Financial Times

Care to make money and share the honey …
By Random Access Memory (RAM)
So we are not to see the top cop of international politics Mr. Kofi Annan, anywhere on Sri Lankan soil soon. The demands on the man, from Colombo and the Vanni, must have been too much to handle at a time when he feels the pressures of Palestine, occupied Iraq, and challenges in Syria, North Vietnam and the other manifold issues looming in the international scene.

It must be hard on him to determine priorities and also render credibility to informal overtures of succession coming from this new land of hope and peace. After all, our FM beam of Puran Appu lineage has made no secret of his plans and is said to be informally but actively canvassing the world's top political cop's job on the next round. A former diplomat and person of eminence of disarmament fame who may have fit the profile better and given our land a better chance of sharing that glory has in the process been sadly sidelined. Here is yet another clear case where meritocracy and prudence takes a backseat in our democratic socialist republic.

At this time when our thoughts are on the non-event of the visit, RAM thought it timely to focus on an area which Mr. Annan and his team brought to the attention of the world in the very recent past…that of the aged and the ageing of the world. At the UN Conference on Aging held last year in Madrid, it was pointed out how the baby boomers of the post-Second World War era put pressures on education, jobs and resources of the world, over the past half century. It was also pointed out how they contributed to generating new wealth and prosperity for themselves and the world. We are told that today, this very baby boomer generation is in need of old age care and unless handled right, can pose severe problems on the future well being of the world.

For little Sri Lanka, in her new role as the land of peace and hope, this can offer an immense opportunity, an opportunity to position ourselves as a centre of excellence for caring for the aged. Now with the guns gone silent and peace taking evasively long strides, it may be prudent for us to get ourselves equipped for the next round of things thinking well beyond traditional tourism, to being the lifestyles solution maker for the world. Florida and Hawaii in the US, Cyprus and Spain in Europe, The Philippines and Thailand in Asia have geared themselves for this challenge for sometime now.

In Sri Lanka, a few companies have already commenced operations to offer care services to our own. That indeed is a very good start and the challenge now is to look beyond. That looking beyond will also allow us to address the issues of unemployment, the shameful need to export our sisters as domestic servants to the Middle East and Southeast Asia and generate adequate funds to give better care for our own.

It is said that the insurance industry makes hefty investments in many affluent societies of the world on their clients who hold life insurance policies for old age care. If Sri Lanka was to offer a cost effective and attractively packaged solution to these companies to care for their clients in the tropical settings of near paradise during the cold winter months each year, it may bring smiles to their faces. We would need to address the issues of the need for excellent medical care, rapid evacuation services, safety and the physical facilitation needs to make it work and work well.

Equally important is the need for equipping our men and women with skills of the fine art of caring for the aged. At this time when education reforms are once again undertaken, it may be prudent to incorporate aspects to enhance the value system needed to create a culture of caring for the elderly in the context of the modern world. It is true that our traditional culture and ethos had all of this embedded in it. But pressures of modern lifestyles have taken most of it away and what may be needed is a conscious effort to rekindle it.

Having over sixty per cent of the world's population in the dependant spectrum by 2020 can be a scary thought of crisis proportions for planners of the future. But, as the Chinese would claim, there is an opportunity in every crisis and it is for us to equip ourselves to make the best of the crisis of an aging global population. There is money indeed in caring and the honey generated can be shared with all to make the world a better place for them.

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