By Garvin Karunaratne

President Trump is looking after the interests of the USA and mind you within months many industries will open up making what the USA did import. Once I owned a Roadtrek-Chevrolet campervan in the USA and clocked over 50,000 miles travel over hill and dale. It was a marvel, far better that the Benz 200 I drive today. Earlier, When I was a doctoral student at Michigan State I ran in a Delta 99 Oldsmobile, a great car and I am certain that the car giants in the USA will soon make better cars than the Benz.

Our new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is kindly requested to get going with opening up new ventures to make everything we import.

In the Fifth Century we built the Yodha Ela at a gradient of six inches in a mile- so miniscule a gradient that defies the irrigation engineers of today. In 1963, as the Assistant Commissioner of Agrarian Services in Anuradhapura I presided over the Irrigation water allocation meeting for over a hundred tanks from Kalaweva and to satisfy the farmers who never got water in time I suggested to put a concrete base  for the seventy mile long Yodha Ela. The District Irrigation Engineer admitted that they cannot lay such a base as the gradient was so miniscule- six inches in a mile, a gradient that the most sophisticated equipment today cannot lay.

That was the achievements of out ancient forefathers.

Get to today. We administrators were once charged with the task of creating production, alleviating poverty and we have real stories of what we did to tell-not fiction.

In the late Fifties the Department of Rural Development provided for small construction work everywhere. Every village had a Rural Development Society. These were manned by Rural Development Officers who know not what to do now.

Under the Paddy Lands Act we organized farmers into Cultivation Committees and did wonders in organizing paddy cultivation with certified seed, and fertlizer use.Farmers were organized into cultivation committees and paddy cultivation was done in an organized manner cooperatives providing fertlizer etc. We never gave farmers money to buy fertlizer as we now do. Instead the cooperatives were active and provided fertiliser. 

Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake  took charge of paddy production  in 1965 and got the Government Agents in the Districts to be in charge and Sri Lanka produced all the rice it needed. He was not satisfied with the Department of Agriculture reporting the yield of paddy. He ordered plots to be decided by random sampling and crop cuttings done by staff officers of other departments to be certain of the yield. I organized this in the Kegalla District in 1967 and 1968. Then, As the Additional Government Agent of the Kegalla District it was my task every Saturday and Sunday to to greet him at nine in the morning every Saturday and Sunday and accommpany him to a host of meetings and inspections in his electorate. There was no poverty and no one who had to live on two meals a day. On the other five days in the week I toured the other electorates and Yatiyantota was Dr NM’s electorate. All development programmes were concentrated on even  in the electorates of the opposition- Yatiyantota and Dehiovita.  We had definitely avoided poverty and deprivation then. Otherwise Dr NM would have raised the matter in Parliament and I would not know where to run.

Unfortunately things changed. With the abolition of the Pady Lands Act the Department of Agrarian Services was completely slashed. Cultivation committees ceased to exist. In 1980  the Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture boasted about paddy production and I asked for the crop cuttings done  by staff officers of other departments. Out came the answer that it was costly and done away with. In  about 1992 President Premadasa promoted all Agricultural Overseers- 2300 of them as Grama Niladharis and till today there are no agricultural overseers. Cultivators plough and cultivate as they like and the Governments have to import rice every year. All tanks in NuwaraKalaviya are ruined almost beyond repair.

Then, till 1978,  Sri Lanka was not a country in debt to anyone. Our forte was to fund what we can. We had development programmes that effectively alleviated poverty. But in 1978 at the instance of the IMF President Jayawardena abolished all those development programmes, confined the administrators to the barracks and today we are begging for dollars in the streets of the World. As a member of the Administrative Service, I was privy to play a role with Premier Dudley and also in the DDCP of Sirimavo, thus I speak of what we actually did, not learned surmises and projections on a chalk board.

In the days of Sirimavo we had the Divisional Development Councils Programme, directed by professor HAdeS Gunasekera, the most qualified economist of the day. It was really Dr NM Perera’s Programme. As he said in his 1970 Budget Speech it was to fullfill the aspirations of young men and women for whom life will loose all meaning unless they can find a useful place in our society”. Passing by his statue in Borella last year, I was sad that my driver did not know Dr N,M,I was myself neck deep involved with Dr N.M.implementing his great programme as the Government Agent at Matara

The Divisional Secretary at Kotmale, charged with creating employment and also making something useful , collected all the waste paper he could find, rolled up his sleeves and worked with the youth to wet and churn the waste paper, spread it out to dry and out came saleable paper and cardboard. President Jayawardena in 1978 put a stop to Kotmale Paper to please the IMF.

In the Youth Self Employment Programme I established in Bangladesh in the two years I worked there-1983-1984 we had to address hundreds of youths on training workshops and we provided the youths with lunch packets. The lunch came in cardboard packs and there were some youth entrepreneurs collecting the discarded cardboard covers and packing them– back at home their sustenance came from churning it to cardboard. Our Divisional Secretary at Kotmale was a great man to make paper out of waste paper. Let us find him and get going instead of wasting money for the imports of paper. I hope he is kicking and alive. I am sorry I do not know his name.

In the DDCP of the Sirimavo days as the GA at Matara I established the Matara Mechanized Boatyard that made seagoing fishery boats- some forty a year. That was a great industry fixed by me in some two months. My giants, the DivSec Ran Ariyadasa and his Development Assistant did that task within two months and our youths made 40 seaworthy boats a year, a feather in the DDCP cap. The boats were sold to fishery cooperatives and ran on the high seas bringing a catch of fish. Ran is no more but his work stands out as something that can be done fast. However President Jayawardena to please the IMF closed that Boatyard in 1978. Imagine what the trained youths thought when they were thrown into the heap of the unemployed. Mind you they were fully trained entrepreneurs.

I got sick of the Ministry of Plan Implementation that ran the DDCP as they failed to allow more industries for me to establish-and I took charge without their knowledge. I had a Planning Officer , Vetus Fernando a raw chemistry grad from the University of Colombo. One day I persuaded him to find the method of making crayons. Once I had worked as Deputy Director of Small Industries and had a background in running powerlooms, handlooms, ceramic and all sorts of industries. Then I authorized the purchase of a few items that were required and started experiments in the night at my Residency at Matara. We never got anywhere due to the lack of equipment. A science lab was needed and we sought the assistance of the Principal of Rahula College the leading secondary school. Mr Ariyawamsa readily agreed for our use of the science lab after school hours. Vetus aided by me- the GA, the AGA and Development Assistant Paliakkara, and the science teachers at Rahula  were at it experimenting every night from six to midnight. It went on for two months and the crayons made were really useless. Then Vetus sought the help of his professors at the University of Colombo, beseeching help on three days on bended knees and was chased away. We were not going to take that lying down and again undertook the daily experiments every night with vehement force. I was there every night. In around a month we did make a real crayon and I sat with Vitus experimenting again and again till the quality of our crayon was as good as Reeves, the best of the day.

We had won but how could we start an industry without money. Though I had money at the katcheri they were all tied up with rules that I could not vary. I was gazetted a Deputy Director of Cooperatives for the purpose of agriculture development. The Coops had money and it so happened that Sumanapala Dahanayake, the member of parliament was the President of the Morawaka Cooperatives. I summoned Sumane and showed him the crayon and he was ready to make it using cooperative funds if only I approved it. I was certain of his sincerity and ability. Though I had no authority I did approve it and Sumane got cracking. He and the Divisional Secretary at Morawaka found twenty unemployed youths, Sumane purchased the utensils and equipment and cleared two rooms at the  Morawaka Cooperatives and Vetus and five or six of us moved in to train the youths to make crayons. It had to be a dare devil job endless working 24 hours a day non stop as we had to be successful and all of us broke rest for two weeks making crayons. It was hand made and thus every crayon had to be handcrafted. In the second week labels were printed and packets of crayons filled two large rooms. All this was done with unauthorized cooperative funds and I had no business to set up an industry without Ministry approval. 

We got over that in a smart manner by tying in other Ministers. Sumane and I took the crayons we made and showed them to Mr Subasinghe the Minister for Industries. He was taken aback at the quality and agreed to open sales and with that we came into legitimacy. We faced the problem of having to purchase dyes in the open market at high cost and the Ministry of Industries said that their funds were not for cooperatives. We got to know when the Ministry for Imports was about to authorize the import of crayons and both of us moved in. We showed the crayons we made to the Controller of Imports Harry Guneratne and he was satisfied with the quality but he wanted us to obtain the approval of his master the Minister for Imports, Mr Illangaratne as such a cross allocation had never been done earlier. . Sumane and I met the Minister and the moment we showed him the crayons he started scribbling them on paper and testing the quality and shouted for the Controller of Imports to stop all imports and gave us a fat allocation of foreign exchange to import dyes. He had a hard look at me and said, I want you to set up a branch in Kolonnawa my electorate.” I gave him that assurance.

Coop Crayon, made crayons equal to the Crayola crayons of today. Sumane developed the sales to become islandwide. Coop crayon was very successful. It was easily the best industry that the DDCP ever made. Sumanapala excelled and developed the venture to have islandwide sales. But not for long- the Government changed and President Jayawardena won the elections. Coop Crayon was the best industry established in the DDCP and it had to get discredited. Sumane had to be sent to the gallows to discredit the industry so President Jayawardena hatched a masterplan . He summoned the Deputy Director of Cooperatives, N.T.Ariyaratne and entrusted to him the task of taking a posse of auditors to do a forensic audit of Coop Crayon. Ariyaratne when I met him in 1982 told me of this and that he had subjected all the books to an audit for four full days and found everything in order. Ariyaratne was not an officer to fabricate facts to put Sumane in the soup. Sumane was saved a stint in the gallows. But the IMF stepped in 1978 and decided that if Sri Lanka was to be given loans the government has to accept that the private sector was the engine of growth and all development work had to be stopped and the administrators who had manned all development departments had to be sent to the barracks. The IMF effectively ensured that all development activities were closed down

Since 1978, not a single industry was approved and all development activities were stopped and this stoppage continues to today- that is the barrier we have to surmount to create production and alleviate poverty within us.

I got sick of doing little work and decided to proceed to the UK to do further studies and sent in papers for retirement. I was entitled to retire but Minister Felix Dias decided that circular 28 should have retrospective effect. I lost my pension and resigned.

That ended my development tasks in Sri Lanka. I bagged the M Ed in Community Development from the University of Manchester and the Ph.D. from Michigan State in Non Formal Education & Agricultural Economics. I moved to the UK and the Bahamas and to Edinburgh, when Bangladesh somehow wanted me for Youth Development and the Military Government that took over the country when I was there was determined to close youth development altogether. Identifying me as a foreigner, Minister Aminul Islam, the Air Vice Marshal ordered me: What can you do for Bangladesh.”

I replied: ‘You should approve a new programme to create employment for the youth, the unemployed who have to scrape the barrel for life.”

The Secretary to the Treasury, the highest officer in the land, objected: The ILO tried hard to create employment on a special programme for three long years at Tangail, Bangladesh, bringing experts from all over the World, but miserably failed. The Treasury had to face a huge loss. We cannot face a loss again.”

I do not need funds. All I need is the approval to start and approval to divert approved funds for training workshops”

“The ILO are the experts and they did fail. You are talking nonsense. ” 

The battle between me and the Secretary to the Treasury took over two long hours and the Minister Aminul Islam who was patiently listening got sick of our arguments and stopped our battle. He ordered: I approve a new Self Employment Programme for the Youth”.

We got cracking the very next day-training officers in economics and guiding youths in a manner where they became self reliant. That was economics and non formal education in action . I worked pell mell for seventeen months- over fifteen hours everyday including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays and trained the staff including members of the elite BCS-( Bangladesh Civil Service).  In 2023 the Ministry of Youth Development reported that total self employment created since inception  was 2,782,000 youths.(Activities of the Department of Youth Development, 2023)

It is an ongoing programme that can be seen by anyone interested.

  Even our High Commissioner Milinda Moragoda when he came forward as a candidate for the mayorship of Colombo in 2011 in his Manifesto stated that if elected he would seek to implement the Youth Self Employment Programme of Bangladesh which incidentally was an amazingly successful scheme introduced to that country by a distinguished son of Sri Lanka, Dr Garvin Karunaratne who served in Bangladesh as an international consultant.”(The Nation 11/9/2011)

Since 1978, the biggest industry one can find in Colombo is the collection of waste cardboard- we ship some 8000 tonnes to India every month and collect a few coppers and buy the cardboard that India makes out of it paying fat dollars. Mind you we have been doing it for the past four decades. We do deserve to be called lunatics for doing this for forty five long years from 1978 to today. I saw a lorry being loaded with used cardboard in February 2025. That is the prosperity that President Jayawardena brought to us and mind you we should call it a day even now.

It is sad that today, we do not have even a Central Bank of our own- the IMF hijacked our Central Bank and now we are on bended knees begging for dollars. Till 1977 we managed with our finances. Since 1978 we closed all development tasks and allowed the rich to spend foreign currency travelling to the galore and educating their children abroad and borrowed dollars- which we do even till today. Now our foreign debt is well over $ 100 billion.

It is upto us to change, develop employment creation programmes once again to make everything we import. We did it once and  it can be done again.

Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D. Michigan State University

former GA Matara 1971-73

garvin_karunaratne@hotmail.com 10052025