by Lokubanda Tillakaratne

News of outrageous and probably questionable horizontal distribution of close to 900 million rupees from the President’s Fund to factions of politicians for supposed medical treatment brought back memories of disappointment after the explanation I received from the President’s Office in March 2024 when I called to see whether it could give  two million rupees to my school of 200 students in Maradankalla, in the Galenbindunuwewa Education Zone, to build a 20ft x20ft small pavilion on its playground.  Section 6 of the President’s Fund Act No. 7 of 1978 allows the distribution of funding for ‘education or knowledge.’

I called after seeing a copy of a letter issued by the President’s office in December 2023 addressed to an Armed Service Head notifying him of releasing a check for 24 million rupees to build a swimming pool at a national school.

When my call got through, the person I spoke to told me that the President’s office funded only National Schools (NS), and smaller village schools, like mine, must contact the Governor of the Province for funds.

CASTE QUARTET OF OUR EDUCATION AND HISTORY

The President’s Office fund distribution practice has proved that we have an asymmetric support mechanism and education they dispense in our schools. The Ministry of Education and BOI are directing three different systems rooted in an Urban-Rural divide to educate our children. They are NSs, the PSs, i.e., rural, the mushrooming International School business (IS), and the business arm of education—the Tuition class pantheon.

This practice mimics the reviled caste systems that controlled Sri Lankan society until the mid-20th century.  This thought gave me a jolt and conjured back a time way back when cold, shameful caste was the norm of the day.  As a boy in the early 1950s, I remember a 6’ 8″ giant of a gentle, grandfatherly man from a neighbouring lower caste village, removing his headscarf and stepping aside on the tank bund and standing still until a group of chattering boys from this supposedly ‘higher caste’ village walked past him.

According to historian K. M. De Silva, in the 1880s, Charles Bruce, the Director of Education, argued that primary education of the village child must equip him for the “humble career which ordinarily lies before them.” The Bruce Education Code at the time imposed high tuition fees in English and Anglo-Vernacular schools to make it a barrier and challenging for those less elitist sections in the society to learn English.  Limiting English education access then to village children was the policy, and it had defenders. J. P. Obeysekere, Sinhalese Representative in the Legislative Council, supported the Bruce Education Code, stating “that the children of the rural poor would be (then) forced to follow such avocations as they are fitted for by nature.”  By not advancing the education of rural kids, if we are thinking of creating a labour force to work in the fields only to produce rice to feed the nation, then the present story must change to stop it from drifting back to the wrong side of history.

 FAR APART MAKEUP OF THE QUARTET

This caste discussion embodies three different types of schools – NS, PS (Village Schools), and IS. These schools differ on an urban-rural divide, emulating past caste dynamics I mentioned.  A village school does not have an influential past pupils’ Association, a characteristic, among other things, enshrined in the preamble in elevating a school to national status. Meanwhile, half a dozen parents form a School Development Committee to lobby for their children in a village school silently.  The NS Past Pupils’ groups work with an all-out fervor on behalf of the school.

Schools and learning are two distinct things.  They can be physically bigger or smaller, some with wrought iron gates with finials standing as sentinels between crenelated parapet walls representing glamour and fame. In the village school, the gate is for entry and exit and to prevent grazing cows from entering the schoolyard. But learning is the soul of any school. Therefore, it demands both school systems – NS and PS – to foster learning on equal terms, adhering to a one-size-fits-all motto.

Contrary to the PSs, NS never had a problem attracting teachers. Teachers come with vested interests and incentives, such as the privilege of admitting their kids to school (which I have no problem with), and economic opportunities associated with after-school private tuition.

It is puzzling that the same students they teach during school hours become their paying customers in the bustling warehouse-like evening tuition class, an uncontrolled monster eating into parents’ pockets. Indeed, I applaud the Western Province PC for identifying this vulgarity and becoming the bellwether to stop teachers’ after-school tuition practice.

 NS facilities are top-of-the-line.  Its computer lab is air-tight, climate-controlled 24/7, and built as a showpiece right as you enter the school.  Former Presidents have graced them at the opening to earn political capital. Meanwhile, my village school has a small computer room; half of the computers are inoperative; there is no A/C to inject life into the remaining few.

Many NSs pride themselves in having a swimming pool, ICC-standard cricket pitches, and a playground with finery of manicured grass with sprinklers showering it with intervals of atomic accuracy.  A couple of groundskeepers work diligently searching for pale-coloured turf to replace. Its pavilion is a treat to the eye. Political royalty and princely educators assemble here annually to enjoy the inter-house sports meet.

Meanwhile, in my village school, the playground is a poor child.  Seasonal rain comes to sprinkle it.  There are no groundskeepers here.  Parents volunteer to trim the grass at the beginning of each term. Elephant droppings of various stages of healing are all over the effaced track.  Teachers stand under the shade of teak trees along the barbed-wire fence as students run laps. There is no roofed structure on the playground for them to rest. The closest we have as a roofed structure here are two linear illustrations of a four-page blueprint for a ‘pavilion’, which I brought to the attention of the President’s Office without success.

We wrote to the Governor of the Province with this plan in March 2023 but have not received a response yet.

I am now trying what President Anura Kumara Dissanayake recently observed—looking to see if there is someone I know in the Governor’s Office!

What I write next may not be pretty.  My school has two precious latrines for students, embellished with aged squatting pans, one of which has broken edges. The pits are packed to the brim and graciously continue to be receptive to the squatting pan output. The concrete slab inside one latrine is peeling off in a few places.  In the three small schools around my village, only Kahapathwilagama (over 100 years old) and Wellaragama are open for business, but they have the same caste title––the PS.  Unfortunately, the nearby Ihalagama school was abandoned over a decade ago. After the jungle had overtaken its buildings, herds of Mahakanadarawa elephants now take turns using them for night school.

Such is the background I called the President’s Office for help. Although countless provincial education officials have visited these schools, they seem oblivious or helpless to resolve these shortcomings. The officials have not considered upgrading the playground because they have many vital issues and probably funding difficulties. Furthermore, a few principals told me they would not want to bother the provincial hierarchy for fear of being labelled a nuisance.

International schools making education for profit business

Nearly 150 years later, J.P. Obeyesekeres of the world have their wish granted in the form of the International School phenomenon, replicating the memory politics of the Bruce Education Code.

Among my neo-caste quartet, IS competes intensely with rural students whose English and other subject proficiency is generally regarded as below average.  Against this backdrop, in the context of securing well-paying jobs, international school students stand a better chance of representing their caste well.

Past governments have colluded with the Bureau of Investment (BOI) by interpreting secondary education as a business and approved the wholesale International School concept. This action contravenes the provisions of the Assisted Schools and Training Colleges (Supplementary Provisions) Act No. 8 of 1961, which requires that no person other than the Director of Education can establish a school for children between the ages of five and 14.

  IS system is not under the oversight of the Ministry of Education but is allowed to take O/L and A/L exams with regular school students or equivalent tests offered by overseas agencies or schools. Now, they are popping up in towns like Grocery outlets.   The Ministry did not study detrimental consequences and the competition they generated on PS students. Now, I see this idea has morphed into an impediment instead of an investment to equalize the cadence of these two learning environments.

Not all children who study in IS end up in foreign universities. Those who don’t then enter the local job market with English language eloquence plumaged on their caps. The inveterate disposition of employers towards the English articulation of prospective applicants makes it easy to take the first look at the plumaged candidates.  Rural school candidates with a smattering of English-speaking skills get the adieu.

Without increased English-medium education opportunities, employment, or academic opportunities for the village school students decrease in inverse proportion to the distance as the school gets farther and farther from the city.  If authorities do not address this imbalance soon, students without adequate English proficiency, i.e., rural students, will become irrevocably irrelevant.

However, English medium education is an indispensable idea in the present day and age. We need a reliable workforce with good English command to court foreign investors to bring their capital. I am concerned about the government’s inaction to bring this environment to rural schools.  It has failed to recognize that such student preparation is a form of export stimulating an increase of inbound investment in the country.  Let us add village schools’ kids to this export market, too.

After the 1956 Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike’s ‘Sinhala Only’ debacle, it took decades for the English language to become a factor in our children’s education. Then, in the early 21st century, President Chandrika Bandaranayake, S.W.R.D.’s daughter, proposed making English medium instruction in rural schools.  However, that idea withered away sadly, leading us to the present discussion. It is encouraging and applausive that some National Schools offer English medium classes now.

Still, the PSs do not have access to such advancements yet; perhaps the education bigwigs think that those children are 5th-Grade exam failures and are not up to the challenge, or there are not enough English teachers to teach.  Indeed, the latter may be accurate, but a positive sign is that the aptness of the 5th-Grade aptitude test has become the subject of discussion among educators.  I know that 5th-Grade testing should not be considered an inflection point in an ‘Other School’ child’s education.  I failed that exam in 1963.

(To be continued)

Forest fires were raging in southern California at the time of writing. The deadly combination of an exceptionally dry period — Los Angeles received only 0.16 inches of rain since October — and powerful offshore gusts known as the Santa Ana winds whipped the roaring flames ever wider and deadlier. The cause was pinpointed. A man pushed his burning car into a ravine near Chico and the metal dragging on the ground is believed to have caused the fire. The latest statistic for human death caused by fire is 24.

A disaster anywhere, even in the most prosperous, powerful and proud nation is cause for universal sympathy and condolence. But it is inevitable that like in Cassandra’s mind, people will recall the thousands willfully killed and injured in the Gaza strip by the Israeli Army. Can you imagine willfully letting people starve and babies freeze to death, just because the wandering Jew was given a land in Palestinian country to settle down in, and now wants to annex more of land around it and drive out or cause genocide in neighbouring states. Thus, the word and its meaning – retribution comes to mind; paying for one’s sins. And why must the US pay? Because it supports financially, politically and with arms and planes, warring Israel.

Cass watched a video clip that had a preacher pronounce that Hollywood was burning because at a recent awards ceremony God was blasphemed. So, God turned around and brought raging fire to Hollywood and surrounding districts. If God is merciful why these deadly tit for tat costing so much in resources: human and material.

The rational reason, of course, is global warning which exacerbates natural disasters, and excessive expansion of human habitats too close to forests.

Funeral of Ex-President Jimmy Carter

Maureen Dowd wrote an excellent article – as is her way – in the NYT, titled Five Presidents and a funeral, in which her focus was contrasting the late ex-president to the soon-to-be-returned next president. The five US Presidents present at the state funeral, all seated together in adjacent pews were George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Of the spouses, Michele Obama was prominently absent.

Dowd starts her comment thus: “Jimmy Carter was exactly where he wanted to be at his funeral on Thursday – at a deliberate remove from his fellow presidents. And slightly above them.”

The first contrast between the deceased President and the revived President was that they were at opposite ends on the moral scale.  “Here was Carter, the righteous, ascending to heaven, as Donald Trump, the felonious, ascended again to the Oval Office. Carter’s passion for honesty was as ingrained as Trump’s addiction to lying.  Even as Carter was being praised at his state funeral at the National Cathedral working tirelessly to eradicate diseases, Trump was hunting for a disease to pin on immigrants to justify sealing the border. While the centenarian was heralded for his virtue and monogamous 77-year marriage with Rosalynn, Trump was bracing to be sentenced on his vice – falsifying records to cover up an infidelity with a porn star, conducted while Melania was home taking care of her newborn son.”

Maureen Dowd continues the contrast by bringing in the entirely different attitudes to climate change Carter and Trump had. Carter very early on detected the danger of global warming and took measures to curb pollution. When Carter lay in state in the Capitol, Kamala Harris paid a sincere and heart-warming tribute  to him in which she itemized his achievements as Prez, like his energy policy, his vision of protecting the environment, doubling the area under parks, extending protection to the Redwoods, appointing more Blacks to positions of power and increased employment of women five times. Trump ignored and denied global warming and may not have changed his stance. He had America withdrawing from the Paris meeting on global warming in 2017 and directed the US not sign the final statement.

If you take that statement of Carter’s achievements while he was 39th President, the contrast between the two is further amplified.  Trump cares little about surroundings as long as he lives like a king; he disdains Blacks and others of colour with his White Supremacy belief, and women he treats so very condescendingly.

Dowd’s final comparison is naming the two: Farmer from Plains vs. Emperor of Chaos.

Cynicism clouded as criticism

Cassandra has recently read and heard criticism of the NPP not keeping to its election manifesto of promises and almost going back on what it promised. Criticism is good and necessary. Any government should allow it and listen, and take action to correct mistakes. Previous governments did not tolerate fault finding even when it was justified. Some governments gagged the press, burnt outfits and killed journalists. We were made to believe the NPP was different and we did and do believe this. Thus, while criticism is good it must be firm-foundationed and justified.

It is said that the NPP government has kept to the bargain thrashed out by Ranil W’s SLPP government with the IMF. It is of absolute paramount importance that Sri Lanka gets untangled from bankruptcy and dire economic woes. The NPP would surely have studied options and decided not to make too many changes in negotiation with the IMP which seemed to satisfy this body so it continues to assist SL to rise from abject economic downfall. The critics say the poor still suffer – taxes, etc. Yes, but the rich are not going to be given the chance to live like kings on pilfered government money. All are called upon to tighten belts and those in power are doing so – no extravagances. There is no justification for the NPP government but all political parties do not keep pre-election promises. Also, we believe the present government is doing the best for the country. So, drop that criticism unless you are an expert economist.

Another criticizing question which is hardly camouflaged cynicism, is: Where are the caught rogues? Where is the brought back lucre? If people think you can catch cunning masterminds who have stashed stolen money and gold, etc., or those advised by master crooks how to cover their stealing steps and stolen goods, they are simpletons. See how difficult it is to swat a fly. Criminals are escapists. All possible evidence must be collected before an arrest is made. Remember the flawed, half-baked cases of corruption thrown aside as lacking substantial evidence. Both Lasantha Wickrematunge and Wasim Thajudeen were not even left in peace after they were brutally and openly murdered. First cases – just dismissed. Then came Yahapalanaya and renewed investigations. Again, failure and murderers left smirking, completely free.  So, give the present government time and then pitch into them if, like other governments did, the NPP also lets the high-flying rogues and murderers continue flying high.

We Ordinaries continue being hopeful Sri Lanka will be turned around – IMF aided; friendly relations diplomatically forged through successful presidential visits; officers working conscientiously; and corruption reduced.

by Rajan Philips

There is an abundance of historical data available on the extent of land cultivation and the amount of paddy harvested based on well-established yields per unit area. Separate sets of statistics cover the Maha and the Yala seasons. The amount of rice produced is estimated to be about two thirds of cultivated paddy by weight. Paddy cultivation as well as rice production and consumption statistics are also available in an impressively disaggregate format, including sectoral (urban, rural, estate), provincial and district distributions. The data also includes expenditure on rice consumption as a proportion of household income on the same disaggregate basis.

However, there appears to be no matching data on the amount of rice sold and bought whether wholesale or retail, either at the national level or at the sectoral and spatial levels. This is a critical data gap that would help those who manipulate the supply of rice and handicap those who try to enable the even distribution of rice in the retail market throughout the year. It is my purpose to elaborate on this to provoke some discussion, if not action.

Impressive Production Data

According to the Department of Census and Statistics data base, Sri Lanka maintains an island wide enumeration system for each parcel of land where paddy is cultivated. Data is collected for each season based on information provided by Agricultural Research and Production Assistants and Grama Niladari acting as “primary reporters.” In addition, the “average yield of paddy” is estimated at the district level using a sample survey known as “the crop cutting survey” that currently includes 4,000 “paddy tracts” for each of the two paddy growing seasons. The enumeration and the sample survey processes have been in place from 1951. This is quite impressive considering the slacking and sliding in so many areas of government due to political monkeying.

Based on the 2023 paddy statistics that I referenced last week, 4.5M metric tons of paddy was produced for the year from a total cultivation area of 1.16M hectares at an average yield of 3870 kg/ha. Seasonally, 2.7M metric tons (60%) were produced from 722,500 (62%) hectares at 3737 kg/ha in the Maha season; and 1.8M metric tons (40%) were produced from 440,300 hectares (38%) at 4,088 kg/ha in the Yala season.

Converting paddy to rice, 4.5M metric tons of paddy was milled into 3.0M metric tons of rice to meet the annual rice demand of 2.5M metric tons based on an annual average per capita consumption of 115 kg of rice. We can ignore the rounding off statistics for 2023, such as imports, stock change and exports, on the supply side, and the amount of seed paddy, processed paddy and waste, on the demand side. For 2023, some 29,000 metric tons of rice was imported, and 8,000 metric tons of rice was exported. The import volume would be much higher in a year of low paddy production due to weather effects.

For a typical year, over 90% of imported rice is from India, and Sri Lanka is identified as one of the major importers of rice from Tamil Nadu whose non-basmati rice exports account for 10% of all rice exports from India. More than 60% Sri Lankan rice exports are destined to western countries with not insignificant Sri Lankan diaspora populations. On the export side, the Sri Lankan short-grain rice is not considered to be export-attractive. However, given the plethora of rice varieties in Sri Lanka, it is not known if there have been strong efforts to find niche markets for some of the island’s historic and unique rice varieties.

Year Round Distribution

The generally available paddy/rice production statistics provide data for total rice production only but for the commonly marketed Nadu, Red, Samba, Keeri Samba rice varieties. But such data appears to available at the official level. In the recent controversy over the (hilariously, allegedly Wickremesinghe-induced) shortage of Red rice, Minister of Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Cooperative Development Wasantha Samarasinghe provided production data for Red rice for the year 2024. The Minister’s point was that there should not have been Red rice shortage given the 2023/24 Maha season cultivation of 706,000 metric tons of paddy from 277,000 hectares and the 2024 cultivation of 403,097 metric tons (the area of cultivation was not indicated). The Minister also noted that the Red rice growing paddy fields are more in the southern and eastern districts.

In proportion to the 2023 total rice production figures, the Red rice portion would be 26% for the Maha season and 22% for the Yala season. The area of cultivation for Red rice is 38% of the total cultivation area for the Maha season, which would indicate a lower yield rate for Red rice than the average yield. My point in this is that it would be helpful for the Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) in include in its commonly available paddy/rice statistics the cultivation and production figures for the different rice types in the market. DCS already provides data for the weekly changes in the prices of the different rice types, and it would be helpful to have their production data also available to the public.

Similarly, the district-wise breakdown of paddy statistics provides the total rice production data for each district, but not for different rice types cultivated in different districts. For total paddy production in the 2023/24 Maha season, nine of the 24 districts (Hambantota, Mannar Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Monaragala) produced more than 100,000 metric tons, three of which (Ampara, Kurunegala, and Polonnaruwa) exceeded 200,000 metric tons, and Anuradhapura registered the biggest harvest exceeding 450,000 metric tons.

In the 2024 Yala season, seven of the 24 districts (Hambantota, Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa) produced more than 100,000 metric tons, during the Yala season with four of them (Ampara, Kurunegala, Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa) exceeding 200,000 metric tons. The noted nine districts are also the rice-surplus districts which in theory should be able to meet their own consumption demands. The other fifteen districts which are generally the more populous districts are invariably the rice-deficit districts and have to depend on rice transported from the surplus districts to meet their higher demands.

Paucity of Marketing Data

As I noted at the outset, in comparison to the relatively rich paddy production statistics there is no matching data for the amounts of paddy or rice that are transacted in the wholesale and retail markets. The absence of marketing data is referenced in the academic and research writings on Sri Lanka’s rice milling industry, and these studies generally base themselves on available but inadequate surveys of existing rice mills.

It would seem that there is no reckonable information on the rice milling sector itself. There are apparently over 7,000 mills in the country, which widely range from small to medium, large and very large in their size and capacity. Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa districts reportedly include the highest number of rice mills as well as the largest among them.

In terms of their physical make up and production capacity, the big Sri Lankan rice mills rival the mills in rice exporting Asian countries. The well known Silos Spain mill building company boasts on its website of the rice milling plants it has built in Sri Lanka for Lakbima Rice Mills. The emerging Hongjia Grain Machinery Company of China carries on its website a “Rice Mill Industry Analysis” for Sri Lanka and offers itself as a worthy resource for supplying machinery and building new rice mills in Sri Lanka. I am of course unaware if any of the large rice mills in Sri Lanka have been built by Hongjia Company.

There are two points to be made here. First, Sri Lanka’s rice milling industry has grown and expanded to a stage that makes the old storage silos put up by the Paddy Marketing Board look pathetic and primitive. There is no point in going back to stone age in rice milling and storage. Nor is there any point in getting Chinese or Indian assistance for the Paddy Marketing Board to build competing state owned rice mills in the country. If there is a need for additional rice mills let the private capital look after it and find more fruitful opportunities for investing scarce public funds.

Second, as others have pointed out, the Paddy Market Board rather than getting back in the business of collecting and storing paddy, could and should be used to exercise at least some its extensive (but long dormant) regulatory powers over the rice milling industry. The PMB has the power to license and refuse licenses to rice milling operations. I have no information as to whether the operating rice mills are licensed by the PMB. The PMB website does not seem to carry any licensing information the way the Public Utilities Commission (PUCSL) provides information on its licence holders in the energy industry.

Pertinent to marketing data, the PMB has the power (under Section 13 of its enabling legislation) “to carry out investigations and record data concerning production, sale, supply, storage, purchase, distribution, hulling, milling or processing of paddy and rice.” There is no reason why the PMB has not been doing this over the years and why it cannot be directed to do so now by the NPP government.

To add a note of caution, the exercise of this regulatory power should not be to harass individual farmers and smallholders who mill their own produce to make ends meet, but to get marketing information from the large millers who control a substantial portion of the paddy purchase and rice supply.

Lastly, a comment on parliament’s role in this. The lack of marketing statistics for rice is evident in the public discussion on rice shortages. However, this data gap does not seem to bother parliamentarians whenever they raise questions about rice and ministers do not provide answers that are informed by helpful statistics. That should not be surprising given the decline and fall of parliamentary expertise under the weight of the equally ill informed executive presidency.

Old parliamentarians like CP de Silva, Philip Gunawardena, Dudley Snananayke and Dr SA Wickremesinghe were acknowledged rice experts. Writing in a Daily News supplement to mark the occasion of the closure of the old parliament and its relocation to Kotte from Colombo, Pieter Keuneman recalled an impromptu three-way discussion, between Dudley Senanayake, CP de Silva and SA Wickremesinghe, on irrigation and paddy cultivation as one of the finest hours of the Beira Lake parliament.

Parliamentarians of the Left, in spite of their revolutionary generalizations, were also nerdy sticklers for detail. Once NM Perera berated Finance Minister Felix Dias for increasing the wholesale price of a gallon of arrack by an amount not divisible by six, because arrack taverns were going to reap rounding off profit from the retail price of a bottle of arrack.

I am nostalgically recalling all this in the hope that the current parliament, the most Left in our history, will once again become an institution that keeps itself well informed for its deliberations and decisions. None more so than in the area of paddy and rice in general, and their marketing in particular. And never more than now when the Left is in government and not in opposition.