nada… you get the picture, or as near as goddamn.

#6 We must stop borrowing recklessly today, against the welfare of tomorrow’s citizens. If it means a temporary setback to progress, so be it. At least until we sort out our own shop and store. 

Shy and retiring – or racist and sinister?

No matter the fallout from nationalism on the rampage, the bitter lessons of a broken national back have not filtered down to the next generation. An estimated 70% of youth – defined as those between 15 to 35 years of age and surveyed in 25 districts – don’t have a friend outside their ethnic or religious group. So is true peace in our time a possibility or are we smoking a pipedream? By the look of it, national reconciliation at the head level is a chimera although the head still aches for true justice in peace. 

#7 Youth are not a tabula rasa on which to paint our fading visions. First we must wash them clean of the iniquity of their ancestors before pinning faint hopes on a fresh generation. 

But it’s not simply facts and figures. If we don’t get the fundamentals of nation-building right in this generation, there won’t be a next to pass a baton on to. And it’s in the elusive area of defining and refining a new inclusive pluralistic internationalist national identity that we’re going to be hamstrung. 

Not only because culture, language, ethnicity and religion run so deep-veined in us islanders. But also because we’re beleaguered by unrepentant ultra-nationalists who increasingly boldly (and repeatedly without impunity despite laws to curb their ilk) climb their dunghill to crow about perceived racial superiority or dominance. And if we don’t get this blind spot out of our field of vision or parasite out of our bloodstream, we’re going to be a sick and sorry nation state in the next years starting now! So what’s to be done?

Here’s a thought. 

What if – instead of birthplace, hometown, political creed or socio-cultural markers – we were to define being ‘Sri Lankan’ as a mix or matrix of temperament/personality/character? What if the perpetually late islander could be taught punctuality beyond observing auspicious times? Hospitality as surpassing shekels from the hands of foreign nationals to the comfort of strangers or neighbours? Decency to all fellow islanders irrespective of beliefs and biology? What if women were treated as equals, children were truly safeguarded and men sought to beat swords into ploughshares in all spheres from sports to politics? Having a dream is not easy, nor the province of idealists; but a crucible to forge hope: and a destiny that averts a grimmer darker fate that awaits us all – if we fail… again. 

#8 A ‘Patent Hope in Decency’ must become Sri Lanka’s ‘PHD project’. It will take the stakeholdership of all our island’s panoply of people and a visionary prophetic leadership that is far-removed from the plethora of parasites in power or parliament. The medium term (the next 15-25+ years) is where a new breed of principled citizen representative could emerge if we turn our back on the tried and tested – and failed and now no longer trusted – leadership modes of the present. – see #3 above also 

Next generation: a new hope?

Ninthly, but by no means least, we must now turn away from the senile ambitions of a lost generation of so-called national leaders to the flower of our youth. In fact, the statistics I’ve quoted above were shared by a bold brave brigade of younger professionals with a wary eye on our past and a keen vision for a sharper smarter tomorrow.  Truth be told, in their bright company – these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed doers rather than talkers – I feel old, lame, prehensile: barely grasping their view of present realities. However, together, we soldier on towards the sunlit uplands of a Serendip that’s as far removed from poverty, interpersonal bigotry, a cycle of rage, as highflying Singapore is from its humble roots. Let jejune presidential aspirants or juvenile cabinets and parliaments rule the roost in the present; we must invest in the future: it is our last best hope…

The whole nine yards! Here is a half-measure to make it 9.5: First, turn the spotlight in. Then, see if the sea change we desire starts with a small pond me; I and/or a better you before we preach to our politicos. And in the limit, over time, the rich and strange transformation would come.

(Journalist | Editor-at-large of LMD | Writer #SpeakingTruthToPower)