The present crisis in Sri Lanka

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The Present Crisis

Sri Lanka has a long history. It is fairly well documented and most of us are having a fair knowledge of it. The history of Sri Lanka portrays one of the most sophisticated contemporary civilizations of the world. The ancient social order, arts, irrigation systems, laws, trading; architecture, régimes, diplomatic relations etc had been among the most developed in the contemporary world. Exodus of people from place to place, régimes of different rulers, wars among different races, efforts for genocides, betrayals, famines, pestilences, prosperity and periods of peace had all been part of our history. These are common and similar for almost every civilization existed on this earth.

Our ancestors had lived very simple lives. They apparently have had no requirement to be fiercely competitive to survive in this blessed lush green island. Yet they had developed some of the best technologies in architecture and irrigation in the contemporary world. The achieved development had been to provide dignified living standards to the population rather than for destructive purposes. The surviving giant stupas, temples, tanks, plazas, statues and irrigation systems still inspire awe in ones mind. These are living legends to prove that we are a nation with unlimited capability. Sri Lankans are having the natural genetic birthright and inheritance of a once brilliant nation. Those giants are sleeping with in us waiting to be awakening from a deep coma. It is interesting to analyze what has gone wrong in present generations.

Today Sri Lanka is having a highly literate multiracial society. As at present the population of the country exceeds 20 million and has come to a very critical state in which people find it difficult to carry on with a meaningful life. If we analyze the necessities of an average Srilankan family, those are nothing but basics of life. Food, clean water, housing, clothing, electricity, transportation, education for children, health care, having decent jobs for eligible members of the family, social security, protection against natural disasters, entertainment, spiritual needs and esteem needs are all basic requirements of every Srilankan. This is a slightly more expanded classification of basic needs than simple food shelter and clothing. It goes beyond the simple definitions because the expectations of the society are higher due to the better literacy of the population. The population has a better understanding about the world and what it has to offer. But quite unfortunately these necessities are the very same things that are distant from a majority of our population in varying degree. The gap between the expectations and the reality widens rapidly, increasing the explosive frustrations. The people have entered in to a fierce competition to satisfy their requirements utilizing the limited resources and opportunities. This fierce competition has bred selfishness, jealousy, shortsightedness, fear, and distrust, lying and cheating. Some have gone to the extent of imbedding these negative traits as typical characteristics of a Sri Lankan. If a human is born and live a lifetime with in a particular social value system, the people are likely to absorb most of it as in borne characteristics. So the negative definition of an average Sri Lankan character holds its validity to a greater extent. The modern world has termed this as third world characteristics and habits. In reality this is the unique software that drives the mechanisms of human survival in a society that many fight for limited resources and opportunities. One example is the admission of little children to public schools. There is a very wide difference in the level of overall educational quality in different public schools. The schools located in localities where relatively capable people live have better facilities and best teachers in the area. Almost all good schools are located with in the few cities scattered in the country. In every forthcoming year, the number of applications far exceeds the available number of vacancies in these relatively good schools. The governments impose more restrictions to control this situation. But the parents driven by parenthood, which naturally strives to provide the best for their children, continuously evolve methods to counter the government controlling. These methods are none other than preparation of false documents, bribery, cheating and even training the little children to face the interviews with a package of lies. This is certainly the wrong start for a kids learning .The competition is so fierce, only the best cheaters and best liars grab the limited opportunities. The parents who are responsible for such acts are guilty in front of the laws of the land, which mete out the justice. But in reality the circumstances that push the people to practice such destructive methods must be eliminated in order to establish the real social justice. Quite fortunately the recent developments of international schools eased the educational tensions to a greater extent. If not for that, by now the school admission would have ended up in a much greater chaos with far reaching social damages. We are so fortunate to be a free and democratic country, which has a free flow of new concepts that are economically viable such as international schools. Yet alone the business community cannot make major changes in the socio-economic texture of a country as efficiently as a government is capable of doing it.

This phenomenon is more or less common for every country, which remained imperial colonies for a long period in the past. Many nations in Asia, Latin America and Africa are still on a struggle to get out of this situation. It is not an easy task to redeem a country, in which the population is degenerated for a long period and has fallen into a state of confusion. If right strategies are not adopted, the unplanned efforts will further complicate the problem. Therefore it is very important to analyze the root causes of the problem in order to eliminate them.

Imperialist powers sailed across the globe and captured countries in less aggressive and less sophisticated parts of the world where people lived in relative harmony with the nature. It was the traders who sailed across the globe. They were only interested in the potential they had for trade and the availability of commodities in those countries. So the earliest sailors, the Portuguese and the Dutch never captured the entire Island but they were manipulating the Kingdoms and ruled only certain parts to facilitate their trade. But every thing in this world evolves from one thing to another. The British who eventually dominated the trading game did foresee the potential of the massive landmasses that are available mainly in Asia and Africa. Those lands looked very attractive resource for the relatively small Kingdom like Britain. Therefore the British monarchy itself got involved in capturing these lands, which they termed as colonization. The British kingdom, which was governed by a very strong constitution, formed a strategic body to utilize the land that was added by the new colonization program for the best interest of the British kingdom. They did set up administrative mechanisms with full authority of the monarchy to utilize the captured lands efficiently to generate supplementary income for the British economy. The planning and implementation carried out by the British strategic body for the best interest of the United Kingdom has become the curse of many nations in Asia and Africa even today.

During a period in human history in which the powerful abused the weak, the British government had no reservations in drawing up the strategic plan for ‘Ceylon' to utilize its fertile land to generate wealth for the kingdom. In this plan no consideration had been provisioned for the well being of the native people which was not even a necessity. The corporate strategy was to cultivate the land with cash crops and export them to generate wealth. The local resistance for these moves was mercilessly suppressed. Large land plots were demarcated and people who were occupying them had been removed against their will. The harbor was built on the western coastal city Colombo and the roads and railroads network was built to bring the produce to this port city for export. Many British planters permanently moved to ‘Ceylon' to cultivate and manage the tea, coconut and rubber plantations.

All the resources of the country were aligned to achieve the targets set by the British East India Company. They concentrated on the conversion of lush green valleys and mountains of the country into plantations of tea, rubber and coconut. It was not an effort of nation building. Instead it was an effort of using one nation's rights, privileges and resources to make another nation rich. In this process the population of the country had no importance other than for plantation labour. Another labour intensive job market was the building and maintenance of the limited infrastructure. In an era of human history in which people were chained and utilized as slaves in some parts of the world, the British adopted a much smarter method in their colonies to utilize the local populations in slavery. They did not chain them as slaves or tortured them. But it caused a greater long-term damage by the lowered quality of the living standards of the local population. The provision of food, health care, education, housing etc was not in their agenda. The main objective was to reduce the costs and make the maximum profits. Therefore a part of their corporate strategy would have been to keep the quality of the local population on minimum levels so the rulers will have less trouble from a weak local population. The impoverished living standards of the people pushed the labour costs down making higher profit margins from the plantations. The British had no requirement to see that local people live in spacious houses comfortably, eat good nutritional food and educate their children. If that happened the domestic consumption would have gone up reducing their take home profits .If children got nutritional food and education, the governors would have faced the problem of absorbing that quality population in an economy which had only plantations. In this environment, the plantations thrived. The locals had very limited physical and psychological strength to stand against the injustice for a very long time. Tea, rubber and coconut could not be used for direct human consumption like fruits, milk, vegetables, meat and grains. So there were no major threats of poaching of cash crops by a malnourished population. People stuffed their stomachs with starchy food like rice, roots and grains and virtually idled their brains for hundreds of years. Those who got isolated in small distant villages had even more difficult lives.

Meanwhile a handful of local people were absorbed into the lower positions in British administration. They had to up hold the values of the British and look down on the fellow locals for mere survival. Those favored locals were educated in a few schools established by the Christian missionaries and developed a British like attitude. They helped the British to rule their weak, uneducated and battered fellow locals while humiliating and abusing them. This British and local combination effectively suppressed the local populations by continuously depriving the chances of coming up in life. Most of the locals were employed in menial jobs and offered a pittance in return.

It is not a question what British did in Ceylon is right or wrong. The British East India Company was just executing their strategies formulated in par with the world order prevailed in that particular era of the human history. It was a time that nations who had a superior social order and technology blatantly abused the less powerful to the extent of capturing their lands and employing the inhabitants as slaves. Slavery was the worst form of recorded human abuse by legitimate governments in which humans were treated as animals. British constituent was very much smarter than their contemporaries. They developed a system, which is an improved version of slavery. In this system there was no direct confrontation with a captured and forcefully retained work force away from their families. Instead the British lowered the total quality of an entire nation so that they could use the people in near slavery conditions. Provision of nutritious food, education for children was not on their agenda. The people had to satisfy themselves on the primitive way of mere survival. The British faced minimal resistance in utilizing these people for longer periods. They only eliminated the leaders who wanted to redeem their fellow men from the British bondage. The Sinhalese Buddhist majority was fortunate enough to receive somewhat reasonable education through the Pirivena temples and through the educated Buddhist monks. The Buddhist temples and monks were instrumental in preserving the religion, culture, language and arts, which is the proud heritage of the Sinhalese. The British indeed had comparatively civilized morals and ethics of governance that they did not completely destroy the Sri Lankan culture. The preserved culture of the land mainly by Buddhist monks is the only link we have to our glorious past and our guidance to a better future.

A nation, which had the intelligence to build architectural and irrigational wonders of the world, lost its vigor and vitality almost completely during this period. We had been forced into a virtual coma for almost 150 years. Physical strength, intellectual quality, innovative ability had gone in to a decline from generation to generation. Majority of the population became timid and humble before their white masters. The British who permanently moved creating large plantation holdings would have felt as if they were kings in their own little kingdoms. Princely plantation bungalows and their administrative culture vouch for this.

By the time of independence in 1948 the British handed over a country with a malnourished abused, confused, uneducated and battered population. Human resource, the most precious gift of any nation had been devastated by the British manipulations in achieving their corporate objectives. They were in a state of very low self-esteem. They lacked intelligence, initiative, innovativeness and endurance. This population was good for nothing but for labour and slavery.

"Ceylon was Britain's model commonwealth country. It had been prepared carefully for the independence. After the war, it was a good middle class country with fewer than 10 million people. It had a relatively good standard of education, with two universities of high quality in Colombo and Kandy teaching in English, a civil service largely of locals, and experience in representative government starting with city council elections in the 1930s. When Ceylon gained independence in 1948, it was the classic model of gradual evolution to independence. Alas! It did not work out. During my visits over the years, I watched a promising country go to waste."

Lee Kuan Yew- From Third World to First ( Page 461)

There is another side of the story that the veteran statesman Mr. Lee did not observe from a distance. The educated class was a less than 01% of the population at the time of independence. The local leaders who took over the country from British were basically a class who were educated in English and trained to uphold the British values. These values directly represented the British corporate strategies of the East India Company. The entire government administrative procedures and concepts were documented and the new bureaucracy referred to them in their day-to-day administration. The British did not give us real independence in 1948. They only transferred the management of these 25, 000 square miles of plantation holding to a management company. Since then this management company was controlled by a small community of British cultured, educated and English speaking politicians and officials who unconsciously catered British requirements until the revival of national sentiments by President Mahinda Rajapaksha after election to office in 2005.

At the time of independence, a vast majority of the population was still living in utmost poverty in rural areas of the country. The country needed to plan its agriculture, housing, education, health care, power and all other infrastructure requirements to redeem this battered population as an independent nation. But quite unfortunately nothing was done through proper planning with achievable goals. Instead the leadership was lulled in to complacency assuming that people and the country will remain static in to the in future. The vision about the future was blurred for most leaders except for Hon DS Senanayake who accomplished a lot for the post independent Sri Lanka during his tenure as the Prime Minister. Mr Lee who became the first Prime Minister of independent Singapore had the vision and carefully planned and executed the people oriented development redeeming his country from the post colonial poverty without any natural resources. That is the reason why he cannot accept what went wrong in Sri Lanka with so many natural resources, which Singapore does not possess.

There was no extensive private sector employment except for limited white-collar jobs in plantations, financial, transportation etc. The privileged few that got the opportunity of having government jobs demanded the respect of their fellow citizens. The ‘ Sir Syndrome' is the most prominent manifestation of this dilemma. In fact this class-consciousness is a unique evil in the British society itself. It became an evil of the highest magnitude in our country becoming a great obstacle for progression due to a minute elite class trying to preserve its privileges at the expense of basic necessities of the majority population lived in poverty. This is indeed a totally unintended but manifested in every act of administration. The Sri Lankan Armed services uphold and protect those old British traditions even today without any change. The big gap maintained between the officer core and the other ranks and the level of respect expected from the lower level still testifies our haunted past. This local bureaucracy could not foresee their responsibilities in building the devastated nation from the scratch. Privileged locals filled the vacant top positions in the hierarchy of the British who left. They enjoyed the respect of their fellow men and valued it more than anything else. This is a psychological state of mind that has been interpreted as jealousy in another perspective. A person in a higher position in the society or in the government bureaucracy does not like to see a less privileged person rising through life in fear of loosing his or her status quo. The class-consciousness, which is an integral part of even in the modern British society, is effectively blocking our progression as an independent nation. This is a powerful evil, which blocks the progression of a nation as much as the cast, racial, language and religious discrimination. Those who want to rectify this condition always get a tough resistance from the society and with in the bureaucracy. It is nothing but the natural human resistance for change.

"I believe one great obstacle to Britain's adjustment to its post-imperial condition was its class- conscious society. It was slow to shed class distinctions. Without empire, Britain needed a meritocracy to retain its position as the leading nation of Europe, not a ruling class which distinguished itself from the working class by its accent, social manners and habits, old boy network, clubs and old school ties. Akio Morita was chairman of Sony in 1991 when he told me that Sony found it hard to get engineers in its British factories to go to the production line. Japanese engineers start from the bottom so as to fraternize with and understand the men who would be working under them. British engineers, he said, preferred their own private rooms. Aware of these shortcomings, Mrs Thatcher as prime minister downgraded class and promoted meritocracy. John Major, her successor spoke of a classless Britain. Prime minister Tony Blair's new labour wants Britain to be rid of class-consciousness.

Lee Kuan Yew- From Third World to First (Page 417)

The Island nation Ceylon that received independence in 1948 did not have many frustrations as much as today because people were ignorant to a greater extent and their requirements were less. Hon DS Senanayake who was one of the greatest leaders we ever had took very positive steps to solve the biggest problem at the time. He concentrated on the development of the agriculture of the country to feed the hungry population. He accomplished the legendary " Galoya Project, Minneriya Project, Senanayake Reservoir" etc. If his vision and efforts continued without deviating this Island nation would have had a different story to tell the world. Since the death of DS Senanayake the priorities of the government administration deviated very slowly but steadily from the actual requirements of the nation.

All developed countries in the world have many things in common. The development of the country is in the households of the population. Availability of adequate food, comfortable homes with utility services, sanitation, decent health care, education, comfortable modes of transportation, entertainment, security, jobs etc for a large segment of the population are common features of developed countries. These are not gifted by the nature. The people itself have achieved them. Nor government neither bureaucracy can create anything unless the individuals of the nation are creative. The simple reason is that in a democratic system, the government, bureaucracy, planners , executers and workers are all consists of common people of the country. Therefore, the over all development state of a country is directly proportional to the quality of the average individual citizen. Who takes what decision has no effect unless the individual who finally performs the job does not do it right. The quality of the teacher determines the standards of the students. The quality of a garment becomes impressive if the tailor is creative and skillful. Winning a battle is easy if the generals are tactically superior. In reality it is the individual quality of the population of any nation makes it superior or inferior to each other. Japan is a living example of this phenomenon. Japan was never a colony of imperial powers except for a short period after the Second World War. Japanese technology was one of the highly developed during the time of Second World War. They had a superior Air Force equipped with home made aircraft and a superior Naval force equipped with home built powerful naval vessels inclusive of large aircraft carriers. The entire momentum of the Japanese nation came to a stop after the destruction took place by nuclear attacks. The agricultural production capacity of the country dropped. The scarcity of food was rampant. Some Japanese movies depict the era so beautifully. The famous movie "Oshin" is one such artistic illustration. It was a time that wife remained in hunger giving the food to her husband or children. The food they did eat was also like what we eat today in Sri Lanka. The average meal had been consisting of large portions of starchy food to fill the stomach. It is a feeling of comfort to fill the stomach with quantity when anything better cannot be afforded.

The Japanese government detected a sharp decline in the capabilities of its population compared to its pre World War II performance. The cause was traced and found out that the nutritional quality of the food consumed by the population was gradually lowering the overall intellectual and innovative capacity of the population. The immediate recovery program was launched to increase the food production and change the eating habits back to pre World War II standards. The addressing of the most grass root level problem, which threatened the progress of the Japanese nation did put the things back on right track. The Japanese were lucky that the quality of their population was retarded for a very short period and it was quickly detected as they could compare with past which was only a few years behind. In Sri Lanka the degeneration of the population was too long that we are totally confused without being able to figure out as to what has gone wrong. We do not have a perceivable reference to our past other than what our ancestors have built.

The leadership of a country alone cannot drive it towards a more developed state. Development in any country has not been achieved overnight. It has always been a gradual process, which are achieved over a period of time and sustained by its people continually. It is always an innovative government that has started and sustained the process when a country is in a fallen state just as it happened in Singapore and Malaysia where they achieved the developed state with in one generation.

In present day Sri Lanka, the biggest obstacle for progression is the quality of the individual population. The malnourishment, which attacked the population for a prolonged period since the colonial era has genetically de graded the physical quality of the population. A very large segment of the population can afford to eat only carbohydrate-saturated foods, which only fill their stomachs to relieve them from hunger. Even though the knowledge base has improved it is economically impossible for an average family to feed the children with nutritional foods as much as required. The resultant malnourished population has low innovative capacity, confidence, physical endurance and intelligence.

The island has bright sunshine year around, fertile lands and ample water resources. The shallow sea around the island is full of plankton, seaweed and other marine food sources that attract an endless supply of nutritious fish, which goes largely underutilized. The country cannot at least produce adequate food for the domestic consumption using these natural gifts that many nations in the world do not possess. Ironically the farming community and the fishing community are among the poorest. This poverty propagates many social problems with in the communities that further implicate the situation. It is becoming increasingly difficult for these communities to provide education for their children in terms of what the country today recognize as good education. The vocational knowledge of the industrial community is inbreeding due to the non-availability of institutions to infuse new knowledge through formal school education. The present educational system of the country does not add any social value for the most productive vocations such as farming, fishing or other industries. It is still so sentimental in driving the student population to groom themselves for white-collar jobs. The graduate engineers, doctors, lawyers, accountants and management experts made out of the best student population mostly seek immigration to other developed countries because the performance of their jobs in the country is not very stimulating for many intellectuals. The accepted belief of the student community of the country is that only the less talented and less fortunate lot is being forced for low-income jobs such as farming, fishing, carpentry, masonry etc. The farming or the fishing communities in the country has no hope in the country's formal educational institutions in grooming the younger generation to become smart farmers or fishermen who can be really rich through their increased productivity.

In today's world it's only the increased productivity can make the living standards better for people. The circumstances of our living are immaterial if the population is empowered with real education, knowledge, intelligence and wisdom, it can achieve the objectives. One good example is the Israel. In Israel the total land area is 10, 290 square miles. More than 50% of that remains deserts and another 20% is forest reservations and steep hills. This leaves approximately 3000 square miles of arable land. According to 1999 statistics, Israel produces fruits and vegetables using this land for the six million domestic populations and also exports 1 billion USD worth of agricultural produce in a year to competitive European markets. The Israel agro industry is so developed that their productivity and quality have achieved unprecedented production levels. Efficient distribution and use of available resources and high intellectual capacity of the farmer population are main contributory factors for these achievements.

It is also natural for a country with a malnourished population, polluted environment and a population highly stressed up due to social problems to incur very high health costs, which is counter productive in all aspects. The vulnerability of the population for health problems is very high due to the prevailing circumstances. The malnourishment is two fold. The poor suffers from the insufficient nutrition while the rich suffer from over nourishment. The rich and the poor equally suffer from the diseases that are generated in the polluted environments. The resultant health care business that is thriving in the country, at times does not even meet the minimum industry standards. So much has to be done to create lifestyles and habits for the prevention of diseases based on the age old precept that ‘health is wealth'.

A population, which cannot produce its own food requirement, will never produce high-tech utility equipment to change the country to a developed state. Whatever the education pumped into malnourished brains is only a paper qualification, which only generates more frustration. This is the reason why private sector prefers to hire a GCE ordinary level qualified child from a well to do family who is educated at a good school than a university graduate from a poor family. Even today a very high percentage of our population is malnourished and we are reluctant to accept it as a fact.

If we carefully study the history of many developed countries, it is the agro industries that had developed first. Once ample food is available for the population to feast upon at affordable prices, the physical quality of the individuals starts to improve .A child needs many forms of amino acids during first five years of their critical formative age in order develop multiple faculties which helps them to absorb knowledge and skills in latter part of their lives. Most of these amino acids are found in fruits, vegetables, dairy products, meats and fish. It is sad that these are the most expensive food items in the country today. Many children are deprived of essential nutrients especially during the childhood due to the financial difficulties of the parents who cannot afford them. Sri Lanka's rural population is the most effected. The poverty and ignorance is virtually destroying the physical quality of the population, which is an irreversible destruction. Once little children are physically retarded owing to malnutrition in their early formative years, it cannot be completely corrected subsequently.

The ‘present crisis' in the country has multiple facets. One problem is dependant on the other and all the problems are knitted together with very strong bonds. Therefore one problem cannot be solved in isolation from another. The most qualified, intelligent, wise, efficient and honest person taking over the ministry of transport as the honorable minister will not be able to solve the transport problem in the country. Similarly none of the ministries, government departments, authorities, commissions, committees etc will be able to find viable solutions in isolation from each other. So it has to be a one master plan that should be activated addressing each problematic area inventing viable, acceptable and culturally compatible solutions. As an example, in present set up the transport problem effects the education, the educational problems burdens the parents, the burden on parents effects their productivity at work and lowered productivity slow downs the economy. The list can go on and on without an end. Each problem is interwoven with another set of problems. Therefore when solutions are sought, it should be able provide solutions to the problems in transport, education, housing, employment, security, economy, resource management etc through a single program that can accommodate the requirements of each other. Each problem has to be taken in isolation, carefully analyzed to identify the root causes and design a solution that can resolve the problem itself while accommodating the requirements of other interwoven problems in order to device solutions for them. It is similar to building a house. In a good house design, everything thing from foundation, walls, electrical distribution, plumbing roofing, door/window frame designs are done at the inception itself. The construction accommodates and leaves provisions for the entire design as the construction progresses. Then only the house can be completed successfully. Similarly, devising a solution for ‘present crisis' is a complex task, yet can be accomplished with the guidance of an acceptable doctrine to the people.

In the drive of designing solutions for the country's problems, we have to be extra careful in clearly defining the expectations of the people in the context of our culture that has been refined over period more than two and half millenniums of recorded history. Any effort to copy a model that had been successful else where in the world could be a disaster since our people will become unhappy in an environment that has different values ending up in a chaos. But there are many good concepts, administrative methods, leadership attributes and social systems that can be learned from successful countries with all due respect for those who invented them. Adaptation and emulating of already proven and successful precepts after proper localization will definitely deliver positive results once applied in appropriate combinations.

First and foremost, we have to clearly define ourselves. We are a nation which had been ruled by our own kings before the colonial invasions. A superior technology in irrigation, architecture, construction, art of war, medicine and transportation had been in place. The people had not been driven after extreme consumerism by the kings but accustomed for simple living blended with nature. The discipline towards the society had been at very higher levels under strict laws imposed by the kings. The Sinahala Buddhist majority culture is mainly influenced by teachings of Buddhism which preaches a deep doctrine of living that cannot harm even an insect. Local kings had not been invading one another devastating women, children and elderly like barbarians while plundering the belongings of invaded people. Those who deviated have been referred with negative notes in ancient records. This history had been instrumental in establishing the social values, main stream thinking and social behaviour to a great extent. Therefore a brief description of the typical Sri Lankan personality is fearful of wrong doing, loves peace, emotionally very sensitive, family oriented, very responsible towards the off spring, offers hospitality to strangers, not very ambitious, likes to socially interact and spend time with friends and relatives, prefer communal living, does not like hard work at the expense of making money alone and not attracted by extreme consumerism. Sri Lankan food, clothing, arts, festivals, and religions represent this personality. Our food is mainly preparations of fresh grains, vegetables, fruits, green leaves, meats, milk products and fish. Cooking is an art that use a precise combination of many spices which provides a refined taste. Still most of our mothers cook in clay pots on firewood furnaces that produce the best flavors. Complicated processed food with loads of preservatives and chemicals that make developed societies sick is still not fully embraced by the Sri Lankans. The high cost of processed food has spared the low income segment from its invasion but it has taken a toll among the high income group. Our clothing tastes are very refine and prefers natural cotton. Our drama and theater is touching love, deep human expectations, struggles and behaviours. Classical music is deeply touching the human soul and it stimulates love and passion. Only the movie industry has been influenced by the Hollywood and Bollywood lately as a result of globalization and developed mass communication technologies. Festivals are mainly family and religions oriented and they portray values of peace and harmony. Vesak festival is one such festivity that enlightens soul through painstakingly done decorations that brings serenity to human souls while promoting the values of love, passion and co existence.

The primary features of the development we have to achieve in Sri Lanka in modern context are to preserve the ‘way of life' in existence. Any added facility, system or infrastructure should only enhance and sharpen different aspects of the existing ‘way of life'. Instead it should not be changing the existing to a different ‘way of life'. We are not very technically sophisticated human beings like in the west. Having televisions in every room and computers for each member of the family and more than two cars in every household is not a necessity for the majority. Very basically a majority of the population is not running after the ‘American Dream'. Most people do not perceive working overtime or cheating to achieve those consumerist ideals as worth striving. There is no social value attached to working like machines and living like machines without human feelings. Instead a majority of our people like to go home early after days work, enjoy the company of friends and relatives in peaceful environment, find joy in raising families, enjoy the bliss of religious worship and family ceremonies and like to relax whenever possible. Therefore the intended development is not to make Sri Lanka a ‘Singapore, Malaysia, or Australia' but to make it a better Sri Lanka where typical Sri Lankans can happily enjoy the unique Sri Lankan ‘way of life' regardless of cast creed or religion.

I believe, that as a nation with matured ideals in life, we are far ahead of many developed countries. The developed world which embarked on a mission to find the joy of life in consumerist ideals has begun to be conscious about its myth. The excessive consumption and limitless modern luxuries have not delivered the satisfaction of life for many. Now they slowly revert back to the values of the old world looking for meaning of human existence. We are closer to being human beings and to the true meaning of life than most of the consumerist societies. This ‘way of life' requires lot of free time away from back breaking work to enjoy the bliss of human existence. The reasonable work that every one performs also should be able to sustain the societies. It is a balance of two extremes. One of the major objectives of the intended development is to rectify the created confusion which is a waste of energy that deprives many from enjoying the Sri Lankan ‘way of life'. Many bad habits, practices and crimes that have come in to being due to the created fierce competition for mere survival have to be eliminated by the achievement of development. People have to bear the burdens of life equally. All have to contribute a fair share of work so that the heavily burdened can have freedom to enjoy the life with the rest. The preservation of our beautiful environment, utility of every drop of water, fair distribution of natural resources, elimination of waste, containment of crimes, simple but complete living standards and economic sustainability are integral goals of this effort.

Efficient systems can reduce waste of time and resources. A matching analogy can be drawn from the shipping industry to explain the existing confusion and the nature of the intended development we have to achieve. The magnitude of the inefficiency, waste of time and space, and waste of energy will be beyond the comprehension if not for the standard 20 ft and 40 ft marine shipping containers that are in use in present cargo shipping industry. Just imagine the shipping industry without standard marine containers. Goods that have to be transported will be in all kinds of awkward shapes and weights. Each time a ship is loaded, the crew will have to make hundreds of different decisions to complete the loading. It would take a long time to load a ship ensuring the safety of the ship, goods and the crew. It will be extremely difficult control the wastage of space due to awkward shapes. Transportation of goods in and out of harbour will face a similar predicament. Loading gantries will have to be adjusted each time a different consignment is loaded. But the introduction of 20 ft and 40 ft standard marine containers have increased the industry efficiency to unprecedented levels. Loading and unloading of containers take place away from ports and it saves lot of time for the shipping industry. Pricing, packaging and land transportation has become standardized. The safeties of the transported goods are guaranteed. The lesson learned is that even factory worker contribute to the efficiency of the shipping industry by methodically loading and unloading the containers with in their factories. This method has lessoned the burden of the small shipping crews but has increased the efficiency through the equal distribution of the burden among many related industries. The standardization has cut down the costs and waste.

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Article Source: ArticlesBase.com