Independence or inter-dependence

The editorial in The Island of 04 Feb. 21 titled ‘Independence’ made me virtually run for my pen and ink bottle, so to speak. 

The editor without beating about the bush and not mincing his words either, in his customary fashion, put it where it rightfully belongs: in his thoughts on our so-called ‘the Independence Day’.

The ceremony and the celebrations that must have followed do not need my two-cents worth  comments for they were being written about on paper and shown on silver screen for an umpteenth number of times during these past 73 years. It is once again an occasion, a harking back to a moment, a history-making one no doubt as the then Ceylon was concerned, when the chains of colonialism were rendered powerless and the ‘Lion Flag’ slowly but surely rose, while the ‘Union Jack’, in step came down, and ‘Sri Lanka Matha’ took to the ether sending mellifluous singing in celebration broadcast from Radio Ceylon in the morning of that day.

Well and good and now let us see how things proceeded onwards in independent Ceylon and later as Sri Lanka.

What should I say? It is a path littered with monumental blunders, notwithstanding the fact that we still managed to build a few monuments (in whose name? Your guess is as good as mine!) at the expense of the nation’s ever-shrinking coffers, two insurrections, an ethnic conflict that lasted for three decades, you may wish to add a few more for the sake of giving more credit to our past and present governors. 

It is said that when the British quit the shores of Lanka, they left a fair amount of foreign reserves, perhaps a way of saying sorry for things done to the country for the benefit of their empire and a few other good things too: a well-structured government administrative system, health care system serving the populace from all corners of the country starting from peripheral units, government dispensaries, rural hospitals, district hospitals, base hospitals and finally the general hospital, and also a reasonably good system of education. Now as for the last two, credit must be given to a few of our own post-independent-era politicians, who had the brains, foresight and genuine concern for the country enabling them to make those systems run more efficiently and effectively. But then the question is are they anymore? 

Now back to my major text: While all this was going on, another era, a sinister one at that, was in the making, an era rampant with political interference, self-aggrandisement at the expense of the wealth of the nation and what not.

And to top it all, we have the luxury of dealing with  a most inefficient behemoth of a government administrative system, three of the biggest government organisations riddled with corruption, scams of varying size and description from the village tea and grocery shop to the mega-sized  ‘bond, rice and sugar’. And now there is another dirty, despicable and stinking addition to this list,, which is import of foreign garbage to dump here in our little land. And the country is in debt  up to its neck with trillions owing to various countries and organisations.

I am tired now and yet still quite a bit more that I left for you to think about.

And despite all this, the two hundred and a few more at Diyawanna merrily continue to play their game of water polo, sucking on the nation’s ever-dwindling resources, both monetary (whatever is left of it) and material.

Let me conclude this by saying : is it ‘independence’ they are celebrating or ‘inter-dependence’ on one another, following the well-known saying ‘you scaratch my back and I will scatch yours’

Laksiri Warnakula