(March 19, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) After a lapse of 54 years more than one million people are experiencing the rigours of extreme weather in the form of life-threatening floods and landslides: A natural calamity similar to the Tsunami of December 2004. The size of the disaster grows with each passing hour as water and earth wreak their havoc regardless of any man-made distinctions of race or religion, caste or class, language or culture—it is common to all. Mercifully, the extreme weather has faded away after doing its damage. It has also exposed the ineptitude and corruption of many public officials.
Some badly-warped minds in the political sphere [there are several!] are attempting to gain some mileage from the severe suffering of those affected by spreading cock-and-bull stories about the Mahinda Rajapakse government and pointing their fingers at the President himself as if he were personally responsible for the extreme weather! These born-losers, has-beens, and wannabes are trying to make a comeback with the local government polls by capitalizing on the misery that the victims of the weather are enduring instead of extending their hands to help mitigate the suffering. It takes heads and hearts and hands to do useful things to alleviate suffering and adversity.
The President himself has personally viewed the extent and gravity of the disaster and has given explicit instructions about the measures to be taken to take the edge off the people’s suffering. Positive steps have also to be taken to prevent and/or reduce any outbreak of epidemic diseases such as cholera, dysentery, enteric fever, and others that follow in the wake of calamities such as the present one. After the waters subside and the landslides stop a thoroughgoing assessment has to be made about the extent of the damage and its cost.
This should also include a searching inquiry as to who or what was responsible, especially for authorizing building plans in hazardous locations and not maintaining reservoir bunds that breached, in good order. Much of the damage to person, premises and property could have been lessened if an alert repair and maintenance regime had been maintained at all times. The fact that such a regime has not been in place points to gross incompetence and the don’t care, or careless attitude of public servants who have got accustomed to undisciplined behavior. The root of the prevailing attitude could be traced back to appointments made politically and not on merit or suitability.
Every politician wants to pack his ministry and the bodies there under with those who allegedly voted for him or her and they have done this most diligently—indeed, it has become a political tradition to reward supporters—as indeed the appointment of heads of various Authorities, Boards, Bureaus, Corporations and Commissions. Most, if not all these individuals are ineffectual nincompoops with neither the qualifications nor the experience to man those posts. Those below them are no better. When you add the inherent corruption within the structure and system (which could be compared to termites within the woodwork) the results are what we see before us: Rampant bungling, expensive mistakes, substandard practice and all that follows such ridiculous ineptitude, malpractice and fraud.
A case in point is the Sugarcane Research Institute. What, exactly, has it been doing for the past several decades except wasting millions of rupees of public money? Where’s the sugar? How has it promoted the cultivation of high-yielding varieties of sugarcane? The same applies to the Coconut Research Institute and the Coconut Cultivation Board and several other similar related bodies wasting public funds. Ministers and deputy ministers ‘discover’ the messes they preside over when these are exposed by the Media—otherwise they while away their time in blissful ignorance mouthing pious platitudes or pontificating about this or that to a turned-off public.
We should lament the fact that good leaders have always been undone by the boot-licking sycophants that surround them on every side. As was once said: “God save me from my friends. I can handle my enemies.” This is so common in post-colonial countries because the engrafted version of ‘democracy’ they are supposed to embrace and practice isn’t a home-grown concept. It is alien and strange and does not allow citizens to actually decide what is to be done regarding their real, felt needs, and their critical priorities. For example, those who inhabit the shanties in the slum-land areas that dots the metropolitan area and other urban centres of the country need decent livable housing and common amenities by way of potable water-supply, toilets and electricity plus a proper drainage and sewerage system. Have they had this for decades? NO! They also need job-training in order that they might be gainfully employed and free of vice and crime. Do they have these? NO! They continue to wallow in filth, vice and crime, marginalized, it seems, forever and ever.
Let’s look at the large rural & plantation sectors. ‘Mookan’ still occupies a 10’x12’ line room in a Line House that accommodates 10 families with one lavatory and one stand-pipe. His father before him, his grandfather and great-grandfather also lived this way inured to poverty from generation to generation. Why can’t ‘Mookan’ and his family be provided with decent accommodation? The plantation proprietors and managers trot out the standard excuse that there isn’t any space in the ‘estate.’ True, but, if they could have five and six storey factories, they could also have five and six storey blocks of flats for the workers and staff, particularly on poor and highly-eroded tracts of land.
The poverty and problems of the rural sector also appear to be endless. These folk don’t need anyone’s charity. What they want is a hand-up to enable them to sustain themselves in an expanding circle of prosperity. They need durable, low-cost water-pumps and a potable drinking water supply in addition to proper housing. Instead of expensive imported tractors and even hand-tractors why can’t every village community have a common pool of water buffaloes that could be hired by the day to plough their fields? These buffaloes would produce milk [from which curd is also made] and also produce manure and they don’t need either diesel or kerosene—expensive imported fuels. They could also be assisted to grow kitul and palmyra palms in their homestead gardens in order to make jaggery and treacle. These aren’t impossible things to do but to those who sit in air-conditioned offices, such initiatives aren’t profitable—no kickbacks, no ‘familiarization’ tours overseas.
The neglect of the problems in the urban, plantation and rural sectors is a severe indictment on both the structure and systems that prevail. If anything, it is criminal and the blame lies squarely upon the political-bureaucratic ‘partnership’ that exercises power on behalf of the People. These ones also control the use, abuse and misuse of public money. It will be seen that commonsense must reign: If we need more water, we should plant more trees, especially tropical hardwoods; if we want milk, we must first plant grass; if we want to control erosion we should terrace the land and practice proper drainage; if we want less air pollution we must encourage the use of bicycles; if we want a cleaner environment we should separate our waste into the reusable and the disposable and convert the disposable into usable compost; if we want cleaner urban centres we should have more toilets and improved sewerage systems and so on. If and when we begin to do these things we can begin to lessen the severity of man-made disasters and, up to a point, natural calamities. The ‘key’ is to look at our many problems both analytically and holistically and do what is possible with the resources at our disposal.
This is not a time to go round handing out the generosity of the people to the victims in an effort to garner votes; it is a time to seriously take stock, individually and collectively, and begin to do the right thing without narrow sectarian partisanship.
It should be apparent to anyone with a small amount of intelligence that the structures, systems in place, and individuals entrusted with responsibility are accountable for many parts of this most recent calamity. This has happened because of criminal neglect, inattention, cussedness, dereliction of duty, effects of the politicization of the administration, dishonesty and widespread malpractice. The structures and systems in place are, if anything, inadequate mto handle the growing numbers that would be affected by natural disasters be they floods, landslides, drought, tidal waves, earthquakes, or forest fires. The machinery isn’t in place; there’s no search and rescue service made-up of boats and helicopters dedicated to disaster management. Therefore, it is the Navy and Air Force that’s called upon to mount search and rescue operations.
A searching cost-benefit analysis of the Ministry of Disaster Management and the units functioning under it should reveal whether it is functioning the way it should be. It is also advisable that a coordinating committee made-up of representatives from Irrigation & Water Management, Meteorology, Railways, Highways, Social Services & Welfare, Health Services and other relevant bodies be constituted to update and fine-tune the responses to and options available when disaster strikes.
Politicians and bureaucrats live in a cozy dream-world coccoon insulated from the daily lives of ordinary citizens. Unfortunately for them, the People are no longer prepared to tolerate either their lifestyle or their hypocrisy. The People will increasingly take them to task, like what happened to the Divisional Secretary’s office and the Grama Niladhari’s office in the Batticaloa District. Such incidents would lead to ugly confrontations with the Police and even the Military but that would only go to resolve the People’s resistance to bureaucratic inertia and malpractice. Indeed, the ‘writing is on the wall’ for those who fail to serve the Sovereign People.
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