“One thing we can be happy about is that we still have the ability to notice that there is something killing the spirit of our Nation. It is nothing but the unnaturally high level of complacence which has gone beyond the natural balance. We have allowed that to take over the level of sensibility, denoting the fact that we are slowly inching towards our own doom. The negative developments that have taken place have definitely numbed our reflexes and we have become almost like a part of the vegetation dominated by some carnivorous plants. So, we have become a Nation that does not need to think. It is that remaining capacity that tells us that it is our incurable attitude of complacence that is behind all our National Weaknesses.”
Absence of self-assessment
The biggest ailment that we have is the ‘poverty’ that is dragging all of us to our doom. By using ‘Rupees’ and ‘Dollars’ as the mediums we try to fool ourselves. A human being needs a certain level of nourishment and the amount of ‘Rupees and Cents’ we needed fifty years ago has changed by now and we say the parity of our Rupee has deteriorated, and we have found an impressive and a bombastic word like ‘Inflation’.
The simple subsistence agriculture that fed a nation was not sufficient anymore and the British developed the Plantation Industry and there were no indices or measures to gauge changes in the ale needed to be generated. The expatriate labour brought in was entangled with the burden of feeding them and the cheapest rice was imported. The reduction in land under paddy resulted in low production of rice and this nation got used to depending on imported rice and the other basic consumables.
With the ever increasing population, the food marketing also became more and more sophisticated. The price of rice that used to be a few cents some fifty or sixty years ago has gone into hundreds of Rupees while making the cost of food from a few cents per day has gone beyond the limits of imagination.
Absence of logical thinking
The trading that developed with the needs of the Plantation Economy has become a new way of life and the need to produce is not a concern anymore. It has become so cynical that humane ethics have been taken over by maximization of profits.
So, in a nation where we have more consumers than producers, what is happening around us is just natural. Those who direct the keys that can affect the trends are guided by the theories they learned in high sounding Western universities, and even in the universities fashioned according to those centres of higher education that impressed the aspirations of a developing nation. The purest misunderstanding of the principles in taxation has created very artificial environments and we are left with what we face now whether we like it or not. That way, we have designed our lot without thinking. Poverty is not to be eradicated, but to be preserved. We can see that, but have no sincere and a serious intention to raise ourselves from that.
Absence of knowledge about the potential
Our Nation is not handicapped in any form when it comes to Food Security. It is a potential that can be developed as a main foreign exchange earner.
What shall stop us from working to harness the system to have all the abandoned paddy lands to recommence growing paddy, and the other garden crops like vegetables and some spices with more attention to chili cultivation aimed at becoming an exporter of dried red chilli? Imagine the foreign exchange that shall be saved. Imagine the quantities of vegetables that can be exported to the Middle Eastern as well as the Maldivian Markets.
Our problem now is the absence of a proper monitoring system to regulate the produce so that the farmers’ efforts shall not end up as excess vegetable to rot by the roads. When we travel anywhere in our country how much land do we see that can be put to some use in agriculture?
While doing all that, the non agricultural human resources can be put to how many other uses?
All those end up with Human Resources and there can be skills that can be created within the borders of our country and in turn all those can become the bases for unimaginable volume of foreign exchange.
Absence of objective-oriented planning
Where exactly is the main problem? Only a figure less than 20% are blessed with some kind of higher education. That means easily there shall be at least 80% of youth who shall be without proper employment opportunities.
Our country has 14,022 Grama Niladhari Divisions and there can be a programme to mobilize the unemployed youth in a systematic way every year, engaging them in various capacities, to be spread-out all over the country.
Now, at this moment, we have a severe and a very silly shortage of eggs and the Big Brains are suggesting and arranging imports from India while a few large poultry farmers and traders are speculating how to skin the consumer.
Is this not a case of pure negligence on the part of the so-called specialized and foreign educated experts who are just warming their chairs and burning the fuel provided to them by indirectly taxing a whole nation existing in a dream-world?
There was a time when political leaders could not be effective because they had no knowledge in English. Now a new syndrome has set in and that is the new breed of younger politicians who do not have a problem with English but are severely handicapped in commonsense and keep on believing in keeping their brains brand new.
If the voters are aware of what is happening, they shall use their votes more meaningfully. That sense of confidence should reach the bottom-most levels so that they shall not fall victim to the confidence tricksters.
Add new comment