Garden Agro-Engineering: Emerging Stronger After COVID-19
Posted on November 25th, 2020

By Dr. C. G. Ilangakoon Courtesy Ceylon Today

It was with absolute pride and delight, the voters of Sri Lanka as a whole watched the address to the Nation, delivered by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on 18 November 2020, certainly to the exclusion of few political hypocrites of opportunism, rejected by the people. He articulated the following contents very much assertively: It is no secret that the majority who voted for me then were Sinhalese. 

Garden Agro-Engineering: Emerging Stronger After COVID-19

They rallied because they had legitimate fears that the Sinhala race, our religion, national resources and the heritage would be threatened with destruction in the face of various local and foreign forces and ideologies that support separatism, (religious) extremism and terrorism. The main appeal made by the people to me was to, Protect the Country”. When assigning subjects to Ministries, special attention was paid to several sectors related to agriculture, plantation, fisheries industry, traditional industries and promoting self-employment opportunities as these sectors affect the majority of the people in the country”  (https://www.president.gov.lk/).

Eight Central Components

The conscious unity of the voters set the end to the head-nodding, neck-bending and the kneeling down cult of the west. The disgraceful era of the original majority community of Sri Lanka, living as refugees in their own motherland has come to an end. The finger pointing of communal terrorists to the political leaders, elected by the voters has been passed in to oblivion. Insulting war heroes by religious” racists, on the stage of official ceremonies, graced by Ambassadors of Foreign Missions, are already stories of the past.  

Stability and peace has been established by the Rajapaksa regime. Yet, along with the world, the land is being mercilessly tortured by the COVID-19 crisis. Now the prosperity vision of the SLPP, in the face of the endemic, is in a terrific imbroglio. In an atmosphere, wherein, one person is compelled to hygienically doubt the one in front of him, no development vision is possible to be commissioned. The macro and mega projects, at present, seem impractical and the best country-suited modus operandi, to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis, appears to espouse simple strategies, our ancient ancestors of Heladiva Sinhala-Buddhist Civilisation compassionately taught. In such a context, there is couple of central components, in the void of which, any macro and mega development dynamism is diminished to the nullity of zero.

 They are: (1) food (2) clean water (3) clothes (4) shelter (5) uncontaminated atmosphere (6) medicine (7) electricity and (8) the forest. This country was rich enough in the said eight constituents,   with no scientific instruction of so-called international community. Our medicine had been based on the fauna and flora-enriched Ayurvedic science.

Therefore, the attention of the President in respect of the agricultural sector, must be grounded, for the most part, on the strategy and its simplicity, as elucidated by the tradition of our Sinhala Buddhist ancestors, certainly, blending with cybernetics and where appropriate, with partial high-tech manufacturing. What is the point of constructing the loftiest tower in South Asia, if the frustrated starving small children of the land are stirring up the dustbins, kept outside, to find leftover food, with tears dripping down from their innocent eyes?   

This precisely is where, the Garden Agro-Engineering Vision of the SLPP founder, Basil Rajapaksa, flexes its muscle, to serve, as the best means to bloom stronger above and beyond the COVID-19 crisis. The depth of the strategy is deposited in its inseparable connection with the above stipulated eight pivotal components. Particularly with the Ayurvedic science, written by the greatest King Ravana 5000 years back. The Ayurvedic science has no pharmaceutical mafia, to administer medicines to be taken, till the end of once own life. It has no commercial destination to make monetary profits. Its profit is not money, but the health of the patient. It is very sad the Media is not giving the due coverage and publicity to the Garden Agro-engineering dynamism. It is the duty of the Media to make people conscious: 

(1) of the project (2) its dimensions (3) possible diversifications (4) its fruitfulness (5) of the independence of self-sufficiency it can produce (6) the vast space for the improvement of health and many more. The Garden Agro-engineering Vision is the foundation for a healthy nation and happy family.

Rajapaksa Popularity 

The project proliferation and the state of independence and self-sufficiency it will bestow, would strengthen the power base of the SLPP

 The UNP became unpopular by reason of introducing the unbridled free market economy to Sri Lanka, though, at the initial stage, it was welcomed by many, by virtue of the ignorance of political economy. The culture of importing everything began and the cult of obsession to admire imported commodities could set its roots in the soil of the domain of consumption. The importing agencies began to mushroom and they produced profits, while destroying the traditionally well established strategy of agriculture and the conception of prosperity, based on independence and self-sufficiency. 

The voters of this country now are well aware of this free market deception and the destruction it produced and continuing to produce. Hence, the Garden Agro-engineering, finally is the dream of the people, which, the Presidential Prosperity Production Task Force Chairman, Basil Rajapaksa has burdened himself to fulfil, as a farsighted mission for the culmination of the aspirations of voters. His timing is also intelligent. The COVID-19 has made the Basil Rajapaksa vision an inevitable imperative. Only fools or those, who take pleasure in betraying the Motherland, can oppose the project. Hence, it is the pressing duty of the present government not to concede in to the fake and deceptive homilies of UNP-supporting bureaucracy and to not allow them to take the upper hand and structure a strong network of conscious observation and also a second network to supervise and oversee the first network of observation, setting them against each other.

Besides, in order to emerge stronger, it is also vital to rightly comprehend the geopolitical rivalry-based global endemic circumstances and put them in to right use to produce prosperity profits for Sri Lanka as a whole.

Investment Opportunism

There are signs that some super powers are using the economic chaos of the pandemic, to go on a global shopping spree, for new businesses and investments.  This strategy of investment opportunism comprises a terrific relevance in relation to third world countries, enriched with geo-domains, conducive to super-power zonal military hegemony agendas.   They come with various proposals of bilateral and multilateral agreements, which virtually structure international instruments, creating territorial spaces in the land of the treaty partners, whose domestic jurisdiction is not valid and inoperative in the orbit of the territorial unit, which is subjected to the regulation of the normative contents of the covenant to be concluded. 

At times, they also stagger to the extent of bribing the developing countries, by means of extending colossal financial grants, conditioned by investor-friendly bias clauses, formulated to profit only the investor. Now, the post-pandemic development plan of the present government must well digest this pandemic-abused investment opportunism, which would inflict infraction against the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Sri Lanka. This will politically be very much dangerous, since, the absolute majority of the voters are against such agreements, which may produce a constitutional crisis in the land and involve the Motherland in totally unnecessary super power geo-political games. 

The pandemic is a multi-faceted phenomenon. The first priority, subsequent to the pandemic crushing, is to build up domestic enterprise and then to acquire the totally beaten-down firms to be revitalised with the help of the government. On the flip-side, the commercial realm is desperate for credit, since, to revive the collapsed business, the entrepreneurs have to undergo a difficult post-COVID-19 period, with diminished purchasing capacity of the consumers. 

Exploiting Super Power Contradictions

On the global level what can be predicted is the supply-chain vulnerabilities, being spotlighted by the crisis. This will accelerate the decoupling process already under way, particularly, between the U.S. and China. As the White House Administration has piled sanctions on China, U.S. companies are attempting to shift their supply chains for goods and services to other Asian countries, to avoid exposure to tariffs. The shock of COVID-19 may bring Sri Lanka closer to the moment, when Washington and Beijing represent separate, opposing poles of economic influence – especially as the Washington Administration casts China in hostile terms. 

The United States has described the COVID-19 pandemic as the worst attack” ever on the U.S., eclipsing even Pearl Harbour and 9/11 Islam terrorist attack, and has pushed the so-far unsubstantiated theory that COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory. In recent weeks, the White House and Labour Department have directed the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which controls federal retirement funds, to stop investing in Chinese companies. According to Consumer News and Business channel” (CNBC), the British officials have accused Chinese hackers of trying to steal research into COVID-19 vaccines. Several Republican Senators introduced a bill that would allow Washington to sanction China for refusing to cooperate with investigations into the virus’s origins. Thus, the super power geopolitical rivalry seems to have created a favourable space for Sri Lanka to make the best use of these contradictions to profit the country, particularly, where lop-sided international instruments are proposed to be concluded.

About the writer:

Dr. Gamini Ilangakoon is a Lawyer, specialising in International Treaty Laws

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