(MENAFN- Colombo Gazette)
By N Sathiya Moorthy
How come a 'poor' in Asia is also among the 'miserable' in the world? But it is possible, as two economic surveys of nations have shown, coming as they do almost simultaneously.
A certain Hanke's Annual Misery Index (HAMI) 2022 has ranked Sri Lanka as the 11th 'most miserable country' in 157 nations surveyed. Zimbabwe has been ranked as the 'most miserable country' followed by Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan, Argentina, Yemen, Ukraine, Cuba, Turkey, followed by Sri Lanka, Haiti, Angola, Tonga, and Ghana in the 'top 15' (!). Economist Steve Hank's index is said to be the sum of the year-end unemployment, inflation, and bank-lending rates, minus the annual percentage change in real GDP per capita.
Then, there is another survey, of 'Insider Monkey', which says Sri Lanka was among the 20 poorest countries in Asia at the end of 2021 in terms of per capita GDP. It was a year before the economic and political crises that swamped the nation in the form of the daunting dollar-shortage as never before.
It will thus be interesting to find out what Insider Monkey has to say of the state of the nation's economy, end-2022, which is what the 'misery index' talks about. Whether it will be a picture of the destitute in the first half of the year, or if it will reflect the road-to-recovery (which is not going to come any soon), of a combination of both would make for an interesting academic comparison and analysis.
Time used to be when only one refrain used to be heard in high-end parlours, and corporate board rooms, intellectuals, self-styled and otherwise in capital Colombo, the only industrialised district in the country, to the last farming village in deep South: 'Soon, we will become another Somalia'. That was at the height of the ethnic wars as they stood at the turn of the century, including the 'no-war, but no real peace' conditions of the Norway-facilitated ceasefire agreement (CFA) between the government and the LTTE.
Begging Bowl syndrome
Post-war, and in more recent years, as the SJB Leader of the Opposition, Sajith Premadasa was criticised for making the 'Somalia' comparison. The criticism was not as if poor Sajith had made a wrong, or worse comparison for Sri Lanka. It was about his 'insulting' Somalia. Yet, the insult was seen as being politically inappropriate in diplomatic terms. It was just not on.
But in real terms, the hurt of the average Sri Lankan should have been worse. But it was not. To them, Sajith was not a great discoverer either. He was only saying what they had come to believe for long, maybe from the days of the two 'JVP insurgencies' in the South, since the early seventies. Now, it is past the golden jubilee of the first insurgency in 1971.
Like the self-inflicted Somalia comparison from the past, even today, no Sri Lankan is shocked at his own plight, for him to be shamed. Unless a nation and its people are shocked and shamed by the 'begging bowl' syndrome, there is no way, they could hope to come out their despicable situation.
Instead, for long, Sri Lankans have come to enjoy their misery (maybe out of sheer helplessness, of course, only of the former), so much so they all seems to have learnt to take misery in the philosophical sense of the South Asian school kind. Some watch it from a distance, as if they are not a part of it. Others enjoy it, and may want more of it. There may be a third kind, which enjoys the fruits of those misery, in the form of international alms of whatever kind from whichever source, as they enjoy the misery itself – as it is the cause of their later celebration.
Convenient, comfortable
All this has made the situation convenient first and then comfortable next for the political class to do precisely what they want to do, they have been doing and which alone they know to do. They are not shocked at the nation's plight, which was/is their handiwork.
So, there is no cause for shame in their case. Without such shock and shame in the nation's polity – accompanied even more by the equally un-shamed / shameless officer class, there is no redemption for this country. That is also what is happening just now, in the post-Aragalaya protest phase.
If there is anything that this phase has proved, it is that no Arab Spring-like Aragalaya can change the nation's socio-political culture for betterment and improvement. Sri Lankans need only have to learnt their lessons from any of the three Asian giants, namely, China, India and Japan, to make a studied approach to economic recovery, as each one of them did in its time.
Then of course there is the incomparable Singapore, with which Sri Lankans still pride themselves through comparisons from the past. It is long, long ago, so long ago, nobody knows, how long ago. Their comparison is to the era when Singapore was still a young and new nation, and Sri Lanka's economy was far superior to the yet-evolving city-state.
That comparison was dubious at best, between apples and oranges, or apples and bitter guard. To be fair to Sri Lanka, did not have a history of the Sri Lankan kind, dating back to centuries and millennia, a nation that has produced a citizenry that still revels in the eminently forgettable past glory from a purely economic sense, which is what the two recent surveys are about. Or, were Dutugamnu and Ellara the be-all-and-end-all of Sri Lankan existence from that distant past?
Guttural syndrome
Yes, nations need an identity, a marker. If history and culture are the self-styled markers, then it means only two things. Those people are still living in the surreal imagery from the past, and do not want to move away onto the reality of the present. It is another phase and part of what could be termed 'guttural syndrome', however pleasurable – and pleasant otherwise – it be, with visible positives that could be touched, felt and enjoyed.
The other thing about it is that where nations grow out of nowhere, as happened to the US in its time and Singapore in more recent ones, their present is their only national identity. It is thus that the US, despite being the most successful and oftentimes victorious nation, is often plagued by self-doubt.
Their constant reference to the 'all-American' identity is all that the British, Spaniards, Italians and all other European nationalities that constitute an evolving America in the decades since Christopher Columbus landed in his 'wrong India'. It comes in the form of a national flag at almost every door-step, where as nations that follow older systems revere their flags too much in an exactly opposite way that there are prescribed sun-rise hours for the flag to be used in public and by the public.
That is only a very small beginning, yes, but that may be where it all begins...again, going by the American experience, which may not suit the Sri Lankan national psyche, which alone the nation and the people just now has to boast of and pride themselves in.
(The writer is a policy analyst and political commentator, based in Chennai, India. Email: )