{"id":114179,"date":"2021-05-11T16:01:15","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T23:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=114179"},"modified":"2021-05-11T16:01:15","modified_gmt":"2021-05-11T23:01:15","slug":"population-is-a-critical-factor-for-economic-development-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/05\/11\/population-is-a-critical-factor-for-economic-development-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"POPULATION IS A CRITICAL FACTOR FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN SRI LANKA"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Economic\ndevelopment has been talking since independence in 1948 focussing on various\nstrategies and at the school level, this topic was broadly discussed to educate\nthe young generation. Since early 1960, the government policy focused on a\nvariety of issues that affected economic development. There was a theoretical\nexplanation that the population grows geometrically despite the economy seems\nto be growing arithmetically. Many economists showed this situation using data\nrelated to the Philippines and government policymakers in Sri Lanka advised to\nproject a population control plan with the support of foreign countries. When\nlooked at the problems faced by large families at the rural level the\nimplementation of a population plan was an impressive idea despite minor talks\nagainst population control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nordic\ncountries assisted in implementing a population plan. However, cultural and\nreligious views were influenced contrary to the population plan, and some\nreligious leaders made open talks against the plan based on mythical views.    The\neconomic growth of Sri Lanka during the 1960s has recorded as lower than\npopulation growth and this nature of growth had considered as one of the major\nfactors that higher population growth for the economic backwardness of Sri\nLanka.  Alternatively, policymakers could\nhave to think about major constraints economic growth, most probably other\nfactors such as productivity, application of technology, investment and\nsavings, and other factors that would have contributed to lower economic growth\nwith a higher rate of population growth. The economic plan for five years\npresented in 1972 identifies a large gap between saving and investment, and the\nleftist politics of the government at that time was not concentrating on\nattracting investment to absorb increasing labor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nimport of labor from India for plantation business and as coolies for\ngovernment and private sector business offices contributed to change the\npopulation density, and in the 1950s the government tightened the immigration\nrules and associated with the policy of population control. In the late 1960s,\nthe concept of a small family is golden came into the mind of people as the\ngovernment promoted the idea, and the census of 1972 recorded a notable decline\nin population growth (The difference between birth rate and Death rate as a percentage).\nThe imported labor from India had been a factor for the increase and change\nstructure of population in many African and Pacific countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nwas recorded a 0.9% growth in 1971 that was affordable to Sri Lanka. Why\nquickly declined the population growth was not interpreted to public, but many\nimagined that the death of young people during the JVP insurrection contributed\nto the situation? In addition, the concept of small family golden has been\nworking in society.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ncensus after the JVP insurrection provided the best information for\npolicymakers of Sri Lanka that the population level of the country should be\nmaintained at the level of 1971. \nHonestly speaking, many people considered maintaining a lower rate of\npopulation growth was good for Sri Lanka, if Sri Lanka has been maintaining a\nlower level of population growth and increasing trend of GDP, and now Sri Lanka\nwould have achieved a developed nation status if economic development mainly\nfocused production and exports. At this analysis, we should not ignore the\nstructure of regulation and market strategies that negatively impacted the\ngrowth. The radical changes in economic strategies in 1978 were motivated by\nthe weakness of existing growth strategies.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nassumption is based on the point that if the population growth is lower rate\nwhile the gross domestic product has an increasing trend, the economic growth\nwould support to overcome many problems.  Sri Lanka needs an economic development model\ndespite unnecessarily mentioning or comparing to Singapore, where was contributed\ndifferent factors for economic development and growth. Many factors that\ncontributed to the development of Singapore are not relevant to Sri Lanka and\nthe regulatory culture in Sri Lanka has not been going with the development\npurposes, and they were associated with many others such as politics, market,\nregulation, incentives, culture, religions, and many others. This comparison of\nSri Lanka\u2019s development strategy with Singapore is a weak analysis and\npoliticians\u2019 popular point to mislead people.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\npopulation policymaking process has been badly influenced by the attitudes of\npeople.  Especially, we can see that\nracial attitudes of communities (Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim) influence the\npopulation policy, and many mythical beliefs and ethnical and racist attitudes\nattempted to influence the management of the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri\nLanka has small land areas and a lower population would be an incentive for\nrapid economic development and growth. \nThe current experience of exporting labor for overseas jobs indicates\nthat Sri Lanka\u2019s investment in health and education has gone to other countries\nthan Sri Lanka while Sri Lanka is looking for foreign Investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nuse of the population for the economic purpose of the country with a good\npopulation plan is the right policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY EDWARD THEOPHILUS Economic development has been talking since independence in 1948 focussing on various strategies and at the school level, this topic was broadly discussed to educate the young generation. Since early 1960, the government policy focused on a variety of issues that affected economic development. There was a theoretical explanation that the population […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edward-theophilus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114179","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=114179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}