Rajpal's Column

27th December 1998

Sri Lanka: compromised and confused

By Rajpal Abeynayake

As a year draws to a close, there is writers block. Everything that has to be said has been said, almost. International magazines have already named their men of the year, and this year's pick is distinguished by the fact that men who were controversial (Clinton, Starr) earned more prominence than men who did good.

Many Sri Lankans who live abroad have descended on the island for the end of the year vacation, the whole Sri Lankan Diaspora from Australia, New Zealand, the United States, anywhere and everywhere there might be a white man living.

Most see that the old country has receded. They see craters on the road and go into shock, even before they really go over the craters and go into more shock…. It takes a while to remind them that Sri Lanka has been like this all along, that maybe a crater or two, give or take may be deeper, but nothing much has changed in the long run.

Most say that Sri Lanka has deteriorated more than it ever had in the past but those who say so are probably suffering from the culture shock syndrome in reverse. Most have gravitated towards motherland after years abroad, and after driving on flat surfaces for over three or four years they feel that the craters in the old country have become deeper. But, no. Its basically the same rut that we are in. Give or take a few millimetres.

The economy, which for the past two decade's would have had to be wound up if not for the IMF or the World Bank, is distinguished by the fact that it didn't take the hit that most of Asia took in the year that's behind us. But considering that we were already on the mat, there wouldn't have been much room to descend any further than where we were . But nevertheless, it was an achievement.

The Economist (London) in a year end edition maps out the world's trouble spots. (Its a glossy edition which is probably still available at Sri lankan bookshops, something out of the ordinary for the usually staid Economist.) Sri Lanka is marked out as a location which is home to civil strife, but curiously there are separate locations marked out as ones in which there is terrorist activity.

Sri Lanka probably doesn't qualify as a location for terrorism because publications such as the Economist see conventional war in Sri Lanka whereas the Sri lankan government sees a terrorist conflict.

It's not an important distinction in these essentially amorphous times. There are many strife torn locations which are marked out on the Economist map, and most of these are very conspicuously from Asia, Africa and other places where White Anglo Saxon Protestants have not made it good. There is no strife period, in Australia, New Zealand or Canada or the United States.

But there are other maps that proliferate this seasonal glossy edition of the Economist, (that used-to-be Bible of graduate school economic students.) One of these maps is an indicator of GNP per capita and the amount of TVs owned by the people of the population as a percentage. This map gives Sri Lanka a low mark, lower than say that of Russia and Eastern Europe. But , this has me confused. If you look around Colombo you see nothing but Russian prostitutes and yet we suffer from a per capita GNP that is less than that of the Russians? Maybe these maps, if once inaccurate, can be twice inaccurate,. If we Lankans have civil strife, and no terrorism, maybe Sri lankans also enjoy a better standard of living than most Russians. But Russians are all over the place, begging for aid. Though Russia used to be a superpower now there are Russian prostitutes not just in Colombo but just about anywhere on earth a buck can be made the oldest way.

So the map lies? I do not necessarily know.

It is true that Sri Lanka deteriorates and that the Sri lankan economy has always been next to shambles. But Sri Lankans' adherence to the system and the country's almost legendary resilience has almost hidden the underlying malaise.

For instance, we went through more searing civil conflicts than Pakistan ever did after Independence. But, during all of these conflicts including the 1989 JVP uprising which reached Pol Potish proportions of deprivation and decadence, Sri Lanka had a government which was elected. True it may have been a doddering government which may not have been popular or robust. But that is not the point. At least in theory, we remained a nation which was ruled by elected governments which were changed periodically only by adult franchise.

This could not have been said of Pakistan or Bangladesh for instance. That fact does not however confer on Sri Lanka any special or extraordinary merit. What it does is to underline the fact that we Sri Lankans are not intrinsically and by nature anarchic. This though it may sound nice, might not necessarily be a good thing because it may only hide the deeper malaise such as social unrest, economic insecurity, and the generally stagnant quality of our collective fates.

Our national condition wears a mask. Through turmoil and rebellion, through unrest and discontent we maintain for the outside world a facade of competence. Our statistics on the Physical Quality of Life say that our people lead better lives than say the people in Russia (Where the prostitutes come from) even though the map on per capita GNP says otherwise. We ourselves find it difficult to decide whether its a good thing or a bad thing to be labelled a country which is beset, not by a terrorist conflict but by just "civil strife." This condition of not knowing whether we are relatively doing well as a country or doing badly sometimes tends to make us get carried away with the notion that as a country were are the cat's whiskers. We are invincible we believe, because of the dubious honour that however down we maybe, we are never out.

In many ways the past year has been symptomatic of this state of being. On the one hand the country has been trying to feel good due to the fact that it was not ravaged by the Asian economic contagion. But on the other hand a war dragged on without any end in sight, corruption soared, roads deteriorated, and the cost of living rose without our permission. Through this all we managed to be nationally schizophrenic, thinking that we must somehow be doing good when everything around us indicates that we are bad.

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