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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Back to 500BC.
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, July 23, 2017
The Need For Practicality Coupled With Principle
The
fact that the dengue pandemic has reached the proportions it has,
leading, among other responses, to the German government issuing a
travel advisory for Sri Lanka does not appear to have “fizzed” on the
current bunch of self-seeking politicians posing as those providing us
with governance of some description.
Many
years ago, after the use of Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, better
known as “DDT,” as an insecticide was banned, I recall that chemical
being used as a last resort in combating a pest that threatened Sri
Lanka’s entire coconut industry.
Going
back to the “sixties,” a leaf miner was accidentally brought in to the
country with, presumably, orchid material from the Far East. It got into
the coconut plantations in and around Colombo and proceeded to wreak
havoc, spreading farther south and north from where it started.
The
Coconut Research Institute headed by Dr. W. R. N. Nathanael and the
Board of whose Chair was the much-respected Reg. De Mel took swift
action to deal with what promised to be a huge problem. Pending
a more permanent solution and buying much-needed time, they took the
drastic step of de-foliating the trees by the simple expedient of
cutting off their branches and spraying the affected trees with DDT.
Of
course, in short order, the wheels were set in motion for a more
permanent solution when a parasite which confined itself entirely to the
coconut leaf miner was introduced, bred in vitro, and released into the
affected areas. I
distinctly remember how different the entire manner of “doing business”
was in those days. To begin with, two obviously very qualified,
scientists were brought down from India. They
were lodged in part of a house off Havelock Road in Colombo which
doubled as their “laboratory” and proceeded to breed the coconut leaf
miner’s parasite in that space. They
did so efficiently enough that, without a great deal of fanfare, the
pest was completely controlled and life in the coconut-growing areas
began to return to normal, with DDT returning to its “banned” slot.
Since
the parasite which was introduced to control it couldn’t exist without
the coconut leaf miner to feed on, it died out as well once the
immediate problem was solved.
An interesting photograph was published on the front page of probably Sri Lanka’s most-read English Sunday newspaper recently. It
showed a Thai expert examining a small Bromeliad plant which is an
ornamental version of the common pineapple as a probable dengue-mosquito
breeding place. In fact, Bromeliads have been identified as a prime breeding environment for the dengue mosquito (Aedes aegeptyi). The
implications of this fact, given the extensive pineapple cultivation in
the Western and North Western provinces, should be obvious. A
footnote here could well be the fact that the Negombo hospital which
serves a significant part of the pineapple growing area of Sri Lanka is
unbelievably over-burdened with dengue patients, even more so that other
similar facilities.
The
fatalities resulting from dengue, not to mention, the enormous economic
cost to the country in terms of (over-)utilized medical services and
massive loss of productivity obviously calls for a drastic solution. Is
it time that we began to fog the dengue mosquito areas with
insecticides that have been found unacceptable in normal circumstances?
I
would be failing in any effort at accuracy and objectivity if I did not
refer to another factor that is seriously impeding efforts to deal with
this scourge.
The
“governance” of which we are now victims, little better than its
predecessor and only distinguished from that scourge by the absence of
white vans, continues to bedevil any efforts of dealing with day-to-day
issues, leave alone something like the dengue pandemic.
If
even a part of the effort that goes into to fattening their purses is
expended in dealing with an issue such as dengue, some real progress may
be made by our rulers. However,
what we have is the disgusting spectacle of gallery-fetching
initiatives to better publicise all kinds of hare-brained schemes such
as that to tunnel under the Kandy lake to “avoid traffic congestion in
Kandy town” when the preponderance of vehicles on the streets of Kandy
are not passing through but carry people having business in that town. I
would not accuse those propounding these ill-conceived schemes of the
typical idiocy of people who have lost touch with the realities that the
rest of us face on a day-to-day basis. I
believe that the simple truth lies in the realm of rip-offs,
commissions and other criminality that feasts off this kind of nonsense.