Financial Times - Who will bell the cat?

An e-mail doing its transmission rounds in Colombo, quotes a Micheal J Bonnel copyright presentation that seeks answers to the difference between rich and poor countries. It states that the reason is not the age of a nation. India and Egypt with histories of over 2000 years are compared with Canada, Australia and New Zealand with less than 150 years but are yet rich and developed.

It then argues that the availability of resources is also not the differentiator, quoting, Japan with limited territory, 80% mountainous, inadequate for agriculture and cattle raring, but the second world economy. Japan is referred to be like a floating factory, importing raw material from the world and exporting manufactured products.

It also states that Switzerland does not plant cocoa but has the best chocolates in the world. In this little territory they raise animals and plants on soil conditions ideal for only four months in the year, not enough; they produce dairy products of best quality -- a small country that transmits an image of security, order and labour which makes it the world’s strong safe.

It further states that there appears to be no significant intellectual differences between executives in rich countries with their counterparts in poor countries. Race and skin colour are also not important, as those labelled lazy in their countries of origin are productive power houses in rich European countries.

Then the author questions as to what makes the difference? He concludes that the difference is attitudes of the people, formed along the years by the education and the culture.

On analysing the behaviours of the people in rich and developed countries, he finds that a great majority of them follow the principle in life;

-Ethics as a basic principle
-Integrity
-Responsibility
-Respect to the law and rules
-Respect to the rights of
other citizens
-Work loving
-Strive for Savings and
Investments
-Punctuality

In poor countries the author finds that only a minority follow these basic principles and concludes that one is poor not because nations lack resources or nature is cruel, but because people lack correct attitudes. The author goes on to implore that those who love their countries should reflect and change and above all ACT.

In our near 60-year post independence period, our leaders have continued to gloat over our golden past and create wrong attitudes in people. This is in spite of Buddhism being the main religion, where the enlightened one implored that there was nothing anyone cannot achieve, if one tries to develop the necessary intellect, knowledge, skills attitudes and commit to the task with determination, summing up with a statement that “one’s own hands are the shadow of one’s future destiny”.

It must be also remembered that in the 450 years that preceded independence, our colonial masters, in their own interests, did not foster in common people the correct attitudes. Our leaders who followed, within their power hungry mind set driven strategies made people dependent on the state and political power houses, building in them the sole expectation for salvation to be state intervention and hand outs.

To make matters worse, caste systems, religious and ethnic differences have been brought to the fore during this period and people subjugated, made subservient with no national pride, ‘can do’ spirit and most of all nationalism fostered as a means of self destruction of the nation and its people and not for unification under a single national vision.

The worse still was the role played by language and education policies since independence that shunned the global language of trade and knowledge in favour of local languages.

To put a nail in the coffin our religious leaders taught and promoted values based on “Karma” that made the majority race develop attitudes totally opposite to “What the Buddha Taught” as described by Reverend Dr. Walpola Rahula in a book by that name. These made our nation’s citizens passive, accepting every obstacle not as a challenge, but as a consequence of fate and destiny.

The million dollar question is who is now willing, capable and ready to be the lead change agent in this society and most importantly lead with timely positive response action in changing attitudes?

Experience to date does not bear witness that this change will be led in a timely manner with commitment by our present day politicians or business leaders nor by religious and civil society leaders.

The change and break from tradition, culture, ingrained beliefs and practices will come only if we have an external enemy or it will only emerge from the grass roots of our village societies, provided they are empowered, guided and motivated and embedded with values, knowledge, skills and attitudes that have been missing in our society for 500 years.