President’s Gama Samaga Pilisandarak

By Dr D. Chandraratna

Trying to place President’s Gama Samaga Pilisandarak (PGSP) in a scientific perspective of public policy making is timely. One of the stated objectives of the Presidents election manifesto, ‘Vistas of Prosperity’ is to create a village-centered development of our predominantly agriculture-based rural economy. The President has pledged to achieve a four-fold objective: a productive citizen, a happy family, a virtuous, disciplined and just society and ultimately a prosperous country. A laudable project worthy of comment and analysis.

President Rajapaksa believes that to achieve this broad objective, he must clearly identify the problems faced by the rural population, which constitutes about 70% of the population in Sri Lanka. It is well known that people in rural areas have suffered for far too long as national development goals are stymied. Given the fact Sri Lanka has an executive presidential system of government it must be understood that decisions that the executive President makes supersede all other decision centres. It is no secret however, that political decisions are tied up with ideology, party politics, group interests, vote banks and the survival of regimes. But in this paper we will leave the ideology and rhetoric aside and examine only the facts, evidence, ends and means only.

Ideal methods of policy making; the end points of a continuum

At the outset it is necessary to contextualise the exercise within the science of policy making in public affairs. Policies are a web of executive decisions made to overcome problems that people in society face in their day-to-day lives. These can be arranged on a continuum from the complex to the simple. At the complex end lies the oldest model, based on the theory of decisions expounded by the management guru Herbert Simon; it is called the Root Method or Comprehensive Rational model, where policy decisions are made after a laborious weighing of all alternative courses in terms of optimum results, costs, and many other value positions. Obviously, this is absolutely necessary in national issues and problems which consume a vast amount of national resources and are costly in nature. Infrastructure projects such as transport systems, communication systems, river and waterways, energy supplies etc., fit in with the comprehensive method of policy making. Governments issue white papers and appoint commissions, task forces and professional consultant bodies before such are undertaken because of the vastness in costs and liabilities. The most important fact is that the country as a whole must realise the value and necessity of such vital state projects. In Sri Lanka, it is a matter of regret that some costly projects such as the Mattala airport and the Hambantota Port have come under criticism because the national implications have not been professionally argued. The author is of the view that both were valuable projects in their own right and if only the relevant Ministry at the time had followed though the correct professional procedure in public policy-making, the projects may have had a different outcome.

In other countries, projects of that magnitude go though extensive weighing of alternatives, open professional debates and university research centres arguing about costs, benefits and opportunity costs of the nation’s limited resources. Science has to be put before ideology because haphazard interventions in national policy or grids or systems can be deleterious.

The opposite method at the other end is called incremental policy making, for as the name suggests it is limited in scope and applicable to small time projects with little or limited national implications. These appear solutions to residual ills, minor dysfunctions of national policies, which need remedial outcomes. Hence, such measures are called disjointed, piecemeal and also having incremental outcomes, benefitting a few at the margins. The fact that they are disjointed invites numerous criticisms. But their positives will be explored first.

This is the method of policy making that the President has taken up as a speedy solution to the numerous problems faced by the rural peasantry in Sri Lanka and his entourage has selected the most backward of villages as the points to touch on.

In fairness to the President, it must be stated at the outset that we do not consider this as a ploy on the part of the President to escape the political overload that he has inherited from years gone past. Ever since the gradual dissipation of efforts by governments since Independence, to kick-start the village economy as the mainstay of the national development strategy, the dividends have been sub-optimal. The colonisation schemes, village expansion schemes, financial assistance to tenants were only partially successful. We do remember the 10-year plans, five-year plans, Operations rooms, Planning Ministries but the results have been poor. The President will succeed to the extent that his advisors keep him informed of the successes, and especially failures of the efforts in the past. The President’s officials must not be a bunch of ‘yes men’ leading the President up the garden path.

Transparency in respect of both means and ends is the path to success. People are not unaware of the fact that politicians are in the habit of recommending such incremental stop-gap policies as a way out to avoid political embarrassment, hoping for a temporary respite. Bottom-up policy making has its positives but its limits and usefulness must be properly grasped.

President’s Gama Samaga Pilisandarak –– the context

Before we evaluate what the President has so far addressed, we must note the following facts about our broad policy field. Sri Lanka has nine provinces, 25 districts, 318 divisions and 14,022 Grama Niladari areas or villages. The country, consisting of 14,022 villages, is demarcated into 196 electorates. For 196 electorates there are 225 Members of Parliament to advance the welfare of all 14022 villages. Given the electoral system these members of Parliament represent not electorates, but districts. They are elected on the proportional representation system of voting. Hence no one at the Centre is responsible, theoretically at least, for any of the problems in any particular village.

Having identified that the PGSP is located at the incremental end of public policymaking we need to put it in an analytical perspective.

It is fair to surmise thus far the President has in his encounters identified and sometimes attended to some of the following major issues identified by the President inter alia: shortage of lands and water for agriculture and houses, unavailability of deeds for lands, inadequate health and transportation facilities, shortages affecting school and other educational issues, inaccessibility to drinking water, elephant-human conflicts and difficulties in marketing.

We are also aware that around 30 precent of the total households in rural societies in Sri Lanka live below the poverty line. Moreover, nutrition surveys conducted in the recent reveal a high prevalence of malnutrition among those in rural areas, which may have been caused by chronic poverty.

There are particular issues in some villages, which we will leave out in this paper.

The Analysis: Plusses and Minuses

I will use a famous textbook in policy making by Hogg and Gunn (1984) to follow through with the Presidential initiative. Let us start with the positives of the PGSP.

This move in the President’s opinion is for the top policy maker to ascertain the real situation in the village, which any text will title as an issue search. The pertinent question to ask is why these concerns do not come up on any agenda paper. Basically, it may be that those affected have no voice because organised interest groups with power and influence drive the issues that get priority. In a poor country, this should come as no surprise. The electronic media of late have had a number of programmes as an agenda-setting exercise with limited success but their main objective was to embarrass the local politicians and bureaucrats. The president also has an interest in attending to their immediate concerns before they could intensify in the future creating more headaches for him. Seeing the problem first hand gives the first policy maker in the country a view of the issue plus the complexities and need for ameliorative action.

The other positive from the perspective of the villager is the immediacy of solution, as resources can be mustered straight away by the President, which otherwise takes long years noting the plethora of departments and other bodies that are involved.

Sri Lanka is one of the highly bureaucratised countries with a public service ‘surplus to requirements’ and running the gauntlet is beyond the capacity of villagers. For example, to regularise a land permit, I was told by a one-time Land Commissioner, one has to have approvals from 23 odd government and semi government organisations. Things are unbelievably complicated by the number of authorising bodies. It took me 12 years after occupation to obtain the deed to my apartment from a government department in Colombo, and that too after two costly court cases. Bureaucratic corruption and inefficiency! Let us not talk about it. No wonder that the people awaiting the arrival of the President were sadly disappointed last week by the cancellation of his visit at the last minute.

In this bottom-up policy initiative there are many pitfalls that we can list straightaway. The President can visit only a few villages and those that are neglected can be politically ‘not with him’. Secondly, the problems are the same in most villages and it will be pointless wasting the time of the President because he will reach the saturation point very soon. He will realise that there are better and efficient mechanisms, given the resources, which can attend to these problems. What the information tells the President is that the issues, being common to many of the fourteen thousand villages are crying out for a national plan of action. Hence we wonder whether it is it the enormity of the issues that strained the limits of those who had power before, causing this neglect? Was it lack of insight, proper understanding, ministerial inexperience or the fear of realising the complexity of the interrelationships between issues or sheer lack of resources that caused this oversight?

The President cannot visit all villages and the solutions he instantaneously gives can be counterproductive. The furore over the environment and forests is a classic case where the Presidents instant solutions have become the weapon in the hands of an environmentally conscious middle class youth on whose bandwagon the opponents of the government are taking a joy ride.

The President will face similar catch-22 situations, which adversely affect his popularity. Incremental policies at the margins by themselves do not achieve much.

Conclusion

Sri Lanka failed in the bottom-up policy development due to many reasons and I can only highlight briefly a few for lack of space. The inefficient and lethargic conduct of the public institutions, the way our peoples representatives are elected without responsibility for particular localities, over 8000 politicians, the haphazard manner in which ministries are created for politicians (Foreign Affairs coupled with Lotteries!), the total lack of coordination between departments, the corruption of public officials, the inability of law to punish those who flout the law, the misuse of power and influence, the non-use or decay of coordination mechanisms such as Divisional, District and Provincial coordinating committees, and the lack of nexus between Provincial Councils and local authorities and many more. The political solution proposed by way of Provincial Councils has become a dead weight. Generally, we are an over governed society and as such the use of modern scientific management for policy implementation is non-existent.

An article appeared in your paper the other day by our colleague Ranjith Soysa from Australia about the successes of China in eradicating poverty in a matter of decades by comprehensive social policy planning which Sri Lanka can learn from. A white paper on poverty alleviation, which outlines the success of policies implemented, the methods employed and her desire to share the unique social experiment with other developing countries was mentioned therein. ‘Sri Lanka should make use of this opportunity to study the programme and follow its guidelines if a national comprehensive policy is to be implemented.

China achieved the largest scale battle against extreme poverty, as 98.99 million people had been lifted out of absolute poverty––a miracle in human history. But China achieves success because it is a planned centrally and the ideology is driven with strict, rigidly enforced rules, but whether we, being overly democratic, can enforce such discipline in a country noted for a poor work ethic is any one’s guess.

References

Hogwood,B.W & L.A.Gunn (1984) Policy Analysis for the Real World, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

D.Chandraratna, Making Social Policy in Modern Sri Lanka (2003), Vijitha Yapa, Colombo.