{"id":191443,"date":"2018-06-19T14:31:06","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T09:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=191443"},"modified":"2018-06-24T00:24:35","modified_gmt":"2018-06-23T18:54:35","slug":"one-of-sri-lankas-greatest-economists-sbd-de-silva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/one-of-sri-lankas-greatest-economists-sbd-de-silva\/","title":{"rendered":"One Of Sri Lanka\u2019s Greatest Economists: SBD De Silva"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta –<\/strong><\/p>\n

In appreciation of the sweet words of comfort from friends \u2013 so many across the world who only knew of SB from my jabbering on about him, and my sharings online \u2013 I shall take recourse to pass on a few memories of a life truly and deeply well lived, of the passing at age 92 of my \u2018guru\u2019 of the last almost 20 years, SBD de Silva.<\/p>\n

\u2026I shall start at the end.<\/p>\n

1<\/p>\n

As his body was relegated to the flames at the Nedimala crematorium, there was a terrific explosion! Was it the expensive pacemaker recently inserted, perhaps uselessly, at great private cost, or was it, as a friend insisted at that moment: SB\u2019s powerful brain \u2013 pressure finally released, albeit post-mortem!<\/p>\n

Indeed, he was of tempestuous core and mind to the very end. When we last saw him, we argued with a dear friend, shouting heated words across SB’s hospital bed, about China\u2019s role in the world, as he lay there listening \u2013 animated as always by debate!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

SBD de Silva<\/p><\/div>\n

The last vivid words we heard tumble from SB\u2019s lips, even as he vehemently refused food, were: \u201cCapital accumulation! Capital accumulation!<\/em><\/strong>\u201d Perhaps to remind us to focus on Lanka\u2019s own priorities!<\/p>\n

Truly, this would be one of SB\u2019s lasting legacies: Broadly, he identified two types of colonies in the world of the 20th\/21st century: settler colonial countries (USA, Canada, Australia, et al), and non-settler colonies (to which Sri Lanka and much of the world, belongs). For within such non-settler colonies as ours \u2013 a class dedicated to ‘capital accumulation’ has not been allowed.<\/p>\n

SB repeatedly maintained: a class dedicated to \u2018capital accumulation\u2019 would not waste its time on low-skill plantations, on tea-and-bed-making tourism, on the fake business of \u2018primitive\u2019 manufacture (garments, etc., where we make none of the basic materials), or on rentier capitalism (making money from money or land).<\/p>\n

We must focus on modern machine industry, providing people with new skills offering pride, vocation, belonging and security, to build a truly independent nation. The private sector, which monopolizes Sri Lanka\u2019s resources, clearly cannot provide this.<\/p>\n

2<\/p>\n

There were two great \u2018political economists\u2019 of the 20th century in Sri Lanka, both almost erased completely by the ideological machinations of the popular mass media and educational system: the two Silvas,: GVS and SBD.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Class of \u201947, University of Ceylon, Colombo
SBD De Silva is at the centre, back row.
Iranganie Meedeniya (later, Serasinghe) is 2nd from right, front row<\/p><\/div>\n

Denied a job at the new University of Ceylon by its oft-lauded English chancellor Ivor Jenning, GVS de Silva, later drafted the controversial Paddy Lands Act, which gave tenant cultivators some rights. An Act passed when GVS was secretary to Philip Gunawardena, a founder of the Marxist movement in Sri Lanka, and Minister of Agriculture, Food, & Co-operatives, in the cabinet of SWRD Bandaranaike (assassinated during the wave of European murders of 1950s and 1960s leaders in Asia, Africa and the real Americas)<\/p>\n

GVS wrote two classics: Some Heretical Thoughts on Economic Development and Socialism or Barbarism.<\/p>\n

While GVS is considered \u2018”more political than economic\u2019”, it is SBD de Silva, author of the classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment<\/em><\/strong>, who really focussed my mind, my poetry (and my attempts at writing a history of the world with Lanka at its centre!) towards the study of the \u2018bourgeois science\u2019 of economics.<\/p>\n

3<\/p>\n

SB absolutely fascinated me. Not just with his amazing \u2018total recall\u2019, but the sheer breadth of his enquiry. He encompassed all the world: the intricacies of Sri Lanka (with our ancient village solidarity and irrigation systems that caught the attention of Marx), the Caribbean (where plantations of the enslaved were first installed), Africa (whose Congo had one of the most advanced working classes in the world until the recent genocide), and China (where his spouse, Marie Pinto Jayawardena, met with the most popular leader of the 20th century, Chairman Mao Ze Dong). Marie also helped SB with his classic, where he notes he owes her \u201ca debt which can never be repaid but can only be recorded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Marie Pinto Jayawardene, spouse of SBD De Silva, meets China\u2019s Chairman Mao Ze Dong
in the 1960s. SB was unable to join due to his work at the Central Bank.<\/p><\/div>\n

SB could quote verbatim: economic writings from Ricardo and Marx to Joan Robinson (visiting SL in 1959), tales of his days at the Central Bank (where he was investigated as a \u2018communist\u2019 by the father of a famous Booker-Prize-nominee who writes not of such drama), of being secretary to the Ministry of Industries (under the much-maligned 1970-77 government of the world\u2019s first female head of government, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, which attempted basic industrialization midst great obstacles), even hilarious lines of poetry (\u201cA poor beggar put his clothes out to dry \/ A rich beggar came and stole them \/ I don\u2019t know why?<\/em>“), as well as his interest in movements of class, of feminism (Does just cutting hair short, or admission into the \u2019nurturing\u2019 cloisters of the medical guild, really signify progress for women?), and the neccesary role of a powerful nation state.<\/p>\n

One theme, both SB and GVS kept returning to, was the nature of our economy, where the mass of the people are still cultivators. To SB, rice cultivation has an elastic demand for workers, depending on the season. In industrialized countries, \u2018surplus\u2019’ agricultural workers, are used to make modern industrial products, in their villages. For example, the touch screens on the latest cell phones are made in East Asian villages.<\/p>\n

SB always lamented why our Economics Departments have no interest in China\u2019s rise, which, contrary to the mass media, is based on the old earlier communes and collectives, where villages accumulate capital and invest in making modern machinery, first making simple industrial products, like wires and chips, etc., while sending their daughters and sons to study in cities, and return to set up technical schools and modern factories<\/p>\n

4<\/p>\n

On a more personal note, he taught me the \u2018basic science\u2019 behind Sri Lanka\u2019s wonderful cuisine, teaching me how to make a quick meal of red rice and parippu (ironically now imported from Canada\u2019s Saskatchewan lands stolen from the original people who were starved out of it) and thibbatu (better than green peas), adding rampay (pandanus, which gives rice that basmati flavor) and a crushed clove of garlic, which every time I add shall always invoke SB\u2019s practical brilliance!<\/p>\n

And as I meditate on SB\u2019s legacy, and I hear more from dear friends, I shall continue to write about his work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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