Celebrating Independence with pomp and pageantry: A post script

We celebrated 70 years (not 30, by the way!) of Independence last week with the  attendant  pomp and pageantry ;  Yet it matters little whether it is 70 or 30 years since independence  as dispassionate evaluation suggests  that we have a long way to go as a nation state in crystallizing the independence from the British in to something tangible and meaningful  in terms of Social Economic Political and Moral prosperity.

 A question that my 15-year-old son drills at me often leaves me answer-less and   blushed. He asks whether we would not have been better off being ruled by the British all these years. Obviously the patriotic rhetoric will confront such a presumption while the moral highlanders would allude to the 2500 year old historical heritage that we possess. Yet the question remains as to whether even in those respects i.e. cultural, moral and ethical, we have been able to get anywhere!

"Chain snatchers, cattle thieves, bookie owners, drug kingpins dangle the sovereignty of the very people whom they are supposed to represent"

Scapegoats for evil

Many attribute much of the social evils that plague us to the white invaders who colonized us; alcohol, consumption of meat, cruelty to animals etc. Point taken; yet then again, another question arise. Is it only the bad things that we learned from them? What about such qualities as discipline, punctuality, quality of work, dispassionate evaluation of things etc. Couldn’t we have availed ourselves with those qualities, which made those nations great and what they are today?
Economically we have gone nowhere; so many countries in the Southern Hemisphere, who were way behind us when the Brits left us have gone passing us and many will do so in the future.The state controlled economic system experimented by the Sirimavo government as well as the open economy model that has been followed by all successive governments thereafter, whatever the political hue they are in the spectrum, has not yielded results that benefit all segments of society. 

"Economically we have gone nowhere; so many countries in the Southern Hemisphere, who were way behind us when the Brits left us have gone passing us and many will do so in the future"

A putrid society

Yet even from a cultural and moral perspective, an area we are generally boastful of when compared with the white nations who ruled us, very little is there to celebrate. Social vices are rampant and many are engaged in these activities out of financial interests;  drugs, prostitution, black money business are no longer confined to a few but beneficiaries of such murky businesses are common in all strata of the society. White collar crime, which has made headlines due to the Bond scam, robs the public coffers of billions; the proverbial parliamentary control over state finances remains a figment of imagination.
Many considered the military defeat of the LTTE as the second or even the real Independence we won; and quite rightly so! But what happened in the aftermath? Have we gone anywhere with reconciling the two warring races? Has the humongous expenditure of warring being channelled to uplift the stagnated economy? Has the situation where all civil liberties were pruned so that the military victory could blossom been rectified? Barely so, at best! Dividends of peacetime have not trickled down to the lower segments of society; a cosmetic modernization of society has not been backed by a strengthening of civil society and economic vitality. 
With the immediate threat of armed Tamil separatism absent on the horizon, the elements who have sought political power with  the attendant plunder of coffers, of course, are working full-time to create new bogeymen in terms of branding other minority racial and religious groups as fundamentalists and expansionists. Social media is full of this racial and religious bias at its most naked form and very little is done to prevent escalation of these incidents to major crisis on communal lines. Intolerance towards minorities or generally, anything that is different to the stereotypical majority is vilified, attacked and hated! Political conservatism, reliant on chauvinistic forces for political mileage either actively instigate these fissures or at best, tacitly allow them to escalate, apprehensive of losing favour with the majority.

Military defeat of LTTE as second or real Independence

Every citizen even toddlers indebted Rs. 417,000!

All three pillars of governance suffered body blows in the past

‘The three pillars’ in shambles

All three pillars of governance have suffered body blows in the past to the extent that it is doubtful whether they represent the sovereignty of the people at all. When the executive is despotic and majoritarian , the legislature  a mere  pantheon of incompetent and greedy low wits and the judiciary is paralysed by an excessive deference to the Executive will , surely the sovereignty in Article 3 of the Constitution , seems to clearly misplaced. Chain snatchers, cattle thieves, bookie owners, drug kingpins dangle the sovereignty of the very people whom they are supposed to represent, not to effect measures of uplifting the populace, but to pad their bank accounts.
With the Auditor General making an unprecedented revelation, that the real magnitude of the debt that we are submerged in, from foreign and local creditors could not be properly be quantified   and roughly estimating that each citizen including the toddler in its mother’s bosom is indebted Rs. 417,000/- , one wonders whether the sovereignty of each citizen has not been mortgaged to foreign aid agencies and super powers.

"With the immediate threat of armed Tamil separatism absent on the horizon, the elements who have sought political power with  the attendant plunder of coffers, of course, are working full-time to create new bogeymen in terms of branding other minority racial and religious groups as fundamentalists and expansionists"

Unsustainable Economy

When S. Mahinda Thera, the Tibetan, wrote, aluthaluth de nothanana jathiya lowanonagie (the nation that does not manufacture new things will not rise) it was not mere cosmetic patriotism or rhetoric; it was an allusion to being truly independent in terms of self sufficiency without being overly dependent on alien nations. The path followed by our nation since 1948  has not been in line with the wisdom of the sage; instead of turning our eyes to the fertile and yielding soil of this land we have been wondering at the sky, waiting for foreigners to feed us, thus allowing our wealth to be leaked to them for filling up our tummies. Any development plan that does not contemplate agricultural rejuvenation and industrial manufacturing will not be tenacious enough to stand the test of new international and environmental realities. An economy which relies heavily on the service sector, with little production in the domestic plateau, will lull us to a false sense of security bordering on complacency. With the global food production facing a crisis, water becoming scarce and international relations of the present epoch being threatened by primitive and reactionary policy retrogression, a nation who cannot feed itself stands so vulnerable.
All these issues need rectification, fast; yet without an overhauling of our attitudinal complexes and value systems, the agents of change are hard to come by. That they are not to be found from the political or religious leaders is as clear as daylight. 
  I long to answer my son in following lines: “No, son, we definitely would not have been better off being under the British all 
these times”. 
My son does not agree, as yet.  I, for my part, do not have the confidence to stamp my statement with authority. But, I dearly wish, if not in my lifetime, then, at least in his, we will be able to say that with confidence.
But my son, the way things are shaping up in this land, might not wish to remain a citizen of my motherland, when he comes of age; so even asking the question might be redundant!