{"id":112433,"date":"2021-03-07T16:49:45","date_gmt":"2021-03-07T23:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=112433"},"modified":"2021-03-07T16:49:45","modified_gmt":"2021-03-07T23:49:45","slug":"the-general-election-of-1956-part-4c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/03\/07\/the-general-election-of-1956-part-4c\/","title":{"rendered":"THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1956 Part 4C"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Philip Gunewardene,\nwho was very sympathetic towards the farmers, introduced a Crop Insurance Scheme<\/strong> which benefited the farmers immensely. I am\nnot sure whether this insurance scheme is still operative, said Elmo de Silva\nin 2020 .  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip   prepared a Crop Insurance Bill in 1958. It\nwas necessary to protect the farmer from crop failure, through crop insurance. This would be tried out first in two pilot\nprojects, one where risk is high and one where risk is low. The pilot projects will not be experimental\nones, they will be fact finding. At\npresent we do not compensate when there is loss of crops. We wait till they are\ndestitute and then give relief. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip\nwas also deeply concerned with the plight of the farmer  when it came to selling his rice. The\nDepartment of Agricultural Marketing, handled the Guaranteed Price Scheme<\/strong> to buy paddy from farmers at a premium\nprice, recalled Garvin Karunaratne. We were extremely strict to ensure that the\npremium price got to the real producer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip wanted\nto reduce the\npayment of Rs 12 for a bushel of paddy to Rs 10 with the remaining        2 paid in form of fertilizer. It was to\nbe retained by the Cooperative to make it easy for farmer to buy fertilizer and\nother agricultural supplies. There was opposition. CP de Silva was the\nstrongest opponent of the scheme. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Protests\nwere organized with the support of mudalalies of Polonnaruwa and Minneriya who\nbought the farmers paddy at Rs 8 or lower and who stood to lose. They brought\npeople in vans and cars from those areas and picked up some from Dematagoda,\nBambalapitiya and other places and organized a demonstration to defeat the\nproposal. Philip\u2019s Harbor and Dock workers Union met\nthe march and there was a free for all. Prime Minister got frightened,\nwhen he saw the demonstration and supported \n CP de Silva. Philip had to drop\nthe scheme, and a proposal that would have led to an increase in paddy\nyields was blocked, said Meegama. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nrural sector needed a body which would give them medium and long term credit.\nThere were no credit facilities available for the small traders either.  The two available banks, Agricultural and\nIndustrial Credit Corporation and the Cooperative Federal Bank did not help. Bank of Ceylon was not operating in rural\nSri Lanka, either. The main sources for\ncredit were the private loan agencies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip\nwanted to set up a Cooperative Credit\nBank<\/strong>, which would provide credit to the \u2018small man\u2019 in industry, trade or\nagriculture, as the existing commercial banks did not support him. The\nCooperative Credit Bank would grant loans to the rural sector, for financing\nsmall agricultural industries and businesses, and also give loans for building.\nIt would also act as a pawn broker.  The\nBank would have branches in the principal towns and rural centers. The plan was\nto open 100 branches in the first year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nBill had received the support of the Central Bank. Governor of the Central Bank\nArthur Ranasinghe had in a personal letter to Philip, praised the idea and\noffered the services of his staff to help the take over the Cooperative Federal\nBank into the new Bank. Amendments suggested by Central Bank were incorporated.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nCooperative Credit Bank Bill was put to the Cabinet in 1958.  It received the unanimous approval of\nCabinet. Then the Bill was opposed by Minister for Lands and Land development,\nCP de Silva and Minister of Finance, Stanley de Soyza. CP de Silva said they\nwould give Rs. 10 million to the Cooperative Federal Bank, instead.  Stanley de Soyza attacked the Bill when the\ndraft was published in Daily News<\/em>.  He protested that this Bank was to be set up\nunder its own Act, and would have the powers of a normal commercial bank, not a\ncooperative bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip\nexplained that the Cooperative Credit Bank which was a pioneer venture had to\nbe liquid if it was to provide credit into the rural sector. It had to first\nmake that money. \u2018We have combined the function of a commercial bank with the\nfunctions of a development bank. The commercial side was to earn the money and\nlending was to be done by the development side, he said. There are savings among the\nfarmers when the harvest is in and these could be banked.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Philip\nthought that foreign banking interests were behind the opposition. The Finance\nMinister is expected to   see that\nbanking facilities were provided to the rural sector. Instead he took the side\nof the foreign vested interests and opposed the setting up of this bank. SWRD took over the Bill from Philip, promising\nthat he would see it through. That did\nto happen.  Philip resigned from Cabinet\nand the Bill was forgotten. In any\ncase, a Cooperative Development Bank would have needed a strong Minister to\nsuccessfully implement it as there were powerful vested interests opposing such\nmeasures, observed Meegama. (Continued) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS Philip Gunewardene, who was very sympathetic towards the farmers, introduced a Crop Insurance Scheme which benefited the farmers immensely. I am not sure whether this insurance scheme is still operative, said Elmo de Silva in 2020 .  Philip   prepared a Crop Insurance Bill in 1958. It was necessary to protect the farmer from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}