SL crisis: When politicians play God

There are a couple of important lessons that the leaders of not just Sri Lanka, but of all countries should learn: first, befriending China can be dangerous; and second, and more important, playing God can have calamitous consequences

With the anger of anti-government protesters spilling all over Sri Lanka and reports suggesting that the once all-powerful Rajapaksa family members are fleeing the country, the situation in the island nation is increasingly becoming grimmer. There are a couple of important lessons that the leaders of not just Sri Lanka, but of all countries should learn: first, befriending China can be dangerous; and second, and more important, playing God can have calamitous consequences.

China deployed the Belt and Road Initiative to ensnare Sri Lanka into a debt trap. About a tenth of the island nation's total foreign debt is in the form of concessionary loans. This does not include the commercial loans through Chinese state banks. As a result, Sri Lanka had to hand over the Hambantota port to China for 99 years. On the other hand, acting like a friend in need, India extended a $1-billion line of credit.

The situation has been grim for quite some time. "Sri Lanka is a classic twin deficits economy," an Asian Development Bank working paper said in 2019. "Twin deficits signal that a country's national expenditure exceeds its national income, and that its production of tradable goods and services is inadequate."

The Covid pandemic exacerbated the situation. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother, prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, failed miserably in managing the economy. The crisis became a catastrophe when the Rajapaksas imposed organic farming and banned chemical fertilizers on April 29, 2021.

The decision made green activists jubilant. The Indian environmentalist Vandana Shiva said in June last year at a virtual summit, "This decision will definitely help farmers become more prosperous. Use of organic fertilizer will help provide agri products rich with nutrients while retaining the fertility of the land."

As and when biodiversity of the ecosystem improves, the harvest will also improve and crops will be resistant to weeds and various diseases, she added.

What, however, happened was the exact opposite of what she and her ilk said. The fall in farm yields was steep. The ban was withdrawn in the wake of extensive protests, but the damage was done, with the paddy yields declining by around one-third all over the country. Tea, another major crop, suffered even more. Suddenly, Sri Lanka faced a host of problems: depleting foreign exchange reserves, severe food shortages, turmoil in streets, the increasing vehemence of anti-government protestors, a surge in violence. Typically, the government has blamed everybody—from hoarders to the media—for the problems it generated. It also declared a state of emergency.

Worse, it has resorted to harsh measures like deploying armed forces to discipline traders suspected of hoarding and profiteering.

This is not to say that organic farming is bad or fertilizers and pesticides are good. But organic farming can't become beneficial for the greater good by executive fiats; it has to grow naturally, indeed organically; it has to adjust to the economic ecosystem. But it was thrust upon the market as a result of a politician's fancy.

Thankfully, Indian politicians didn't get obsessed with organic farming, though they have been promoting it. A few months ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged every state to make natural farming a mass movement. Slowly but steadily, it is growing; about 3 per cent of the farmers in India are into organic farming.

Madhya Pradesh has the highest number of farmers, 773,902, involved in organic farming, followed by Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra. But there has not been any compulsion in this regard.

Compulsion, followed with the diktats like ban on fertilizers, did the Sri Lankan economy in. In general, when compulsion plays a greater role in the economy, the effects are often disastrous, especially when stupid and outlandish ideas like collectivization and forced industrialization are executed.

Stalin imposed farm collectivization in the erstwhile collectivization in 1929; millions died because of state-sponsored massacres, deportations, and famine. Thirty years later, Mao thought he could fast-forward industrialization in China by his ambitious campaign called the Great Leap Forward; according to Encyclopedia Britannica, about 20 million people died of starvation between 1959 and 1962.

Jawaharlal Nehru, influenced as he was by socialist ideas, did toy with the idea of collectivization. Fortunately, there were some sensible politicians like the Swatantra Party leaders and Charan Singh who successfully opposed the idea.

Politicians are often seduced by the ideas of meretricious charms. They come to believe that government can decide which course the economy should take, that they can steer the country to follow that course, that they can play God. The truth, however, is that things happen in the economy; and they should be allowed to happen in their natural course so that change is as painless as possible.

But intellectuals regularly present outlandish, preposterous ideas to politicians; during and before the cold war it was for a new world, a classless society; these days such ideas often come in the garb of 'outside-the-box thinking.' Sometimes politicians accept such ideas. The consequences are disastrous; Sri Lankans are realizing that now.

Politicians in India and other countries must pledge that they would never play God.