What undermined SL? Its own myths and corrupt practices or western conspiracies?

By Chandre Dharmawardana
chandre.dharma@yahoo.ca

Conspiracies attributed “to the deep state” and their exposure seem to be the order of the day. Princeton educated sociologists, as well as populist politicians like Wimal Weerawansa, are examples of this genre of activists where they delight in writing about “deep state machinations”. Has the American Ambassador, in Colombo, declared these “fictional writings”, so giving the authors someone who picks up the hat?

Their writings are also part and parcel of “identity politics”, neo-nationalist rhetoric, as well as the chronically atrophied politics of Marxist analysts who still continue to quote from Rosa Luxembourg or Antonio Gramsci!

All of them eye the West with deep suspicion and actively engage in fear mongering for political gain. This activity even transforms into support and justification of the most heinous acts of the Russians or the Chinese, while being totally insensitive to the massacre of innocent civilians by Putin and his Wagner fighters, led by Evgueni Prigojine.

The US, too, as insensitive as ever, shows no improvement from the days when the people cried, “Yankee go home”. The US follows its concept of ‘manifest destiny‘ and imagines itself to be the “policeman of the world”, while ending up being the “bully of the world”. These insensitive policies are intellectually supported by Ayan Randian libertarian thinking, made respectable by great economists like von Hayek and von Mieses.

But the practical reasons for the military agenda are found in the enormous profits made by arms merchants, oil merchants as well as tech companies during any war, when governments buy arms, using public funds. The public gets impoverished while rich oligarchs, be they American, Russian, Chinese or Arab and Indian, get even richer and even more powerful. Meanwhile, Switzerland chooses to be neutral, and allows the oligarchs to hoard their money in Helvetia!

The US insists on “Human Rights” from weak nations, and blacklists people on mere NGO hearsay when it fits its agenda. It suppresses evidence of war crimes against its own leaders and its own soldiers. It props up odious dictators and topples democratic governments that it doesn’t like. Countries like Canada, too, find it politically convenient and economically and militarily necessary to follow the USA, as they exist in the shadow of the big bully and fear the Russian bear.

So, this bullying by powerful nations, like the US, applies not only to Sri Lanka, but also to other small nations that have nevertheless prospered. Small nations that are neighbours of Russia or China also have to accept a degradation of their sovereignty and “Finlandize”, a term that defined the Soviet union’s relationship with Finland.

Nation like Vietnam and Cuba (to give just two examples) were existentially affected by the US. Vietnam faced a full-scale open war and not mere “machinations”. The division of Pakistan into two, and the conversion of the Western part of old Pakistan into a military-dominated state, at the beck and call of the US, had much to do with US foreign policy. But countries, like Bangladesh and Vietnam, have overcome all that and made progress.

Vietnam has not stagnated at asking for damages from the West; instead, even while being Communist it has collaborated with Monsanto and other Western multinationals. Monsanto made ‘agent orange’, on orders by the US Army that used it to defoliate Vietnam’s forests, destroy its vegetation and rice paddies. But Monsanto has advanced agricultural technologies, and Vietnam knows their importance.

Today, Vietnam has set up a biotechnology lab, with the help of Monsanto scientists (some of the best in the world), and proceeded to modernize its agriculture. It has recognized that the power of the West resides in its control of technology, and moved to acquire that technology. Japan, China, under Den Xio Ping, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, have made major progress, using the same logic.

In Sri Lanka, in contrast, the successive governments were infiltrated by local Lysenkos and self-proclaimed “expert advisors” on agriculture. A number of “nationalist” news channels supported them, claiming to create a “toxin-free” nation, dear to Champika Ranawaka. While Sri Lanka has extensive capacity to become self-reliant on food, their so-called “sync with nature” policies destroyed Sri Lanka’s agricultural sector (https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2023/01/05/the_us_must_learn_from_sri_lankas).

The JVP and other neo-Marxist groups, too, played major negative roles, e.g., in scuttling sugar projects in the Uva-Bibile area, and blocking foreign investments that consequently went to other countries. Their role in destabilizing higher education, and the latter’s impact on scientific progress have to be factored into any analysis. So, we have a tropical country with good arable land, and yet unable to produce its staple foods, or its own sugar, onions, chilies, or even its tear gas!

The country had a big lead in rice breeding, with its scientists leading the world, prior to the setting of the International Rice Research Institute in Manila. Their research provided the means to feed the rapidly increasing population of the country, preventing malnutrition and nearly doubling life expectancy. But misguided activists began to claim that low-yielding but traditional varieties of rice were more “eco-friendly” and also had “immense health benefits”.

In reality, they are less ecofriendly and no health benefits from eating traditional rice have been established; and what is established falls well within the gray area of scientific doubt. All the initial technical advantages that had been built up were back-peddled and Luddite activists, like Vandana Shiva, were presented as the models to follow.

The methods of the “Baas Unnahe” and the “Kattadiya” are cheaper than those of the engineer and the medical man. Appointing a “party man”, even if he were a “kattadiya” became the accepted approach. An attitude of “cutting corners”

to achieve immediate objectives, irrespective of industry standards, fitted into this scheme, nourished by corruption. For instance, Sri Lanka, when it was Ceylon, had safe railroads set up according to technical specifications, using stone beds and wooden sleepers to position the metal rails. It had an engineering shop, at Ratmalana, second to none in the region. However, within decades after Ceylon became Sri Lanka, rail tracks were being laid on bare ground!

Similarly, Sri Lanka had immense initial experience in hydroelectricity and reservoir construction. This knowledge was not harnessed into Sri Lanka becoming a world consultant in hydroelectricity. Instead, a politicized Ceylon Electricity Bureaucracy (CEB) came into being, without a research and development arm.

Instead of the CEB becoming an innovative organization, it became an Albatross that wouldn’t allow the country to move away from commission-generating fossil-fuels. That benefited the corrupt politicians and their select bureaucrats.

The CEB had no interest in the immense possibilities that Sri Lanka has on developing bio fuels from local inedible oils (e.g., castor, rubber seed) that can be cheaply and rapidly deployed. Its engineers prevented any serious analysis of the potential for solar and wind energies, until circumstances forced them. Even today, the incredible potential of heat pumps, to save electricity, has not dawned on the electricity planners.

While the private sector moved ahead to set up dendro-energy generation, using fast-growing wood like “giricidia”, the CBE put all possible obstacles, e.g. by not authorizing connections to the grid. That, too, has not kept pace with the nation’s needs.

The CEB’s managers, its union bosses, and its successive minsters of energy, are surely not part of the Western “Deep State” Conspiracy, or India’s RAW in action – they are a part of a national myopia and a resultant entrenched corruption. This was given free reign by JRJ’s belief that “robber barons” will develop the country even if they rob it.

Well, the robber barons have robbed it of its wealth, and then indebted it to foreign lenders and robbed the loan money as well! The sovereign-bond loans jumped up during the Yahapalanaya period when the Treasury-bond scam also happened. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and his novice advisors, failed to see that they inherited a bombshell from the Yahapalanites, and proceeded to ignite it by destroying any revenue sources by generous handouts, cutting taxes, and undermining agriculture, even while facing a pandemic.

But the likes of Wimal Weerawansa and other Cabinet rebels got little or nothing from Basil’s power, and so they loosened the pegs holding the Gotabaya government, without anticipating the possibility of an Aragalaya.

If the “deep state” actually came to take advantage of the disaster, by supporting the Aragalaya, it is merely profiting from the events. Sri Lanka’s problems are rooted in its own irrational populist, nationalist, eco-extremist, and chronic Marxist ideologies. These support confrontation among employees and employers, investors and rural people, or among ethnic or religious groups, and claim that the “end justifies the means”.