Excerpted from volume ii of Sarath Amunugama autobiography

I was lucky both as Permanent Secretary and a researcher in the field of family planning to spend time in the east coast which is one of the loveliest parts of Sri Lanka, with its pristine beaches and a large swath of blue sea. The Information department was a partner of the Ministry of Planning under Wickreme Weerasooria in undertaking a communications campaign to promote family health.

The UNFPA provided a well-known communications scholar, Flora Rosario Braid, of the Philippines as an expert for the project. Anura Goonesekere, Director of Information, and I were the local experts representing the Government. We decided to undertake a baseline survey of attitudes to family planning among the different communities in the country. One group to be tested were the Muslims of the Eastern Province with Kattankudy in Batticoloa district as the main focus of our interest. This was because Kattankudy was recognized as one of the most densely populated villages in the world.

This was before travel to the Middle East made this area a main provider of housemaids to Arab countries. This was followed by the Wahabisation of the East when Kattankudy was re-imaged as an Arabian village with date palms lining the roadways and men and women adopting the Arab dress which was quite unsuitable for our climate.

At the time we studied it, Kattankudy was a poor village subsisting on primitive agriculture and manufacturing of handloom sarongs. Its males were traders who fanned out to all parts of the country and established a communal network which was later exploited by the ISIS trained Muslim terrorists. It is amusing that when I was a member of the National Security Council as a Minister the only participant who had actually visited this ‘hot spot’ was me.

That spoke volumes about the lack of preparedness of the intelligence services under the Sirisena–Ranil dispensation. They were totally unprepared to respond to the intelligence provided by the Indian authorities regarding an impending attack by Muslim fanatics hailing from Kattankudy on that Easter Sunday which is now part of the sad history of that time.

The old Kalkudah Rest House was our meeting place during the survey. We would spend our weekends there by the sea and enjoy the sea food that was a specialty of the well-appointed Rest House. Close by was the large coconut estate belonging to the church which was managed by Father Miller, a legendary American Missionary. Unfortunately the Tsunami hit the East coast hard and the Kalkudah Rest House was obliterated.

The demographic projections we made clearly showed the lack of interest of the Muslim community vis-a-vis the other communities in the island, to family planning. On one hand it showed a demographic spurt in their numbers. On the other it showed the increase of poverty and paucity of health measures in the Muslim community which was later seen in their vulnerability to pandemics like Corona 19 in which their deaths were far above the average of other communities.

This was in contrast to the other samples from nearby Panama which had a mixed population. Sinhalese from Uva had fled there during the British repression following the failure of the rebellion of 1818. Panama is famous for its Pattini Temple and its procession in which the goddess’ anklets are paraded along the boundary of the village. From Kalkudah and Panama we went further south to Arugam Bay. This village and its nearby Whiskey Point with its fearsome sea waves, is one of the loveliest spots in the country’s shoreline.

Unfortunately it too was hit hard by the Tsunami. It has been rebuilt now. I am glad that the Tourist Board during my time managed to put the East coast on the map. After the Tsunami and the long civil war during which these spots were devastated, the East coast has now got a new lease of life. The future of adventure tourism lies in this beautiful area with its long sea line, pristine beaches and wild life without parallel in other parts of the country.

Government Printer

With the reshuffle when Anandatissa became our Minister, the President transferred more powers to the Ministry of State. In addition to tourism the subject of printing – the Department of Printing and the State Printing Corporation, was also allocated to us. This was mainly because those subjects were allocated to JRJ during the Dudley regime and Ananda was its Permanent Secretary at that time. The employees of these two institutions were happy at this change as they were coming back to familiar territory.

Both Ananda and I were personally interested in printing technology. To mark the assumption of the Presidency by JRJ, I started for the Sinhala reader a fortnightly news magazine called ‘Desathiya’ which was modeled on English news magazines like Time and Newsweek. I recruited the best talent among off beat Sinhala journalists like Cyril B. Perera, D.B. Warnasiri and Gamini Wijetunga and ‘Desathiya’ became a popular publication in the country.

It has now survived, indeed flourished, for 43 years and is still going strong having attracted a Sinhala middle class readership. Work on the magazine required regular interaction with the Printing Department and I acquired the rudiments of printing technology which became useful when I started my own newspaper as I shall describe later.

This was a time when we were moving from hot metal technology to digital printing and I was able to persuade the Treasury to make a considerable investment in the latest digitalized printing machinery. We became the pioneers in this field as it was an expensive outlay at that time. It was much later that newspaper moghuls turned to digitalization. Here too Upali newspapers led the pack.

When we took over the Department of Government Printing there were hundreds of workers who had not been confirmed even though they had served for more than ten years as temporary hands. They had been kept in limbo because their unions were supporters of the LSSP and the CP. It was their massive presence on Baseline road that made Borella a leftist stronghold. NM Perera’s municipal constituency was Borella.

However, in spite of being the Mayor, NM was defeated by the SLFP which fielded Dr. WD ‘Dadi Bidi’ Silva who was a popular private medical practitioner who belonged to the Salagama caste. A part of Borella, Wanathamulla, had a strong Salagama community and the SLFP, in their hatred of NM, had no hesitation in playing the caste card.

In 1977 however MH Mohamed managed to secure this seat and JRJ cannily made him Minster of Transport because private bus transport in the western province was mostly owned by Salagama capitalists of whom Sir Cyril de Zoysa was the outstanding example. Later Premadasa appointed Wijepala Mendis, the son of another Salagama bus Mogul, as the Minister of Transport. One could not understand the ups and downs of our leftists without reckoning the caste factor and the willingness of their ‘democratic’ opponents to use every trick in the book to defeat them.

With Anandatissas support I managed to confirm all the temporary workers because in fact it did not require new funds as they were already being paid monthly. This decision was welcomed by all the Unions, including the UNP and SLFP, and our stock was very high. The LSSP union led by Wimalasena was especially supportive and helped considerably in the book printing program which I will describe presently.

The State Printing Corporation which was founded by JRJ when he was Minister of State, had a strong UNP representation. JRJ had appointed one of his cronies, lawyer R.R. Nalliah, as the Chairman who worked closely with the Ministry and probably gave favourable reports about us to the Godfather. Nalliah frequently invited JRJ for functions of the SPC and JRJ often obliged because he knew many of the staff personally and was happy in their company.

With my minister’s blessings I arranged a comprehensive scholarship programme for our young printing executives with the London School of Printing on one of my visits there. Accordingly four young chemistry graduates were sent to London for training. They were taught the latest digital printing technology. On returning they were attached to the Department of Printing here and were asked to establish the Sri Lanka College of Printing with the resources of the Government Printer.

One of the returning graduates was Neville Nanayakkara whom I appointed the Government Printer though he was in his early thirties. He revolutionized printing in the country and brought it in line with the latest developments in technology and management. The other graduates joined the SPC and the private sector and helped in modernizing the printing trade here.

Text Book Printing

At a Cabinet meeting JRJ pulled out another rabbit from his hat. As a young State Councilor he had proposed that all school children should be provided text books free of charge. His proposal had been ignored at that time. Now he wanted his proposal implemented. It could have been argued that education in the State Council days was very different and at that time children had to be lured to schools with many incentives in order to promote education.

The free education scheme had brought almost all our children to school. Secondary education in Sri Lanka was being cited as a model by the UN, in its millennium development goal of education for all. But no Minister dared to argue with JRJ when it came to recycling his early fantasies. All solemnly agreed that it was a good idea and requested our Ministry to print the text books in consultation with the Education Ministry.

What followed is a classic example of decisive decision making by JRJ. The Minister of Education Nissanka Wijeratne was asked to provide a paper on the number of text books to be printed. He consulted his officials and said that the number was 20 and it was so entered into the Cabinet minutes. When I called my printers to discuss the printing schedule we were already in the month of September and had only three months to complete our task before schools reopened in January the following year.

We then discovered to our horror that the actual number of books to be printed were 60 and not 20. That was because there were three languages of instruction – Sinhala, Tamil and English – and text books were required for all three streams. Realizing the enormity of the problem I went to see the President with a graph showing the text books actually required class by class. JRJ immediately realized the dimensions of the blunder and called to his office the Minister and his Secretary, senior CCS officer DMPB Dassanayake.

The Minister had no explanation for his blunder and began to berate his Secretary. JRJ cut the meeting short and asked me to come back to his office by three o clock that afternoon. When I went to his office Menikdiwela and the Deputy Education Minister Lionel Jayatilleke were there. JRJ then gave letters of appointment to Jaytailleke and me.

In that brief period of time he had created a new Ministry called the Ministry of Education Supplies, by detaching several functions and budgetary provisions from the Education Minister. I was appointed the Permanent Secretary of the new Ministry in addition to my post in the Ministry of State. Lionel Jayatilleke was sworn in as the new Minister of Education Supplies. All this was done in the space of a few hours.

As we were leaving JRJ called me and said, “I can see you know your job” which was high praise indeed. Lionel and I found new premises for the Ministry near the Turf Club grounds and we got to work. Fortunately we had the goodwill of the workmen in the Government Press and the Printing Corporation. To their credit they all agreed to work round the clock without asking for overtime.

As the LSSP Trade Union leader Wimalasena, who was normally a hard nut to crack told me “We are doing this for our children”. Tragically many years later, after the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord Wimalasena was shot dead by the JVP. Then another problem arose. Sepala Gunasena owner of the Davasa group called me with his dilemma. MD Gunasenas traditionally printed the texts for Buddhism classes in schools from Grade one to ten. By the time of the Cabinet decision he had already completed printing these textbooks.

He was now facing a big loss if the Government also printed the same book. I saw the merit of his case and appraised JRJ about it. I told him that my solution was to buy the Gunasena stock and distribute it with our books. He immediately agreed and asked me to go ahead. When I gave the good news to Sepala Gunasena he was greatly appreciative as his company was in the throes of a financial crisis. He remained a good friend and I averted a crisis in the good relations that the Information Ministry had with newspaper publishers.

We worked hard on the text book project and even organized `shramadanas’ where Minister Lionel and I took part in the gathering of printed sheets and stapling them. With JRJ’s consent we gave part of the printing to the private sector and had to fend off recommendations of assorted politicians to give contracts to their favourite printing shops. Anyway we did our job in time and organized a ceremonial handing over of books in a school in the Minister’s electorate, Kuliyapiitya.

By a strange coincidence that school in Nakkawatta had a nostalgic message for me. Nakkawatta was my father’s first teaching assignment as a young man in the late 1930s. He had often told us about his experiences there and it had remained in my mind’s eye. Many years later as Minister of Education I revisited this school with the Education Secretary Tara de Mel and was happy to address the students about my father’s pleasant memories of their school.

Unfortunately at that time there was no one in the school who remembered him. But when I told my father about this ceremony he was delighted and told many visitors to his home of the good time he had in Nakkawatta as a rookie teacher.