By N Sathiya Moorthy

The irony is striking. The incumbent JVP-NPP Government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake seems to have taken after the post-war Mahinda Rajapaksa dispensation in replacing 'devolution' with 'development', especially for the Tamil areas, but with a difference. From the looks of it, while delaying devolution, or 'real devolution' of the 13-A kind, the Government seems to be soft-pedalling development, too, even after committing itself to the process, and with external assistance in a Sri Lanka that is still caught in an economic web.

According to Jaffna-based Tamil media reports, Transport Minister Bimal Rathnayake has gone back on President Dissanayake's commitment to convert Palali into an international airport and Kankesanthurai, or KKS, into a viable commercial port. India has committed huge sums for the two projects, but in Jaffna recently, Minister Rathnayake reportedly declared that the Government was dropping the two proposals as it would cost much more than originally expected.

Rathnayake, a JVP ideologue who is also the Leader of the House in Parliament, did not say if the Government would undertake whatever development that was possible with the available funds or was dropping the two projects in their entity. Nor did he say why the Government could not approach New Delhi for increasing the funding, given whatever new realities that Colombo might have encountered while working on details.

Top source

This is only one of the many India-funded projects – the rest of them are in the multi-ethnic East, or whichever region Colombo had chosen in the first place – and that is for a fact. The economy, Wickremesinghe as President before the incumbent, might have been arrested from tanking so very completely, but that was only a beginning to recoup. It would take a long, long time even by normal standards.

And you now have such Governmental approaches to development that come with job and revenue-creation, which should be the main concern of any dispensation that is serious about economic revival and political survival. That does not seem to be the case.

First and foremost, tourism, along with inward remittances, continue to be the mainstays of the nation's economy. Leave aside the governmental assistance that New Delhi (alone) is still willing to cough up, even without asking, India is also the top source of tourists in the country.

Maybe, Indians are not your top-of-the-shelf, high-spending western tourists, but they make up for it in a way through the numbers. Whatever the reason and justification, the sole international airport at Kattanayake, outside Colombo, is unable to handle the numbers.

According to media reports, the Government has substantially scaled down the number of tourist-arrivals this year, mainly because Kattanayake is unable to handle the number, tour operators from the West are bugged and they act accordingly. They have no commitment to assisting in Sri Lanka's economic revival, like, say, the Indian neighbour has.

One family

The Indian reasons are acceptable. First, it is the cultural integration of all South Asian nations, otherwise known as the Indian sub-continent. What Prime Minister Narendra Modi calls, 'Vasudeva Kudumbagam'. Ask your Tamil friend, if you have one, he will tell you the equally ancient phrase in the language: 'Yaadhum Oore, Yavarum Kelir.' Both translate as the 'World is one family.'

So, when India helped out Sri Lanka in the face of the impending economic crisis, with the present and future in mind, it owed not to any strategic calculations but to the basic goodness of heart that belongs to us all, South Asians. If you care to recall, the then Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla came calling with project-funding even before the Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime was willing to accept that the Sri Lankan economy, especially dollar-reserves, were hitting the rock bottom, and you will know the rest.

Also recall how India became the only country in the world to help out all nations with Covid vaccines and the rest, and you will understand the rest. China supposedly caused the pandemic and the West, or nations like the US, which did develop the vaccine, would not share. India's 'Vaccine Maitri' or 'Friend' was the only source.

It's easy to argue that it was a part of what in modern-day strategic terms is accepted as 'soft-power'. Granting that it's so, positive outcomes of such soft-power peddling comes only at the end of it all – and is unpredictable. It thus happens because you can help, you alone can help, and you alone are large-hearted to help. It is inherent to a civilisation. Full-stop.

Jobs, family incomes

In this particular case, it is understandable that the likes of JVP ideologue that Minister Bimal Rathnayake is, is doing it in a more sophisticated way than while in the Opposition. Such statements will be proved wrong, if and only if, they act otherwise, with the larger good of the country in mind.

The plain question is if taking India funding, more and more, as may be required in this instance, going to improve the nation's economy or not. If not, what other source of forex investments and development-funding that the Government has in mind?

Soon, as Finance Minister, President Dissanayake is going to present his second Budget. How is he going to be different this time than last year, which was a hurried job, after all? How is he going to be different from all his predecessors, whom his JVP-NPP has blamed for the state of the nation's economy before coming to power?

The Palali-KKS development projects will bring more tourists and goods into the country, maybe only from India, initially. That would improve jobs and family incomes in the North first, but also all along the route to Colombo and beyond, by and by.

After all, Indian tourists are also coming to India, not only to visit the North or the Nallur Kovil and the like. By providing them with an option, which also has cultural links that at least some of them can relate to, makes the difference. Not opening 'gay clubs' elsewhere in the country, as this Government is said to be forward-looking in ways not thus far understood and acceptable to the larger sections of the Sri Lankan / Sinhala society.

Taste of the pudding

The taste of the pudding is in the eating. And it is political. If the Government cannot increase wages and incomes for employees in the public and private sector, as the JVP was always expected to do, if the Government cannot lower power-tariffs, duties and taxes because that is IMF' sole prescription and the rulers actually do not have the kind of alternative they made the people believe that they (alone) had, then the straight way is to do what it takes to improve job-creation in and revenue-generation through the unorganised sector that tourism in the country is.

If someone up there still thinks that providing jobs and family incomes to the Tamils in the North would run down their image in the South, thus cut into their vote-banks, they are sadly mistaken. Their continued hanging to the IMF coat-tails has already done it for them.

There is nothing called the 'Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist vote-bank' after the JVP-NPP mainstreamed itself through majority votes coming from the middle-of-the-road Sinhala voters, who cared, but who did not think hard enough when the JVP alternative automatically offered itself at the height of the post-Aragalaya socio-political wave. The wave has died down, but not the causes that stirred them.

Incumbent rulers should remember it, now and always.

(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: ...)

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