Sri Lanka has always been special to me. It was the first foreign country I ever visited as a wide eyed sea cadet in 1974. Memories of my first shore leave at the port of Colombo include smiling, soft spoken people and clean, pristine surroundings. Watching the sun in the distance dip into the sea off the Galle Face Hotel, I’d thought at the time that no sight could be more beautiful. There were many such port calls at Colombo during my sea career. Sri Lanka also became a favourite family holiday destination for its beautiful beach resorts. And the smiling, soft spoken people remained as they’d always been. My brother shifted there 4 years ago, and I’d been meaning to visit him. But somehow that never took place. And now, it probably never will.
What the hell went wrong in Sri Lanka? One hadn’t really kept track of the goings on there, and it came as a rude shock over the past 3~4 months that there was trouble in Paradise. As a tourist or a visitor, one had never felt any such tremors.
Let’s go back a bit in history to understand what went wrong. The trouble has always been there on the boil, actually. After getting its independence from the British in February 1948, Ceylon formed its own government as per British convention, much like we in India did, with a Prime Minister and his cabinet. The figurehead president came much later in 1972, when Ceylon became the Republic of Sri Lanka. The ruling elite after independence consisted of English-educated Westernized people, far removed from the Sinhalese and Tamil-educated masses. Thus there grew a gulf between the ruling and the ruled.
By 1955, a new Sinhalese nationalism was unleashed. In the 1956 elections the ruling party that came to power—SLFP—made Sinhalese the sole official language and took measures to provide state support to Buddhism and Sinhalese culture, ignoring others. The minorities—Tamil Hindus, Muslims, Christians—all felt alienated. The language policy was bitterly opposed by the Tamils. Educational policies angered the small but influential Christian community. In 1959 Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the first woman in the world to hold the office of Prime Minister (PM), and she continued to support Sinhalese nationalism.
A new Constitution was introduced by PM J.R. Jayawardene in 1978, giving the President new executive powers as head of government. That same year he was elected the first President (!) under the new constitution. Sri Lanka then witnessed the passing of a series of policies conceived in bad faith, which progressively disenfranchised over a million plantation labourers of Indian origin, lowered the status of the Tamil language, made Tamils second-class citizens and declared Buddhism the state religion. Political unrest grew and escalated in the 1980s as groups representing the Tamil minority moved toward organized insurgency. Tamil bases were built up in jungle areas of the northern and eastern parts of the island. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)—popularly known as the Tamil Tigers—was the strongest of the militant organizations formed.
The Sri Lankan government responded to the unrest by deploying forces to the north and east and a civil war ensued. The eruption of insurgency inflamed communal passions. In July 1983 there were extensive organized anti-Tamil riots in Colombo and elsewhere. Sinhalese mobs, often with state support, systematically attacked Tamils and destroyed Tamil property, and the riots forced Tamil refugees to move within the island to strongholds in the northeast and from Sri Lanka to Tamil Nadu, India.
Guerrilla warfare continued between the LTTE and the army for years. In 2005 powerful politician Mahinda Rajapaksa, known for his strong stance against the LTTE, was elected President. Over the following years, Government troops advanced into LTTE-controlled territory, cornering the remnants of the rebel fighters along the northeast coast. The army launched a final offensive in May 2009 and succeeded in occupying the rebels’ last stronghold. Their leaders (including founder Vellupillai Prabhakaran) were killed during the operation, and the LTTE effectively ceased to exist as an organization. Over 70,000 Tamils are known to have been killed during this entire period of the civil war, with tens of thousands displaced by the fighting.
The government’s victory over the LTTE went down very well with the country’s Sinhalese voters, and Mahinda Rajapaksa won a second term. His administration, however, became increasingly associated with strong-arm tactics and other repressive measures against political opponents and various forms of dissent, as he centralized greater power with himself and his family members. In addition, relations with Western countries got strained over allegations of human rights abuses and the government’s refusal to allow independent investigations into the genocide of Tamils.
It appears that the Govt did nothing to protect the 7% Christian population, 9% Muslims and 12% Tamil Hindus from Sinhalese mobs and police thereafter, as sporadic incidents of violence continued. Then came the Easter bombings. On April 21, 2019—Easter morning—eight explosions occurred in the vicinity of churches and hotels, leaving hundreds dead and hundreds more wounded. Many foreigners were killed. The beautiful island nation’s image was tarnished internationally. In the days that followed, ISIS claimed responsibility, though the waning organization offered no evidence of its direct involvement. In April 2021, the government banned the burqa.
Besides supporting communal discord, the Govt made economic blunders as well. Around the same time, making a quick decision without thinking of the consequences, the government banned import of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, leaving 2 million farmers in the doldrums. Why? They decided that the way forward was to use organic fertiliser. (Organic fertiliser is good for the soil but produces slow results, maybe in 15 to 20 years. What about agricultural production during the interim period?) But the country did not have enough organic fertiliser, and the demand was enormous. So what did they do? They bought 70 million usd of organic fertiliser from China. This fertiliser somehow got infected and forests of trees and plants rotted to death. Now the country’s trade has always hinged on its export of three agricultural products—tea, rubber and coconuts. But the production of these commodities was ruined, along with that of basic staple crops. As a result, the once self dependent nation had nothing to export and even began to import rice and wheat to feed its people, increasing its expenditure.
Sri Lanka has always depended on its tourism for a significant chunk of its revenue. But along with agriculture, tourism too declined. Not just for the bombings; COVID was the final nail in its coffin, with flight bans and lockdowns. A rapidly increasing population and the free import of consumer goods swiftly ate into earnings from foreign trade. The coffers emptied out.
In another hasty decision earlier in 2020, the Govt declared heavy tax cuts, hoping that it would attract foreign companies to come and invest. But no such luck; two months after that, COVID arrived instead and the world shut down. So finally the country was stuck with no tourists, no agriculture, no fuel, no money and no income from taxes! There was a shortage of everything. A shortage of paper caused two newspapers to shut down their offices. Exams for students got cancelled. With no money to buy coal or fuel, and hydro electricity not enough, the nation began to suffer long arduous power cuts where electricity supply would be for just 2 hours a day. (Even my Gurgaon would be Paradise in comparison!) With exhausted supplies, the costs of basic amenities shot up to unacceptable levels. Sri Lanka began to import almost everything on borrowed money, including essentials like medicines. With no money to import petrol, the demand caused the petrol prices to shoot up. Queues formed outside gas stations. With the rise in prices of petrol and diesel, transportation costs rose, as is wont to happen—railway fares, flights, taxis, public transportation…. The country is now broke.
So that is what went wrong in Sri Lanka. In April this year it went to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a 7 billion usd loan. If a country is approaching the IMF for a loan, it means it is on a ventilator, on its last legs. IMF gives loans for bailout packages when you're broke, on the condition that it will have a say in running the financial affairs of the country, and therefore is normally considered the last resort.
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is widely used as a reference for the health of national and global economies. (It is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a specific time period by a country—a country's economic output.) Any economist will tell you that a country’s Debt-to-GDP ratio should not be more than 20%. In other words, do not borrow more than what you can repay. Or do not borrow more than 20% of what you can possibly earn. If the ratio is 60%, alarm bells should ring loudly. Sri Lanka has borrowed so much that its Debt-to-GDP ratio is around 120%! This year it needs to pay back an instalment of 7.6 billion usd to Chinese banks and other lenders. But its current foreign exchange reserves are only 1.5 billion usd. What is it going to do?
Image Source: https://unsplash.com/@theeastlondonphotographer
You’ve read of the ongoing protests and violence in the streets, when the people decided they could not take it any more—the rising prices, the long power cuts, the shortage of food and medicines etc. Yes, the people went on a rampage from 15th March this year calling for the resignation of the President and PM, both of whom are brothers. PM Mahinda’s house got burned down, and the army was called. Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned hastily, though his younger brother Gotabaya is still there as President at the time of writing.
Who is responsible for this debacle? It is basically one family—the Rajapaksas. Till recently they had held all the key positions in the government, mismanaged everything over the last few years and brought this island nation to bankruptcy in just 30 months. A nation which has four brothers—ex-Army Colonel Gotabaya as the President, Mahinda as the Prime Minister, Basil as Finance Minister and Chamal as Irrigation Minister—not to mention Mahinda’s two sons Namal and Yoshitha as Sports Minister and Chief of Staff respectively, and Chamal’s two sons Shasheendra as Agriculture Minister and Shameendra as a former Director of Sri Lankan Airlines—how did a democracy allow so much power to go to just one family? And we in India complain about nepotism? As of now, all the family members have resigned from their posts, save Gotabaya, who is hanging on despite ongoing protests.
Is there a lesson to be learnt here? It all seems familiar, doesn’t it? Muscular nationalism, disdain for human rights, strong arm tactics against dissent, banning the burqa, rash decisions involving the economy, subjugating minorities, policies in bad faith targeting one community, incompetence, high inflation, language policy, rise in fuel prices, ….do you see a pattern? No further comment.
Sri Lanka has often been called The Teardrop of the Indian Ocean. Ironically, now it is no longer for its shape.
Beetashok Chatterjee is the author of ‘Driftwood’, a collection of stories about Life at Sea and ‘The People Tree’, another collection of stories about ordinary people with extraordinary experiences. A retired merchant ship’s captain by profession, this old sea dog lives in New Delhi with his memories of living more than 40 years on the waves.
His books are available on Amazon. Click here.
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