BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS

The major dream of Sri Lankans since the political independence from Western colonial rules has been to become a developed nation, which could deliver the prosperity to citizens of the country.  The evidence in the past indicates that the economic policy of monarchical reigns of the country was able to accomplish the expectations of people to a reasonable extent, as in history, the wants of people were limited to an arm’s length.   Sri Lankan society was aligned to a seclusion status, in which the expectations of people were bounded to basic needs.  The idea may be challenged by historians as the western theorems explained that past information would be irrelevant for making decisions for the future. It is an agreeable view, and the motivation of people is to revisiting the prosperity that had enjoyed in the past and might be an equal society without class differences. Peoples’ motivation is to go along with modernization despite the artificial misleading in modern society. 

Many archaeologists say that International trade and relations had been intact before the beginning of the Sinhala state.  The ethnic groups in the country also restricted to a few in the past, who did not demonstrate the desire of dividing the country with the support of foreign forces.  In such a background, Sinhala kings satisfied the anticipation of people, despite the minor opposition that remained against the style of ruling in history.

Historical evidence further confirms that Buddhism as the major religion of the country had been played a central and critical role to unite people and guided the political authority to formulate the right economic policies, justice in administration, cultural development, and advancement of civilization with a network of concrete social values.  The Buddhist philosophy focuses to control the desires of people, encouraged sharing the wealth, and looking after the poor people.  People in historical society were listening to religious guidance and attempted to develop religious principles in the day to day life of people.  The Buddhist philosophy effectively contributed to managing the country as a peaceful state and guided Sinhala kings to follow the ruling quality, which was called Dasa Raja Dharmaya”, which was a concept that equals to high-quality governance.

However, the peaceful political, economic, and cultural environment of Sri Lanka was challenged by Indian invaders, who attempted to destroy the economic, political, social, and cultural stability of the country.  The different kinds of invaders arrived from South Indian provinces and attempted to destroy Sri Lanka with a secret agenda, and they had vicious elements against Sinhala people and attempted to destabilize the country by economic, cultural, social, and religious destructions.  There was no historical evidence that the ruling governments at that time in India supported those invaders, but later especially after the independence in 1948, provides clear evidence that the Indian government directly involved in disturbing Sri Lanka’s administration creating the LTTE terrorist movement with the financial support from India.

As a result of Indian influences, the dream of people of Sri Lanka visibly blotted many occasions. The current challenge of the country is defeating the divisive attitudes of people intending to achieve the major dream of people.  To convert the dreams into a reality, Sri Lanka desperately needs broader support from the outside.  Sri Lanka where has a very small market inside and the quality of products and services of the country are needed to be tremendously improved to the international level with the support of the outside world. 

The current market conditions also indicate that Sri Lanka cannot be a strong industrial nation without exportable high-quality productions, but the country has a strong potential to be a nation with high-quality services such as real estate, financial, fuel supply, leisure, tourism, and many others. While this idea had in mind, the COVID pandemic emerged in 2019 that has forced to change the direction of economic activities, especially to promote a production base (Agriculture) with a higher volume and quality and maintain the above-mentioned services absorbing the external and internal socks with alternative strategies. At present, economic planners have the challenge to adjust the contributing ratio from different sectors of the economy while increasing production. 

After the 2015 Presidential and general elections, it seemed that India and Western nations failed to honestly help Sri Lanka as the way promised before the elections.  The West with India ignored the supports for realizing the dream of people and appeared that they were distancing from the promises. It should acknowledge that India extended short-term supports to deal with maintaining foreign exchange reserves (by a currency swap agreement). It needs to acknowledge that India also extends supports to Sri Lanka under the presidency of Mr.Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who requested a currency swap of $ 1.1 billion. It was widely published that India secretly influenced to defeat the Rajapaksa regime, which especially concerned about achieving development targets that associated with China to achieve the dream of people.

The presidential election in 2019 gave a clear message to the West that the secret strategy in 2015 would not last with and new president, Mr.Gotabaya Rajapaksa who is working with a clear understanding that how to deal with other countries and international forces. This point has been recently confirmed by the prime minister of India.

Current official economic statistics demonstrate that Sri Lanka’s economic achievements have transposed to a lower level with a strong influence of the corona pandemic. In 2015 the foreign forces targeted to defeat the Rajapaksa regime to break the association with China and during the yahapalana regime, the western countries have abandoned the country without supporting major economic projects such as Colombo Port City and Hambantota Port and other investment projects. It may have been the influence made by Singapore as the plan to construct Kra Cannel would negatively impact on the revenue flow of Singapore.  

The governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka during the yahapalana regime stated: when he observed that the west abandoned the country, Sri Lanka desperately need the support of China and the country is in a difficult situation to find large-scale investors, who can support getting out from current problems”. In fact, during the election period in 2015, the yahapalana advocates ruthlessly criticized China without knowing the truth about the economic strength of China and now they are gradually realizing the fact that China can honestly help Sri Lanka’s people to achieve the dream.

During the COVID crisis, it observed that many international issues against China manipulated by West, Sri Lanka as a small nation shall not be engaged in such pointless arguments and the role of the country is to concern with own issues some stupid guys in Sri Lanka, who doesn’t knowledge of protocol write rubbish in websites and people of the country are not responsible for minority stupidity and China knows the root cause for such foolishness.