An ancient civilisation founded the Sri Lankan science of irrigation and water management; the modern island nation now takes our legacy to new heights. The country’s single giant multipurpose infrastructure development programme, the Mahaveli River Valley Development Programme, began in the 1970s, accelerated in the 1980s and now nears completion with the commissioning of the last of its massive dam and river diversion project last week.
The Moragahakanda - Kalu Ganga Project is the last of the massive Mahaveli River programme, and, with the dam and waterways completed, the water-filling was launched last Monday by President Maithripala Sirisena. Soon, the massive Moragahakanda Reservoir – built as the successor to the ancient Veva (tank) of the same name – will ensure the storage of water for irrigation and also the diversion of much needed water to irrigate newly settled Dry Zone areas.
Farmers in these areas will soon not have to depend on meagre quotas of irrigation water. The massive influx of water from Moragahakanda and Kalu Ganga (a tributary of the Amban Ganga) will be a new hydraulic bounty for the farmers of the entire region, one that will pave the way toward both agri-development as well as general economic dynamism and its positive social outcome. Some 1,500 minor village tanks and waterways will be fed from the Moragahakanda system, supporting, in turn, some 94,000 hectares of paddy lands and other farming activity and agri-business.
At the same time, Moragahakanda will also tap the hydro-electric potential of the harnessed waters, contributing 25 megawatts to the national power grid.
This is the last of the several massive dam, reservoir, canal, and power generation projects under the Mahaveli Programme that commenced in 1976 with the building of the Polgolla Dam, near Kandy, in the upper reaches of the country’s longest river. When the J. R. Jayewardene regime won power in 1977, President Jayewardene’s new vision of rapid economic development transformed the Multi Purpose Mahaveli Development Programme into the ‘Accelerated’ Programme.
Programme momentum was focused on six major headwork projects harnessing the Mahaveli and its upper level tributaries for much needed hydel power supplies. The country today, could not have taken its industrial and tourism sectors to current levels of success if not for the foundation of hydel power provided by the Mahaveli Programme. The country owes much to the vision of Jayewardene and the tireless energy of Mahaveli Minister Gamini Dissanayaka.
The Mahaveli Programme has already laid the foundation for agricultural and rural community prosperity of vast tracts of the Eastern, North Central and Northern Provinces over the past four decades. As he himself acknowledges, President Sirisena comes from a peasantry background that benefitted profoundly from this development programme.
Indeed, Sri Lankans of many generations will recall the launch of the first dam project followed by the launch of several others – Victoria, Kothmale, Ulhitiya, Randenigala – over the next decades.
The added boost to central, northern and eastern development from the Moragahakanda project will contribute to the planned comprehensive economic development of the adjacent Trincomalee port and growing urban centre.
Capitalism at the grassroots
True to its vision of a prosperous, industrious society, the Government’s new Enterprise Sri Lanka Credit Programme is its latest endeavour to boost private enterprise at the lowest social levels.
The Programme’s primary focus is on small and medium scale enterprises (SME) and is the single largest such coordinated programme to date. There are 15 local-funded and donor-funded financial and non-financial schemes under the umbrella of ‘Enterprise Srilanka Credit Programme’. The Government, very correctly, is targeting the lowest layers of business.
For the market economy to succeed at all social levels, it is those levels least able to access modern expertise and business resources that need the most attention. In a society yet evolving from the traditional to that of modern capitalism, the least capacitated low-income groups, especially in the less modern rural areas need the biggest boost. It is the strengthening of entrepreneurship at the grassroots that ensures that market-based economic prosperity is distributed more evenly.
Enterprise Sri Lanka will reach out to the lowest social layers thereby spreading the social dynamism of private enterprise at these levels. People who once either relied on traditional agriculture – now a dwindling resource – or on state sector jobs as an entry point to modern lifestyles, will now have access to the necessary financial resources and expert guidance to ‘start-up’ their own livelihood ventures.
The entire emphasis is on reaching out to the once-neglected periphery so that hitherto marginalised social groups will now benefit from these business and livelihood self-support systems. After decades of rebellion at the periphery, it is crucial that in this new post-war, democratic era, the common citizen becomes the real focus of social development. In a market-based economy, it is fundamental that capitalism thrives from bottom up.