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Where Arts Faculties should be headed – a rejoinder

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By FARZANA HANIFFA

Over a month ago, I wrote in this column about the way the current Quality Assurance processes, including the Qualifications framework, has little space for Humanities and Social Sciences (H and SS) knowledge (The Island Feb.1 2022). Prof. Susirith Mendis, Former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ruhuna, responded to my column by arguing that the knowledge imparted by H (and SS) was important but that the Sri Lankan University system had failed to produce good quality practitioners of these disciplines (The Island Feb. 16 2022). He stated further that these academics were therefore unable to address and critique neoliberal tendencies in recent developments in Education Reform. He also claimed that the Arts faculties were not playing the role that they should, i. e., function as “the spirit and the soul” of the university.

Prof. Mendis is largely correct in claiming that our H (and also SS) faculties are in crisis, and his intervention is appreciated. I agree, for instance with the Professor’s suggestion that the Arts education reform process requires critique. The compulsion to teach badly defined “employability skills” involves an erasure of the knowledge and perspective that an H and SS educations offers. It is difficult however to agree with some other elements of Prof. Mendis’ critique. His placing of responsibility at the feet of H and SS academics is inadequately informed by the history of developments in Arts Faculties and ultimately personalizes a structural problem for which broader interventions are required. Prof. Mendis’ critique also reflects the elite politics and class dynamics at play in the public conversation about Arts Education as well as the Education reform process. Unless this critique’s own prejudices are addressed, we will not be able to push the conversation forward on the issue.

That there is a crisis in Arts education in Sri Lanka is not news. As members of Arts Faculties, we wish that our Faculties were better equipped research centres, that our students had greater competence in both critical thinking and English language ability when they come to us, that gender relations in our faculties were not from the last century, that our faculties – by and large sites of Sinhala Buddhist hegemony– had wider ethnic representation and more space for the discussion of ethnoreligious tensions in the country, and that our postgraduate programmes were supported and regulated better, and, most of all, we wish that the speedy neoliberalisation of our faculties that is ongoing—emulating a failing model from the west– can be more successfully resisted. Our Kuppi columns are an attempt to draw attention to the failings within our universities and also to show that the public commentary, regarding this crisis, is not asking the right questions and that the policymakers are not responding to the right problems.

There are historical reasons for the current state of the Arts Faculties. Prof. Mendis’s piece is more sophisticated than many but his position reflects the standard criticisms of Arts faculties and the nostalgia for a bygone era where the humanities (mainly in the English language) flourished. Prof. Mendis asks if anti-colonial thinking—that brought about the preoccupation with swabhasha—is legitimate, and bemoans the nativism that has been the result of our flirtation with such theories. He alleges that the emphasis on the local has produced closed-minded academics uninformed by global development, unable to think out of the box.

Much of this criticism is valid and has in fact been discussed in this column (See Harshana Rambukwella, The Island Nov. 23 2021.). The crisis in Arts Education has also been discussed by both Kumudu Kusum Kumara (2013) and Prabha Manurathna (2018) in excellent essays that elevate the conversation substantially. Kumara discusses the transformation to swabasha as a national level policy that upended the university system. As Kumara points out, the policy of teaching H and SS disciplines only in the local languages drove out academics from the university system and required those who stayed to teach in Sinhala and Tamil without access to adequate translated reading materials. Instruction was conducted only through delivery of lectures and student reading was largely confined to handed down lecture notes. Education policymakers did not invest in substantive translation programmes or fund research by H and SS academics to produce knowledge in the local languages. To date, the lack of support for Arts Faculties continues: the STEM faculty student to teacher ratio is 10:1 while in Arts faculties it is 18:1. Talking about the nativism of Sinhala-speaking academics without discussing the structural conditions that led to the policy and then limited the resources with which they could work, is disingenuous. Further, no attempt has been made to recognise the many who have flourished in the local universities despite such policies.

That English capacity is important for high quality training in the H and SS is not disputed. As we know, English speaking skills are wielded like a sword by the Sri Lankan middle class and excellence, competence, and trustworthiness are considered a function of English-speaking ability in such circles. Current Higher Education policymaking regarding English is driven by its value as a class marker more than as an instrument towards greater subject specialisation or a broader perspective.

That the mostly Tamil and Sinhala speaking staff at the University struggle to express themselves well in English should not be considered a sign of their lack of ability across the board, but a reflection of the swabasha policy itself. Experts from the UGC, running workshops for quality assurance, routinely talk down to us when we don’t ask questions using the “right” language. It is time that education policymakers better recognise the intellectual and emotional labour required of academics whose first language is not English, to function under such conditions. I raise this point only partially in response to Professor Mendis; most critics of Arts Faculties – from other faculties within the universities—speak to and of their colleagues in Arts Faculties as incompetent based on their verbal performance in English. Such a perspective draws from a larger position regarding the “failures” of the Arts Faculties’ that is similar to the one articulated by Prof. Mendis.

Prabha Manurathna’s essay on Arts Education draws attention to the “actual Arts student” that enters the local university system. Drawing attention to the students’ class background Manurathna critiques how the current reform process imagines their transformation. A recent audit report that was discussed in this column also referenced the kind of students that the Arts Faculties attracted. They were the students who went to schools that didn’t have Science Education facilities; they were from the poorest districts in the country, and they were mostly women. The report described them as the weakest students entering universities, following the least useful degree programme. They were also the largest percentage of university entrants. The recommendation from the Audit Office was that technology education needed to improve so that students from these underprivileged areas could be better equipped for the future, and a technologically capable workforce would be produced. The report even suggested that as a ‘developing country’ we could not afford to have so many Arts Graduates, or invest in the fine Arts. The report is evidence of the low regard for H and SS education at the policy level and we have critiqued this report (Farzana Haniffa, The Island 27 April 2021). The report also confirms that Arts Faculties are home to large numbers of students from severely under-sresourced schools and very strained social and economic circumstances.

The elitism at work in the prevailing critiques of Arts Faculties, including in Prof. Mendis’ essay, is reflected in the absence of a sociopolitical analysis of the demographic that Arts Faculties in Sri Lanka largely serve. It is also reflected in the aspirations expressed as to what the Arts and Humanities should offer students. In Arts Faculties in Sri Lanka we are struggling to empower students with huge disadvantages. It is well to remember that the celebrated homes of Humanities that Prof. Mendis references – like Harvard University– are elite institutions that benefited from the exploitation of the downtrodden and the enslaved. They were engaged in the reproduction of the elite and not in producing emancipatory knowledge or opportunities for the struggling urban and rural underclass.

It is not the Harvards of this world that we should emulate, but contexts that have enabled the emergence of labour struggles and cultural critique informed by class analysis. It is also here that our decolonial critique needs to be located. Our task should be to enable our students to better understand and critique the structural conditions behind their circumstances and equip them to change these conditions for their communities. It is to this end that we should gear our educational goals and not merely to equip individual students to escape class through “entrepreneurship.” Having students aspire to become CEOs of exploitative enterprises that trap future generations in poverty is the neoliberal project that we should resist.

(The author is Professor and Head in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colombo)

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.



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Features

The Rohingya question and states’ international obligations

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A boat load of Rohingyas rescued off MullaitIvu

The presence of Rohingya refugees in Sri Lanka has prompted sections in the South of the country to raise some concerns in connection with it but The Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka’s (THRCSL) recent report on the issue, if received and read in a spirit of reconciliation and humanity, should put their minds at ease.

To be sure, there is considerable substance in the objections and worries of the relevant Southern quarters but the majority of the refugees in question need to be seen as victims of complex political circumstances in their countries of origin over which they do not have any control.

Those Rohingyas who are now literally adrift in the seas of South Asia and beyond, are strictly speaking stateless. Most of them are escaping endemic political turmoil and runaway lawlessness in the Rakhine state of Mynamar and the spillover of such tensions into the Myanmar-Bangladesh border and beyond.

There has been playing out in the Rakhine region over the decades a Rohingya armed struggle for autonomy but the majority of the Rohingyas are not in any way supportive of this armed struggle which is an expression of the Rohingyas’ awareness of their separate identity as a community, although they possess a wider Muslim identity as well.

But there has been an influx of Rohingya refugees to several neighbouring countries from this conflict, including very significantly Bangladesh, and this has been triggering concerns among the wider publics in those states which are compelled to manage the Rohingya refugee presence amid economic pressures of their own.

The problems arising from the Rohingya refugee presence have been compounded by the rise of Islamic militancy in South Asia and the tendency among some of these militant groups to exploit this presence for the propagation of their causes.

However, this does not take away from the fact that the majority of Rohingyas are helpless victims of circumstance. They are caught up in the metaphorical ‘exchange of fire’ between mutually suspicious states that are compelled to contend with issues growing out of the rise of Islamic militancy. But for the majority of Rohingyas such endemic conflicts among states translate into displacement, statelessness and growing powerlessness.

For an enlightened understanding of what states need to do in connection with the refugee crisis and connected questions it would be necessary to read the THRCSL report above mentioned. States that are members of the UN family are obliged to ratify and implement a number of conventions related to refugees and the THRCSL mentions some of these. They are: The 1951 Convention on Refugees; 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons; 1961 Convention on the Reduction of the Stateless and the Rights of Refugees and Stateless Persons within Sri Lanka.

If Sri Lanka and other countries facing a refugee influx have not adopted these laws they would need to do so without further delay if they are opting to remain within the UN fold. In this connection, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be seen to be of fundamental importance. The Declaration is the fountainhead, so to speak, of international humanitarian law and UN members states have no choice but to adhere to it.

Contentious issues are likely to grow out of the implementation part of the mentioned conventions but it is best that signatory states take up these matters with the relevant key agencies of the UN rather than grouch over matters that surface from their inalienable obligations towards the stateless and homeless.

It was encouraging to note a Southern group in Sri Lanka mentioning that the Lankan government should draw the attention of the UNHRC to the fact that the state is not a signatory to some of the mentioned refugee conventions. This is the way to go. A dialogue process with the UNHRC, which does not happen to be very popular in Sri Lanka, on such issues would perhaps throw up fresh insights on Sri Lanka’s obligations on refugee issues that may then convince the state to sign and ratify the conventions concerned.

There needs to be a flourishing of such positive approaches to meeting Sri Lanka’s obligations as a UN member state. The present most unhappy existence of being a UN member state and not implementing attendant obligations needs to end if Sri Lanka is not to be accused of ‘double speak’ and ‘double think’.

Meanwhile, identity politics and connected problems are bound to remain in South Asia and bedevil all efforts by states of the region to see eye-to-eye on issues such as the stateless. The yawning ‘democratic deficit’ in South Asia continues to be a formidable challenge.

But all efforts should be made to reduce this deficit through collaborative efforts among the concerned states. This is so because increasing democratization of states remains the most effective means of making identity politics irrelevant and the latter is a primary cause for the break-up of states, which process throws-up troubling consequences, such as statelessness and refugees.

Fresh initiatives need to be undertaken by the ‘South Asian Eight’ to end the continuing ‘Cold War’-type situation between India and Pakistan, since they hold the key to re-activating SAARC and making it workable once again. It ought to be plain to see that it is only the SAARC spirit that could help in ushering a degree of solidarity in South Asia which could go some distance in resolving issues growing out of nation-breaking.

Once again, South-South cooperation should be seen as a compelling necessity. If vital sections of the South come to this realization and recognize the need for such intra-regional cooperation, the coming back to power of Donald Trump could be considered as having yielded some good, though in a highly negative way. Because Trump has made it all too plain that he would not be considering it obligatory on the part of the US to help ease the lot of the South any more.

The South would have no choice but to fall back on strategies of self-reliance. No doubt, this situation would accrue to the benefit of the world’s powerless. Self-reliance is the best option and the only key to unravelling external shackles that bind the South to the North.

Meanwhile, those sections of Southern Sri Lanka that are tending to cheer Trump on need to put the brakes on any such idle distractions. The message that Trump has for the world is one of division and strife. By rolling back almost all the progressive ventures that have come out of Washington over the years, Trump is plunging the world into further ‘disorder’. The international community needs to brace for stepped-up nation-breaking.

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Effective and non-effective methods for mitigating human-elephant conflict

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Villagers living in fear of wild elephants. (File photo)

by Tharindu Muthukumarana
tharinduele@gmail.com

(Author of the award-winning book “The Life of Last Proboscideans: Elephants”)

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”.

-Albert Einstein

When we examine the records of funds spent in the years beforehand to mitigate human-elephant conflict (HEC), it is evident that the expenditure has been growing. For example, in 2010, USD $505,001 was spent, but in 2018, USD $1,068,021 was spent. So, this shows that expenditure had been over double within a period of less than one decade. But in the same way, the HEC had always been rising throughout the years. So, what went wrong? The answer is that the funds were expended mostly on ineffective mitigating strategies rather than effective mitigating approaches. Henceforth, let’s look at a glimpse of what are the non-effective methods and effective methods.

Non-effective methods Translocation

Elephant translocation involves capturing elephants from one place and moving them to a safer environment. Sri Lanka had done this for many decades. One of the earliest translocations occurred in 1979, when 10 elephants were relocated from Deduru Oya to Wilpattu National Park (NP). So, it was a new experience for the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), and they even had to get a foreign veterinary surgeon named Dr. Ian Hoffmeyr from Etosha NP in Namibia to sedate the elephants.

Unfortunately, radio tracking collars were not put on those elephants to monitor updates of those elephants. So, ultimately what happened was that those translocated elephants’ status never got documented. However, in recent translocations, the GPS tracking collars were fixed on them and have given accurate updates on their whereabouts. According to those data, 3 conclusions are probable: (i) The translocated elephant got killed in the new home. (ii) Left the new home and returned to the initial home. (iii) created conflict with neighbouring villagers in the new home.

As for example, in 2007, a tusker named Ravana that was crop raiding in Anuradhapura got translocated to Udawalawe NP. He then got into conflict with neighbouring villages of Handapanagala, Aluthwewa, and Buttala. Due to this, Ravana got shot in the leg, and as a result, Ravana got re-translocated to Lunugamvehera NP. Again, Ravana raided crops on leased land in the park, and a few months later, Ravana got shot in the jaw and had an agonising death after suffering for a few days.

Another tragic event happened when a young bull elephant named Homey that frequently foraged at a garbage dump in Hambantota got translocated to Yala NP Block II, which took a journey of 75 km. Within a few days, Homey was back at the garbage dump. Astonishingly, when data from the collar was downloaded, it was shown that the route Homey took to return contrasted with the route Homey was taken. For the second time, Homey was translocated to Udawalawe NP, but as time passed by, he created conflict with neighbouring villages. Subsequently, Homey left the park and again returned to the garbage dump. For the third time, Homey got translocated to Maduruoya NP, almost 300 km away from Hambantota. At times, Homey tried to come back to the garbage dump but was unsuccessful due to compact human settlements. So, he continued to stay at Maduruoya but started to create conflict with neighbouring villages. This resulted in him getting shot frequently. One day he got shot in the head and died in a paddy field.

Elephant Drives

Elephant drives involve chasing elephants from one area to another area, and for this, firecrackers or thunder flashes would be used. This procedure can take days to get completed. These drives had happened as early as the 1970s, and the latest to be 2024. From a scientific perspective, the decades of elephant drives that have been done are one of the key reasons for Sri Lanka having the highest level of HEC in the world. Records have clearly shown that after an elephant drive, some or all driven elephants returned. Also, in every location where elephant drives took place, HEC still persists. In many cases, the problem-causing males don’t get driven because those males usually avoid it. Instead, non-problem-causing female elephants get driven. In such incidents, after those driven elephants got enclosed in a restricted home range, those elephants did face starvation and malnourishment that eventually made them die. For this, there are examples coming from Lunugamvehera NP and Yala NP.

Removing the problem elephants

Removing problem elephants could be done in two ways: one is domestication and the other is culling. Such acts can enhance the risk for elephants’ extinction. Problem elephants are usually male elephants, and elephants that raid crops are risk takers. Emerging research shows that risk-taking behaviour contributes highly to their reproductive success. So, if such elephants are removed from the gene pool, it weakens the elephant population.

In modern days, there is a popular misconception that the elephant population has risen, and it is immoderate. In fact, scientifically, there is no way to explain whether the elephant population has risen or plummeted. Because the first legitimate elephant census was done in 2011. Before 2011, elephant population numbers were given as guesses or estimations. After 2011, last year an elephant census was done, but still the results haven’t been published. There are many who think that the elephant population has increased because, around the country, there are places where locals are newly experiencing HEC. This happened because of habitat loss and the blocking of elephant corridors that occurred due to poor development planning done by various governments. So, as a result of it, new places experience HEC.

Still, the Sri Lankan elephant is classified as “Endangered” by the IUCN Red List due to its high risk of extinction and declining population. Also, we must remember that though culling or capturing of elephants is not done, yet annually, in the last few years, over 350 elephants have died due to HEC. This is only the documented data, and the undocumented figure can give a higher value. A mother elephant usually gives birth to a single calf with a two-year gestation period. They have 4-5 years of interval until the next calf is born. Females become less fertile after 40 years. In Sri Lanka only 6,000 elephants are left. So, such a high mortality rate due to HEC is critical.

Biofencing and Geological Barriers

A victim of the human-elephant conflict

Palmyra Palm fencing: This involves planting palmyra trees (Borassus) as a fence to restrict elephants’ movements. Though it has some positive effects, practically there are problems to call it a solution. This project is expected to take a longer time to achieve its anticipated outcomes and could take even a decade. Even so, the germination rate is lower, and by any chance, if at least one tree fails to grow, the fence becomes ineffective.

Thorny plant fencing: Plants such as agave, cacti, and bougainvillaea had been used to deter elephants, but those had been unsuccessful because of elephants’ thick skin. Besides, elephants even feed on thorny plants such as Acacia eburnean that have sharp thorns that can grow up to 1 inch.

Beehive fencing: The fence is erected at chest height with beehives fixed to it and spaced every ten meters. This method had high success in deterring crop-raiding elephants in Africa. In addition, the produce from hives provided economic benefits to farmers. This project was introduced by Save the Elephants Organisation (SEO). From 2014-2019 SEO collaborated with the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society (SLWCS) to do a pilot project in Wasgamuwa. Unfortunately, results showed it was ineffective due to the reason that African honey bees (Apes mellifera scutellata) and Asian honey bees (Apes cerana indica) behaviour contrasts. Asian bees cannot scare away elephants, and those bees are not active at nighttime.

Trenches: Soil erosion had made trenches ineffective, and also the construction and maintenance cost is very expensive. According to past experiences, it had impeded wildlife movement, and a lot of other smaller animals had died after falling to them. Also, there is a potential of hydrological impacts that would have a negative effect on villages.

Effective methods

Before touching this topic, it is important to mention that the strategies put forward here are science-based projects, and these projects had been put into experiment as pilot projects with successful results. The villagers state that after the implementation of the project, HEC had been solved or mitigated. These projects had been done by the Centre for Conservation and Research and SLWCS.

According to research, it has been proved that the electric fence is the most effective to deter elephants. But it depends where the electric fence is erected. If it is erected in the boundary of a protected area, it can be ineffective, but instead, if it is erected at the border between elephant habitat and human-use areas, it can be successful. This is what is called community-based electric fencing and proved to be successful in mitigating HEC.

Another method is the paddy-field electric fences. These fences are installed seasonally. During cultivation the fences are installed, and during harvest the fence is removed and stored in their houses until the following crop season. So, during the fallow periods, elephants would forage the leftover harvest and other vegetation. By 2020, approximately 50 village electric fences and 25 paddy-field electric fences were active in the Kurunegala, Hambantota, Trincomalee, and Anuradhapura districts for up to 12 years. Feedback from the villagers is positive.

It needs to be mentioned that in 2020 a National Action Plan for the Mitigation of HEC was made by a committee of wildlife experts. Strategies included in the National Action Plan were chosen based on their demonstrated effectiveness, capacity to be executed on a suitable geographic and temporal scale, and cost-effectiveness. Stakeholder discussions were performed with the public and relevant agencies, and their feedback was integrated into the Action Plan as needed. So, if that action plan gets implemented, HEC could be mitigated!

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Congratulations…and celebrations

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Twenty-one years in the news, in Toronto, Canada, and that certainly calls for big time celebrations!

Dirk Tissera, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of The Sri Lanka Anchorman, is working on making it a big scene.

He says the 21st Anniversary celebrations will take the form of a gala dinner dance, scheduled for Friday, 30th May, 2025, in Toronto, Canada, adding that there would be plenty of surprises!

In fact, The Sri Lankan Anchorman’s 20th Anniversary, ‘A Night To Remember,’ held on 31 May, 2024, at the J&J Convention Centre, in Toronto, turned out to a resounding success.

Dirk mentioned that last year’s event was sold out long before the scheduled date.

“We generally work on our anniversary celebrations months in advance to ensure that the audience got their monies worth, and there was plenty of variety in the music we provided last year, led by veteran singer, the legendary Fahmy Nazick, along with the band Déjà Vu, guest singer Cherry Deluna, and DJ Chami.

What is special about The Sri Lanka Anchorman, a tabloid newspaper, is its wide and varied content which Sri Lankan-Canadians eagerly look forward to reading.

In fact, Dirk Tissera received a top Toronto press award from the National Ethnic Press & Media Council of Canada (NEPMCC) for excellence in editorial content and visual presentation.

An old boy of St. Mary’s College, Dehiwela, he had his early grooming, in journalism, right here, in Colombo, and then moved to Canada, and is now based in Toronto.

Dirk Tissera is efficiently supported by his wife Michelle in the publication of The Sri Lanka Anchorman.

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