Achievements since Independence: Significant yet inadequate

By the Economist

Today when we celebrate the anniversary of regaining our independence from foreign rule, it may be appropriate to assess the pros and cons of our economic performance over nearly six decades. Yet we refrain from doing so as this column has over the past several weeks focused on the serious economic problems facing the country and also addressed the issue of what went wrong in the economy in the past. Therefore today our comments are a celebration of our independence: a discussion of the several formidable gains that the country has achieved over this period.

At the time of independence we had a population of a little over 7 million. At about this time there was “an amazing decline in mortality”. In the single year 1946-47 the crude death rate was cut by nearly one half. It fell from 20.2 to 14.3 per thousand. This decline in the death rate was brought about by an improvement in health conditions owing to the health, education and nutrition policies pursued since the gaining of self government in 1931 and the use of DDT on a mass scale in the dry zone that enabled the eradication of malaria.

Consequently we faced a population explosion with the population increasing by 2.8 per cent in the first decade after independence. This continued though slightly abated in the following decades. The annual rise in population in the 1960s was 2.6 per cent; it was 2.4 per cent in the seventies and dropped to 2.2 per cent in eighties. Currently the annual growth in population is only 1.1 per cent.

These increases in population resulted in the growth of the population from just 7 million in 1947 to 19.9 million at the middle of 2006. The population is likely to have risen to over 20 million on this anniversary of independence. The population increase over these six decades is the causal explanation for many of the economic and social developments of the country. It is in the context of this rapid rise in population that the development experience of the country must be viewed.

There can be no doubt that the achievements in health in the country led paradoxically to economic strains and was a significant underlying factor in retarding economic growth, in generating unemployment, increasing poverty, environmental degradation, social tensions and the ethnic conflict. In this context of a rapid population growth, the country has several milestones of economic and social achievements.

Overall, the country has achieved considerable progress in social development during the fifty nine years. The greatest achievements have been in the spheres of health, literacy and primary education. During this period, life expectancy at birth increased from around 55 years to 74 years, the adult literacy rate increased from 58 per cent (1945) to 91 per cent with female literacy improving more sharply than male literacy thereby reducing the gender gap to about 5 percentage points.

There were significant improvements in maternal mortality, infant mortality and under 5 mortality. Maternal mortality rate decreased from 560 to less than 140 per one hundred thousand live births, while infant mortality declined from 82 to 12 per thousand. Under 5 mortality reached less than 19 per thousand. It is noteworthy that the infant mortality rate declined more rapidly since the late 1970s.

School enrolment of children between the ages of 5 - 19 years increased from 54.1 per cent (1945) to around 80 per cent with primary school enrolment reaching 92 per cent. Female school enrolment, which lagged behind male school enrolment has caught up and is higher than male enrolment. These are no doubt substantial achievements.

Although these attainments over the entire period is quite impressive, the current economic strains could result in a somewhat tardy improvement in several indicators as in fact it has been in the last two decades. Given the attainment of a literacy level of 87.2 per cent in 1981, its decline to 86.9 per cent in 1991 and rise to only 91 per cent now is indicative of these strains. Similarly school enrolment which rose sharply to reach 70 per cent by 1981 increased only marginally to 73.4 per cent in 1991. With the initial growth in school enrolment the expectation was that near full school enrolment would be achieved.

This remains a goal owing to pockets of poverty. Although health indicators have improved, the morbidity pattern still discloses a high incidence of illnesses associated with poverty, poor housing and malnutrition. The persistence of high levels of poverty and unemployment and the severe constraints in public finances are key constraints on improving social development indicators. Besides many Asian countries including the Maldives have overtaken us in terms of human development indicators.

Another significant area of achievement is in food production. At the time of independence we were described as an import-export economy.

The feature of this import-export dependence was that a substantial proportion of our imports were food imports. Although we prided ourselves as being an agricultural country, we were importing over half our requirements of food.

Today with a 20 million population we are more or less self sufficient in several of our food needs, notably rice, poultry and many of the subsidiary foods. However we remain substantial importers of wheat (that is not grown in the country), sugar, milk and even a part of our fish. Nevertheless the achievements on the food front cannot be discounted.

These achievements indicate that over the last 59 years there have been significant improvements.

Yet these achievements have been inadequate to meet the aspirations of the population, to resolve pressing problems of unemployment and in relation to the achievements of other Asian countries. Even in the area of human development indicators on which we take pride, we have fallen below many of our Asian neighbours like Malaysia, Singapore, Maldives and of course the more prosperous East Asian countries.

Therefore while celebrating our achievements in the past we have to endeavour to achieve much more. We must resolve to take the needed policy measures and implement them to further improve our standard of living and quality of life. Will there be hope of such achievement when we celebrate our Sixtieth Anniversary of Independence next year?