{"id":150458,"date":"2025-06-29T15:48:33","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T22:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=150458"},"modified":"2025-06-29T15:48:33","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T22:48:33","slug":"father-of-the-modern-industrial-revolution-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/06\/29\/father-of-the-modern-industrial-revolution-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"Father of the Modern Industrial Revolution in Sri\u00a0Lanka"},"content":{"rendered":"

e-Con e-News<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

blog: eesrilanka.wordpress.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Before you study the economics, study the economists!<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

e-Con e-News 22-28 June 2025<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Tell the old lady [Sirimavo Bandaranaike] that some prophet<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

who also thinks that he is the father of the industrial revolution<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

in Sri Lanka believes that he can produce all the mammoties<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

we need in some smithy in Kotmale<\/em><\/strong>\u2019<\/strong> \u2013 Brian Senanayake,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Senior Assistant Secretary under Minister of Industries TB Subasinghe,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to his cousin MDD Peiris, Secretary<\/p>\n\n\n\n

to the Prime Minister, quoted in Peiris\u2019 autobiography<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Pursuit of Governance<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Difficult songs find few singers<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is a torrid tale of how England has had the monopoly over making mammoties in Sri Lanka. Even though, if you stop even now, or stopped even then (in 1974, when this anecdote unreels) any English man or woman on a dank London Street, and ask or asked them, then as now: what on earth a mammoty<\/em> is? \u00ad\u2013 they certainly wouldn\u2019t know this \u2018English\u2019 word, let alone care to know. They may even think it an obscenity. The English farmer uses or used a spade, which uses the weight of their body to unearth the wintry hard soil, that is, until they were replaced by machines. The Sinhala farmer seemed to prefer the swinging motion of the mammoty, that perhaps keeps them in shape for other activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Yet, someone in that Bandaranaike government of 1970-77 had decided it was time for Sri Lanka to make its own farming implements. Yet others thought it was still not the right time. And we wondered who they, pro & con, could have been?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The Sunday Island<\/em> has been faithfully excerpting MDD Peries\u2019 memoirs. This mammoty episode unfolds around 1974, in the midst of worldwide famines, the skyrocketing of fuel & food prices, and the usual \u2018shortage\u2019 of foreign exchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The Chillington Company of England has been producing this \u2018Crocodile\u2019 brand mammoty, since 1876. It has gained a prickly reputation for suing any local attempt to make it here. The Chillington brand, recalls Peiris nostalgically, \u2018was extremely popular with our farming community, particularly the paddy farmers\u2019. And Peiris was skeptical about attempts \u2018being made to produce it locally under license by the State Hardware Corporation\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet as one erudite ee<\/em><\/strong> reader has already recalled:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The State Hardware Corp produced very good mammoties<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kotmale produced steel products under Workers\u2019 Councils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kotmale was famous for smiths & smithies. The tradition goes<\/p>\n\n\n\n

back to a fugitive Gamunu<\/strong> from Rohana<\/strong>. If developed as envisaged,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kotmale could have developed as Sheffield, Jamshedpur, Shanghai,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

paving the way for an industrial resurgence<\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Secretary to the PM, MDD Peries however is somewhat derisive:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We also needed to import a certain number annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However there also was at this time a doctrinaire<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

anti-import lobb<\/strong>y who fervently believed that we could<\/p>\n\n\n\n

produce good quality mammoties in the forges of Kotmale.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peries blames \u2018the vociferousness of this lobby\u2019 that led \u2018to the government hesitating to place orders for the import of the \u2018Crocodile\u2019 mammoty, pending a study\u2019, yet appears to make a valid point (reminiscent of the recent \u2018organic fertilizer\u2019 fiasco):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018There now arose a possibility of a serious shortage<\/strong> of good<\/p>\n\n\n\n

quality mammoties, when land preparation for the sowing<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of the main Maha paddy crop<\/strong> was drawing near.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s try to figure out who on earth constituted this \u2018doctrinaire\u2019 \u2018vociferous lobby\u2019? And even more, who this putative \u2018father of the industrial revolution in Sri Lanka\u2019 could have been? And how these \u2018serious shortages\u2019 are stage-managed? There\u2019s no proof, but we have no doubt that Peiris\u2019 cousin Brian Senanayake is referring to no one other than SBD de Silva<\/strong>. After all, SBD was a Director of Industrial Policy & Economic Research at the Ministry<\/strong>, and later Secretary<\/strong> to Minister<\/strong> of Industries & Scientific Affairs<\/strong> TB Subasinghe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Peiris\u2019 prose flows mellifluous, and his memoirs are usually a pleasure to read. Yet he appears to lose his cool here. His recollections usually portray himself as an unflappable heir to the traditions of the purportedly even-handed English civil service. Yet one gets the sense, that he\u2019s also doing his best to maintain decorum midst the rise of the rule of the darker yakos after 1948.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Peiris\u2019 recall is to be envied, and his anecdotes are indeed compelling and endearing, but there is a strange vacuity about the urgency of national production, epitomized in his rendition of this mammoty moment. Here is his \u2018cousin\u2019 who is working as Senior Assistant Secretary to the Ministry of Industries under Minister TB Subasinghe, and an \u2018assistant\u2019 to SB, urgently calling him up to get him to warn the PM:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The message was very clear. I briefed the Prime Minister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regretfully<\/strong>, I could not quote the original text<\/strong> of the message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mammoties were ordered, but by the time they arrived some delay<\/p>\n\n\n\n

was caused and the newspapers were full of the shortage of mammoties<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why are the newspapers never \u2018full\u2019 about the need for modern <\/em>industrialization? Can we deduce any positive identification from such a stray gratuitous comment broadcast in the media, made by one senior bureaucrat to another? A comment which displays the continuity of the \u2018permanent government\u2019<\/em><\/strong>, run by the so-called civil<\/em> service inherited from the colonial machinery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     This anecdote illustrates not just the family connections and class interests shared between senior members of the \u2018civil service\u2019 and bureaucracy. It is clear Senanayake knew his plaint would resonate with his dear cousin Peries, who indeed was fully in accord with his concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     SBD would later write about the downright ingenuity of the sabotage that any attempt at industrialization must withstand. SBD de Silva, anyway, in 1974 was about to be targeted again as a \u2018communist\u2019 and forced to resign. \u2018A doctrinaire anti-import lobby!\u2019 indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     May we conclude that Peiris & Senanayake were part of the \u2018permanent\u2019 \u2018opposition\u2019 embedded in the bureaucracy? \u2018Doctrinaire\u2019 enemies to any real change in the colonial import-export plantation economy, a quarter of a century after so-called independence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The growing intervention of governments in the affairs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of private business makes it entrepreneurially helpful for<\/p>\n\n\n\n

the large, invariably expatriate firms<\/strong> to keep the goodwill<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

of politicians<\/strong>, and to take on to their staff<\/strong> bureaucrats<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

whose contacts established during their service<\/p>\n\n\n\n

with the government\u2019 are invaluable to the firms,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

in their dealings with government over foreign<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

exchange licences<\/strong>, raw material allocations<\/strong>, pricing<\/strong>,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

taxation<\/strong>, & matters pertaining to foreign investments<\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 SBD de Silva, Political Economy of Underdevelopment<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it also does not mean that the pro-industrialization \u2018lobby\u2019 has been fully aware of the challenges, political, technical and military, they would face, that only a Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong could overcome. \u201892% of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) payments still go to the global north (see ee Economists<\/em><\/strong>). As for SBD being \u2018the father\u2019, we should be clearer. While ee<\/em><\/strong> has tried to record Sri Lanka\u2019s many attempts and failures to industrialize, pointing to those like DJ \u2018Laxapana\u2019 Wimalasurendra, to Philip Gunawardena & GVS de Silva & William de Silva, to TB Illangaratne, who worked tirelessly to industrialize the country, despite vehement & vicious & deadly opposition, it is SBD de Silva in his book The Political Economy of Underdevelopment<\/em> (PEU<\/em>) who examined and crystalized those efforts, recognizing: that modern \u2018machine-making\u2019 industrialization is more than dainty handicraft<\/strong>, more than assembly<\/strong> & manufacture<\/strong>. He saw that such an industrial revolution would require many fathers and<\/em> mothers. And as ee<\/em><\/strong> keeps jabbering, requires the \u2018manufacture of manufacturers\u2019, the \u2018invention of inventors\u2019 \u2013 yes, modern<\/em> industrialization\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed \u2013 \u2018Difficult songs find few singers<\/em><\/strong>.\u2019 And SBD de Silva penned difficult songs. And perhaps few can sing what SBD conjured. His song is not a melody that Mr. Maharajah\u2019s MTV and other merchant media bestow superstar celebrity status on, multiplying mindless memes ten-thousand-fold. His reverberating vibes were about the need to industrially transform a colonial import-export plantation economy, and to thus build a powerful modern country, not remain a beggar who must endure the \u2018shithole\u2019 sermons from genocidal maniacs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     The quotable quote about \u2018difficult songs find few singers\u2019 comes from a recent interview with Chinese tech provider Huawei\u2019s founder, Ren Zhengfei. <\/strong>Ren is evoking those researchers who undertake challenging tasks in awesome conditions. And this is what SBD undertook. Whereas the media largely runs scared of SB\u2019s ideas, Ren\u2019s interview made the front page of People\u2019s Daily<\/em>, the premier Communist Party of China<\/strong> medium (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q:<\/strong> Facing external blockades & pressure,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

encountering many difficulties, what are your thoughts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A:<\/strong> I haven\u2019t thought about it \u2013 thinking about it is useless<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t think about difficulties<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 just get on & do it, and move forward step by step<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026Praise brings pressure<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bit of scolding keeps us clearheaded.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huawei\u2019s Ren seems to shrug off (as any real leader would) the attempts by the US & Europe to hobble China\u2019s rise \u2013 through political, industrial as well as military means. He singles out \u2018the importance of basic research to long-term competitiveness<\/strong>\u2019. The interviewers point out that US economists themselves have noted \u2018the US lacks a high\u2011speed rail system because capitalism demands immediate individual profit<\/strong>\u2019, whereas \u2018China\u2019s socialist approach values social benefit<\/strong>: high\u2011speed rail, heavy\u2011haul lines, advanced power grids, expressways, rural infrastructure.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Yet, while Ren\u2019s enterprise now invents newer & sexier communication tools, SBD\u2019s attempts toward Sri Lanka, even making a simple farm implement, were blocked. SB\u2019s musical notes & instrumental notions are after all not that very different nor more difficult than Ren\u2019s \u2013 for they are common sense. SBD\u2019s words seek to make us stand up, midst squalls threatening to knock us over and drown us if we do not learn to navigate storms more deadly than we have had to endure for centuries, located as we are in another increasingly raucous intersection of the world. Yet, if we take the time & effort to listen, to read carefully, we\u2019d appreciate how deeply intricate & rich are SBD de Silva\u2019s analyses & arguments & prognoses. Their difficulty lies in getting the actions & accompanying words to resonate in the real world, midst the seemingly overwhelming and diverting din & dance of the usurious merchant hegemon and their sponsors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     And while there is still much chatter about our \u2018Asiatic\u2019 despotism (resonant in the numerous delegations of genocidal warmongers calling on us savages to \u2018reconcile\u2019 & make \u2018peace\u2019\u2026) let\u2019s recall the great Guinea-Bissau leader Amilcar Cabral<\/strong>\u2019s axiom, that the role of the person with the weapon, is to protect the person with the tool<\/em><\/strong>. We well recall that the Portuguese, the Dutch & the English first attacked our smithies<\/strong>, and then our waterways<\/strong> (the material basis of the purana village solidarity) and fields<\/strong>. We can bear witness to the studious dedication of the imperialists to the destruction of the artisanal class<\/strong> that must make up the liberatory proletariat, with our \u2018foreign employment\u2019 agents ever ready to pack them off to servitude in distant lands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Again: as Secretary to the Ministry of Industries & Scientific Affairs<\/strong> in 1974, SBD de Silva had to fend off the ingenious merchant sabotage of the policies he recommended. He also learned how weak the Sri Lankan state\u2019s tools and weapons were, and still are, let alone our understanding of what true industrialization entails \u2013 he concluded it requires a political, economic & military policy. And now we get to witness again yet another government having to contend with the so-called \u2018black economy\u2019 of mafias, cartels, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Yet, in truth this \u2018black economy<\/em><\/strong>\u2019 is as \u2018white\u2019 as ever, for these saboteurs are a front for the so-called \u2018Free Market\u2019, monopolized by European (& their settler) multinational banks & corporations<\/strong>, who are the main opponents of our countries\u2019 modern advance. Which makes us wonder, whatever happened to that League of Multinational Corporations (LMNC)<\/strong>, led by Unilever, which was inaugurated in 2018, crying out, \u2018Everything needs to be fixed\u2019 in Sri Lanka? And, why do they appear so quiet, at least in this \u2018sunlit\u2019 media they sponsor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The ownership & control of the foreign enterprises<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

in the nonsettler colonies were held by powerful corporations<\/p>\n\n\n\n

abroad. Their sources of economic power lay outside the country<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

of investment<\/strong> & therefore out of reach of the newly independent<\/p>\n\n\n\n

governments. The ramifications of such external control extend<\/p>\n\n\n\n

over the whole of the colonial export economy including the financing,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

marketing & sale of plantation or mining products, & its roots<\/p>\n\n\n\n

are not easy to unravel let alone exterminate.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013 SBD de Silva, PEU<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The League of Multinational Corporations (LMNC)<\/strong> in Sri Lanka, was formed in 2018 by seven MNCs: Unilever<\/strong>, Ceylon Tobacco Company<\/strong> (CTC, i.e., British American Tobacco<\/strong>), Baur & Co<\/strong>, Heineken<\/strong>, HSBC<\/strong>, Indian Oil Co<\/strong>, and Mastercard<\/strong>. These powerful MNCs, with war chests bigger than most countries\u2019 budgets, demanded of Sri Lanka: \u2018Everything needs to be fixed in the context of international standards, in terms of human rights & labor laws too.\u2019<\/em> And \u2018fixing<\/strong>\u2019, as in fraud<\/em><\/strong>, is surely what they do best!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     For SBD, industrialization was not just trading (\u2018take a walk along the pavement & see what\u2019s on sale, and where & how it is made\u2019) or assembly (like the \u2018garment\u2019 fraud that refuses to make a pin), handicraft (plucking tea seems hands personified alright!) or manufacture (primitive production), but ultimately modern industry (the making of machines). But how<\/em> to get there (where one thing leads to another<\/em>) was & is the question?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     MDD Peiris\u2019 naivete or ignorance is epitomized in the recent excerpts of his memoirs, of his rendition of a trip to the USA to learn about wheat<\/strong>, then later mentioning the imposition of that great Japanese-Singaporean fraud called Prima Flour<\/strong>. He seems not to have been taken to where the latest agricultural machineries were being designed and produced, or the industrial-agricultural colleges. Instead, he is introduced to the marketing side of the food chain\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Without basic research, you plant no roots. & without roots,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

even trees with lush leaves fall at the first wind<\/em>\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Huawei\u2019s Ren (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>) offers sheer cool in the face of imperialist opposition to China\u2019s industrial rise. He also gives examples of scientists & artists (are they different quantities, really?) who work almost underground & unsung, doing \u2018basic research<\/strong>\u2019 that may never see the light of day, for decades or even centuries to come. SBD de Silva was indeed a basic researcher<\/em>, and his aria arrayed the uncovering of the political and economic roots of Sri Lanka\u2019s disquiet, with examples from around the world, when the evidence at home was scant or missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     There have been those who criticized SBD for not writing or translating his important work into Sinhala. But first he had to gather the evidence, which was mostly in English and put it all together. On the other hand, those who criticized him never sought to explain or extend his work in Sinhala. They were too busy stimulating their acolytes with the psychoanalytic postmodernisms of French theory, that has failed to liberate the French themselves from their murderous metier and libidinal neuroses \u2013 \u2018postmodern\u2019 theories, which were a US-state-financed ideological attack on Marxism-Leninism, etc, the praxis that has made China \u2018great\u2019 again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018The rigorous curtailment of Western education<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[in the settler colonies] was in contrast to the<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

educational policy in nonsettler colonies <\/strong>\u2013 <\/strong>eg, India,<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka<\/strong>, Malaysia, & the West Indies \u2013 where<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Westernization & Western education were deliberately fostered<\/em><\/strong>.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were dangerously diverted last week by the deadly war games & media hype of the imperialist powers & their \u2018running dogs\u2019 (there\u2019s a phrase we haven\u2019t heard in a while, but it sure fits Ukraine & Israel, Germany & Japan, etc), from marking more fully the 7th<\/sup> anniversary of the passing of SBD de Silva, and his formidable legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     This week saw repeated hype about the World Bank\u2019s $50million dollar loan for \u2018education\u2019, which will supposedly benefit \u2018500,000-students & 150,000 teachers\u2019. Wow! The hijacking & bribing of the Ministry of Education & its officials, recalls the different forms of education permitted in the different types of colonies, discussed in Chapter 6 of SBD\u2019s classic work, on \u2018Settler growth & the repression of indigenous interests\u2019, <\/strong>which ee<\/em><\/strong> begins this week (see ee Focus<\/em><\/strong>). Here, SBD goes into further detail of the different economic policies of nonsettler colonies such as Sri Lanka and the settler colonies, as well as the white \u2018dominions\u2019. See how the media goes on about the need for \u2018exports\u2019 all the time \u2013 which SB notes is a feature of such colonies of ours \u2013 whereas settlers \u2018generally catered for domestic or regional markets\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2022 <\/strong>In these days of municipal horse trading, ee<\/em><\/strong> continues looking into that famed New York \u2018charity\u2019 \u2013 the political machine called Tammany Hall, and its role in fixing \u2018democracy\u2019 to divide the \u2018spoils\u2019 of urban political office: where \u2018the control of the police force<\/strong> was considered as necessary as ever to success at the election\u2019 and \u2018political & pecuniary reasons alone guided the appointment of policemen<\/strong>\u2019 such that \u2018the police being so disorganized, the criminal classes ran the town<\/strong>\u2019. We find it interesting however that there is almost no reference by Gustavus Myers, author of the 1917 History of Tammany Hall<\/em>, to the larger political and economic forces that ruled that country at that time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     Which is why it\u2019s so enlightening to hear this week (see ee Economists<\/em><\/strong>) about the historian Gerald Horne\u2019s latest work, The Capital of Slavery: Washington DC 1800-65<\/em><\/strong>. He is not just referring to a municipality but to the \u2018international\u2019 business of buying & selling people: The USA, at that same time as Myer\u2019s tale, was involved in the wholesale kidnapping of people from Africa and breeding more, and selling them not just to their southern cotton penitentiaries, but also to the European colonies of the Caribbean (Cuba, etc) and the rest of the Americas (Brazil, the last country in the Western Hemisphere where slavery was abolished, only in 1888), and their extension to the Pacific (Hawaii) and Asia (the Philippines, in particular). As noted last week, the settler colonies & the white dominions truly believe they are success stories<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 regardless of their horrors then & now \u2013 and see their model as desirous of replication. They badly need to be disabused of such fairy tales, and history is on its way toward doing just that\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

________<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contents:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
Father of the Modern Industrial Revolution in Sri Lanka<\/a><\/blockquote>