By Vishwamithra –

“Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings.”  ~ Joseph Conrad

Pledges declared, promises made and a new vision articulated on the election platform is now history. That history is not all that long, merely twelve months. We are trying to compare twelve months with seventy six long and agonizing years; and we fail to see any resemblance. But we cannot wait another three quarters of a century to pass judgment on a governing machination and economic management by the newly elected government of the National People’s Power (NPP). The people’s patience is running very thin. They are eager to see the results today, now.

Professor Anil Jayantha, Minister of Labor and Deputy Minister of Economic Development made his presentation to Parliament a couple of weeks ago; it sheds light on some very salient features of the country’s economy, both at macro and micro levels. If one were to assume that all the statistics which he laid out is true, the country is in good hands, to say the least. Given the trust and faith the people have reposed on both Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) and his government, one simply cannot disbelieve and later disregard what Anil Jayantha presented to Parliament.

The fundamentals of the economy which include, amongst others, employment, GDP and inflation, seem to be within acceptable dimensions. But what was omitted was whether the government will be in a sound enough position to start repaying the debts when 2028 arrives. Also, there was hardly any mention about the micro picture in which each family that lives on the borderline of poverty, those who live on a paycheck to paycheck basis and who are already below poverty level, would be better off than they were twelve months ago, prior to the take over of power by AKD/NPP.

Growth of the economy, better than what was forecast is indeed quite an encouraging snippet. Nonetheless, absence of forewarning of consequences if and when a sudden natural disaster or any softening of the process the government is taking does occur could be very unfortunate and even disastrous. What ultimately matters, in the context of the average commoner is ‘disposable income’. Can the government assure that the  disposable income of each family would have a chance of increasing or not.            

Would the average family be able to have sufficient disposable income so that what was cut off from its monthly budget be reinserted now? Will he be able to buy for his sons and daughters an extra pair of shoes, shirt, a sari for his wife and enjoy an evening with his family at the theater or the city’s restaurant? When the average voter makes his or her judgment on the performance of their government, that is the yardstick he or she will use to measure that performance.

How deep the NPP parliamentarians go into their electorates and disseminate the good or bad news about the economy? Do they engage in an American-style ‘town-hall meetings’ at which there is a fair and balanced exchange of views and a Q & A session with the voters, not as a mere public relation exercise but as a genuine exploration of the real conditions in which the average voter lives. The more  the representatives keep away form their electorate, the less popular and accepted they become. That is a given in a democratic republic which Sri Lanka is.

One may be reminded about the conditions of the electorate’s frustrations and disillusionment on the eve of the 1977 General Elections and in what discourtesy the then government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike treated the average electorate; the utter callousness and disrespect was evident. Politicians, when in power, do not realize the validity and unparalleled significance of exchanging basic information with their voters. As ‘customer is always right’ in marketing, ‘voter is always right’ in democratic politics. Election campaigning is marketing; the politicians have to market their policies and principles; they have to market their methodologies and processes by which, they say, can their policies and principles be executed. And then they market themselves.

Voters always have a choice. If one politician does not listen, he might opt to go to another, whereas, the politician does not have that option. He has to go to the same electorate to canvas votes. The faster they realize the indispensability of the voter, the better off he would be at the next election. Discipline of the parliamentarians, the Cabinet of Ministers and the President himself too matters a great deal. But in comparison to the ability of each family to feed itself and meet the daily expenditure levels with whatever the income they receive at the end of the day, week or month, discipline of the politicians pales into insignificance.

Even the extent to which the present government goes to punish the villainous past-politicians that include the Rajapaksas and the Wickremesinghes along with an utterly corrupt bureaucracy amongst which were Deshabandu Tennakoon and other civil and military service thugs could carry the optics of the government’s executive powers thus far but no further. In a country where the majority of the population is living dangerously close to the poverty-line cannot afford the luxury of weaponization of the very system by which the machinery of government is controlled and run. Retribution may be tolerated by some western governments, but a greater majority of a people having being born and raised as practicing Buddhists, revenge or vengeance in whatever form is an alien concept; a concept that has been tested and proven to have failed in the context of social uplift.

Punishing the so-called ‘bad, dishonest and corrupt’ must be totally without qualification, in the hands of the those who are vested with that power. Law of the land must not be dabbled with by politicians who get elected for a specific number of years whereas the bureaucracy is there to stay. The generations that preceded the present one were not familiar with the social media; the current generation is literally living by the social media. They don’t go to sleep without their iPhones turned on by their bedside. It is no more an addiction of the present generation, it is a basic necessity.

Sri Lanka having graduated from feudalism and a society that spent its disposable income on basic necessities to a modern day consumer society owing to the availability of credit, payment plans and ‘buy now pay later’ banking concepts and spending habits began increasing even more spending. Families began spending a larger share of their income on new products like appliances and automobiles, shifting from a focus on necessities. Advertising agencies mushroomed, using new strategies to influence consumers and create demand for these new products. Adjusting their lifestyles to the darker sides of capitalism created a false narrative, its fundamental message being: ‘live now, suffer later’. High-spending youth and  adolescents managed to persuade their parents to adjust to the same culture of spending way before earning.

We can’t go back in this process. Society’s evolution is a journey forward, Its movement is always a step to the future. Whether what awaits at the end of this journey is a crash without a forewarning, one might never know. But it is the responsibility and the mission of each government, which the people elect, to provide the essential tools and wherewithal and even philosophical guidance so that if and when the crash occurs, the people would be ready if they were made aware of the dangers of pursuit of material comforts beyond one’s means.

It is not the function of government to legislate and enact morality and ethics into one’s life. But provision of eye-opening new vistas at a fundamentally macro level is a primary function of all governments. The optics of the picture painted by AKD and all his cohorts at the election campaign time may have conveyed the wrong notion that they are all holy and pious compared to the ones who preceded them. Having being driven to the ground by the country’s bankruptcy and debased by diabolical corruption, the people looked up to the National People’s Power (NPP) as a forlorn people waiting for a ‘Messiah’ to appear. In the given circumstances of the 2020 to 2024 period, one cannot blame them for being so naive and unready and unwilling to accept any different alternative.

This the context within which the performance of the AKD/NPP government should be measured. Anil Jayantha’s statistics, AKD’s rhetoric, absence of major scandals and an apparent void of corruption and the laughable performance of the Opposition and its leader, Sajith Premadasa, may all contribute to a sustainable trust on the part of the majority in the government. A left-wing administration is evidently in charge and in full control. Mass movements against the government are hardly manifest. What is really lacking is rapid improvement in the living conditions of the ordinary men and women in the country. Whatever appears as improvement in the economy in World Bank or Central Bank Reports would be meaningless unless and until there is sustainable improvement in ordinary family’s life. AKD and his government may well be advised as to the unnuanced, one-dimensional and black-and-white aspects of Sri Lankan society that cannot be hidden away by and from nuanced rhetoric.

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