Dudley’s Drama

Friday 24th June, 2022

The incumbent government has become a metaphor for failure, and earned notoriety for its callous disregard for the woes of people. It does not care to safeguard the interests of consumers, who are being fleeced by producers and traders alike. Some help for the hapless public has come from an unexpected quarter—a member of the Rice Mafia; the proprietor of the Araliya Rice Mills, Dudley Sirisena, who is one of the millers blamed for market manipulations and the exploitation of farmers and consumers, has embarked on a crusade to protect the public against exploitative practices of big-time rice millers and traders! Whoever would have thought such a thing would ever be possible?

Dudley has publicly undertaken to sell rice at the maximum retail price (MRP) and ensure that other millers do likewise. He seems to be serious about carrying out his pledge. How come a member of the Rice Mafia, of all people, has become so considerate as to take up the cudgels for the sake of poor consumers? This is the question one must have asked oneself on seeing the Araliya Rice boss clashing with a fellow miller at a media briefing, on Wednesday. He walked out in a huff, when another miller requested the government to introduce a ‘reasonable’ MRP; he demanded that rice be made available at affordable prices. He told other millers that all of them had amassed enough wealth by selling rice, and the time had come for them to help the public.

One may have thought that the transmogrification of people from misers to givers was possible only in fiction as in the case of Ebenezer Scrooge in the Dickensian novella, A Christmas Carol, or the title character of George Eliot’s Silas Marner. Both Scrooge, the penny-pinching business owner, and Marner, the miserly weaver, overcome greed and become caring and generous, in the end. But we can now see such a character in the flesh—Dudley, the miller!

People can, and do change—for different reasons. What has caused Dudley’s welcome transformation? He would have us believe that he is driven by pure altruism to give something back to the rice consumers who have made his wealth accumulation possible. It may be that he is following the dictates of conscience, at last. There are other possibilities, though. People are at the end of their tether. They are in the depths of despair, unable to buy essentials and dull the pangs of hunger due to the chronic scarcity of goods, and soaring prices. Their anger is manifestly welling up, and food protests could lead to food riots sooner than expected, and nobody will be safe in such an eventuality; the wealthy millers will have people raiding their warehouses. Last month’s spate of violence, which left scores of houses belonging to government politicians gutted may be considered a foretaste of what is to come unless the current crisis is brought under control and some relief granted to the public urgently. Dudley, the miller, knows how people react to rice shortages and steep increases in rice prices; he may be aware of the fate that befell Dudley, the PM, in 1953, when an increase in the price of a measure of rice, inter alia, triggered a hartal. So, the Araliya Rice boss may have sought to win over the public by undertaking to sell rice at the prices stipulated by the Consumer Affairs Authority. It is also possible that as a younger brother of former President Maithripala Sirisena, who is still aiming high, Dudley is trying to rally public support by reducing the prices of rice in a bid to take to active politics and/or shore up the crumbling image of the Sirisenas.

Whatever his motive, Dudley has put the government to shame. He has come forward to tame the Rice Mafia, of which he himself is a member. This is something the present-day leaders have failed to do all these years. They should hang their heads in shame for being so impotent despite their braggadocio.

We have had no civil word to say about the Rice Mafia, especially Dudley, but his offer to adhere to the MRP of rice as well as his exhortation to other millers to follow suit is to be appreciated. We can only hope that Dudley is genuinely desirous of granting the unfortunate public some relief, and will not try to pull the wool over their eyes and remind us of some evil characters such as the shapeshifters in Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Saki’s Gabriel-Ernest.

Now that Dudley has talked the talk, he has to walk the walk. Other millers, too, had better be considerate towards the public in these difficult times. People are waiting for rice at affordable prices. Hungry masses are angry, and nobody will be safe if their anger spills over onto the streets.