{"id":120771,"date":"2014-03-05T12:22:17","date_gmt":"2014-03-05T06:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=120771"},"modified":"2014-03-12T12:33:21","modified_gmt":"2014-03-12T07:03:21","slug":"gota-please-dont-white-van-sunli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/gota-please-dont-white-van-sunli\/","title":{"rendered":"Gota, Please Don\u2019t White-Van Sunli"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kumar David<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Prof<\/a>

Prof Kumar David<\/p><\/div>\n

Neoliberalism Underpins Wanathamulla And Slave Island Evictions:\u00a0The Informal Economy and its Enemies<\/strong><\/p>\n

The informal sector of the economy is the bedrock of an open society in third-world countries. When the bulldozers of the UDA roll in with white-vans in tow, flanked by jackboots in helmets, there is no place the poor can run, nowhere to hide. The assault of Rajapakse Raj\u2019s corporate-state neoliberalism on the Informal Economy (InfEc) is a paradoxical turning of tables on Karl Popper who preached that the great facilitator of an Open Society was capitalist individualism. The PPP (Popper-popping-paradox) then is that free market capitalism in poor countries is predicated on authoritarianism thus exploding the capitalism-freedom marriage that Popper so artfully brokered. Left to themselves, the poor that is the majority in third world nations, seek self-supporting collective structures, Popper\u2019s antihero.<\/p>\n

This essay is a book-review of sorts where I inject local context into the generic discourse in \u201cThe Dilemma of the Informal Economy\u201d by Sriyan de Silva. The monograph, published by the Employers Federation of Ceylon, 214 pages in length, has just come hot off the press. I have drawn on Chapter 5 for my purposes in the first part of this essay. The chapter has a jaw breaker of a title but it is about the flimsy property rights and underlying travails of the small people who earn their livelihood through InfEc.<\/p>\n

InfEc consists of small and very small businesses; itinerant vendors, pavement hawkers, small repair joints, the ubiquitous 3-wheeler walla<\/i>, small contractors and craftsmen. The littlest fellow could be the wewalkaraya<\/i> who mends your rattan chair; at the more ambitious end would be the leader of a clique of four or five bass unahas<\/i> who did that balcony extension for you. The residents and families of Slave Island<\/span><\/a> and Wanathamulla<\/span><\/a> are only in the minority a proletariat (workers employed by companies or the state); a significant majority are self-employed in the informal sector.<\/p>\n

Sunil Samaradheera<\/span><\/a> who was abducted in Wanathamulla last week after a heated argument with Gota<\/span><\/a>, was a fish vendor, a hawker at a mallu lalla, <\/i>typical of an informal sector person. Read Tisaranee Gunasekera\u2019s story<\/span><\/a> and watch Sunil\u2019s embedded video expos\u00e9 after his release thanks to a Wanathamulla citizen\u2019s outcry;<\/p>\n