The two nations that emerged from the partition of the raj, India and Pakistan, celebrated the 50th anniversary of their independence in August last year. In both, celebrations were subdued, but more so in Pakistan. Two former colonies on the periphery of the raj celebrate the 50th anniversary of their independence this year; Burma (now Myanmar) was part of the raj till 1937, and Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) was not. Myanmar became independent on January 4, 1948, and the celebrations there were low-key; Sri Lanka became independent on February 4, 1948, and its celebrations will be low-key as well.The great difference between the transfer of power in the raj and Myanmar, on the one hand, and Sri Lanka on the other, was that the latter was essentially a negotiated passage to independence with nothing of the mass agitation and communal violence one saw in the raj, or the riots, strikes and student agitations seen in Myanmar. Nehru and Gandhi failed in their efforts to keep the political legacy of a single state inthe sub-continent intact, and Myanmar erupted in civil war from the moment of its independence. In Sri Lanka, in contrast, D.S. Senanayake, the island's first Prime Minister (1947-52) and the principal negotiator for its independence ensured that the transfer of power was peaceful. Indeed his successful balancing act, reconciling the legitimate interests of the Sinhalese-Buddhist majority and those of the minorities, provides lessons for those concerned with bringing peace to Sri Lanka's fractured polity.Just as we have only to look at the 1940s and the early 1950s to see how to get the political management of a multi-ethnic polity right, Sri Lanka's record after 1956 provides a multiplicity of clues on how the political stability and ethnic harmony of a multi-ethnic polity could be destroyed by the adoption of wrong policies. The dominant political influence in the period 1956 to 1977 was the populism of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (of the Bandaranaikes) which ruled for all but five years (1965-1970)generally with the support of, and sometimes in association with, Marxist parties. The Bandaranaikes emphasised majority prerogatives and were generally insensitive to minority interests. A unilateral change in language policy in the mid-1950s heralded the first phase in Sri Lanka's current ethnic conflict. They politicised the bureaucracy and Bandaranaike brought the national Press under state control.
Beginning with a Sri Lankan version of Nehruvian socialism they eventually emulated the economies of the Soviet bloc, encouraging import-substitution industries (generally state-owned and inefficiently run), nationalising all the important industrial and commercial ventures and financial institutions; and reducing the role of private capital in Sri Lanka's economy to a bare minimum. Sri Lanka's ``closed economy'' became the most state-dominated in the whole of non-communist South and South-East Asia except for Myanmar.
Sri Lanka has always had a higher standard of living than the rest of South Asia, but aslate as 1960 it had more or less the same per capita GNP as South Korea and nearly double that of Thailand. Why does it lag so far behind these countries today? The answer lies in the economic policies of the Bandaranaikes and their Marxist allies, and the lingering influence of Marxist ideology on the working class and sections of the intelligentsia.
With the employment generating capacity of the private sector reduced substantially everything depended on the state sector, and the latter's performance was dismally poor. Had economic growth been sustained throughout this period at twice the prevailing rate it would still not have matched that of non-communist South-East Asia, but it would have provided the jobs that mattered to the thousands of young people entering the labour market each year. Apart from increasing opportunities for graft for ministers and MPs, the dominance of the state sector was accompanied by the exclusion of opposition parties (including the Tamil political parties) and oppositiongroups from these opportunities. Had economic growth provided more jobs, the growing discontent among the young Tamil youth may not have turned to violence; and the Sinhalese, the ultra-left and nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) may not have defied state and society as they later did.
The liberalisation of the economy, which began in 1977-78, led almost immediately to a spurt in economic growth and to the expansion of employment opportunities in the private sector for the first time since the mid-1950s. The continuation of this process may have helped in healing the rift between the Sinhalese and Tamils except that by the early 1980s there was a full-fledged armed separatist movement in the Tamil-dominated north. In any event, liberalisation of the economy, although electorally popular, was still viewed with suspicion by the populist SLFP and, of course, the Marxists. It took the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the world-wide acceptance of the liberalisation of the economy as a viable policyoption, for the SLFP to accept it for themselves. Like most recent converts to a new creed they are now more enthusiastic than those who accepted it initially.
The expansion of the private sector, and a reduction in the size and scope of the public sector, are now part of an emerging national consensus. This is a hopeful sign because the intensity with which national elections have been fought and the violence they generated stem from a recognition that one of the most important avenues for amassing wealth by individuals is through control of the government. Success at general elections was treated as nothing less than the capture of state power by electoral means. This explains why, despite Sri Lanka's long record of democratic elections under universal suffrage (since 1931), and regular changes of government through the ballot (since 1956), electoral contests are marked by a great deal of political violence. Expansion of the private sector may not end this right away but, given time, will be a factor inchanging the political system.
Thus the hopes for the future lie in a return to the forms and mechanisms of political management practised in the first decade after independence, and through a de-politicising of Sri Lankan society and public life. Both these constitute a calculated departure from the policies of the fateful 20 years after 1955, in which the seeds of the current crisis in Sri Lanka were sown and nurtured.
The writer is executive director, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
