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So that is that. Period. The President has spoken. The declaration is carved in stone as it were. There is no U-turn in the Government’s policy banning the import of chemical fertiliser for agricultural purposes. So “es ist nicht kaput”, my old German acquaintances in Communist-run East Berlin would say in the days of the Cold War, insisting that East Berlin would survive. History tells us what became of such certain certainties.

The President’s Office insisted last week that there was no U-turn in the Government’s policy on promoting organic fertiliser and that the latest gazette only aims to facilitate the importation of “specialised fertilisers”.

“The Government has not granted permission to import chemical fertiliser for local agricultural purposes, neither has it made any changes to the decision taken by the President to use only organic fertiliser for local agriculture. And there will be no changes to this decision in the future either,” a statement from the President’s Media Centre said.

Well what more do you want? If confirmation is necessary that what was decided earlier stays firmly established, then here it is, the imprimatur steadfastly stamped.

The citizenry would remember if they have had time to cast their eyes on the small screen or turn their attention to the printed word, the numerous talking heads that appeared on television and others who preferred the print media whose wizardry in defending the Government’s policy in promptly banning the import and use of chemical fertiliser appeared to some the answer to all our woes.

Still others would argue the shortsightedness of a policy — that was suddenly imposed as though their country would be blown to smithereens if organic fertiliser would not immediately replace chemical fertiliser in our agricultural fields and plantations — is incredibly naïve and ill conceived and shows a lack of understanding of the issue.

To a public following this ongoing tragicomedy, the battle between Twiddledee and Twiddledum over a rattle is a more serious issue than what fertiliser is immediately needed to create an eco-friendly environment when the existing forest cover and wetlands that sustain what we have are subject to ecocide, often with political backing.

As I write this on Friday I read the alarming news that 45,831 children have been infected with COVID-19 “until now”. This is what Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi told Parliament the day before though she did not precisely spell out the time period she alludes to. The Health Minister added that 50 percent of the deaths were children between 0 to 3 years.

Meanwhile, medical officers have pressed alarm bells over the fast rising covid patients with at least 4-5 of them dying every hour.

Only the other day, a Sri Lankan virologist Malik Peiris who joined the University of Hong Kong in 1995 four years before I left there, and has earned an international reputation as an efficient scientist, warned of a more virulent coronavirus outbreak, affecting Sri Lanka in the coming months.

With the existing virus in
Sri Lanka not yet under control and the spread of new variants not discounted, saner decision-making would have been expected from the Government. Those who would weigh the options available to the administration would surely ask whether a more balanced assessment of the options would not have pointed to a more thoughtful route to take.

If the populace was asked in a referendum today what option they would prefer what would be their answer? Would they vote for pursuing a policy of combating this virulent virus that haunts us today by placing our scientists, medical specialists and those knowledgeable and competent in the front lines at a time when medical specialists are calling for caution?

Or would the people vote for a policy that is of no immediate consequence and cannot turn our current agricultural practices on the head overnight when it is quite evident to experts, small time farmers, practising agriculturists and planters of exportable agricultural produce that whoever pushed this policy line to the top of the Government agenda is totally ignorant of the complexities of the issue?

Surely among the self-proclaimed intellectuals who have built a laager round the leaders there must be some who have read the 16th century English writer John Heywood’s succinct words that “Rome wasn’t built in one day”.

But we know from history that the ancient city rose brick by brick and it took 800 years for the city to reach its peak. One does not have to wait that long to convert our agricultural practices if the subject is approached systematically and with understanding.

A couple of months ago I reproduced a four-line verse that I had written when I was also an Agriculture Correspondent for the Daily News in the mid-60s and early 70s. It is useful repeating it the way things are going.

“If little drops of water

 And little drops of rain

Can fertilise an acre

Why not a bureaucratic brain”

One thing that seems to puzzle many citizens is the pre-presidential election promises that came from both leading contenders. Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised free fertiliser to paddy farmers if he became president.

Not to be outdone, Sajith Premadasa promised free fertiliser for all farmers and major agriculturists, including horticulturists, one expects.

If the import cost of chemical fertiliser at the time was Rs 45 billion by some calculations, what would it have cost the country if all farmers and commercial agriculturists were provided with free fertiliser as Mr Premadasa proposed?

So this current obsession with an eco-friendly environment and producing a healthy population free of the toxicity of chemical fertiliser is a post-election thought after the public had voted. Of course, a healthy nation reduces the costs of providing health services.

But one hopes that such physical improvement will extend to parts of the anatomy above the neck so that our elected representatives will tell the public how much gray matter they posses now that there is a marked reluctance to do so.

Everything points to the fact that the chemical fertiliser ban is a sudden decision — not a decision that had been thought out before the election. It may not have been as dramatic as Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. But whoever was responsible has caused havoc.

So what is the more urgent task before those who ruled this country? Is it to channel its medically-qualified manpower to head the task rather than engaging in histrionics of chemical fertiliser, an eco-friendly environment and a healthy nation.

If this cherished concern for creating an eco-friendly environment is not just a propagandist endeavor, why is it that the environment is not preserved instead of being gradually destroyed with the felling of trees in forests and elsewhere, wet lands filled and ownership claimed by friends and acolytes and precious fauna and flora destroyed for the benefit of an aggrandizing few?

Surely some of the whizz kids of various sorts that form circles round this administration are indeed intrinsic parts of it.