Break the paddy mafia!

We are cats on a hot tin roof

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake  

Tennessee William’s Pulitzer winning 1955 play (and the subsequent 1958 film starring Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor) is about a wealthy, crumbling family in the United States deep South. It’s a story of alcoholism, self-destruction, and lies, though it ends on a somewhat happy note.

General elections Sri Lanka 2024 – 17 million people voted. All previous records were broken. Sri Lanka is a socio-economic and political drama about self-destruction, deception and lies for its 22 million people. After all, we are an extended family, though poor - not wealthy, like Tennessee William’s characters. The National People’s Power (NPP) under newly-elected President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) has been given a massive mandate by voters to change this never-ending story.

When Mahinda Rajapaksa held an election rally at Campbell Park during Ranil’s time, there were bus loads of soldiers parked in the area, a ridiculous show of force and protection for a politically spent force. No one wanted to throw even a rotten egg, let alone bricks or bombs, at MR.

Can they do it?

His three hour interview on Sirasa TV  last week, was  a mega hit, seen by over 1.2 million viewers. No other TV appearance by any other Lankan politician has even come close to such ratings.

After winning the presidential elections in September, AKD said he’s not a magician and people should not expect miracles.

Clearly, they do not believe him. They expect a miracle.

As voting closed and counting began on this peaceful election day, I saw one positive sign. There wasn’t a single soldier to be seen on Colombo streets.

If Ranil Wickremasinghe had been president, there would have been armed soldiers and riot police vehicles all over the city! This was Ranil’s policy from Day One as president – to create a fear psychosis and show a  artificial need for massive security. This is one reason why he lost so badly it wasn’t just economics.

When Mahinda Rajapaksa held an election rally at Campbell Park during Ranil’s time, there were bus loads of soldiers parked in the area, a ridiculous show of force and protection for a politically spent force.  By then, no one wanted to throw even a rotten egg, let alone bricks or bombs, at MR.

Ranil Wickremasinghe, knowing he was heartily disliked by many, lived in a world of fears, more imaginary than real.  Anura Kumara Dissanayake, though he had his political formation in the fires and flames of the late 1980s, showed far more self-assurance after being elected president. That was apparent on the streets of Colombo on  election day.

But where do we go from here? Can that same calmness and self-confidence be maintained in the difficult months ahead? Control inflation, food and essential item prices, finding money for education, health, infrastructure, salaries, pensions – all this is going to be very, very tough.

In the Sirasa talk show, AKD said he accepted the IMF’s extended fund facility or EFF and its debt restructuring plan, reluctantly, out of sheer necessity. The IMF’s idea of relief is to tax the people more. But everyone wants some measure of relief.

Executioners

The IMF team who came here for negotiations post-Gotabaya Rajapakse looked like executioners. Can we expect any mercy from them? Our external debt is massive, simply servicing it has become a Herculean task and bottomless pit. We need to secure extended deadlines, reduce interest rates and to shift funds from debt servicing to more productive areas. It will take a magician to achieve all this.

Then there is a crying need to reduce dependency on imports and increase local production. The focus is on agriculture. No one is even talking about Industries (unless we think of teaas an industry). The 1970-77 SLFP coalition government laid the foundation for a network of local industries, from steel to tires, canned fish to condensed milk. But all this was wasted by corruption and inefficiency. Post 1977, right-wing President J. R. Jayawardena found a “simple” solution – neoliberal open economic policies, import everything, and local industries be damned.

Since then, India and China have become giants for the kind of consumer goods we could have produced. But, instead of continuing with this depressing story, let’s talk about what everyone is focusing on now – agriculture. The main product is paddy, produced by millions of small-scale farmers many of whom were already in debt before Gotabaaya ruined them with his mad ‘organic agriculture’ scheme. Now, the farmers are struggling to get back on their feet again. But, apart from climate change and unpredictable weather, their main enemy are rice mill owners and distributors, who mint money by milking the paddy farmers.

This lot have formed a mafia, controlling the supply and prices just as they like. Farmers suffer from low purchasing prices, while consumers suffer from high retail prices. No government has been able to deal with this perennial menace.AKD sees revival of the bankrupt Paddy Marketing Board (PMB) as the solution. He plans to have it back in action very soon as a competitor to private mill owners, thereby breaking their monopoly.

This is a laudable plan. But the factors which ruined the PMB –corruption, lethargy and inefficiency – need to be dealt with first. And it isn’t just the price of rice. Everything from fruits,vegetables, eggs, fish, all locally produced – has become exorbitantly expensive. A family or five of six can’t even afford a banana each every day.

Next, AKD wants to expand the tourism industry so that it would bring in $5 billion to the country per annum Sri Lankas tourism industry has generated over $1.5 billion for the first half of 2024, and is expected to reach $5 billion for the entire year, in any case. 

But two issues need to be tackled in this case to achieve these goals. The country’s tourism infrastructure -- hotels, airport services, transport, and food supply – need to be improved. The other factor is the high import content of our tourism sector, which is needed to maintain a tourist.

But, just as global warming is dangerous to farmers, tourism too, is subject to vagaries beyond our control. For the moment, India and China are our most dependable sources for tourism. Western and Japanese tourists have dropped significantly in numbers. Japan’s economy is in crisis, and Western European (British, French, Italian, German, Scandinavian) countries have troubled economies and severe immigration issues. As for Eastern European tourists, mainly Russian and Ukrainian, the ongoing war is a huge problem.

Donald Trump becoming president of the United States could be bad news for tourism, too. J.D. Vance, his choice as vice president, is openly advocating attacking Iran, to the delight of Israel’s hawkish lobby. If this happens, it will be goodbye to tourism for quite some time. 

In short, we face huge difficulties in a very uncertain world. We are going to need plenty of good luck, faith in ourselves, and a good deal of magic, too, to survive and prevail in 2025 and beyond.