The country’s balance of payments inched upward and the rupee value began to stabilise despite the instability of the trade-war-hit global economy, even as some of Sri Lanka’s recent initiatives in the rural heartland too began to bear fruit. Over the weekend, the President and Prime Minister will officiate in numerous project launches in the Polonnaruwa district. At the same time, the government’s countrywide rural upliftment programme ‘Gamperaliya, is well under way.
There may be significant changes in demography since the historic economic liberalisation moves of 1977 with a major expansion of the non-agriculture sectors and a growth of cities. But much of the nation remains rooted in the villages and small towns. Indeed, the expansion of the private sector has seen a trickle down of investment in the rural economy. Villages have prospered and grown to become small towns or local trading centres for agri-business. Rural society has broadened its aspirations as value chains spread across previously dormant regions.
Striving for quick social mobility and access to modernity, rural communities are not impressed by grandiose expressways or artificial harbours that have no hinterland population to serve. Rather than merely herding cattle along empty highways, local farmers would prefer investment capacities and technical help for launching their own agri-business. They would prefer rural training centres and local health and educational infra-structure to a giant, unused, airport. The regions of high rural productivity and thriving agri-business have been crying for investment and development and Colombo has, at last, heeded the call with greater vigour than before.
As it was in ancient times, Polonnaruwa is at the crossroads between the eastern economic region and the North. It is also the gateway to the North for the Mahaweli River basin hydraulic resources. The new ‘Pibidemu Polonnaruwa’ programme will further strengthen the region’s economic and social dynamism.
Meanwhile, the recently launched, islandwide ‘Gamperaliya’ rural reform and development programme now complements the government’s ‘Enterprise Sri Lanka’ programme of financial support for rural small and medium scale enterprises. These two programmes are a powerful combined package that will provide a sharp boost for rapid rural development.
Having vigorously launched a rural revolution, what is now needed is for the Government to move on to the next step in the revival of ‘Good Governance’: political reform to reunify the nation and democratise administration.
GMOA and medical insurgency
After centuries of success, Sri Lankan capitalism does not need to hold medical patients to ransom to survive. Sri Lankan capitalism originated as much from our ancient Vaanija guilds,and astute medieval state policy as much as it did from colonial intervention. Even today, the Sri Lankan business sector, having survived modern insurgencies, harsh counter-insurgency and ruthless political greed, has been dealing with the vagaries of governmental policy to survive and thrive. And the nation has thrived along with it.
The business community is well organised with numerous business chambers, trade federations, research bodies and, structured consultation between government and business.
The issues of Sri Lanka’s international trade, foreign investment and employment have been the stuff of sophisticated study at many levels and also of intricate, inter-sectoral consultation and negotiations at many levels. For decades, the modern Sri Lankan state has navigated the national economy through numerous economic and social pressures on the basis of such consultation and negotiation. Economic policy and management – including international trade and investment negotiations – has succeeded on the basis of the outcome of these collective deliberations.
If the entire range of business sectors have not thought to resort to street agitation nor any other kind of coercion to negotiate critical issues pertaining to free trade agreements (FTA), why does the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) have to resort to repeated offensives of coercive agitation that hurts their patients’ well-being and threatens human life itself?
The issues of local employment and local professional standards are the concern of numerous sectors of the economy when it comes to framing free trade agreements. Certainly, issues of medical professional standards and employment opportunities can have direct and indirect human impact.
But if medical professionals protest by disrupting medical and health services, then such action can have a terrible human cost long before any of the FTA provisions that the GMOA is ‘protesting’ are implemented! The GMOA has been engaged in this frequent tactic of ‘strikes’ for over a year in what amounts to a kind of medical professional insurgency, since it is adopting a coercive tactic that directly endangers human health.
It is fitting that Dr. Colvin Gooneratne, one of the country’s most eminent physicians and health administrators, has pointed out the self-serving role of medical trade unionism at the very heart of the profession itself – the Sri Lanka Medical Council. At a press conference last week after retiring as chairman of the Medical Council, Dr.Gooneratne has called for an end to the dominant role of medical professional associations in the governance of the profession. He points out the powerful role of the GMOA within the Council and has questioned the Council’s record in the successful protection of patients and the public at large.
It is time that policy makers address such serious lacunae in our medical and healthcare system and creatively reform current structures that will focus the energies of our health personnel more directly on issues of medical service – including better professional self-regulation – rather than (to them) indirect issues of international trade. Select, but numerically powerful, interest groups should not have the professional and ethical leeway to wage this kind of socially disruptive professional insurgency.