Features

Policy Making and Execution in Agriculture

Published

4 years ago

2022/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

By Gamini Seneviratne

HIGHLAND COLONISATION

It’s been a long time since the thought had occurred to me and/or I’ve been asked by concerned people, mostly scholars or would-be scholars to write about our post-Independence experience in policymaking in the various sectors I served in. My friend, the late S B D de Silva, (for those who have no knowledge of his work, I refer to his “The Political Economy of Underdevelopment”, in which he employed Keynesian economics as deconstructed by its application to ground realities – a book that demands translation into other languages), was particularly insistent that I write of the much-maligned industrial policy of the 1970s. He would also, till his last years, phone me at odd hours asking for my views on some aspect of plantation agriculture.

What agitated S B D was that he had been Director of Industrial Policy and Economic Research before moving towards agrarian studies. I was brought into the Ministry of Industries and Scientific Affairs as Director / Regulation of Industries in the late 1972. (My functions there had to do with the disbursement of foreign exchange ‘quotas’ among manufacturing industries to enable them to import raw material and machinery for their operation). Not long after I came there, I was appointed, in addition, to take over the functions (Policy and Research) that had been S B D’s beat. I shall revert to questions of industrial policy later.

My first encounters with agriculture, as a public servant, was in Matara in 1965. As AGA there my primary duties had to do with the development of the Highland Colonisation (HC) Schemes that had been established for the cultivation of tea. (Despite the publicity given here and abroad to ‘the plight of estate workers’, today and for several decades now, such ‘small-holdings’ have produced the bulk of our tea – around 70%. Several years later, I had the task of editing the Bill drafted by Wickrema Gunasekera under which the Tea Small Holdings Authority was set up. More on that is due in the interests of public policy relating to the system of ‘plantations’ the inefficiencies of which S B D exposed in his ‘Political Economy’).

Matara had established several such colonies off Pitabeddara on a roadway that runs towards the district boundary between Matara and Galle. They were serviced by the Derangala factory owned and operated by the State Plantations Corporation (SPC). Another set of colonies was being opened between Morawaka and Hiniduma, supported by Kalubovitiyana, a new factory that was brought into operation during my tenure in Matara. These two factories were quite capable of processing all the leaf produced in the HCs (the SPC had another factory, Delgoda, in Ratnapura District). Private factories, hungry for leaf, had begun to raid the HCs and were offering higher prices than the SPC.

Price per pound [lb] of leaf payable by the factory was determined on a simple formula: the net sale average (NSA) of made tea at auction divided by the out-turn – which was taken to be around 22 %, roughly four and a half pounds of green leaf to a pound of made tea. Prices at auction for low grown teas being low in the mid-1960s, the NSA was usually below one rupee – which meant below 20 cents per pound of leaf. After deducting for water, coarse leaf, weight of gunny bag … the SPC paid 16 – 17 cents – and the private factories cashed in, paying, say, a cent or two more. The producers shifted towards them, the SPC gathered less leaf than could be economically processed, its losses went up – it was all a mess. The SPC claimed the private factories could pay more because they cheated on the weight of the leaf they collected. I asked for a meeting at the SPC – which they were happy to grant.

That didn’t turn out well for them. The price data for the last auction was on the wall in their Board Room – and the prices for Derangala and Delgoda had been interchanged. Recriminations, apologies (the SPC Chairman was an impressive man who had been a top officer at Inland Revenue or a Bank). He agreed to adjust the payment for that week, I agreed that the weighing mechanisms used by the bought-leaf factories should be checked.

That took a bit of doing, getting our transport and personnel (led by the Weights & Measures Inspectors) into place as secretly as possible. The private lorries were ignored as they came in as usual, were stopped on the way out, their weighing scales checked. On average they registered 5 lbs less than the true weight. All were charged, taken to court, tried and fined. All the lorries belonged to a politician of the ruling party, the UNP. There was no change in the verdicts, but it all added up to other unwelcome developments that made my transfer out of the district desirable.

What was most visible to the agitation of bought-leaf factory operators was that the SPC factories began to thrive – and, what was truly annoying, the small-holdings began to improve the quantity and quality of their leaf (that meant better prices at the auction for the SPC and a couple of cents more for leaf).

It had to do also with the economies of scale and when it looked as if more land would be brought under HCs some distance away – that would be good if the SPC didn’t get the leaf. But if the quantities were right the transport would pay for itself.

There was an HCS already at Rotumba on the eastern end of the district; it had been there for a few years but the allottees had not moved in. I happened to go that way on my first day at Matara and the DRO, S E T Jayasinghe, a campus colleague told me about it. The beneficiaries of Rotumba were to be mostly the wrong people led by the previous President of the MPCS and the new President, the mudalali with a paddy mill, a van and the big sillara kade, a natural supporter of the UNP, obstructed the expected influx of people ‘of the other side’. He did this by simply occupying the land allotted to the previous President and refusing to construct the access road to the Scheme. Two years on there were just two allottees on the land meant for 100 and I found the Colonisation Officer (CO) at home rubbing after-shave into his chin.

He chose to move out, a senior OLDO (Overseer for Land Development) who had served in that area and was a CO was brought in. The MP came to protest, along with the mudalali and the law was explained to him. He said it was a political problem for him and his man was given an extra fortnight to vacate the encroachment. When I went there, there had been no change on the ground. The mudalali was ordered to remove the fence to the encroached land, he moved to do so, the Grama Sevaka and others ripped it all off and within a few months Rotumba was active with the land prepared by some 80 families who were ready to move in.

An initiative to establish a Youth Settlement Scheme for the cultivation of tea met with much opposition from politicians, local and at parliament level. It had to do with caste – a factor that had not been taken account of in selecting young men for the project. The settlement was to be located around Ginneliya, above Urubokka in the jungle that extended towards Katuwana (where a fort built by the Dutch still existed).

I discussed the project with senior planters in that area, Douglas Jayawickrema of ‘Berabeula’ and R L Pereira of, I think, ‘Deniyaya’ estate. Gunam Thambipillai of Pitabeddara and Rajah Senewiratne, Superintendent of the SPC factories were constantly at hand for consultation: indeed, they were the primary designers of the lay out for the internal roadways, the wadiyas, the residential and other buildings. Both trudged through the forest with me to work out such detail.

Applications were called from young men in the vicinity, and they were interviewed at a ‘Land Kachcheri’ – one where a Land Officer normally ‘screens’ a hundred applicants in a day. This was different: two teams of a Land Officer and a senior Agriculture extension officer were given that task. So painstaking was their scrutiny of the applicants that they took three days to conclude the selection process. I dropped by for an hour or so each day.

When the selections were made, I submitted the list to the GA, Francis Pietersz, who approved it.

And all hell broke loose. It was alleged that I had selected ‘reds’. The managers of major plantations in the area, including Berabeula and Deniyaya complained to me that I had taken their best workers. But that was of no account; the MPs for Deniyaya and Hakmana sent out telegrams flying everywhere from the Prime Minister down, demanding that I be transferred out of Matara.

So it was done: I was sent to the Ministry of Agriculture ‘with immediate effect’.

And, with no further delay, the first Youth Settlement Scheme in the country was buried before the youth moved in. Evidently, the MPs’ supporters had their own version of a land kachcheri, made their selections – and sent them to the site at Ginneliya to grow cinnamon.

It was the year that straddled mid-1965 and mid-1966.

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Features

The challenge of keeping value-based politics alive

Published

16 hours ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Anti-migrant protests in Durban, South Africa. BBC

The current outbreak of anti-immigrant protests in Durban, South Africa is bound to have taken many a subscriber to value-based politics or political idealism quite by surprise. After all, this is evidence that despite the historic accomplishments of nation-builders of the stature of the late President Nelson Mandela it cannot be taken for granted that identity politics, including racism in its worst forms, is no more in South Africa.

At the time of this writing details are scarce on the substantive root causes of the protests but it could very well be that economic grievances, particularly on the part of the majority community in South Africa, are contributing considerably to the disaffection. Shrinking employment and material prospects are likely to figure majorly among the factors igniting the unrest.

Fortunately, the local authorities in Durban are losing no time in calling for peaceful co-existence among the relevant communities and are pointing to the vital importance of stepping-up national integration processes. Apparently, immigrants in sizable numbers from neighbouring countries are present in Durban. However, international TV footage of the protests quoted some local authorities as saying that the majority of the immigrants in some centres that housed them were not illegal migrants and had the documents that entitle them to be in Durban.

In the Durban protests the world has fresh proof of the socially divisive consequences of the gathering globe-wide economic disaffection, touched off particularly by the continuing crisis in West Asia. Going ahead, the world would need to brace for increasing identity-based unrest of the kind it is just witnessing in South Africa.

Considering that the material lot of ordinary people everywhere could only aggravate progressively, with the US and Iran showing no signs of negotiating an end to their confrontation any time soon, it will be left to the more democratic and progressive sections of the world community to initiate positive measures collectively to bring a measure of relief to the discontented.

The swiftness with which such relief will be provided would depend crucially on the importance those sections taking up these undertakings attach to value-based politics as opposed to Realpolitik of power politics.

Going by these yardsticks, Italy could be considered to be moving in the right direction. Recently Italy came to the fore in initiating the collective named, ‘Rome Coalition for Food Security and Access to Fertilizer’, which has as one of its aims the swift provision of fertilizer to economically weak African countries.

In a recent statement Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Antonio Tajani, said that a principal aim of the project was to ensure that the farmers of Africa gained easy access to fertilizer, considering that food security is a growing concern among some of Africa’s economically vulnerable countries.

The statement went on to mention that some 30 countries hailing from the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, the Balkans as well as the FAO had been invited to join the coalition. The venture is far-seeing in that food security is main among the reasons for social discontent which in turn could degenerate into endemic political turmoil and bloodshed. Separatist violence and geographical fragmentation of countries wouldn’t be too far behind these developments, as Africa itself has often proved.

It is hoped that more G7 countries would take the cue from Italy and do what they could to ease the hardships of economically distressed countries, particularly of the global South. In these efforts they would need to break rank with the US, which is today brutally indifferent to the consequences of its policy of making ‘America First’, come what may.

Going by current developments, the Trump administration seems to be blithely oblivious to the wider, deleterious effects of its policy course in West Asia. Besides rendering Iran militarily and otherwise impotent nothing else seems to matter to Washington, as regards West Asia. This is policy short-sightedness of an extreme kind. After all, right now West Asia could be said to be sitting on the proverbial powder keg.

On the other hand, Iran is not giving the world the impression that it is doing anything constructive to get out of the policy straitjacket that it wove for itself decades ago. Rather than enter into a policy of ‘live and let live’ in relation to Israel in particular and initiate a process of reconciliation with the latter, it has chosen to operate within policy parameters that continue to damn Israel. This has put Israel always on the ‘defensive’ so to speak and prevented the opening up of space for meaningful dialogue.

That said, Israel is obliged to explore the possibilities of entering into a negotiatory process with the Arab-Islamic world that could lead to a de-escalation of tensions and bloodshed. It cannot continue to look at its neighbours through lenses that distort them as archetypal enemies who should be ‘wiped off completely from the face of the earth.’

In other words, the need is urgent for Realpolitik to give way to value-based politicks. Italy is beginning to prove that the latter approach could be pursued with some success. May be the EU and the UK could throw their weight behind these initiatives as well and establish that international politics could be refashioned on the basis of humane, civilized norms. The UN would need to be fully supportive of these moves and prove an organizational nucleus of the operations that follow.

In fact the time is ripe for people of conscience to collectively stand up on the side of peace and say ‘No’ to war and violence. Organizations such as the ICRC, the WHO and Medicines Sans Frontiers have already taken up this call. Referring to the widespread destruction of health facilities and their dehumanizing results these organizations have said, among other things, that ‘This is not a failure of the law. It is a failure of political will.’

True, ‘failure of political will’ among those powers that matter accounts for the runaway, uncontrollable nature of war and destruction in contemporary times, but more fundamentally it is a failure of the human conscience. It could very well be that the phenomenal levels to which violence and war have been unleashed today have had the effect of deadening consciences. This is a matter for urgent study and wide discussion.

Features

Vesak celebrations … with Cuteefly

Published

16 hours ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions // Gift pack

I would describe Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka as innovative and creative, and she operates under the name of Cuteefly.

Indunil always comes up with something novel to celebrate special occasions, and she does it with candles … and that’s her profession.

She was in the spotlight when she created a happening scene, with candles, for Christmas, Sinhala and Tamil New Year, and Valentine’s Day.

As lanterns light up Sri Lanka for Vesak, the Colombo-based candle maker is quietly turning wax and wick into little pieces of the festival.

Candles reflecting Vesak themes

Her candles reflect Vesak themes – light, peace, remembrance, giving, etc., to enable you to fill your Vesak celebration with devotion and beauty.

Among her Vesak creations is a lotus-shaped soy candle, scented with sandalwood, lavender, etc., meant to burn during this Vesak Poya Day.

Indunil Kaushalya Dissanayaka: Customers
praise her for her creativity

These handcrafted Vesak candles are perfect for offering at the temple, she says.

What makes her creations so novel is that they come in different shapes, scents, themes, and all are handmade.

What’s more, her customers have heaped praise on her for her creativity.

According to Indunil, her creations are perfect as a thoughtful gift … to bring beauty, unity, and light into every moment.

Says Indunil: “Our beautifully handcrafted Unity candles are designed with premium detail and love, making them perfect for celebrations, gifts, and meaningful occasions.”

Cuteefly, says Indunil, is available online.

Readers could contact Indunil on 0778506066 for more details.

He Facebook Page is: Cuteefly.

Handmade with love

Features

Dark Spots …

Published

16 hours ago

2026/05/28

Sahan Weerasooriya

Yes, dark spots do crop up on the skin, especially with sun exposure and, of course, as the skin ages.

However, these tips should be of immense benefit to those who are faced with dark spots.

* Lemon and Honey Glow Mask:

You will need 01 teaspoon lemon juice and 01 teaspoon honey.

Mix the lemon juice and honey well and then apply this mixture, only on the dark spots.

Leave for 10–15 minutes and then rinse with cool water.

Benefits:

Lemon helps brighten pigmentation.

Honey moisturises and heals skin.

Gives a natural glow.

* Aloe Vera Gel Treatment:

All you need is fresh aloe vera gel.

Apply the gel apply on dark spots, before going to bed.

Leave overnight and wash in the morning.

Benefits:

Reduces acne marks and pigmentation.

Soothes irritated skin.

Helps skin repair naturally.

* Turmeric and Yoghurt Paste:

You will need 01 teaspoon yoghurt and a pinch of turmeric

Mix the yoghurt and turmeric into a smooth paste and apply on affected areas.

Leave for 15 minutes and then wash gently with lukewarm water.

Benefits:

Turmeric brightens skin naturally.

Yoghurt removes dead skin cells.

Helps fade dark spots gradually.

Use these packs 02-03 times a week as results are generally seen over time.

You can also try this out: Mix a ripe papaya into a smooth paste and apply to the face, or directly on to the dark spots. Leave for 15-20 minutes and then wash with lukewarm water.