Ignore the advice at your own peril

By Neville de Silva

Is the World Bank having a change of heart or a change of mind? A couple of weeks back I referred to the state of agriculture in Sri Lanka in the context of the huge increase in rice prices and the resultant decision to import rice to feed the people. At least I am glad that I got that off my chest because we had successive governments pay tribute to our farmers and lip service to agriculture without ever pursuing policies that would ensure sustainable agriculture at optimum levels of production. It was my fellow columnist “The Economist” who actually initiated the discussion on our declining agriculture by raising the subject of rice imports at a time when we prided ourselves on having achieved self sufficiency in our staple food. Last week he referred to the World Development Report 2008 produced by the World Bank which makes a series of comments on the state of our agriculture and suggests policy options some of which we ignore only at our own peril.

My fellow columnist has done a signal service by quoting the report ‘in extensor’ In days gone by senior administrators poured through these reports with great care. Or to use that horrible cliché went through them with a fine tooth comb. Ministers read them too, naturally not all of them but the educated ones and those who could see beyond their noses rather than those who poked their noses into every possible thing. One begins to wonder whether these reports are read and digested any longer except perhaps by some researchers in the Central Bank, in some of the NGOs and think-tanks. As for senior administrators in important policy-making ministries, I suppose many of them while away their time trying to please their political masters and ensuring that political henchmen are kept happy.

Another problem, I suspect, is that the deterioration in the levels of English have left many of those in the administration who should be feeding their ministers with relevant information and policy advice, bereft by language difficulties. The result is that many of these reports go unread. The question here is not whether one agrees with the findings of the report and any policy advice. One cannot agree or disagree with what one has not read and tried to understand. That I believe is one of the basic problems with the administration and even the political leaders. I remember in the old days finance minister Ronnie de Mel was well versed in every report and every document on economic matters that reached him and would discuss them with great clarity and depth in private conversations or during TV interviews I did with him. There were other ministers like that- Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake, Ananda Tissa de Alwis to name a few- who kept themselves informed not only of what was said locally but equally by important international institutions. Such reading habits and study that kept political leaders and the bureaucracy informed and up to date seem to have unfortunately ceased. I draw this conclusion from the seeming lack of informed debate on these issues emanating from administrators and politicians in the media. I am not certain whether such discussion takes place outside the charmed circle of foreign-funded NGOs and the fault lies with the media for not reporting them.

Somewhere, somehow there appears to be a serious lacuna. That is why I am glad that my fellow columnist had devoted his entire space to the World Development Report, not only because the report does raise some of the issues that I took up two weeks ago. “The Economist” says that the report has valuable lessons for Sri Lanka because “there is a lack of understanding on the role of agriculture in the current Sri Lankan stage of development.” As he says the significance of the report is that “it reasserts the importance of agriculture in economic growth and redefines its role in relation to the stage of economic development of countries.” This is one of the key reasons why the chapter on Sri Lanka should be made compulsory reading not just for our political leaders and administrators dealing with agriculture, lands, irrigation, finance and planning but also for the public.

As the World Bank rightly points out 75 % of the poor people in the world live in rural areas. They survive with great difficulty because they lack many of the basic facilities that would improve their lot and help alleviate poverty by raising their standards of living. This is not some great western economic theory that is beyond the understanding of those in developing countries or “transforming economies”. This is so basic that it requires no reiteration. Yet it seems that the simplest of ‘theories’ have to be restated either because nobody cares about the rural poor or because they continue to ignore what every government should have done and continued to do. This is not to say that the World Bank and its Washington twin the IMF, have always proffered advice that would have ensured sustained and sustainable agricultural development. Their errors have been many and it might be useful to mention a couple of them so that we view both institutions and their policy advice in the proper perspective.

I had earlier mentioned how Indonesia, perhaps the largest exporter of rice in Asia in the late 1980s is today a big importer of rice because the IMF policies Jakarta followed altered radically the economic base of the country with farmers abandoning rice cultivation for what they thought were more lucrative and less tiresome vocations. Take the example of Ghana, a country in which a former World Bank representative to Sri Lanka, the controversial Peter Harrold served. Ghana was once held up as the model African country. Today it is what former British Prime Minister Tony Blair called a scar on the conscience of the world. Ghana was once self sufficient in rice. But World Bank/IMF policies led to the slashing of subsidies and opening up of markets. The result was disastrous. Ghanaians are now eating rice imported from America just as Indonesians are doing. American rice farmers were able to provide cheaper rice than home farmers as they are heavily subsidised by the US, the very policy that the Washington twins wanted Ghana to abandon, just as they advocated that we do a decade or so ago.

We need to understand that in the coming years the scarcity of water is bound to cause inter-state wars and disputes over water sharing and aggravate present tensions and disputes. Fortunately Sri Lanka will be spared such turmoil though internal tensions and disputes cannot be ruled out. But if climate change is going to make dry areas drier and wet areas wetter then obviously agriculture is bound to be affected and particularly rice cultivation which is mainly carried out in the dry zone areas that has the potential of producing much higher yields in the yala season. Any sensible leadership will ensure that the country’s food security is assured. If the world is going to face food shortages then we just cannot afford to ignore agriculture and depend on the world to supply our needs, especially if exorbitant prices are the outcome of world shortages.

In his Independence Day address President Rajapaksa said: “We are building a country where the farmer could smile as he reaps the harvest from his cinnamon, betel, maize and rice cultivations…… when they receive a good price for their crops, when they consume their own food, they begin to feel that they are not strangers in one’s own land.” The question to ask is whether our governments are doing enough to make our farmers smile or to make them weep. Not too long ago we had ministers who promised to restore or revive some 1000 (or was it 10,000) tanks or small reservoirs so that our farmers would have enough water for their cultivation. How many of those tanks were actually restored? How much money was actually spent and did the farmers benefit or was this again the usual rhetorical flourishes of politicians who make promises they fail to keep or never intended to fulfill?

There is an old Sinhala saying “katen bathala hitawanawa” (the English translation “planting sweet potatoes with the mouth” hardly does justice to the pithiness of the original).One hopes that for the sake of future generations of Sri Lankans this was not another exercise in political garrulity.