Wrong approach to development
View(s):Sri Lanka’s development process in the post-war era has come in for a lot of discussion in recent times.
On the one hand while there are many plus points in the progress on infrastructure particularly in roads, express highways and beautification of cities, the other side of the coin is that the needs and concerns of communities are (sometimes) either ignored, disregarded or very little attention paid.
A sine qua non of development is that it is for the people, who (mind you) chose their rulers. The people’s voice must be heard if their rights and needs are being infringed upon in the name of development.
Understandably if development is resisted at all levels by the public in uprooting of communities or resettlement then projects like the Mahaweli and that downstream development would never taken place. Positively the express highways that have made travel faster and more efficient to the south and the soon-to-be opened outer circular roads, have helped to develop towns, villages, etc. But alongside that must come more jobs, better education and better health benefits – these are the fruits of development. Without these, development is a façade, a political agenda with a lot of promise.
Sirimal Abeyratne, Professor of Economics at Colombo University, says that in spite of rhetoric, Sri Lanka has not yet shown any signs of a high-performing economy in the post-war era.
“It is therefore not surprising that Sri Lanka cannot sustain 8-10 per cent rate of average growth unless it expands its capacity level, and not the capacity utilization level,” the respected economist noted, commenting (at our request) on a new working paper by a group of IMF economists which says that Sri Lanka’s potential output growth appears to be around 6.7 per cent per year (See story on this page). Fund economists said that Sri Lanka should allow a period of below-potential economic growth over the next few years to curb excess demand.
All this points out to the fact that cracks are appearing in the development path that Sri Lanka has embarked on with, as Abeyratne points out, mostly a lot of rhetoric.
Closer home, in Colombo, the Centre for Policy Alternatives has organised a discussion next week on “sharing the experiences of communities whose lives and lifestyles are disturbed due to the infrastructure development in Colombo.” A note announcing the discussion says that while Colombo has undergone a major facelift with road and pavements being redone and new malls coming up, ‘infrastructure is only one strand of the city; the other vital strand is her citizenry; a mix of people from different religions, ethnicities and walks of life living side by side”, arguing that the human element is as important as developing infrastructure.
Development is, in our view, balancing the interests of people and the economic interests of the country at large.
It is in this context of development that (first and foremost) should be for the people that we draw attention to last week’scomprehensive overview in the Business Times of the development taking place in the northwest coastal town of Kalpitiya.
Dormant Kalpitiya came into the forefront many years back with a plan during the tenure of the UNP government (2002-03) for this town and its outlying islands to be transformed into a tourist paradise complete with its own harbour (maybe for yachts), airfield for corporate jets and helicopters and a speedboat service after developing island resorts. That plan was then revived under Mahinda Rajapaksa’s administration but has turned out to be a failure simply because the people’s interests were not seriouslyconsidered. It has turned out to be a case study on the flaws of development and lessons to be learnt.
The Kalpitiya series flagged some simple issues that should have been taken into consideration; and wouldn’t have cost much if not for the hurried speed to draw investors without bringing the community into the project in the first place.
Here are some key highlights in the Business Times investigation:
- Fishermen have guarded these islands for decades against the LTTE fighters and intruding Indian fishermen. Now they are being asked to leave after being the only guardians of a resource that the state is making capital use of for financial benefit. If not for these fishermen (with help from the Navy) the islands may have been destroyed, taken over or become security risks.
- Now these ‘guardians’ are being forced to leave. This is akin to residents of border villages in the East who protected their homes against marauding rebels, preventing them making inroads into other parts of the countries (and protecting the likes of you and me), being asked to vacate. Border villages and fishermen on the Kalpitiya islands were the first line of defence and they had to either be killed or captured for the rebels to break through. What kind of (inhuman) justice is this if the guardians (at great risk to their lives) are being uprooted?
- Clearly, as the Business Times, says, the fishermen are not opposed, (REPEAT), not opposed to development but say development must first start at home – they need better schools (some send children to schools in Chilaw, 73 km away), better health facilities and better job opportunities.
- They are happy to allow tourism to flourish but with community-based participation. A good example of such community-linked tourism is how Negombo is flourishing with the people’s involvement.
- Uprooting them without making them part of the tourism development process and providing the facilities as stated above is a high price to pay for development (at any cost).
- Development should be modelled on the adage “Live and let live”, meaning let the people, let tourism succeed and both sides benefit. The same thinking should apply to other development particularly in wild life zones where man should live with animals with suitable safeguards for both.
Money (and the desperate need to fill depleted Treasury coffers) should not be at the cost of unplanned or community-endangered development.