A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Tuesday, May 2, 2017
Disasters & Democracy: Facing Up To Realities In Following New Year Tragedy
By Asanga Abeyagoonasekera –May 2, 2017
“The ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it
helps that society to establish conditions which improve the standard of
living for the majority of its people.” ~ Lee Kuan Yew
Last year, an article title New Year Kokis To Luxury Permits was written for the Colombo Telegraph highlighting
that the Kokis treats eaten on our traditional New Year didn’t have the
time to digest among us before luxury permits was issued to Parliament
members. The very public who suffered last year from the burden of
permits now has to face a colossal disaster. This disaster has cost
lives as the entire nation mourns rather than celebrates the New Year.
The son who distributed kokis as a New year tradition returned to see
his parents buried by the garbage landslide which was stacked up owing
to a systemic failures of standards and systems . This mountain of
garbage stacked at Meethotamulla in
Colombo District crashed, killing 30 and destroying more than 90
houses. The last incident of a similar nature occurred in the East
African nation of Ethiopia killing 113 in March of this year.
Several reports by experts and public intellectuals reports were ignored
by policy makers in the past. It is a hope that from now onward policy
makers will have more respect for policy inputs from academia. What I
wish to highlight is why we have become a reactive society than
proactive. The reason is clearly procrastination, rejection of solutions
and blaming each other. A systematic method to streamline and implement
top priority projects that improve quality of life and secure human
security should be implemented by the Government without delay. The
security of individual and the security of the State should be top
priority. If the State takes the Hobbesian choice of of keeping chaos at
bay, it would be fulfilling its duties toward its individuals.
It is either best practices or tragedy that shapes policy. The former
remains the ideal to avoid the loss of human lives. Unfortunately, many
proposed projects for waste management including waste to energy plants
was rejected by policy makers for various reasons. In 2003, in
Vijayawada India, I witnessed how generated waste was converted to
usable energy and supplied to the national grid. Let us hope we could
start some similar project of this nature in Sri Lanka in the aftermath
of our New Year’s tragedy..
As reported by the World Economic Forum, Sri Lanka is a third world
country transiting to a second world, moving from being factor driven to
efficiency driven.. Although certain segments of our society live a
first world life, the majority o still on the third world state with 27%
poverty. Those who belong to the first world segment of predominantly
urban society, educate their children majority overseas with even health
care obtained internationally. The country is at a $3600 per capita
while our target according to Central Bank is to achieve $7000 by year
2020. With the present economic climate this will be clearly
unachievable . A nation like Singapore which most of our politicians
quote as their example is at per capita above $50000 ,to achieve this
state how long does Sri lanka take? How much of best practices we need
to import and adapt?These remain among the larger questions we should be
asking.
On the day of the disaster at Meethotamulla this author was in Singapore
talking to one of the young geopoliticians Dr. Parag Kannan of Lee Kuan
Yew School who has authored the recent book Technocracy in America.
During the discussion we spoke about how important to have technical
experts at policy level and how nations like Singapore has achieved as a
technocracy and sometimes Democracy is not the best model. Technocracy
may be understood as a philosophy to which similarities could be drawn
with the teachings of Plato. The concept is about technical experts
running the core institutions of a nation. Technocracy is evident in
Singapore, South Korea, China and even Rwanda.
The health of a political system is determined by the quality of its
institutions. For more than a generation, citizens of Western societies
have been voicing steadily their increasing dissatisfaction with their
system of government, even directly challenging whether or not democracy
is right for them. 49% of Americans now believe that experts should
decide what is best. Thus, the “end of history” is being turned on its
head according to Parag Kanna. The case of Switzerland and Singapore are
both verifiably democratic and rigorously technocratic at the same
time. They both have a high percentage of foreign-born populations,
national military and civil service, strong linkages between education
and industry, diversified economies, and massive state investment in
R&D and innovation. They are both relentless in seeking
self-improvement. Their only ideology is pragmatism. With the world’s
top-ranked civil service (as measured by merit and autonomy), detailed
scenarios and forecasts are used to strategize the countries domestic
priorities and international positioning. Crucially, both countries are
also at the cutting edge of leveraging big data. Switzerland has
pioneering finance and technology companies, while Singapore has become a
living lab for those innovations.
Sri Lanka could adopt technocracy. First, to change our political
culture we should bring in technocrats in order to have a dramatic
change over a short period of time. What we have currently are technical
problems and policy makers have failed to give solutions because they
basically have no clue. So technocrats should take up this work for the
betterment of our country. The question hinges on the ability of a
technocrat to get elected in a democratic system. Society cannot afford
to get carried away during the election, especially on massive political
spending. The public needs to be vigilant and evaluate the election
purely on meritocracy. The spending capacity of a candidate is not a
qualification for their post and this must realized by the general
public. The national list should be used only for technocrats and not to
satisfy loosing candidates.
Given the current trajectory of our economy, with very small incremental
changes year on year, it will take us a very long time to become a
$22,000 per capita developed economy. My estimate is that at the present
rate, it will take us till the year 2040.