Policy Making and Execution in Agriculture

By Gamini Seneviratne

HIGHLAND COLONISATION

It’s been a long time since the thought had occurred to me and/or I’ve been asked by concerned people, mostly scholars or would-be scholars to write about our post-Independence experience in policymaking in the various sectors I served in. My friend, the late S B D de Silva, (for those who have no knowledge of his work, I refer to his “The Political Economy of Underdevelopment”, in which he employed Keynesian economics as deconstructed by its application to ground realities – a book that demands translation into other languages), was particularly insistent that I write of the much-maligned industrial policy of the 1970s. He would also, till his last years, phone me at odd hours asking for my views on some aspect of plantation agriculture.

What agitated S B D was that he had been Director of Industrial Policy and Economic Research before moving towards agrarian studies. I was brought into the Ministry of Industries and Scientific Affairs as Director / Regulation of Industries in the late 1972. (My functions there had to do with the disbursement of foreign exchange ‘quotas’ among manufacturing industries to enable them to import raw material and machinery for their operation). Not long after I came there, I was appointed, in addition, to take over the functions (Policy and Research) that had been S B D’s beat. I shall revert to questions of industrial policy later.

My first encounters with agriculture, as a public servant, was in Matara in 1965. As AGA there my primary duties had to do with the development of the Highland Colonisation (HC) Schemes that had been established for the cultivation of tea. (Despite the publicity given here and abroad to ‘the plight of estate workers’, today and for several decades now, such ‘small-holdings’ have produced the bulk of our tea – around 70%. Several years later, I had the task of editing the Bill drafted by Wickrema Gunasekera under which the Tea Small Holdings Authority was set up. More on that is due in the interests of public policy relating to the system of ‘plantations’ the inefficiencies of which S B D exposed in his ‘Political Economy’).

Matara had established several such colonies off Pitabeddara on a roadway that runs towards the district boundary between Matara and Galle. They were serviced by the Derangala factory owned and operated by the State Plantations Corporation (SPC). Another set of colonies was being opened between Morawaka and Hiniduma, supported by Kalubovitiyana, a new factory that was brought into operation during my tenure in Matara. These two factories were quite capable of processing all the leaf produced in the HCs (the SPC had another factory, Delgoda, in Ratnapura District). Private factories, hungry for leaf, had begun to raid the HCs and were offering higher prices than the SPC.

Price per pound [lb] of leaf payable by the factory was determined on a simple formula: the net sale average (NSA) of made tea at auction divided by the out-turn – which was taken to be around 22 %, roughly four and a half pounds of green leaf to a pound of made tea. Prices at auction for low grown teas being low in the mid-1960s, the NSA was usually below one rupee – which meant below 20 cents per pound of leaf. After deducting for water, coarse leaf, weight of gunny bag … the SPC paid 16 – 17 cents – and the private factories cashed in, paying, say, a cent or two more. The producers shifted towards them, the SPC gathered less leaf than could be economically processed, its losses went up – it was all a mess. The SPC claimed the private factories could pay more because they cheated on the weight of the leaf they collected. I asked for a meeting at the SPC – which they were happy to grant.

That didn’t turn out well for them. The price data for the last auction was on the wall in their Board Room – and the prices for Derangala and Delgoda had been interchanged. Recriminations, apologies (the SPC Chairman was an impressive man who had been a top officer at Inland Revenue or a Bank). He agreed to adjust the payment for that week, I agreed that the weighing mechanisms used by the bought-leaf factories should be checked.

That took a bit of doing, getting our transport and personnel (led by the Weights & Measures Inspectors) into place as secretly as possible. The private lorries were ignored as they came in as usual, were stopped on the way out, their weighing scales checked. On average they registered 5 lbs less than the true weight. All were charged, taken to court, tried and fined. All the lorries belonged to a politician of the ruling party, the UNP. There was no change in the verdicts, but it all added up to other unwelcome developments that made my transfer out of the district desirable.

What was most visible to the agitation of bought-leaf factory operators was that the SPC factories began to thrive – and, what was truly annoying, the small-holdings began to improve the quantity and quality of their leaf (that meant better prices at the auction for the SPC and a couple of cents more for leaf).

It had to do also with the economies of scale and when it looked as if more land would be brought under HCs some distance away – that would be good if the SPC didn’t get the leaf. But if the quantities were right the transport would pay for itself.

There was an HCS already at Rotumba on the eastern end of the district; it had been there for a few years but the allottees had not moved in. I happened to go that way on my first day at Matara and the DRO, S E T Jayasinghe, a campus colleague told me about it. The beneficiaries of Rotumba were to be mostly the wrong people led by the previous President of the MPCS and the new President, the mudalali with a paddy mill, a van and the big sillara kade, a natural supporter of the UNP, obstructed the expected influx of people ‘of the other side’. He did this by simply occupying the land allotted to the previous President and refusing to construct the access road to the Scheme. Two years on there were just two allottees on the land meant for 100 and I found the Colonisation Officer (CO) at home rubbing after-shave into his chin.

He chose to move out, a senior OLDO (Overseer for Land Development) who had served in that area and was a CO was brought in. The MP came to protest, along with the mudalali and the law was explained to him. He said it was a political problem for him and his man was given an extra fortnight to vacate the encroachment. When I went there, there had been no change on the ground. The mudalali was ordered to remove the fence to the encroached land, he moved to do so, the Grama Sevaka and others ripped it all off and within a few months Rotumba was active with the land prepared by some 80 families who were ready to move in.

An initiative to establish a Youth Settlement Scheme for the cultivation of tea met with much opposition from politicians, local and at parliament level. It had to do with caste – a factor that had not been taken account of in selecting young men for the project. The settlement was to be located around Ginneliya, above Urubokka in the jungle that extended towards Katuwana (where a fort built by the Dutch still existed).

I discussed the project with senior planters in that area, Douglas Jayawickrema of ‘Berabeula’ and R L Pereira of, I think, ‘Deniyaya’ estate. Gunam Thambipillai of Pitabeddara and Rajah Senewiratne, Superintendent of the SPC factories were constantly at hand for consultation: indeed, they were the primary designers of the lay out for the internal roadways, the wadiyas, the residential and other buildings. Both trudged through the forest with me to work out such detail.

Applications were called from young men in the vicinity, and they were interviewed at a ‘Land Kachcheri’ – one where a Land Officer normally ‘screens’ a hundred applicants in a day. This was different: two teams of a Land Officer and a senior Agriculture extension officer were given that task. So painstaking was their scrutiny of the applicants that they took three days to conclude the selection process. I dropped by for an hour or so each day.

When the selections were made, I submitted the list to the GA, Francis Pietersz, who approved it.

And all hell broke loose. It was alleged that I had selected ‘reds’. The managers of major plantations in the area, including Berabeula and Deniyaya complained to me that I had taken their best workers. But that was of no account; the MPs for Deniyaya and Hakmana sent out telegrams flying everywhere from the Prime Minister down, demanding that I be transferred out of Matara.

So it was done: I was sent to the Ministry of Agriculture ‘with immediate effect’.

And, with no further delay, the first Youth Settlement Scheme in the country was buried before the youth moved in. Evidently, the MPs’ supporters had their own version of a land kachcheri, made their selections – and sent them to the site at Ginneliya to grow cinnamon.

It was the year that straddled mid-1965 and mid-1966.