28 March, 2024

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‘Social War’ Budget: Sri Lanka’s Social Contract Under Siege

By Dayan Jayatilleka

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

“…restore property rights in accordance with market principles…” ~ Mangala Samaraweera, Budget speech

Earlier this year, the country’s top economists and policy planners, current and previous, were gathered together to honor the country’s top development thinker and perhaps the finest Sri Lankan intellect alive, Dr. Godfrey Gunatilleke. The specific occasion was to launch a volume of his writings covering forty years. Described as ‘A Collection of Writings 1975-2015’ it is with excellent reason that the main title of the volume was ‘Towards a Sri Lankan Model of Development’.

It is this very idea of a ‘Sri Lankan model of development’ and its core concepts, that Mangala Samaraweera’s Budget and the UNP’s economic ideology has made a rupture from, in favor of the embrace of market fundamentalism and ungrounded neoliberal dogma.

The idea of a Sri Lankan model of development was both cause and consequence of decades-long bipartisan, actually multi-party national and social consensus, which brought successful outcomes. Godfrey Gunatilleke sums up the key ideas of this creative national developmentalist consensus, this “somewhat unique development mix it has achieved” (p10) and towards which he was a crucial contributor. There are two key postulates:

1. “the final outcome—development.” (p17)

2. “…We can take some satisfaction at having arrived where we are—a middle income country enjoying a state of high human development with an economy which is among the fastest growing economies in the world, a multiparty democracy which has been sustained without interruption from the time of independence and a clear prospect of advancing into the state of very high human development during the next two decades.” (‘From Retrospect and Hindsight’, Chapter 9, pp. 315-352)

Mangala Samaraweera has ruptured with this national consensus, has gone against the national grain and the Great Tradition of Sri Lankan developmentalism. Not only is his stated outcome “rapid growth”, not “development”;  not only does he turn his back on any notion of a successful and desirable Sri Lankan model of development based on its fairly unique experimentation with a creative policy mix; his entire reading of Sri Lanka’s development experience is one of negativism.

“Sri Lanka needs to liberalize and globalize” pronounces Mangala Samaraweera in his Budget speech, adding that “…The country needs to shift away from being more protectionist and inward-oriented…We have tried many strategies including protecting local industries through tariffs.” He sounds like Rip Van Winkle. One wonders whether he thinks we are living in 1977 having experienced a closed economy for decades. Sri Lanka certainly needed to liberalize and globalize, and that is what we did under JR Jayewardene’s leadership, Ronnie de Mel’s strategizing and management, supported by Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanaike’s dynamism and Premadasa’s synthesis of ‘growth with equity’.

There is no problem with liberalizing and globalizing except that we have already done that in several waves. The problem is that there is no evidence that moving forward on that same track will help. This is not to argue for reversal of liberalization and globalization. It is however, to argue against going recklessly further, and I say recklessly because Mangala Samaraweera calls for “fast-tracking liberalization”.

Samaraweera promises to “…restore property rights in accordance with market principles aiming at promoting faster and sustainable growth.” What does he mean by “restore property rights”? To ‘restore’ means to go back to what it was. So when does Samaraweera want the country to go back to? To the era in agriculture prior to the Paddy lands act, in which sharecropping (‘ande’ cultivation) was unchecked and unrewarded? To the era before rent controls made urban housing affordable for the middle classes? To the era before the Land Reforms of 1972 and 1975 which imposed land ceilings of 50 acres?

The UNP of Ranil Wickremesinghe obviously does not know that when the Land Reform Bill was introduced in 1972, R. Premadasa, who was familiar with the formula for social stability and de-radicalization through creating a rich/middle peasantry (a kulak class) of the brilliant Fr. Peter Pillai: “five acres and a cow”. He moved an amendment from the Opposition benches calling for the land ceiling to be limited to five acres! This was no theatrical gesture. When elected the country’s leader, Premadasa appointed a Presidential Task Force on Land Redistribution which earmarked 750,000 hectares of state land to be given to the landless—NOT corporate business. When Liberal leader Dr. Chanaka Amaratunga proposed at the All-Parties Conference of 1990 that the Constitution be amended so that private property and that private ownership of land be made a fundamental right, President Premadasa rejected it from the Chair, declaring emphatically that “land is the patrimony of the whole people!” When the plantation sector needed a new dynamism to pull it out of a rut, the same UNP President refused to re-privatize the ownership of the plantations and decided instead to limit the reform to the grant of management contracts for five years to private companies.   

The Mangala Budget not only launches an all-out attack on the broadly bipartisan developmental paradigm that Sri Lanka has adhered to, with whatever strategic variations, since Independence, itself the most credible claim to an internationally recognized ‘Sri Lankan exceptionalism’ in a positive sense of the term. By so doing it also attacks the Sri Lankan Social Contract that underlay this developmental paradigm and reciprocally was held together by it.

When one factors in the new Constitution project which does the same thing, undermining the bipartisan paradigm of a unitary state and thereby undermining the National Contract between the Sinhala majority and the state, what we have is a cosmopolitan-liberal or neoliberal-globalist assault on both the Social and National Contracts that kept Sri Lanka intact.   

What are the social classes and strata targeted for disintegration or subordination by the Mangala-Ranil Budget? What are the social classes and strata targeted for all-out attack by the Budget?

They are (I) the local industrialists (II) the middle and upper middle classes, including professionals (III) labor and (IV) the peasantry.

I. Local industrialists:

How will “our policy of liberalizing and globalizing” as Mangala puts it, help local industry? Will it not harm it instead? Who will benefit from this policy of fast-tracking further liberalization and globalization?

“We have legislations that do not allow foreign investments in certain sectors. Perhaps, most of all, our complex labour laws and bureaucracy have unwittingly obstructed foreign enterprises from entering into the country, thereby, preventing the much needed competition for the local industries.”

What will befall local industry when foreign industries enter the local market unimpeded? And what happens when having decimated our local manufacturing base, they move away as foreign industries have done in many countries, as well as areas within countries, some of them in the developed West, leaving such zones and populations prostrate?

II. The middle/upper-middle classes and professionals:

“…For example; the Rent Act, No. 7 of 1972 which limits the ownership of houses and the rent to be charged requires amendments…”

“As I already mentioned, we will remove restrictions that limit the land ownership rights of listed companies with foreign ownership together with the restrictions on foreigners’ ability to purchase condominiums below the 4th floor.”   

III. The Peasantry:

Without proper ownership of land and property, no country could achieve faster growth ensuring prosperity for all. In this context the country’s land and property ownership issues need a careful and urgent appraisal…”

“…restore property rights in accordance with market principles aiming at promoting faster and sustainable growth.”

Mangala Samaraweera has not explained what’s ‘improper’ about the ownership of land and property in the country, which warrant a careful and urgent appraisal of the country’s land and property ownership issues. One could have sympathized if he named landlessness among the peasantry and growing inequities in property ownership and the ability to own property. But he said nothing of the kind so one cannot but assume that he is referring to some other sense in which there is no ‘proper ownership of land and property’ and that the country’s land and property ownership issues need to be reappraised. That this is so is confirmed in yet another sentence in his Budget speech, to wit “we will remove restrictions that limit the land ownership rights of listed companies with foreign ownership”.

In short, Mangala Samaraweera is planning to repeal or disembowel the Paddy Lands Act (1958) and the two Land Reform Acts (1972 and 1975), at the same time that Ranil enhances the powers over land of the Provincial Councils. Thus, we shall not only see the abandonment of the DS Senanayaka strategy of relieving landlessness by utilizing the unpopulated extents of land in the country’s North and East, but we shall also see large corporate landholdings, both local and foreign, back in Sri Lanka—a recreation of the Planter Raj that Dr. Colvin R de Silva and hector Kobbekaduwa brought down.

This is precisely what previous governments strove to avoid. They undertook land reforms after the violent uprisings of 1971 and 1987-90 precisely because the prevailing land ownership structures caused land hunger and radicalization among the rural youth.

Previous governments were also thankful that this island never saw a classic peasant based uprising or guerrilla movement, nor could the JVP fall back on peasant support for a protracted campaign, precisely because we did not have a large landowning (‘latifundist’) class as in Latin America and the Philippines. In their myopia, Ranil-Mangala are about to change all that.

IV. The workers:

“…Country’s labour demand against the constraints on labour supply requires a closer examination of all areas of the labour market including labour laws, to pave the way forward to harness the productive resources of the economy.”

“…Perhaps, most of all, our complex labour laws and bureaucracy have unwittingly obstructed foreign enterprises from entering into the country, thereby, preventing the much needed competition for the local industries.”

Thus the Ranil-Mangala Budget is a Budget of social warfare. It embarks on social warfare, targeting specific social categories, and will trigger a response of social warfare. The frontal attack on all these social classes will cause massive unemployment, povertization, proletarianization, decline of purchasing power, shrinkage of the domestic market and therefore economic crisis on the one hand and the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few foreign and local business interests on the other. It will be tantamount to a social genocide project. Social polarization of a sort that Sri Lanka always avoided and buffered itself against will appear and rapidly proliferate.

The Ranil-Mangala economic philosophy is based on a lie, a fraud, in that it flies in the face of the most spectacular economic success story of our lifetime, that of China. The Chinese model is, as every informed economist knows, based not on fast-track liberalization and unfettered opening, but on an economic guiding role for the Chinese state (a version of ‘state capitalism’) and a national playing field that is tilted in favor of Chinese companies. Furthermore, China’s perspective on the global economy in which it plays such a huge driving role, is not one that fetishizes global free trade and totally ‘free’ economies. Mangala Samaraweera is ignorant of all of this and inhabits a fading universe of neoliberal globalism.

This economic philosophy and the quasi-federalizing new Constitution project cannot but generate resistance on two fronts, the social and the national, either running parallel or forming a pincer, which can cumulate in revolt and rebellion. The prelude to 1956 was the ‘Hartal’, the unarmed popular uprising of August 1953. Just as the prelude to 1956 was the worker upsurge of 1953, the postscript to 1956 was the ugly ethnic riot of 1958, and the postscript to ’58 was the heartrending lethal denouement of 1959. What the policies of this UNP government, enshrined in the Budget and the Interim report on the Constitution, may trigger is an incendiary combination of 1953 and 1956, or more horrifically and nightmarishly, the chain reaction of 1953-1956-1958-1959.

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Latest comments

  • 6
    1

    Born stupidity is not something that can be cured easily. The worst is that these born stupids are considered as “Gurus of all trades” by this low IQ nation.
    This Guru is critical about “fast-track liberalization” and try to compare with what has been happening in China in resent times. China is high IQ nation with high work ethics, productivity of workers is way above 80% and 1.3b people …Does DJ knows how low worker productivity or work ethics in SL??? …
    If one has general knowledge of world economics, they should know that SL can NOT even compare with Malaysia today.. If this stupid Guru (First Class honers degree on Languages (economics??) in early 80s), wants, the comparison should be done what Malaysia was doing 20 or 25 years back OR what Vietnam was doing 10~15 years back…

    • 4
      0

      AVB: china is one billion. You wants this 22 million to think like china ?

    • 3
      0

      As for the issues raised by DJ, the short answer is that our efforts over the last 70 years cannot be declared a roaring success, so maybe it is time to try something different.

      For all our (SL) obvious attractions we are not exactly a magnet for inward investment for many well rehearsed reasons. It is about time that our ‘protected’ industries faced a bit of competition. It may well spur them on to higher things.

      We cannot remain frogs in our little well forever.

      • 4
        1

        Spring Koha

        True this island is not a magnet for inward investment however the reason being we do have our inappropriate share of “Commission Rajas” at every step of the state hierarchy. We need to introduce one stop shop for potential foreign investors where by paying just one fee they get clearance in no time. Basil is the most suitable and qualified person to head this division within BOI. He has plenty of hands on experience.

        Of course the protected industries enjoy a captive market supplying low quality goods and services at monopoly prices. Don’t you think the masses are willing to put up all misallocation of resources because they are smart ass patriots?

        • 3
          0

          Native,

          You were inquiring about cut and paste somewhere. Use Firefox browser with NoScript add-on/plug-in. And turn off JavaScript when you visit the page. You can turn NoScript on/off as required.

          • 2
            0

            nimal fernando

            Thanks for the technical support.
            Burt recommended greenshot.org for all the user friendly facilities that we are used to. I have already down loaded the programme however I am yet to familiarise with all its commands and attributes.

  • 9
    1

    Dayan,

    Buddy, what happened to the “Gota for president” project?

    Did you ever foresee that the greatest obstacle for Gota would be Mahinda? Ha ha ha

    If you can’t see what is right under your nose, what makes you think that you are good at evaluating anything?

    Man, if you haven’t learnt anything in 60 years, now is the time for you to step back and evaluate your objectives in the cold light of day.

    You want an overseas posting. How do you get it?

    If you are smart – well, not foolishly voluminous and verbose – you would stay silent and study the others who were successful.

    Study how Palitha Kohonne survived in the plum posting in NY for the entire Rajapakse tenure. Contrast his methods of “sucking-up” to the Rajapakses with yours and learn what he did right and where you went wrong.

    Better still, study your nemesis Sajin Vass Gunawardena; how he was able to be a favourite and amass a great fortune as well.

    Kohonne and Sajin Vass have the courage to accept who they are ………… there are no daily tomes to justify their actions …….. unlike you, they are comfortable to be who they are, and don’t give a fig about public perceptions.

    The stupidest thang a man can do, is to get bogged down in one’s own hazy shebang of hallucinatory morality. Be true to yourself, just step back and observe your past; you have displayed no morality, ethics, principals ……….. So, at least now, have the courage to be what you really are. You would succeed in your endeavour even beyond your wildest imagination.

    Man, don’t be so predictable! Even before someone reads your tomes, they know how they going to end. In the SL political realm you have become too predictable hence boring. ………….. Man, even gals find predictable men boring.

    Just some friendly advise ……….. just witnessing your daily efforts and feeling sorry for ya.

    After all, what are friends for, eh?

  • 1
    1

    This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our Comment policy.For more detail see our Comment policy https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/comments-policy-2/

  • 3
    1

    It is amazing. Not long ago, Millinium corporation wanted lands reforma and gave funds. Now finance minsiter single handedly wanted to change Paddy land act and some other land act. I heard, the govt wants to tax even the wells. Yet they releave Beer from taxing and ask kids to drink beer instead of sweet drinks. How do they are going to elelctions. Keep it away from rural masses

  • 5
    0

    This is the only way out for Srilanka. Speedy globalization. It should not be like SWRD taking over buses owned by locals and Chandrika giving them back to private sector and Sirima taking over of land and Insurance and daughter giving them back to private sector and again Insurance back with the Govt. which retards development.Think about Sri Lanka Telecom how efficiently run by the private sector. Before privatization the monthly bill took over 5 months to come and repairs we had to wait and wait . Now every thing is promptly attended to.Our slogan today should be in bold letters ”PROSPERITY THROUGH PRIVATIZATION”

  • 6
    2

    Just about a week back you wrote an article assessing the budget and this one is an aspect of the budget. When did you become an expert economist?
    You never paid ANY attention to the MR budgets. Were they perfect?

  • 7
    2

    This guy suffers from Ranil-Mangala phobia. Can someone suggest an antidote for this poor fellow?

  • 1
    0

    Thero is not trying to show he knows economics. He know even if Fidel had accidentally understood a sentence in that subject, he never would. He had plough throw all this garbage because he has to raise a question.

    He caught Mangala on the Amude. Mangala reduced the beer tax to make Thero happy. But Thero can not go silent when he has found the code word.

    Sampanthan and Sumanthiran said in Colombo it is good Budget, but changed it in the North. They denied that they had said that. But one or two Tamils MPs had seen same thing Thero saw. They have said this is not a Tamils Friendly Budget. It one only for America, India, EU… those who are raising the minority problem. That is the point Thero Talking, but on his side; that is 180 degrees other side. .
    Thero is 110% correct on “What does he mean by “restore property rights”? To ‘restore’ means to go back to what it was. “
    Here Magala is trying to building secret tunnel to use when he go out and see other diplomats. For the Sinhalese, this Land right is about business. For China, its approval to own Five villages wide big lands. Then comes the countries who talk about UNHRC resolution. Mangala has perfectly worded his sentences that he can twist as Yahapalanaya is going to return the army occupying land. A Tamil MP had listed 1000 and 1000 acres of land army currently holding and cultivating in the North. Then he was asking why the rebels should not be allowed to do that cultivation if Mangala is honest, and not just trying to fool the West with wordings.
    Here, Thero has smelled it in his own way and he has come from the Secret Solution Cementing to Budgeting. Here Goes Thero “When one factors in the new Constitution project which does the same thing, undermining the bipartisan paradigm of a unitary state and thereby undermining the National Contract between the Sinhala majority and the state, what we have is a cosmopolitan-liberal or neoliberal-globalist assault on both the Social and National Contracts that kept Sri Lanka intact. “ Thero asking Mangala others may try to fall two magos with one stone, but aren’t you felling three Magos (IC, China and Modayas” without any stone at all? Can magala answer to Thero’s question?

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