e-Con e-News

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‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’

e-Con e-News 23-29 June 2024

This ee gapes at the role played by English and US and home-grown colonial agents in the new university set up in ‘postcolonial’ Sri Lanka. We look at the Wiltshire Regiment’s Sidney Arnold Pakeman, who was made Professor of Modern History and Economics, at the Ceylon University College from 1921-42. A publisher of ‘histories’ on Sri Lanka and the world, and appointed a preserver (more like, obliterator) of Sinhala ‘archives’, he was made president of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Pakeman (who students nicknamed ‘Fakeman’) was appointed a member of the Ceylon House of Representatives by the Queen of England after parliamentary elections in 1947, ‘to represent important interests which were not represented or inadequately represented in the House’. We also look at the role played by Bryce Ryan (expert on ‘caste’)  and the US Rockefeller Foundation’s imposition of his ‘sociology’ on the University system. These colonial ‘interests’, dressed up in their histories and economics, not just ‘keep on rocking’, but plague Sri Lanka to this day (see ee Focus).

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Former Central Bank Governor WD Lakshman has given us a recent history of the teaching of Economics in Sri Lanka (see ee Focus). As governor, Lakshman dared promise a ‘development bank’ (which in the 1950s earned Philip Gunawardena expulsion from cabinet, & SWRD Bandaranaike, a bullet?), resulting in demands for WDL’s immediate & subsequent removal. WDL is still being sniped at by the rolling thinktanks of those North Atlantic climes, and their ‘native’ media-missile-slingers. Such historiography however leaves out or downplays the role of such teachers of Economics as SBD de Silva.

     This omission is perhaps understandable. As Lakshman’s history shows, the teaching of Economics, let alone other subjects, was very much a colonial project, even after 1948. And SBD was no darling of the media or of colonial economics. A 1950s Daily News editorial about SBD (based on a complaint from the Australian government!), once asked why there were ‘communists’ in the Central Bank? Yet SBD and the body of knowledge he attempted to unravel, matters to Sri Lanka. This omission perhaps also parallels the absence of teaching in Sri Lanka of what a productive economy is about, and the modern-machine-making culture this could engender.

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‘During the advent of the 1^st industrial revolution

Sri Lanka was mostly under the rule of European Colonisers.

In 1815, Sri Lanka was fully conquered by the English Empire.

In fact, at that time, the English industrial policy was to prohibit

any form of industrialisation in any of their colonies, and to use them

only as sources of raw material to fuel up industrialisation in England.

In colonies they built canals & railroads and used steam engines only

to transport raw materials from inner parts of colonies to the seaports.

They set up government institutions that facilitated the extraction of resources

and did not set up complete sets of institutions that were necessary for

industrialisation & promoting economic growth & development within colonies.

Thus, Sri Lanka missed the 1^st industrial revolution.’

– see ee Economists, HN Thenuwara: Sri Lanka Should Regain

the Missed Industrial Revolutions (cited by WA Wijewardena)

Contrary to Thenuwara & Wijewardena, however, it is still English & EU & US policy to prevent industrialization in our countries. And unlike SBD de Silva, Thenuwara & Wijewardena appear fainthearted to expose the stranglehold over the economy and media by the multinational banks & corporations (MNCs), and their merchants & moneylenders who actively sabotage a productive economy.

     This ee also excerpt Sugath Kulatunga’s memoirs on the changes in the public service. He recalls their early dedication to increasing rural industrial & agricultural production (all subsequently sabotaged). And while he doesn’t refer to the sharp reduction in salaries to local government workers after the English took a step back (they did not leave!) in 1948, he mentions how trainees had begun to ‘calculate the number of permits, licenses & approvals which were opportunities to make money’.

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This anti-industrialization policy – involving crippling a modern university, an advanced institution for education which should have been a laboratory for the research & development of reconstruction after over 500 years of destruction – was one of the strategies in the renewed colonial invasion of Sri Lanka. This was continued under the USA from the 1940s, and included diversion away from a modern industrial education into useless scholarly conceits.

     The cry for independence – which arose out of the cry for modern industrialization, which itself arose from the English sabotage of energy security (evident in the saga of DJ Wimalasurendra) – appears to have found little resonance in our universities, midst the pursuit of almost empty academic accolades bereft of relevance to a country seeking to prevail in this ever more challenging world. Instead, we keep being told how wonderful English colonialism was, and the need to preserve the import-export plantation fraud, and the merchants & moneylenders who depend on it.

     So instead, over the next 70 years, the US et al have funded various universities & departments & disciplines –from sociology to geography – to divert from the need to pursue a productive economy & culture (see ee Focus).

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• This ee also reproduces a statement from a group of ‘visiting scholars’ who call for ‘renegotiation’ with the US-controlled IMF. They gently call for ‘a change of orientation in dealings with the IMF and Sri Lanka’s creditors’. That the IMF’s ‘aim must be to protect the living standards of the people & to promote the growth of the economy.’ They point out, ‘multilateral & bilateral agencies’ like the World Bank & IMF, while blaming China, refuse to reduce their own loansharking terms. These US agencies also do not admit the costs to Sri Lanka of IMF’s previous 16 misadventures here. While these ‘scholars’ believe the IMF is open to such reason, others luckily for us see exactly who & what we are dealing with, with their penchant for ‘stealth’ & ‘strategic ambiguity’, evident in their manipulation of the media to hide their real intent. For unlike ‘neocolonialism’ and sexy ‘post-colonialism’, there’d be few academic posts in the white lands that would really call their game, recolonialism:

‘The current IMF offer accepted by Sri Lankan political leaders

is not just a debt trap but a ‘death trap’, as shown by its historical

dealings with other developing countries. Its officials are

expert manipulators – keeping developing countries poor, expanding

internal markets to benefit the West, allowing product dumping,

reducing the growth rate (GDP) partly via increasing exorbitant taxes

& tightening regulations, and even forcing (unconstitutional) changes

in recipient countries’ laws to benefit themselves.’

– Sunil Wimalawansa (see ee Quotes)

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Contents:

Colonial Professors & Undermining Sri Lanka’s Industrialization