Dr D.Chandraratn Perth.

 Recently in a National daily there was criticism of the President’s apparent trimming of the welfare budget and the increase in the public debt resulting from massive infrastructure projects undertaken, allegedly detrimental to public good aimed singularly at election victories. Obviously associated with these (or any other matter) two infamous issues were also mentioned and they are directly from Mr Ranil Wickremasinghe’s book; Family lordship and swindling public monies from mega projects. Since I have no concrete evidence of the latter even from the people who ought to know better to raise it under privilege in Parliament I shall not venture into that aspect. Worth mentioning here that some of the mega projects may have been constructed ahead of time but I am no soothsayer. I will only dwell with the reduction of the percentage GDP on welfare in the Central bank figures.

These are in percentages, as per the commentary of Dr Uswatte arachchi but in absolute terms the allocations in 2014 are manifold than in 1974, as the GDP has grown quite measurably. Prof Gerald Peiris has critiqued the Dr Uswattearachchi standpoint and demonstrated that the rural folk are many times better off now than in the dark old days of Mrs Bandaranayake where only Colombo folk had dinner on time while the lower classes were languishing in queues after work for the essential commodities. Even those who had climbed the ladder to intermingle in the Colombo cocktail circuit were oblivious to the plight of many who out of sheer desperation voted JRJ to power. The lower classes had tightened the belts to the wisp of a waist. CBK being in Sorbonne at the time would not have experienced hunger pangs anyway.

 Neither the economic policies nor the social legislations of post independence era has much relevance to the current times for we are living in a post welfare state just like many other countries in the world where the utility of the welfare state is questioned. The time in which the moral integrity of welfare was beyond the normal rhetoric of both the left and the right is no longer an issue. Dr Uswattearchchi argues from a 1970 vantage point when the metaphors and intellectual tools justifying the social obligations to its citizenry were thought immutable and beyond the debates of election manifestoes. In the modern world it is a fact that governments are driven by economic imperatives of survival. Current social policies have to be experiments to be tried out incrementally rather than mere enactments for social obligations. Social welfare has to be rethought but unbridled expectations of welfare and an entitlement as a right has had its day.

 The 1977 JRJ regime championed the neo conservative position of social legislation but yet did not advocate a total rejection of the social ideals enshrined in the Sri Lankan political and social structure. It reduced the entitlements to public sector based upon the traditional ties of community ties and social obligation. Mr Premadasa’s Samurdhi experiment clearly refutes the polarised ideological positions taken in Western countries but as far as Sri Lanka is concerned no ruling party totally disavowed the welfare provisions of the public sector. Since independence we never had a fruitful debate about what degrees of redistributive justice is possible in our developing economy to justify a certain degree of entitlement from the public sector.

It is true that the current President as the finance minister is placed in a difficult position in demonstrating infrastructure development for the longer term, which is an absolute necessity, and at the same time acceding to the plethora of demands with regard to the needs and wants of the deserving. Dr Uswatthearachchi as with the Friday forum group cannot also be unaware of the inefficiency of the public welfare system, (health, welfare and education) and the bureaucracy in general for the waste and mismanagement. Allocating more resources to the public sector without overhauling the inefficient bureaucracy is a further drain of the national resources.

 I cannot enter into a long debate on the crisis of the welfare state (which I do not think is the case) but the changing character of social need in Sri Lanka has to be addressed as a precautionary measure. The definition of social need which is an intrinsic part of resource allocation by the state for the welfare system which is now undertaken by pressure groups identified by ethnicity. For example Tamils and Muslims now claim vulnerability related to ethnicity and by forming into pressure groups the relationship to the state is claimed on the basis of rights. The whole of the Jaffna Peninsula, which aided and abetted terror groups, is passed on as the burden of the welfare state.

In Sri Lanka it is a vexed question to separate needs from desires, wants and aspirations from actual needs. The UNHRC investigation now has latched onto Tamil wants as grievances whereas all ethnic groups feel almost the same being poor but Sri Lankan welfare state finds it almost impossible to give into all these demands. The TNA that was complicit in the destruction of the Tamil Community is now the champion of the vulnerability in the Tamil population. It is demanding the wants and desires also as entitlements at the expense of the nation. Compare this with India which has completely avoided vulnerability as a right and while millions are in utter poverty unabashedly calls itself a flourishing economy and a regional power.

 The other point that has to be mentioned to those who want the 1970’s welfare state expanded is that universal welfare has the tendency to create an infantile class of poor who become attuned to dependency and contribute to generational poverty. Sri Lanka suffered this intractable problem till JRJ gradually started the weaning off process. We have still not totally eradicated dependency on the public sector, now extended to public official and in recent times left at the feet of the politician. Political cynicism or scientific argument might lead us to the conclusion that we need to rethink the role of welfare in the light of how responsibly vulnerabilities can be recognised and responded selectively within the ‘art of the possible’ in our economy.

 It is to the credit of the current President that the space is open to reignite the debate about the role of the state and human costs in the reduction of the welfare state, which was virtually foreclosed in the JRJ time. I believe that the neoconservative imperative for privatized welfare makes no more sense than the former pattern of public sector dominance in social policy which virtually decapitated the socialist economy along with its proponents of the left. The JVP managed to do the summary execution with no holds barred.

 Dr D.Chandraratna