by Geewananda Gunawardana, Ph.D.

Before a problem can be solved, it pays to know what caused it; the collapse of Sri Lanka’s economy and social institutions are no exceptions. Our problems are not unique. Other countries have suffered this fate before us; some have recovered while others have turned into failed states plunging their hapless citizens into never-ending misery and suffering. There is much we can learn from their experiences in solving our problems, and this is an effort to sum up a few salient points.

Analysts agree that these failures occur because of sequences of events that are cyclical in nature. Each cycle aggravates the conditions until they reach the breaking point. Since this process is cyclical in nature, it is futile to look for the first cause to pin the blame, but it is possible to identify the contributing factors and conditions. There is consensus among the experts that the most proximate cause of economic and social breakdown is bad governance. They reject the idea that geographical, climatic, historical, cultural or any other factor could lead to the economic or social breakdown of a country if proper governance were practiced. Let us emphasise that point: Bad Governance is the root cause of all evil. The North and South Koreas are a good example; except for the current systems of governance, there was nothing different whatsoever between the north or south of the Korean peninsula prior to the separation that started in 1945. In 2022, South Korea’s GDP per capita was $32,255, while North Korea’s was $1,116.

Bad governance is characterised by having poorly structured, ambiguous, and noncompliant policies and haphazard implementation of such policies. The wide-ranging disastrous results of this process are all around us for everyone to see. However, the most crucial point that we fail to recognize is that there is one result that contributes to the perpetuation of the cycle, social stratification. The policies that fail to ensure inclusive institutions cause an income disparity among the population and, over time, create an elite and an underprivileged class.

Sri Lanka has an extremely high-income inequality; according to the UNDP Regional Human Development Report – 2023, the richest one percent of Sri Lankans own 31 percent of the total personal wealth, while the bottom 50 percent only owns less than four percent of the overall wealth in the country. Since just one or even 10 percent does not represent the citizenry, I will use the terms “elite” and “people” to identify these two socio-economically distinct groups in this discussion. The term elite is defined as the group that has the most wealth and status in a society. Whether it is a dignified term or not depends on the way they came to such wealth and status. It is not necessarily an honorific.

Due to this income disparity, people have limited access to education, healthcare, and other necessities of life. Even though education and healthcare are supposed to be free, the deterioration of these institutions, yet another result of poor governance, has created a secondary market for these and all other services. For example, private tuition, medical consultancy, and having to grease the palms of all levels of bureaucracy to access the simplest of government service add a major economic burden on the people. There are no published data for obvious reasons, but it is out there for everyone to see that the private tuition industry is a major contributor to childhood poverty in Sri Lanka. According to a 2019 government report, 42.2% of children, under five in Sri Lanka, are multidimensionally poor. Additionally, 33.4% of children aged 0–4 are malnourished and stunted, and 16.4% of children are multidimensionally poor and deprived in early childhood development. Obviously, this situation must have worsened during the last two years. This now normalized practice of having to pay for services, the services the government is supposed to provide using taxpayer money in the first place, in a ‘secondary market” further erodes the quality of life of the populace and their confidence in the government and the democratic process. This practice of paying twice for the same service results in enormous waste of nations resources. As a result of them having to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort just to make ends meet, people lack the capacity or the time for engaging in participatory democracy. That does not mean that they do not vote; they do it in throngs, but not for the right reasons, and that is the cause and condition that perpetuates the vicious cycle.

The hurdles facing the people in participating in democracy leave the governing process in the hands of the elite. The people must understand that the elite do not want to change the existing system and lose their privileges. The most damaging aspect of this process is that the political parties become undemocratic institutions within. The parties become patriarchal fiefdoms; the party bosses decide the candidates nominated for elections, irrespective of their qualifications or fitness to legislate, for they know that they can manipulate the voters’ decision-making process and continue the kleptocracy unimpeded.

The lack of political savviness in the average voter makes it much easier for the elite to manipulate the way people think. Mass media outlets controlled by the elite can freely spread misinformation and use modern advertising gimmickry to brainwash the unsuspecting. Not having access to any other sources of information, and the habit of accepting everything in the media as absolute truth makes it so much easier for manipulation of public opinion.

Breaking away from this cycle is not easy, thus the comparison to the religious concept of samsara, the never-ending suffering. However, historically, people have been presented with opportunities to stop such cycles: the Back Death in Europe and the civil rights movement in the USA are two occasions that people have used to bring about changes to eliminate drastic social inequalities. In Sri Lanka, the events culminating in the past two or three years have offered us the opportunity to act against this injustice to the people. I say injustice because the system has kept the national wealth and resources away from the same people who are instrumental in creating that wealth: the working class. In a democracy, all people are equal, and they should have equal access to happiness and prosperity; and if that is not possible, then it is a kleptocracy, and the three adjectives in the official title of the country amount to nothing.

The first problem we face in overcoming this situation is that we are not fully aware of our unalienable rights provided in the constitution, and how they are blatantly violated. How many of us have seen the Constitution, let alone read and understood it? We are made to believe that our constitutionally protected rights are charitable contributions at the whims of benevolent elected officials. For example, building a bridge or a road by an elected official using taxpayer money is portrayed as an act of generosity on the part of the officials, when such projects are often done for hefty commissions for the benefit of them and their henchmen. We assume that the elected officials and government servants are doing us favours by doing their job, and that they should be rewarded and venerated for doing so. This attitude of the public has contributed to a sense of impunity among the elected officials and bureaucrats. Therefore, the first step should be for us to know our rights and responsibilities under the democratic system, and fight for them. It is the people’s responsibility, and not the elite’s privilege to do it for us as they want us to believe. People must actively engage in the process of intelligently selecting the elected officials.

The next two steps are to have pragmatic policies and find people to implement them in an equitable and honest way. We must force those who run for elected office to declare their plans for solving the problems. Not just empty promises of reducing the price of onions or potatoes, but real plans for providing equal opportunities for all, and restoring the economy and other institutions. Then, we the people must select the ones who will govern us based on two criteria: a) the soundness of their policies, b) the credibility of the candidates. Both are equally important, but in the current situation, the latter matters more. Policies can be changed, but characters do not change.

What can be done? Unfortunately, not all people have the wherewithal to analyze policies and evaluate candidates. There is enough information out there to identify policies that will work and those that will fail. The candidates have histories that will tell us about their integrity, honesty, work ethics and qualifications to do the job. What we urgently need is a mechanism to capture that information, analyze, and present it to the people in a way we can grasp. The elite will do their best to prevent the truth from coming out, and that is the nature of political campaigning. They will bring up irrelevant divisive issues to the forefront to confuse and mislead us, as they have done many times. If we break the monopoly on ruling, give equal opportunities to all to prosper, those human-caused divisions will lose their meaning, and their purpose. We need nonaffiliated individuals, organizations, and institutions to do these critical analytical analyses in an objective way and help us make the right decision. We do not need another group of curry favouring pseudo academics. They must establish themselves as sources of credible information that we can trust. The time is running out. We must unite and put the country first.

Let us hope that those who can do this critical service will see through the scare tactics. The elite will try to silence them but let us remind ourselves that the civilised world is watching, and history is not on their side.