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A Sunday newspaper in Sinhala that is available in the stalls on Friday, carried an article by a well known Political Scientist in Sri Lanka on the failure of the government machinery in relief work connected with those displaced by tsunami. He made a vane attempt to show that the government machinery has failed due to the unitary character of the state! This Political Scientist who has a degree of Doctor of Philosophy from a university in the United States of America in Political Science teaches the same in what is sometimes known as a leading university in the country. It was clear to me that the Political Scientist was trying to fish in tsunami waters.
It is true that the government machinery is not working efficiently. However, it has nothing to with the unitary character of the state. The legislation and administration are not the same as any student who has done civics up to G. C. E. (O/L) or S.S.C. in the good old days would tell. The administration structure can be centrally organised even in a federal state and in certain unitary states the administration could be decentralised. The eksesath rajya that the Sinhalas had in the past is a good example for a unitary state with a decentralised administration. India which has a quasi federal state has a centralised administration structure. We have already explained the reasons as to why the Sinhalas opted for a decentralised administration within a unitary state, and how the Sinhalas resented the centralised administrative imposed by the British.
I was also astonished to see a well known scribe trying to say that the British civil service and the associated administrative structure were not very oppressive in sri Lanka as we had the good fortune of being served by some scholars who came as administrators. Just because there were a few administrators who could be identified as "scholars" the general administration did not become less oppressive than in the other countries of the British empire. I wonder how the scribe came to the conclusion that the other countries were not served by British "scholars". Even in "The village in the jungle", a book written by, I suppose, a scholar, the oppressive nature of the British administration is described. Most of the Sri Lankans who joined the civil service could be described as "educated" and "brilliant", even if some of them did not get an opportunity to become "scholars", but there was very little, if at all they could do to make the centralised administration less oppressive.
It was the Sinhalas who resented most the centralised British administration and after independence they thought that it would be replaced by a decentralised and people oriented, and less rigid administration they were used to in the pre colonial days, however within the unitary state. The governments that came to power did very little in this direction, and finally the people had to look up to the politicians who ironically, as we have noted, were also produced by the British. Thus the politicising of the civil as well as the police administration began. Instead of establishing an administration that had roots in the culture and the history of the country, the politicians interfered with everything in the administration from transfers to admission of school children to schools, and even allocation of beds to patients in the hospitals.
What has to be remembered is that it was the administration itself, that did not know the culture of the country, which contributed towards its politicising. The inefficiency of the present administration is not linked to the unitary state as Britain would testify even today. In any event the administration in our country, though oppressive, functioned efficiently during the British period when the country did not have a non unitary state. The Political Scientist mentioned above is not consistent, and neither is the scribe. It is clear that the Political Scientist is only interested in his pet project of devolution of power.
The very same newspaper has criticised the Sri Lankan scientists at various institutes "equipped" with certain "pointer readers" as Ernest Mach would have described them, for not giving prior warnings of tsunami. In fact the President of Maldives himself had wanted to find out why Sri Lanka did not inform them of the tsunami after it struck the shores of Sri Lanka. There are many others who criticise the Sri Lankan scientists for not informing the public in advance of the disaster. What these critics do not realise is that in the countries in the region, including India, the pattern was the same. No body was prepared for tsunami. Even after the other countries were hit by tsunami, it is clear that they would not have thought of informing the others as they would not have known what a tsunami was in practice. The Maldivians may be worried as to why Sri Lanka did not inform them of the disaster in advance, but they should not forget that even after the eastern coast of Sri Lanka was struck nobody thought of warning the people in the west coast of Sri Lanka let alone the people in Maldives.
There would have been in Sri Lanka before the twenty sixth of December (the imitators in Sri Lanka would get a satisfaction by using the notation 12/26, following 9/11) a few who had studied tsunami from text books (now of course each and every one of us is an expert on tsunami), but even they would not have had the experience of a tsunami. How many of them would have had the ability of predicting a tsunami after reading the Richter scale? Even if the tsunami had been predicted, without prior drills or experience, could we have been successful in requesting the people living close to the sea to go interior with or without their property? It is easier to be wise after the event and blame the scientists and others for their "negligence".
However, what these critics do not realise is that the western system of knowledge, in this case in the form of western science and methods of communication, collapsed during the three or four hours on that Poya day, or shall we say the boxing day though the only boxing we know is what takes place inside a ring. The local "scientists" who have no first hand knowledge of these phenomena have to depend on the internet and text books for their knowledge. Though we call ourselves scientists and mathematicians, in general, our contribution to fundamental knowledge in these fields is zero. We may have obtained our postgraduate degrees by solving a problem in the periphery but I wonder whether that makes us (western) scientists or mathematicians. Of course, it is a problem of definition, and very often the westerners come out with definitions that would inflate our egos. Tsunamis may be global phenomena but protection from and prediction of tsunamis have to be local. The animals protected themselves without the internet and the Hawaii information network thanks to their "local" knowledge. Unlike the animals we depend too much on the western knowledge having lost our "local" or "indigenous" knowledge.
In fact the use of words such as "local" and "indigenous" indicate how much we have been dictated by western knowledge. Most of us tend to consider western knowledge as THE KNOWLEDGE that is globally valid while others are valid locally geographically and/or historically. Thus we have been taught by the westerners to consider their knowledge, after all a knowledge that was created only during the last five hundred years or so in Europe and North America, as the global, nay, the universal knowledge, while our systems of knowledge are given the glorified titles "local", "indigenous", "traditional" etc. In fact University departments are created to study "traditional" knowledge while the other departments study THE KNOWLEDGE. The faculties of western medicine are called faculties of medicine, without qualifying them as western, while at the same time we have indigenous institutes of medicine. I myself belong to a so-called faculty of science that teaches only western science, though I make it a point to teach my students some of our knowledge. (Once upon a time a vice chancellor wanted to find out why I taught "Jathika Chinthanya" to a captive audience!).
We have been stressing for sometime the danger of depending only on one system of knowledge but very few people listened to us. Tsunami has shown that if we had retained our systems of knowledge we could have minimised the damage. We have no knowledge on the behaviour of the animals and we have been trained to laugh at our knowledge on animals. It is said that the king Kavantissa could communicate with the crows. Whether the king talked with the crows or not what this means is that those days there were even kings who could understand the behaviour of animals. If there were kings with that ability there would have been many others who could understand the animals.
There is a saying among the Sinhalas, I am sure the Tamils also have such knowledge, "hoona kiyanna wage" (as the gecko says). The animals have a way of communicating. or may be expressing something that they sense, and it may be that some Sinhalas who had studied these aspects could understand what the gecko was trying to say. This knowledge was lost probably during the "Kandyan" period and after that it was degenerated to believing that whenever a gecko made a noise disaster was impending. I know that I am only speculating but it is time that we studied the behaviour of the animals with the same eagerness that we study the readings of the man made instruments. In general we should study our systems of knowledge (not indigenous or traditional knowledge), and try to create new knowledge in these fields. This does not mean that we should neglect western systems of knowledge but we should be able to develop our systems by creating new knowledge as well as by absorbing western knowledge to our systems.
It is also time to think whether we live in areas suitable for dwelling. We live in a Colombo centered Sri Lanka and all roads including Gale Road lead to the "gendagam polowa" (the land of Sulphur). The British called the Raja Rata the dry zone and we have a tendency to degrade those areas when it comes to living. We live in the coastal belt and the hill country with the tea plantations and the massive dams to contain a large water mass that will lead to the next big disaster in time to come. It is true that the Sinhala kings had to leave Raja Rata because of invasions from South India. However, India is not likely to invade Sri Lanka in the near future and as many people have suggested on many occasions we should be thinking of going back to the so called dry zone which is our "Jaya Bima", leaving the "gendagam polowa".
Professor Nalin de Silva
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