North Sri Lanka – Growth And Development

By S. Sivathasan -August 31, 2014 

S. Sivathasan

Investing resources judiciously, creating wealth, consolidating it and distributing it appropriately are prime tasks of governance – Thirukkural.

People with a History

Sangam literature serves the Tamils well in the study of their social and economic history. The better known Chola exploits of a millennium back owe their origin to the Sangam era. The first Tamil Poet Laureate of Tamil Nadu after India got independence was Namakkal Kavignar. He said “We Tamils are legatees to great achievements; let us do all that is appropriate to regain our past glory”. Life affirmation and material prosperity characterized earlier times. Full awareness of it influences their thought and action in both places across the Straits. With such consciousness perhaps Edmund Samarakkody MP speaking in Parliament in 1961 said; “Tamils are a proud people, a people with a history”. Yes, people with a rich heritage will seek to reassert their rights to give the appropriate economic dimension to their aspirations.

What stands in their path and against their forward movement will have to move out of their way. When the Treaty of Versailles heaped humiliation on Germany, Mao Tse Tung as a young revolutionary of age 25, addressed some French leaders in 1918, along these lines – You people think you have done something great. In ten or twenty years war will break out – What a warning it was to those insensitive to the susceptibilities of the defeated and impervious to the inevitable destined to follow. What a parallel it has to the war and its aftermath in Sri Lanka.

Human Resources

The unconventional way in which Japan and Singapore grew in recent times has dazzled the world. The irrepressible energy of the Japanese was duly channeled by good governance to make the economy top notch. The mental energy of a single leader in Singapore has taken the nation to laudable status among first world economies. They have blasted the notion of richness in indigenous natural resources as basic to create more wealth. To them the richest resource was the people to whom modern education was provided and skills imparted. As important or more was the luring of foreign finance together with transfer of technology.

Sri Lanka and the Northern segment are rich in human resources, though yet to be cut, polished and value added. The last three-quarter century has shown the world over, how material wealth can enhance human resources that have remained stagnant for long. For the segment of the North, economic opportunities abroad have opened up possibilities never considered practicable earlier. It is to such material that those in governance owe an obligation to provide the environment for further growth.                                                     Read More