No Happy New Year

There is no escaping the reality that the government is back to the wall and very well aware of it. But it is not going to be toppled in the short term as some of its opponents would wish. Not a day passes when already suffering people are not heaped with more burdens. Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa a few days ago announced a relief package costing Rs. 229 billion but did not bother to reveal how he is going to find the money to fund it. There will be no tax increases, he has promised and it is to be hoped that this is a pledge that will be kept. Obviously the printing press will account for most of the soon-to-be-paid relief with all attendant ill effects. Published figures indicate that new money created last year reached astronomical proportions. Inflation has hit historical highs with much of it accounted for by food prices. Opposition politicians are now calculating how much a single bean pod or carrot costs. Most of the poorer housewives cannot think of buying more than a 100 grams of the cheapest vegetable.

The Island, our stablemate, reacted to the first news of the Basil package by editorially saying it was a pain reliever but with terrible side effects. Santa, wearing a sataka, the leader writer joked, had arrived late bringing gifts for some of the people; but many more will be left out altogether. Certainly the beneficiaries will welcome the relief, inadequate as it is. Who will not at a time like this when the prices of essentials have shot through the roof? But what about the greater numbers who will not get nothing at all? Granted Sri Lanka has a massive public service running at over 1.1 million according to data gathered in the last census in 2016. The number will be much higher now so a very large number will enjoy the benefit. But there are more workers in the informal than in the formal sector and most of them will be left out in the cold.How daily paid workers eking out a miserable living in the face of ever rocketing prices fared during the lockdown is too recent for anybody, leave alone the victims themselves, to forgive or forget.

Covid is admittedly responsible for many of the problems that the country is now confronted with; but not all of them as has been frequently pointed out. The rulers have contributed substantially to the nation’s current predicament and are paying the price of massive unpopularity within a couple of years of a heady election victory. The fertilizer crisis and its consequences is a vivid example of the harm ill-thought decision making, ignoring expert advice, can do. The government, in the face of massive protests, has partially backed down although too late to rescue the forthcoming Maha harvest. The ban on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides have undoubtedly contributed much to the current vegetable shortage and the resulting price increases. A rice shortage that will force imports the cash-strapped economy can ill afford is being widely predicted.

Although a freeze on public sector recruitment this year has been announced, neither this government nor its predecessors can evade responsibility for the bloated public service the country has for too long carried. Politicians of every hue have given jobs that do not exist in the state sector to their supporters in return for votes. There is no need to labor the well known fact that a very large number of passengers burden the state payroll and no meaningful effort has been made to correct this scandalous state of affairs. Instead, politicians have continued to expand the public sector and the bestowing of letters of appointment to new recruits by various ministers has been a common occurrence. Such letters are handed out as though the politicians themselves are paying their salaries out of their own pockets.

However well meant and necessary, the relief package has many weaknesses and will be difficult to administer effectively. For example, a large number of public servants bring home two salaries with both husbands and wives employed by the state. This will mean a double benefit for some families while many others will get nothing at all. Samurdhi, no doubt, is a welfare package necessary in a poverty ridden country like ours. But it is badly targeted and large numbers of unqualified families benefit while many of the deserving do not. Payment of relief allowances to public servants, other state sector employees and Samurdhi beneficiaries using the existing administrative machine will not be difficult. But administrating the home gardening incentive, given the many possible avenues of corruption that will surely be exploited, will present many challenges.

The cooking gas and milk powder queues continue and there is little possibility of the shortages being quickly addressed. Gas explosions keep happening and nobody has been held responsible although it has been established that the change in the propane-butane proportions in the cylinders is the most likely cause. The foreign exchange crisis persists. People have now stopped wishing each other a Happy News Year but the prospect of happiness in 2022 remains bleak.