KAMALIKA PIERIS

Premadasa carried out two highly publicized programmes Gam Udawa and Jana Saviya. The Janasaviya Poverty Alleviation Programme was inaugurated in October 1989 and soon became a lead program of Premadasa’s government.  

In 1990, a $100 million Janasaviya trust fund (JTF) was launched with World Bank assistance, to support a five-year Janasaviya programme. The International Development Association, (IDA) an affiliate of the World Bank agreed to give a long-term concessionary loan of 3.2 billion rupees ($95.5 million) to the JTF. Sri Lanka would contribute 800 million rupees over the next five years.  

The aim of Janasaviya was to transform impoverished households into well off ones, through a controlled set of handouts which included credit entitlements as well as cash and subsistence gratns.   There was a Janasaviya Commissioner and a special Ministerial Steering Committee, with seven working committees under it, for Janasaviya.

The Janasaviya recipients were selected from those who were receiving food stamps. 189,088 families   were selected from the 225,000 who were on the food stamps.Each   family was paid 2,500 rupees per month, for 24 months, but each family had to do 24 days of labor per month or engage in some other   approved activity. Some families had dropped out at this point.

Rs. 1042 went to a compulsory savings account and the 25,000 rupees accumulating at the end of the 24 month period from this had to be used for an income generating activity. The balance 1,458 rupees were issued as a coupon with two separate payments, for rupees 1,000 and Rupees 458. The rupees 1,000 was to be used to buy goods from the Janasaviya basket of goods available at the local co-operative stores. 

The Janasaviya Programme was administered by 5 tiered committees, each committee reporting to the one above. The committees were the Hamlet Level Task Force, Divisional Coordinating Sub-committee, District Coordinating Sub-committee, Provincial Coordinating Sub-committee and National Coordinating Committee.

The first of these was the Hamlet level Task force.  The Island was divided into 30,000 hamlets of around 150 families each. Each hamlet had a five-member task force led by the Grama Sevaka. The other four members were selected by the community. One had to be a woman.

This task force was expected to guide the Janasaviya families towards productive work. It would provide counseling, training, supervision, equipment necessary for the income generating activity. This task force was also expected to find suitable markets for the Hamlet goods. This grass level task force reported to the committee above it.

The Grama Sevaka also had a Sahayaka Kandayama which included village elders, local business men and government officers such as Agricultural Project Officers, teachers and Public Health Midwives.

The other four committees   were composed of government officials and others, led by GA and AGA. . These committees decided what income generating projects were to be followed in each hamlet. They also organized village fairs, set up sales centers, and at the highest level, coordinated with Export Development Board and export-oriented private sector organizations to obtain markets for the goods produced in the hamlets.

 The government also provided training for the Hamlet Task Force, which totaled 150,000 persons. They were trained at distirct level by 75 handpicked master trainers. They in turn trained 1,350 divisional-level trainers. These 1,350 in turn trained the 150,000 support team. The AGAs were also trained. The training programme included three modules.  The first was on propagating the underlying goals and aspirations of the Janasaviya Programme.

Critics observed that there were too many committees, as well as an expanding bureaucracy in Janasaviya. This would lead to duplication of effort and delays making the Programme expensive to run.

There is no information as to the success of the Janasaviya movement. Biographers are silent about Janasaviya. However Norwegian researcher K. Stokke, writing in 1995, said that the Janasaviya Poverty Alleviation Programme enjoyed widespread support within and outside Sri Lanka , but it has been rapidly dismantled.

 Lakshman Watawala has described another activity connected to Janasaviya. Under Janasaviya the two state banks, Bank of Ceylon and Peoples Bank gave loans to the rural sector for sums between Rs. 5,000 and 25,000, without security .They gave a variety of loans, self-employment loans to youth, agricultural loans, start up loans, tiny sector loans, athamaru loans, Janasaviya loans, and also assisted the cooperatives and the cooperative rural banks.

A category known as Praja Naya Niyamakas (PNN)   were created as   intermediaries for these bank loans.  Peoples Bank and Bank of Ceylon gave them loans between Rs. 50,000 to 100,000 at normal interest rates on provision of security. PNNs were to use this to provide the hamlet   with small loans ranging from Rs 500 to Rs 10,000 for micro projects. They were to lend at rates of 3 to 4% per month which was very much lower than the rates charged by money lenders.  By going to the PNNs, villagers were able to avoid going to banks and fill lengthy forms. They could instead go to these agency banks to obtain loans. (Continued)