By B.M.Thilakarathne, Post Graduate Institute of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya.
Sri Lanka is now at a critical stage of selecting which kind of development to proceed with. First of all even having an idea or feeling about development is enough at the beginning. If we have that feeling collectively as a nation, we would protect our natural resources; we would care about others; we would never use synthetic materials; and we would admire Sri Lankan products.
All the parties who respect the nation's development must value our own resources. The world recognizes us as the Pearl of the Indian Ocean; the country that had terrorism; a potential centre for global marketing; a country playing cricket; a bio-diversity hot spot; and an island having beautiful beaches and lagoons.
In ancient times the economy prominently focussed on agriculture. People grew enough and more with plenty of time also to create new technology. Even today there is a lot of evidence of the prosperity of ancient Sri Lanka. Wonderfully structured reservoirs, channels, sthupa and architecture reflect the nation's prouder history.
Even today there is enough time and energy to generate new technology and use it with the available resources if only Sri Lankans stopping running after money and spend time on technology.
More Sri Lankans today are engaged in promoting imported fruits like orange, baby naran, grapes, apple etc, with nicely prepared products and added values.
They sell them mostly in urban areas as well as on roadsides in villages. These channels show how service oriented Sri Lankans are; not the production oriented. Sri Lanka itself has a lot of local fruits like orange, mandarin, naran, waraka, anona, etc which unfortunately are not in demand because there is no promotion of these fruits. Just like the technology created by our forefathers that still exist like the great tanks and the local fruits that provided all the nutrition, Sri Lanka needs to move into a technological age utilising the wonders that we can create from technology plus the vast food resources like fruits for instance.
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