{"id":68242,"date":"2017-07-26T20:39:07","date_gmt":"2017-07-27T02:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=68242"},"modified":"2017-07-26T04:04:58","modified_gmt":"2017-07-26T11:04:58","slug":"ranil-wickramasinghes-pie-in-the-sky-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/07\/26\/ranil-wickramasinghes-pie-in-the-sky-economics\/","title":{"rendered":"Ranil Wickramasinghe\u2019s \u2018Pie in the Sky\u2019 Economics"},"content":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma<\/span><\/b><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

According to the wide-eyed prognostication of Mr Ranil Wickramasinghe, we in Sri Lanka are in a most fortunate position to secure that economic take-off that politicians of all stripes had dreamed of in Post-Independence Sri Lanka. His starting premise is that the \u2018Centre of Gravity\u2019 of global commerce and economic activity will shift to Asia in the decades ahead and that Sri Lanka – geo-politically wedged between the two Asian Giants, China and India, will have all the benefits of competitive patronage in the ongoing economic tussle between the Asian Giants. More specifically, both India and China will make economic and political overtures that go beyond those merely motivated by commercial gain \u2013 the chief of which will be the willingness to use our territory as a base for ventures that would turn our poor country into a \u2018Megalopolis\u2019\u00a0 of the kind seen in such places as Singapore and Dubai. That Sri Lanka is a biodiversity hot-spot and the locus of an ancient and distinctive civilization \u2013 in contrast to such human sink-holes as Singapore and Dubai \u2013 does not seem to perturb Mr RW who, presumably, sees jobs, factories and tall buildings as the key indicators of civilization. A Naturalist might rightly ask \u2013 is pristine Sri Lanka with its forests, mountains and glades, its rich wild-life and the ancient civilization to be sacrificed to assuage the commercial greed that finds allure and attraction in the enslavement of the many to satisfy the yearnings of a dominant capitalist class? In RW\u2019s thinking, the chef existential problem for a human being is the securement of a well-paid job \u2013 and the unavailability of well-paid jobs for young people in Sri Lanka is the daunting political challenge that we (supposedly) face in this day and age. <\/span><\/p>\n

Is all this true? In the days of ancient glory, did we buy and sell to keep body and soul harmoniously together? Must foreigners and foreign capital \u2013 and, above all, foreign models of facing the existential threats that we encounter at this troubled moment in our history, be our sole route to felicity? Global trade has made winners and losers \u2013 a few have flourished and are held up as wonderful illustrations of the success of this economic model. \u2013 The dismal truth is that this destructive model\u2013 of forced dependence on hot-house traders and manufacturers \u00a0that necessarily \u00a0battened in the misery of the majority \u2013 is a freakish perversion\u00a0 of the good life as classically understood. \u00a0Like Africa, South Asia will be a region of conflict and misery if Western-style Capitalism \u00a0– and its philosophy of pampering a consumerist greed that fattens the purses of the rich \u00a0– be the ruling paradigm. This seeming \u2018grand felicity\u2019 of the ruling elite makes the world lose worth as a green habitat for life while the enslaved masses toil to secure the wherewithal to survive in a world bereft of greenery and natural beauty. When the engine of growth is powered by an insatiable consumerist greed, nature withers and the new life in all its artificiality becomes the doleful norm .There are other ways of living nobly and it is the task of philosophers to show us the way. There is an important caveat – one must be wary of both Politicians and Priests \u2013 deceit is part of their professional ethos.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R Chandrasoma According to the wide-eyed prognostication of Mr Ranil Wickramasinghe, we in Sri Lanka are in a most fortunate position to secure that economic take-off that politicians of all stripes had dreamed of in Post-Independence Sri Lanka. His starting premise is that the \u2018Centre of Gravity\u2019 of global commerce and economic activity will shift […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-r-chandrasoma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68242","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=68242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}