Several decades ago, when the Food Drive led by Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake in a bold move to achieve self-sufficiency in essential foods wherever possible, the press officer in Mr. MD Banda’s Agriculture and Food Ministry, Lakshman Ratnapala telephoned several prominent personalities to get their views on the effort. One of them, the late Dr. EW Adikaram, the ascetic academic, told Ratnapala: “I can tell you what I think but you will not be able to publish my view.” The press officer urged “never mind, Sir, please tell me.” Adikaram’s reply: “I think we are already self-sufficient in rice because we eat twice as much as we need to!”

However that be, in the years since Dudley Senanayake’s Food Drive, we have heard boastful claims from many ministers that self-sufficiency in rice has been achieved. During Mr. EL Senanayake’s time as agriculture minister a cargo of rice was even exported to an African country. If the annual rice consumption of a population that has increased sharply over the years and the domestic production are compared, without doubt the self-sufficiency claim will be proved accurate. Yet we continue to often import rice to contend with a real or perceived shortages.

Our regular columnist Rajan Philips wrote on this page last Sunday of “Sri Lanka’s Perennial Rice Crisis: Scarcity Despite Self-Sufficiency” neatly summing up the existing situation. For the past several years, a so-called Mafia of large scale rice millers have been accused of hoarding and price manipulation to the detriment of both producer and consumer alike. Recent inspections have not been able to establish hoarding. Noises made by government on its commitment to end such practices have been all froth and no beer. Imposition of controlled prices have not worked with the available enforcement mechanism lacking the required muscle. Many traders refrained from stocking saying that selling at the declared maximum retail price (MRP) would mean losses.

Although government permitted rice imports, it imposes a high tax of Rs. 65 per kilo no doubt in an effort to safeguard producer interests rather than as a revenue raising measure. Finely balancing producer and consumer interests in determining the price of rice is a very difficult if not an impossible exercise. Recent and present shortages per se were not of rice itself but of certain varieties of rice, Nadu in particular. Red rice too was short in some areas, something the opposition seized on to say this affected the cooking of Pongal rice by Hindus to celebrate last week’s festival. The government countered by attributing the shortage to Ranil Wickremesinghe’s distribution of free red rice before the presidential election.

A variety of factors come into play in the availability and price of rice which is not only the country’s staple food but had also long been a staple of politics. For example there was a price incentive to produce keeri samba. When there was an over-supply of this variety, considered superior and therefore more expensive, some traders made the purchase of a quantity this variety a condition for selling cheaper rice. Whatever the recent convulsions regarding the prices and availability of rice, we were never confronted by a situation similar to the post-1970 crisis of the Sirima Bndaranaike-led United Front government when rice less days were mandated by law and haal pollas (rice barriers) erected to prevent the transport of paddy/rice across districts.

A factor that has contributed to the present problem has been the running down of the state-owned Paddy Marketing Board (PMB) and the fact that the PMB continues with outdated warehousing rather than using silos for grain storage like the big millers do. An effort to rehabilitate rundown PMB warehouse has now begun and hopefully the board will soon be effective in the market.

What’s in a name?

As readers are well aware, appreciations of people no longer alive, written by their friends and relatives are regular features in most newspapers. When very well know figures like former President Jimmy Carter of the USA and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India died recently, their obituaries were published not only in their own countries but also globally. In our paper last Sunday, Amal Jayasinghe, long time bureau chief in Colombo of the Agence France-Presse (AFP), wrote an appreciation of his father marking his seventh death anniversary.

This was no common or garden obituary. Using his considerable writing skills, the writer focused on his father’s names. Originally named Hirohito Edward Jayasinghe, these names were later replaced with Lenin Lindbergh with the subject living out his life as Lenin Jayasinghe. Lenin, though not common, was not totally unknown in then Ceylon and now Sri Lanka. If fact we even have a Joseph Stalin leading a teachers’ trade union and there have been more than one Hitler in this country. Also Shakespeare from Jaffna, a Bradman in the Ceylon Civil Service and elsewhere but no Mussolini we know of. Hirohito we have not heard before.

We all know the Solomon West Ridegeway (a British Governor General) Dias Bandaranaike though fewer would know that the name Solomon was carried by at least three generations of the Bandaranaikes with even Anura bearing that name. He was Anura Priyadhrshana Solomon Dias Bandaranaike. SWRD, apparently, was called “Solla” in close family circles. We also had Henry Woodward (famous principal of Mahinda College, Galle) Amarasuriya well know for his wealth and political role having been elected to parliament and served as a cabinet minister. The writer had a friend who named his daughter Romancita after a race horse – whether it was winner he backed we do not know.

Nicknames too are galore in schools and not only for teachers. There was a Yakadaya at royal College followed by his sibling Malakadaya!

Saturday 18th January, 2025

The JVP-led NPP asked for a working majority in Parliament to carry out what it called a clean-up campaign on the cards. Believing in its rhetoric, the people gave it a two-thirds majority instead. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake asked for mops and brooms for the grand clean-up, but the people gave him a bulldozer, so to speak. They did so because they wanted to strengthen his hands to overcome challenges and obstacles, upend the existing systems and serve their interests, but the government has not even been able to tame the millers’ cartel and private bus operators who have become a law unto themselves. It has even failed to make public officials fall in line.

Following a recent meeting between President Dissanayake and the Customs bigwigs, at the Presidential Secretariat, to discuss inordinate delays in container clearance, the government declared that the situation would be remedied in four days and the Customs would work 24/7. But that claim too has become a broken promise. Long lines of container trucks are still seen on the roads leading to the Orugodawatta terminal of the Customs.

Truckers have been struggling to gain access to food, water and sanitary facilities for days. They blamed the Customs for their suffering. One of them was heard saying on television yesterday that the people who had given President Dissanayake a huge mandate, expecting him to deal with errant state officials with a firm hand, felt badly let down. His view no doubt resonates with all others who backed the NPP overwhelmingly, hoping for a radical change.

Large-scale rice millers and private bus operators are running parallel governments to all intents and purposes; they scuttle the incumbent regime’s half-hearted attempts to control them. Even President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former battle-hardened frontline combat officer, dared not take on the wealthy rice millers, who are known to throw money around and have governments on a string. Today, the situation has become so bad that even state officials are defying presidential directives with impunity.

Customs clearance delays cause huge losses to importers, who pass them on to customers. It is the public who bears the cost of delays caused by the Customs. A spokesman for importers has said there has been no increase in the import volume of late, and therefore the Customs clearance delays are unpardonable. He has said delays cannot persist if the Customs are working 24/7 in keeping with their promise to President Dissanayake. Curiously, the government has not cared to find out whether the Customs have streamlined their clearance operations.

Shouldn’t the government be considerate enough to take action to provide the truckers who have been waiting in their vehicles for days, with mobile toilets, food and water until the Customs grandees eliminate delays?

Of what use is a government that cannot ever so much as make public officials carry out their duties and functions efficiently? Where are the cantankerous NPP ministers?

Friday 17th January, 2025

The Opposition has been able to put the government on the defensive on the propaganda front. The JVP/NPP carried out a propaganda onslaught against its political rivals, and rallied enough popular support to win last year’s elections. The boot is now on the other foot.

On Wednesday, claiming that despite last year’s regime change, some big companies continued to import coconut oil fraudulently, causing huge losses to the state coffers, SJB MP S. M. Marikkar, said NPP’s much-flaunted mandate had a foundation of lies. The ruling alliance had lied its way to power, making a host of promises that it did not intend to fulfil, he said. The SJB is now saying about the incumbent dispensation what the NPP said about previous governments.

The NPP launched a successful campaign to delegitimise the SLPP’s popular mandate after the onset of the current economic crisis in 2022. The Opposition is now all out to assail the NPP government’s credibility and challenge its authority in a similar manner.

Legitimate mandates founded on honest campaigning, truthfulness and sincere promises are rarer than hen’s teeth in Sri Lanka. It is doubtful whether during the past several decades any government has obtained an unsullied mandate in this country, where election campaigns are characterised by half-truths, outright lies and false promises.

One may recall that in the run-up to the 1970 general election, the SLFP-led United Front (UF) promised to make rice freely available even if it had to be brought from the moon. The country experienced a protracted shortage of rice under the UF government.

The UNP came to power in 1977, promising to bring about a ‘Righteous Society’, but what the country witnessed was the very antithesis thereof. Democratic dissent was violently suppressed; elections were rigged and state terror claimed tens of thousands of young lives under that regime.

The SLFP returned to power in 1994, promising to eliminate state terror and corruption, as a national priority, but both evils flourished under that government. The UNP obtained a mandate to rule the country again in 2001, promising to end the war through negotiations, but it only jeopardised national security.

The SLFP-led UPFA administration promised a ‘Prosperous Future’, but only its leaders and their kith and kin prospered during that government. The UNP formed a government in 2015 with the much-advertised goal of ushering in good governance, but its rule became a metaphor for corruption.

The SLPP obtained a mandate in 2019 by pledging to carry out its manifesto, ‘Vistas of Prosperity and Splendour’, but it bankrupted the country in 2022. The NPP promised ‘A thriving nation and a beautiful life’, but the people are struggling to keep the wolf from the door. Rice is in short supply and the prices of essentials have gone through the roof. Overall, the NPP stands accused of doing the opposite of what it obtained a mandate for.

Most of all, the NPP government is on the reverse gear just like its immediate predecessor; it keeps making about-turns on its key promises. It has chosen to remain silent on its pledge to scrap the executive presidency although it has a two-thirds majority in Parliament to introduce constitutional reforms.

The SJB’s assertion that the NPP’s mandate has a foundation of lies may resonate with the irate people who are demanding pay hikes and tax and tariff reductions. However, the fact remains that even the SJB, which has taken the moral high ground, and is condemning the NPP for reneging on promises, would not have been able to deliver what it sought a mandate for if it had won the presidential and parliamentary elections last year. It pledged to amend the debt structuring agreement, but the IMF bailout conditions leave no room for such measures. Most of its election promises were also Machiavellian.