Garvin Karunaratne,

Professor Susirith Mendis’s A Short Essay” and Sena Thoradeniya’s Where are Soul and Spirit of Peradeniya” (The Island.lk:18/2) took me back to my days at Peradeniya in the Fifties.

Truly Professor Ediriweera Sarathchandra walked tall at Peradeniya. I happened to be in his first batch of Sinhala Hons students. His greater contribution was to the country in drama. I have happened to write in his favour when he was unduly criticised.(Saratchandra’s Maname : Is it that bad?” : Lanka Web 1/2/2018)

My Master’s Degree was also under Professor Srathchandra and that ended with the publication of the dissertation: Modern Sinhala Poetry.

As Sena states the University was in the forefront in the Fifties. Dr GVS de Silva, a Lecturer in Economics serving as the Private Secretary to Minister Philip Gunawardena contributed heavily for agriculture through the Paddy Lands Act. It was GVS’s ideas that came through. Though Minister Philip and GVS had a short stay in the Government the Paddy Lands Act offering security of tenancy to tenants has come to stay permanently. Peradeniya shon all round with personalities like Professors Malalasekera and Hettiaratchi. Economics too moved in with Professor HAdeS Gunasekera as the Permanent Secretary of the Plan Implementation Ministry that implemented the Divisional Development Councils Programme of 1971-77, which brought employment to 33,200 youths. It was unfortunate that this Programme was dropped by President Jayawardena. However this Programme stands to the credit of Peradeniya, the last real development programme to date,

Subsequently as Sena says we saw entropy or utmost decay in the system of humanities and social sciences at Peradeniya.”

I too was involved with my University- Peradeniya. I came back to Sri Lanka in 1995. Working with peasants in the Administrative Service for eighteen years, I had long forgotten my Sinhala though my Master’s Dissertation is a text in moderen sinhala poetry today and marched over to economics with a Ph.D in Ag Econ and Non-Formal Education from Michigan State University. I had also designed and implemented the Youth Self Employment Programme in Bangladesh, where I worked as a consultant and by then it had guided over a million youths to become commercially viable entrepreneurs. Back in Sri Lanka, I wanted to make a contribution in Economics and sent in an application for a Visiting Lecturer’s position to my contemporary Professor Hewawitarana. I was appointed a Visiting Lecturer and told to prepare a lecture on any topic in econ and deliver it to the Staff in the economics department. I selected the subject of Microenterprise Development as the means of poverty alleviation and employment creation: the path out of the World Bank and IMF Stranglehold. I did deliver that two hour lecture to all dons at Peradeniya detailing how the IMF had enticed our country to follow the neoliberal economics of running a country on borrowed money, squandering the money in a non developmental manner-giving up all controls on imports and freely using the borrowed dollars to enable the rich to cruise, send off children for foreign study, leading to a situation where Sri Lanka was gathering a foreign debt- in 2005 our foreign debt was $ 11 billion, while till 1976 Sri lanka through careful planning lived within our means without falling into any debt. None of the dons raised a single question at the end of the lecture , but the lecture also sealed the fate of my Visiting Lectureship. Perhaps my critique of the IMF was forbidding. I edited that lecture and got it published: Microenterprise Development: A Strategy for Poverty Alleviation and Employment Creation in the Third World: The Way Out of the IMF and World Bank Stranglehold.(Sarasavi:1997). This book happens to be the first book critiquing the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Programme which was forced on President Jayawardena in 1977, when he requested Aid and which has today brought Sri Lanka to the brink of being a bankrupt country with a foreign det of $ 56 billion.

The dons not only at Peradeniya but all our Universities ignored what was happening to our country which was running the economy on loans, not gearing funds to bring about development. If only our economic dons had written that running a country on loans, without any plans to repay will someday bring us to bankruptcy, it would have been a contribution.

Today, when our country has by living on loans from 1977 come to a point where our Motherland, so full of resources- a fertile land, blessed with rain,and an array of excellent climates has become bankrupt and cannot find dollars even to import essentials, it is perhaps incumbent that our dons, the most qualified in economics in the country, should address the subject: Neoliberal economics of Milton Friedman, commence research and studies, and grope for the economic endeavour that can deliver our country out of the mess we are in today. Any of our Universities that embark , will surely shine among Universities and also make a major contribution to our Motherland.

Garvin Karunaratne,

Author of:

Microenterprise Development: A Strategy for Poverty Alleviation and Employment Creation in the

Third World: The Way Out of the IMF and World Bank Stranglehold (Sarasavi:1997)

How the IMF Ruined Sri Lanka & Alternative Programmes of Success(Godages:2006

How the IMF Sabotaged Third World Development(Godages:2017)

How the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Destroyed Sri Lanka(Godages:2022)

09032022 garvin_karunaratne@hotmail.com