by Jayantha Jayewardene
(October 22, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Dame Betty Boothroyd, Speaker of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom once said, “From the numerous occasions that I have met Gamini, it is clear that he has a vision for Sri Lanka and its people. While one could consider him an idealist, the very fact that he delivered in terms of the gigantic Mahaweli Scheme, illustrates that he is also an extraordinary performer. It is a testimony to his pragmatism and determination.”
Gamini Dissanayake
Today, 16 years after his cowardly assassination by the LTTE, it is relevant to ask what this vision was that Gamini Dissanayake had for his country and its people. How did he set about translating his vision into action? How far are we from achieving that vision? ‘Vision’ was indeed a word that Gamini loved. For him, it meant something like ‘ the grand scheme of things as I would like them to be’. In articulating this vision he once said, “My vision is of a country where every person contributes their mite - both physical and intellectual - participating in the mainstream of economic growth as partners. Everyone shall reap the fruits of his or her efforts and benefit from a balanced and sustained march to prosperity - that is the Sri Lanka of my dreams.”
To Gamini, these were not mere words or political rhetoric: they were an articulation of a mission statement, the rationale by which he charted his political course.
Mahaweli
One of his major undertakings which helped him to go in this direction was the Accelerated Mahaweli development program. Over the eight year period that he was the minister he led this project to unprecedented success and achievements. It was because of this project that the country was able to achieve self-sufficiency in rice for the first time in its post-colonial history.
He encouraged commercial agriculture by the middle class in the Mahaweli areas. He wanted these middle class entrepreneurs to give the thousands of Mahaweli farmers the lead to high-income agriculture by showing them the many markets that were available to them and the requirements and standards of those markets. They would show how value could be added to basic agricultural products produced by these farmers.
He constructed five dams across the Mahaweli River in a cascade and made maximum use of the hydropower potential of this river.
This output doubled the installed capacity of electricity in the country. The availability of electricity not only helped industries (including the garment industry) to start up, but also doubled the coverage of rural electrification.
The value of the electricity produced by the Mahaweli Project in its first decade alone paid back the enormous loans taken to fund the whole project, including the massive irrigation works and settlement schemes.
For just over a year, Gamini was the plantation industries minister. In that short time he brought radical management strategies to this century-old industry. These new strategies, which were unique in their socio-economic scope, immediately brought better results to the industry as a whole. Even today the cluster system, which he innovated, is the form of management practised, though the dream he had of integrating Tamil estate workers with their Sinhalese brethren in up-country towns and of empowering both societies through land ownership, remains a forgotten dream.
Settlement
Organized settlement is not a new experience. In Sri Lanka settlement or colonisation schemes, as they were known then, have been in operation since the 1930s. The Accelerated Mahaweli Development Program, however whilst using the experiences of the past, injected a new dynamism to human settlement, the results of which have had a tremendous impact on the rate of development of the settlement regions and the country in general.
The Mahaweli’s achievements have been recognized in other parts of the world where human settlements are discussed and these achievements and successes have been noted with much appreciation.
Another of Gamini’s brainchild, the Mahaweli Cultural Centre, brought to gather the traditions and cultures of the different ethnic groups of settlers in the Mahaweli Project areas. Here, whilst the old cultures were encouraged to flourish, a new and harmonious culture was also formed. Gamini proudly patronized all the cultural and religious activities in the Mahaweli areas.
Any activity that involves the movement of people, especially families and in a number of instances, whole communities, must necessarily be handed with care, sympathy and a deep understanding of human feeling. The understanding must necessarily be form the perspective of the moved rather than that of the mover.
A clear vision of the future of those moved and settled must be a precursor of any human-settlement activity. A genuine interest in the progress and welfare of those resettled is also a necessity for sustained successful settlement. As the visionary behind the Mahaweli settlement program, Gamini had all these abilities and qualities.
Lalith Athulathmudali once said of Gamini, “Politics is a continues turn of the wheel of fortune. One has to be judged in victory and defeat. One has to endure encomiums, praise, abuse and insults. Gamini in his years of politics experienced all these and still endeavoured to work according to his ideals and place his undoubted skills and experience at the service of the nation.”
Gamini was not without his problems in the local political arena. His baptism of fire into politics, at a tender age, was when he was elected to the Nuwara Eliya seat, only to be ousted by an election petition. In the ensuing by-election, he went on to retain his seat despite the whole might of the government and political machinery being pitted against him. That was Gamini in Opposition.
At the receiving end
Then again in the 1990 a vindictive President Premadasa unceremoniously turfed Gamini, who had worked tirelessly to put Premadasa in office, out of Cabinet. Not stopping at that, Premadasa brought false allegations against Gamini, subjecting his adversary to a painful lawsuit from which he was, of course, easily acquitted.
Ironically, this had the reverse of the effect Premadasa intended, transforming Gamini into a hero and not a victim. Sirimavo Bandaranaike stepped in to offer words of support and encouragement, with Opposition MP Mahinda Rajapaksa actually attending court and marking his name pro Deo as a member of Gamini’s defence team.
Later, Premadasa forced Gamini to leave the country under threat to his life. The astute Gamini made use of this time and went to Cambridge, where he got himself a Master’s Degree. He came back to the country unexpectedly, via a devious route and presented himself in Parliament in the nick of time. Otherwise Premadasa would have seen to it that he was unseated from his seat in Parliament as well.
Sport
Sri Lanka has always been a cricket-loving nation playing the game since the advent of the British to this country. However much our standard of cricket improved in those days, the game was limited to matches with our neighbours from the subcontinent, India and Pakistan and occasional one-day matches with the Australian and MCC teams that went England and Australia. This was when they travelled by ship and the ship docked to refuel etc.
Though many of our administrators including most of the Presidents of the Cricket Board tried to take Sri Lanka to the next level of world cricket, they failed. This was because of the ganging up of the world cricket hierarchy to prevent another country from Asia getting into the fray and outnumbering them.
With Gamini taking over the Presidency of the Cricket Board, he was determined to get test status for Sri Lanka. He did this with his ability to present Sri Lanka’s case coherently, answer all the questions put to him and meet all the arguments against Sri Lanka being accepted to test cricket. His was a great victory never matched in the history of international cricket.
Sir Garfield Sobers, one of cricket’s all time greats, whom Gamini persuades to come and mould our fledgling cricketers, said, “During the time I spent in Sri Lanka I met many fine people. One of the finest I had the pleasure and privilege of coming to know was Gamini Dissanayake. What he has done for Sri Lanka Cricket will become more visible and appreciated with the passage of time. I do not know whether the guide, philosopher and friend of the Sri Lanka cricketers at that time is any longer involved in the administration of cricket. It is my perception however that he has done for them what few others could do.”
 Dame Betty Boothroyd, Speaker of the Ho...){kind=link}
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