Sustainable economic development in Sri Lanka: Role of mass media in transforming public beliefs and attitudes

By Dr. A K M R Bandara
Head/Department of Agricultural Systems
Faculty of Agriculture
Rajarata University of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has been facing an economic crisis like never before. This crisis emerged with the COVID-19 pandemic mainly due to a drop in external earnings from tourism and foreign employment which are common to almost all countries in the region, including Bangladesh and India. However, those countries were able to recover due to the maintenance of external earnings reserves (buffer of dollars). Sri Lanka never gave much thought to reserving foreign earnings to face disasters, like COVID. The situation becomes acute with the incidence of repayment of interest and shares of foreign borrowings. Sri Lanka drew foreign loans substantially, after 2010, to develop highways, Mattala airport, and Nelum Pokuna which did not generate dollars to repay the loans. In this context, successive governments continued to borrow foreign loans to repay existing loans. Since the information on dollar inflows and outflows is not available to the public and the exchange rate is artificially controlled by the government, the dollar problem was not visible to the public until it has become a crisis.

There are lots of articles explaining the reasons for the economic problems, but no adequate information is available to resolve the problems. Factors affecting economic development have been discussed for over two centuries in the development literature in economics. Adam Smith, the father of economics, pointed out that low taxes, peace, and justices are the main factors that determine the economic development in 1776. However, evidence shows that economic development cannot be achieved by ensuring these three factors anymore, and it is more complicated when countries are struggling to achieve economic development that comprises of both quantitative and qualitative development. Quantitative development means an increase in quantity and value of the products and services of a country known as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while qualitative development is the improvement of the quality of life of the people. When examining the development of many countries, including developed countries, economic development has been achieved mainly by changing the behaviour of the people. During the last 74 years, after independence, Sri Lanka has not given due attention to human aspects of economic development. Hence, the game of conflict instead of the game of cooperation, has grown in the country over the years and continues until now. The game of cooperation is necessary for economic development in which all individuals, politicians, and members of the society alike are searching for cooperative solutions for issues related to economic development.

Social transformation

In the case of social transformation, mass media can play a bigger role by increasing awareness. With the development of information and communication technology (ICT), passing information through media is very fast and effective. The media has already made a big impact on controlling corruption and changing political ideology from time to time through increasing awareness. Similarly, media can play a bigger role in economic development in the country. Today extensive awareness is going on highlighting who is wrong but not what should be done. Past is the past and it is not good to linger in the past. This article focuses on the role of mass media in economic development.

Performance (P) of a person depends on three factors: 1) knowledge (K), 2) skills (S) and 3) attitudes (A) known as KSA. Knowledge is to know things. It links with the brain. Skills are the ability to apply knowledge to do things and are linked with parts of the body because skills develop through doing things using hands, observing things through eyes, and hearing things through the ears. Attitudes are feelings, ideas, and thoughts and they link with the heart. There are two models explaining the relationship between performance and its determinants of knowledge, skills, and attitudes. One is the additive model (P= K+S+A) and another is the multiplicative model (P=K x S x A). The additive model is an old one and it says the performance of the person depends on three factors separately. For example, if the person has no skills, they will perform to some extent due to the other two factors but not to a great extent. Alternatively, the multiplicative model says that performance depends on three factors collectively. For example, if the person has no skills the performance is zero. In other words, performance and determinants work together and they are equally impotent to determine the performance of a person. This model has further improved giving more weight to the attitudes. Accordingly, the new performance model has the square of the attitudes (P = K x S X A2) illustrating that attitudes play a significant role person’s performance. Since economic development depends on the summation of individual performance, the highest priority should be given to the attitudinal changes in society. Mass media is the most effective tool in this regard. The following attitudinal changes are required for economic development.

Negative mindset

Society, especially public sector employees, has a negative mindset about privatization. This is mainly due to fear of losing jobs and benefits. It is necessary to highlight success stories in Sri Lanka and other countries through printed and electronic media. The best example is the privatization of the Department of Telecommunication in Sri Lanka. Before privatization people had to wait more than six months to get a connection even after payments. Similarly, repairing a breakdown took days and weeks. Now, the situation has completely changed. Also, employees are better off. Another negative attitude is setting up private entities. This is due to fear of competition. The principle is competition creates efficiency and efficiency leads to development. The best example is the banking sector. At the time of government monopoly with the presence of only the Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank, customers were in the queue for a long time to deposit and withdraw money.

The situation completely changed with the establishment of the private banks.The society also has a negative attitude toward foreign direct investment. The most popular argument against foreign direct investments is the sale of national assets. Most countries, such as India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore, have developed with foreign direct investments. Countries need foreign investments to develop their economies because domestic savings are inadequate for investments which generate returns, such as foreign earnings, employment, and technologies. Competition is now high for foreign investments as many countries are encouraging foreign direct investments by providing facilities such as low-rent land, and tax reliefs. India established free trade zones to attract foreign investments. The principal objective of foreign investment is obtaining foreign money. One of the reasons for the current foreign currency crisis is negative attitudes regarding foreign direct investments.

Need for attitudinal change

Changing the attitude of the employees in the government sector is urgently required for economic development. Both local and foreign investors complained about the long process of getting things done through government organizations. Studies found that Turkey needs 6 hours for start-ups; Thailand needs 7 days and Sri Lanka needs more than 6 months. Moreover, employee productivity is low in Sri Lanka. In the garment sector, three people require getting the work done by one person in Pakistan. It is required to inculcate among employees that taxpayers’ money is spent on their salaries. The situation is more crucial in Sri Lanka because over 80 percent of the tax comprises indirect tax paid by the public. Government sector employees are the servants of the public, not the masters or puppets of politicians. The public should respect those who provide better services, not the title of the position. In the recent past, the government introduced a luxury bus service to travel from the railway station to government offices to reduce traffic in Colombo city. It failed because of attitude problems. High-ranking officials wish to come to the office by vehicle and have somebody to take their bags to the office. The situation is the same or worst with politicians.

The expenditure pattern of the households also needs to be changed for economic development. In Sri Lanka, unnecessary expenditure is high compared to income whereby the domestic saving ratio is low. It is less than 25% of the DGP whereas in India the figure is 35%. Sri Lankans spend huge amounts of money on house construction and purchasing vehicles because they have social value. There is a slogan in India that is “be Indians, act Indians”. The life of the Indian people is simple. They mainly depend on things produced in India. Also, they do not spend money unnecessarily. University lecturers use motorcycles to travel short distances including travel to university. The use of bicycles is common in Japan though it produces vehicles in large quantities.

The government is planning to declare the year 2023 as the year of agriculture. The success of this programme hinges on a change in the attitudes of the participants of the agricultural value chain. At present, farmers do not plan production based on the market requirements while traders are reluctant to provide information to farmers on market requirements. Also, traders hide pricing information and they do not like to establish relationships with farmers. Hence, the agricultural value chain in Sri Lanka is fragmented and disorganised resulting in high transaction costs, severe price fluctuations, low farm income, high consumer price, poor quality, and high post-harvest losses. It is an accepted fact that a sustainable agricultural value chain is required for agricultural development. Donor-funded projects such as Agricultural Modernisation Project, Smallholder Agribusiness Partnership Project, and Climate Smart Agriculture are developing agricultural value chains, but success is in question due to the lack of business discipline. In business, the customer is the king. There is no business without customers. Customers need quality, convenient and safe food at an affordable price.

Price control

In Sri Lanka, the popular mechanism used to stabilise food prices is price control. It is now an outdated tool that creates artificial shortages in the market resulting from the inability to supply products. The government does not have buffer stocks and no adequate foreign currency to import any more to solve this issue. Hence, the measures should be made to increase production in the country rather than controlling the price. For instance, India introduced a three crops programme to control vegetable price hikes. Under this, the most popular short terms crops were selected. Another issue in the value chain is low prices at the harvest time causing hardship to the farmers who are mainly depending on farming income. The farmers think that the government should purchase the products at a reasonable price. This is also an old concept and is not given priority at present because of huge financial losses incurred by the Treasury. This issue can be solved by delayed selling from time to time rather than selling the entire stocks at harvest time. The government’s role is to provide financial and technical facilities to set up farm-level storage facilities. There is no country where guaranteed prices are stipulated for perishables and prices are determined by market-led production planning.

Attitudinal changes are required in the decision-making process. Evidenced-based decisions are lacking. A scientific decision-making process should be adopted. It includes five steps: 1) identification of the problem, 2) finding alternative solutions, 3) evaluation of each alternative 4) selection of the best alternative, and 5) implementation of the best alternative. Also, proactive decisions are required instead of reactive decisions which are taken after the problem happened and provide solutions to the effect of the problem rather than the root causes of the problem.

In Sri Lanka, it is necessary to raise awareness of four management functions: planning, organising, directing, and controlling. Planning includes the formulation of vision, mission, objectives, strategies, and activities. Organizing is the allocation of resources and staff to implement the plan. Directing means the provision of instructions necessary to undertake activities. Controlling includes monitoring the project activities in line with the plan. Most of the projects formulated, especially in agriculture, are limited to the planning function and monitoring is poor in many foreign funded projects. Many countries in the region have established, long-term continuous plans one after another that does not alter with the change of ruling party of the government. For example, India is implementing the 12th five-year plan after independence. Also, monitoring reports are submitted every year to the parliament. Educating all the stakeholders including the community is essential for the success of government projects such as home gardening. Past projects such as home gardening and tree planting fail due to poor management. The media should be alert in these areas.

Youth participation in agriculture

Youth participation in agriculture is poor and there is a need to motivate the youth to return to this vital sector. There are success stories here as well as abroad. The global trend now is the promotion of high-tech agriculture such as precision agriculture and digital agriculture. In these fields, youth entrepreneurs are urgently required.

All in all, the necessary condition for economic development is attitudinal changes in the society. The role of mass media is to raise the evidence-based awareness to facilitate the attitudinal changes. Priority should be given to making awareness of how developed countries such as Japan recovered from their crisis after the World War II by changing attitudes. Print media can provide opportunities to publish articles while electronic media can provide opportunities for discussions. At present, the media is engaged in such activities, but those efforts are not adequate to change the mindset of the Sri Lankan society.