By Vishwamithra –

“The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible – and achieve it, generation after generation.” ~Pearl S Buck

On the election platform Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) and the National People’s Power (NPP) promoted a fresh ideal and they iterated a fresh slogan, again and again: the 56% of Sri Lanka. Fifty six percent of the total voting bloc in the country was women; not only the well-to-do Colombo seven ‘ladies’ whose evening routine circled around the city’s cocktail circuit, but also the middleclass women who went to work day in and day out in order to buttress the monthly income of a family to set aside and maintain a steady disposable income with extra cash at the end of the month to entertain the whole family to a monthly dinner in an expensive looking restaurant, new clothes for the husband, children and herself; it’s also true for the unemployed village damsel who had been looking for a gainful occupation since she left the university with a heavy load of hopes and a light paper certificate of graduation, yet full of infatuated sentiments for a ‘happily married’ life with her husband-to-be.

They stood in line to listen to the lovely women who appeared on the NPP platform expressing the very sentiments and aspirations they themselves were nurturing for a long time. They were treated to a fanciful yet hopeful tomorrow, a tomorrow that has still not arrived. The country’s Prime Minister is a woman. There are close to 22, a ten percent (10%) of the total, women in the current House of Representatives. A separate portfolio for women’s Affairs and its head is a woman, an experienced activist in the NPP. Yet the fruits have still not matured, far from being ripe and juicy.

What is the cause and what is the path, if there is any, towards the destination as was told and sold in the election manifesto. They can’t be just words limited within the ugly boundaries of election pledges. Women are in every family, be as a wife, sister or certainly as mother. Every person has a mother, a woman who nurses the baby son or daughter; she is the one who is primarily responsible for the upkeep of the family. Anura Kumara Dissanayake himself, our President,  has spoken about his mother on more than many an occasion, lovingly and with utter devotion. He simply cannot forget what he and his party promised at the time of the elections.

When talking about the woman of the land, categories are many into which each of our women belongs. She may be a hardcore professional, a lawyer, a doctor, an accountant, an administrator, a civil servant or a junior or senior manager in a private sector company. Or she may be the one that is faithfully doing her housewife’s chores without any complaint; harassed by the mischievous kids, not appreciated by an equally hardworking husband who has lost his interest in his sentimental approaches to her when the time permits. She is a housewife and she cannot be ignored. Trying to find employment for her should not be a the government’s ‘job’. But identifying her as an equal partner in every enterprise in life and some dreaming of soaring above all aspirations.

The qualified yet unemployed woman of all geographical regions too needs the attention of the government if it’s keen on seeking a resolution of woman’s issues. In other words, no woman should be forsaken; every probable solution must be the subject of search for resolving the emerging problems and issues related to her in a patriarchal Sri Lankan society.

A few decades ago, only men had the platform to themselves. They not only dominated the political and sociocultural dynamics of society; and what that process entailed is there in display for everyone to see: a bankrupt economy, a corrupt and dishonest polity and governance dominated by nepotism. The average woman has been not only ignored and her demands and needs brushed aside, she actually has been violated and left to rot in a hellhole of social process that needed reform not today, but years or decades ago.

What can AKD and the NPP whose authenticity and apparent honesty was not questioned offer this hapless specimen of our society? This woman we are talking about is not overly interested in bringing the Rajapaksas and Wickremesinghes before the rule of law. Such issues do not capture her scrutiny; the abstract and nuanced do not dwell in her mundane mind. Her priorities are focused exclusively on the immediate: her family and herself. Even sounding a little condescending, the writer emphasizes that woman’s standing, despite the fact that we produced the world’s first woman Prime Minister and another one as President, we must not forget that it was naked nepotism that produced such world’s first feats; Sirimavo was the widow of an assassinated Prime Minister- SWRD Bandaranaike- and CBK is the daughter of the Bandaranaike couple. Not a very boastworthy or glorifiable accomplishment.

We had a very ordinary woman, Shirani Bandaranayake, who ascended to the seat of Chief Justice but she was impeached under inglorious circumstances by the Rajapaksas and no soul in our society today even mentions Shirani Bandaranayake’s name.

Every woman has a right to her own dreams and aspirations. She wakes up in the morning and wakes her siblings up; helps her mother cook the morning meals; gets dressed to go to work and earn money to keep the home budget balanced and leave something for a rainy day, so to speak. She does not complain, she does not stop either. Her task is to finish what she started soon after she woke up: finish the day’s chores and dream for a better day. She might be blocked wherever she goes and she might be dissuaded from whatever she dare undertake to do. At the end of the day, she will deliver.

She cannot be ignored; she cannot be stopped and she cannot be substituted for. Unforgiving social stigmas and unrelenting cultural forces cannot slow her down. Gaining employment as anchors in the television marketplace is not sufficient to satiate intellectual curiosity for those superficial and ‘glorified’ occupations are like what the beautiful airline hostesses who attempt to impress onlookers who crowd the Katunayake Airport during rush hours.

Can the NPP government look to the horizon and be determined to go beyond? Cliches and platitudes are not the solutions. They are mere slogans and cliches. Setting some visibly impossible goals might be an inviting way forward. The NPP is supposed to be a political party that looked outside the ‘box’. Extraordinary issues need extraordinary solutions offered and accomplished by extraordinary men and women. Woman has to be part of every part of our governance process, not because it’s a sweet political slogan. Because it’s the right thing to do.

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com