An open letter to the doctors
By Paul Caspersz

As the twentieth century and the second millennium draw to their close, I do not think that you will want to contest the fact that health care in our country today is in a most parlous state. Certainly there will be no one at all in the country who will not hope that during the twenty seven months still left in the century and the millenium something definite will be done to lift the health care of our People out of the present most pitiable state,

Victim
It is not only health care that has been the victim of the dominant economic and political philosophy now on the rampage in our country (and in many other countries), Education has also been a casualty, as we all know, User pays, cost recovery, nothing for free, these are the axioms for both Health Care and Education in the current Structural Adjustment Programmes of the World Bank and the IMF, But this letter - bound as we are by time and space - is addressed only to you, our doctors, in the hope that the teachers in the tutories will also take notice, and maybe our lawyers also.

It is not that the blame for the parlous state of health care has to be laid only or even chiefly at the doors of your clinics. Similarly, the blame for the terrible state of education cannot be laid chiefly on the teachers, even those in the tutories.

Mainly responsible are most certainly the successive governments that have ruled our country since the flood gates were opened about twenty five years ago to international Financial and Commercial Capital, to Capital’s operational mechanisms which are the ‘Free’ Market and the Open Economy and to Capital’s supervisory mechanisms which are the World Bank and its Siamese Twin, the International Monetary Fund. Mainly responsible are the successive ministry of Health and Ministry of Education which have not acted to stop the flood waters from engulfing all our People.

Yet you, I respectfully submit, have also to take your share of the blame, This letter is addressed not so much to the ayurvedic doctors and the western general practitioners, especially those anong them who in former days functioned as family doctors, though the worrying infection is slowly spreading to them too. Why should I not charge a hundred rupees, said the ayurvedic bone specialist the other day, if the ‘English’ doctor charges five hundred? This letter is addressed especially to the allopathic specialists in the various branches of health care.

Channels
It is now common knowledge that for the doctors, especially the specialists and those with postgraduate qualifications, the ‘channel’ is now a gold mine. These, as we know and you know, are mushrooming all over the country, The ‘channel’ is very good business for the business person. The patient’s relative or friend queues up for a ‘number’ - on Saturdays you can see them, even people from distant villages, the estates and the smaller provincial towns, forming the queue as early as at five in the morning. For each number anything between Rs. 20 and Rs. 40 has to be paid to the channel mudalali, Then, at eight or nine o’clock, sometimes climbing two or three flights of stairs, the patients proceed to line up at the door of your room in the channel, To the credit of the channel mudalali it must be said that there are also some chairs, but in the more popular channels there is no space for a sufficient number of chairs to meet the demand, Patients sit or stand so close to each other, some to see the physician who cures fevers, others the chest or other specialist, that one recalls what used to be said of the mid- l9th century hospital in England that often one did not die of the disease with which one entered the hospital but of another contracted there, Finally the patient’s turn comes and your attendant is there to collect the consultation fee at the door, lt is the patients visa into your inner sanctum.

Most doctors in most channels - except in a few, where of course the patient has to pay more to get more time - take five ninutes or less to see and talk with the patient, diagnose the disease and write a prescription,. At Rs 100 per channelled consultation many now charge more, and charges keep rising with no one to control them in the ‘free’ market which has suborned the doctors too), the doctor collects one rupee every three seconds, At four hours plus a few ainutes a day in the channel, the doctor earns a cool Rs 5000 a day, The doctor earns very such more if surgery follows the consultation. All this money is untaxed, for payments to the doctors are not receipted and have to be made in cash, and cheques are not usually accepted. Moreover, the doctor’s generous monthly salary, if the doctor works in a state hospital, is not liable to tax.

To the doctor, particularly the more prestigious among you, the work in hospital is entirely secondary, Many specialist doctors (May we say 80 per cent of them, for there are, thank goodness, a few ethical ones still around) do not spend more than three or four hours in hospital free clinics or in their wards. After lunch, siesta and a shower, they are seen no more in the hospital but proceed to their precious channel Many years ago I talked to the St. Luke’s Guild of Christian Doctors in Colombo. I alluded to Dr A. J. Cronin’s then best-selling, controversial and doctor-upsetting novel, ‘The Citadel’, and the ‘repeat prescription’ which Dronin pilloried. A doctor who was present told me quietly in the interstices of the meeting, "I fully agree. But I have not had the courage to say it." However if Cronin were alive today in any one of our "channel" cities, his repeat prescription would be child’s play in the face of current "channel" practices.

Prescriptions
Today few prescriptions are repeated unchanged, The doctor changes from drug to drug, one more expensive than the other, spurred on by the incentives offered by eager medical representatives who have to make their living. If Dr Senaka Bibile were still with us, he would have made good drugs available in the cheaper generic form rather than under the more expensive brand names. He would also have had his list of essential drugs, showing that many of the drugs you prescribe are not really necessary. But Dr Bibile is no more and so doctor, medical rep, the pharmacist and of course the drug manufacturer make good company for their merry-go-round.

Watch some of the patients’ relatives on channel days at Osu Sala or at the various pharmacies which surround the channels. By their side is a shopping bag: a coconut, two loaves of bread for the family, some vegetables, 100 grams ot sugar, obviously the daily shopping of some city clerk or petty sales assistant. The bill the person gets is often for a few hundred rupees, "Any substitute available?" the more educated person asks the pharmacy salesperson, "The doctor has not prescribed any" comes the answer. Buy it or be sick, seems to be the order of the day. Today anyone who goes to the doctor in the channelling centre should better have at least a five hundred rupee note wrapped up in a handkerchief or in the handbag or in the purse.

About the five minutes (or less) per patient, especially the case of a specialist treating patients suffering from certain illnesses, a foreign doctor told me a few months ago, you must almost certainly be wrong. "It is simply impossible for a doctor to treat such patients in five minutes". Our specialists seem to go by Mirabeau: ‘Impossible! Never let me hear that foolish word again!’

Service
However, though Cronin isn’t alive any more, there is still the ten or twenty per cent of our doctors who are good not only as doctors but as human beings. They go not only by the Hippocratic Oath but also go by the postwar Declaration of Geneva and especially by their own principles of kindness and justice. The doctor then pledges to consecrate life to the service of humanity and to make the health of the patient the prime consideration. The doctor must surely live, and live decently, even comfortably, off the medical profession. But this should surely not mean making money the be-all and end-all of medical practice.

There are ways by which you could help to change the present order. One, which some of you already use, is to ask the patient to send you a self-addressed stamped envelope for an appointment in your hospital clinic. The patient need not therefore spend the night outside the hospital gate in order to get to the top of the queue when ‘numbers’ begin to be issued at 8 o’clock. Another is to have paying medical clinics in the hospital itself in the evening, at which each patient pays say thirty rupees so that you and the nurse-attendants could be paid generous overtime. And so on. As the old adage has it, where there is a will, there is a way!

On you largely depends the physical and the mental health of the people. Where the poor and the lower middle-class as in our country are the overwhelming majority, the sick poor go to you not only to pay for a prescription but to beg for mercy and compassion, for karuna and maitreya, which should continue to be the unassailable bedrock of our culture. No Open Econonmy tycoon or World Bank representative should be permitted to destroy that culture.

Towards Justice in Sri Lanka’s Education System
By Sandaruwan Madduma Bandara

I would like to thank Mr. David for a most thoughtful and diplomatic response to my article "Stand-ardisation Debate Revisited". However, there are significant lapses in his analysis that deserve further attention.

The first thing one notices in reading Mr. David’s article is a glaring lack of hard facts and recognised sources. In my own article I had cited no less than 7 sources including the University Commission Report of 1959, the National Education Commission Report of 1961, two issues of the Hansard (November and December 1978) and Rohan Guneratne’s landmark work, Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Crisis and National Security (1998). None of them appear to have been considered by Mr. David. The reason for Mr. David’s reluctance to use hard facts is obvious; a deeply entrenched bias that blinds him to any sense of justice and fairplay.

Mr. David claims that it was the ‘politics of envy’ that caused the government of Sri Lanka to pass university admission standardisation legislation. However, he has not even verbally denied (given the impossibility of showing evidence to the contrary) my various facts and examples clearly proving the existence of a widespread Tamil conspiracy. It is an established fact that some Tamil students and Examiners committed fraud at the Advanced Level and University examinations. By remaining silent on all these points it is clear that Mr. David has conceded them.

Mr. David states that American educators chose Jaffna because it was "virgin territory" free from Anglican competition. The bitter truth was that caste oppression in Jaffna was far more severe than in Sinhalese areas. It was much easier to convert oppressed low caste Tamils to Christianity than the more resistant Sinhalese. Further, the British also encouraged the development of Tamils over Sinhalese, because they faced much nationalist agitation from the Sinhalese in the interior. Thus regions like Uva which became the centre of the great rebellion of 1818 were allowed to decay and remain handicapped in education and development. It was the classic British colonial strategy of divide and rule, which seems to be working to this day. Mr. David argues that Tamil students perform better at the university level because of the better educational facilities in Jaffna. Four clear facts disprove his assertion;

1) There are clear-cut cases where Tamil students and Examiners are proved to have cheated. This is established and documented evidence against which there is no challenge. Perhaps Mr. David also wishes to place the ‘credit’ for this kind of behaviour at the door of the missionary schools of Jaffna.

2) In examinations conducted in English, for instance at the Faculty of Architecture in the University of Moratuwa, there is absolutely no superior performance shown by Tamil candidates as a group. In medicine the M. D. Part l, a multiple choice question (MCQ) exam, is conducted in English and administered at the same time worldwide. In this exam too, there is absolutely no outperformance by Tamil candidates. It is singularly curious that the ‘superior academic capabilities’ of Tamil students fails in exactly those exams where cheating and fraudulent practices are difficult

3) Whatever edge students in Jaffna may have had in the past over their Sinhala counterparts, this is no longer the case. Now the top results islandwide for any subject stream at the A level examination come from schools like Ananda, Vishaka, Dharmaraja and Mahamaya. Given this situation, how can anybody explain the fact that even today Tamils comprise about half of the intake for faculties like engineering.

4) Many of the Tamil students who enter Sri Lanka’s universities do not come from Jaffna. I would like to see how Mr. David explains the unusually superior performance of these students due to the so-called superior education apparatus in Jaffna.

Mr. David hints that the incidents of 1915 and 1956 were orchestrated by "Sinhala terrorists". These were unfortunate spontaneous clashes between Sinhalese and Tamil people ignited by tense political situations prevailing in the country. Those persons, both Sinhala and Tamil, involved in ethnic riots were certainly guilty of breaking the law. However, it does not make them terrorists. The examples I have cited in my paper were of organised terrorists who publicly acknowledged responsibility for their acts of violence. Pulip Padai, the Army of Tigers (1961), and

TLO (1969), were operating well before university standardisation. Their claim that they fight for a separate homeland because of discriminatory policies like standardisation is baseless because they clearly started fighting before standardisation existed.

In response to certain misunderstandings on Mr. David’s part, I would like to categorically state that I have no grudge against the general Tamil populace that prospers as a result of its intelligence and hard work. I don’t even claim that since the Sinhalese comprise 74% of the population they are automatically entitled to 74% of university admissions. However, when any individual or group prospers as a result of cheating and conspiring against the population at large, it is the responsibility of the State to intervene and regulate. University admission standardisation is exactly this kind of legislation.

Mr. David once again mistakenly refers to some ‘former aspects of the US college system.’ The "curve" I had referred to was a means of establishing the Bell Curve on student results in order to avoid unduly low or high performance within batches. This is a system that is used right now in the United States in just about every single college class room. With regard to Affirmative Action in the USA, Mr. David’s understanding is flawed. It is only in the state of California that Proposition 209 bans taking race into account in employment and education. In most other parts of the USA all institutions that receive federal funding are still required to give special provision for underprivileged groups including blacks and women. It is ironic that in Sri Lanka it is the majority that is the underprivileged ethnic group in such areas as education.

It is a fundamentally accepted scientific fact that no ethnic group is more intelligent than another. Therefore, if any ethnic group outperforms another ethnic group, all else equal, there is clearly some kind of systematic discrepancy at play. By wrongfully over-marking the papers of Tamil medium students, this is exactly the kind of funfair advantage that is achieved by unethical examiners. All that university standardisation does is to prevent this bias.

Mr. David points out that Sri Lankan Tamils outperform their white counterparts in countries like the USA, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. What he ignores is that all Sri Lankan students outperform their white counterparts in these countries. In fact even students from India, Pakistan and Asian countries in general typically outperform their white counterparts in these countries. By singling out the Tamils and claiming that they have some unusual biological capability, Mr. David reveals his racial biases against the Sinhala majority of this country.

Mr. David claims that a meritocracy is the best form of government. I couldn’t agree with him more. However, Mr. David betrays his ignorance of modern political thought when he advocates meritocracy in and of itself. A meritocracy is only successful when there are no conspiracies by various ethnic groups. A meritocracy only works when the playing field is level. Surely no one would consider it a fair race if some runners started several hundred meters in front of their competitors! But this is exactly what Mr. David is advocating. The long-term impact of this kind of ignorant government policy would be the creation of a permanent underclass of rural Sinhala youths. This would naturally lead to the kind of revolt by nationalists that we have already witnessed twice in Sri Lanka.

I certainly agree that the whole Standardisation issue has given ammunition to Tamil terrorist groups like the LTTE. However, the ammunition is provided by extremist Tamil leaders and academics. Tamil youth have been brainwashed and misled into believing standardisation is a racist piece of legislation. By portraying the Sinahalese as the oppressors of the Tamil people these leaders are merely propagating a Western myth that has no place in Sri Lanka’s national politics. The reality is that the Sinhalese are being severely discriminated against, in spite of standardisation. This is a truth that few have the courage to speak of. Mr. David attempts to blame Mr. Cyril Matthew for inciting terrorist groups by his speeches. It is those Tamil examiners and students who cheated who must assume the blame in this regard. All Mr. Matthew is guilty of is speaking the truth even when that truth was highly unpopular. In my mind that certainly qualifies him as a hero. Further, Tamil extremists try to avoid the fact that, like us, Mr. Matthew gave protection to Tamil families during the riots of 1983.

What is important is that the silent conspiracy continues to this day. The following facts are from "The Statistical Handbook of University Education," published by the University Grants Commission. In 1991/92 there were 128 Tamil students taken to the faculty of medicine as compared to 654 Sinhala students. For the same year there were 176 Tamils taken to the faculty of engineering as compared to 472 Sinhalese. The Tamils have an unfair advantage right from the start because the only ethnic group that attends Jaffna university are the Tamils. In 1993/94 Jaffna university had 9.7% of all university students. Notice that there are large percentages of Tamil students at all the other national universities above and beyond this number. In 1993/94 Jaffna district had the 3rd highest number of students being admitted to university, behind Colombo and Kurunegala. Once again notice that Tamils are also included among those who enter from all other districts including Colombo and Kurunegala.

However the most dangerous statistics do not appear in any formal report. And these are the number of 1st and 2nd classes awarded to Tamil students as compared to other students. The need for a commission of inquiry into this matter is still direly felt. As a beginning, I challenge faculties such as Engineering and Medicine in national universities to publish their academic results by ethnicity. Academics are aware of the various mal-practices in universities. They remain silent to avoid unpleasantness in their workplace. If a commission of inquiry is called, however, it becomes a legal matter if they do not come forth and give evidence. Unfortunately what all this means for the truly meritorious Tamil students is that the value of their academic achievement is brought into question. When a potential employer or institution of higher education is assessing a Tamil graduate, they will have to ignore a 1st or 2nd class the person may have, because it could just as easily have been the work of an unscrupulous Tamil examiner, as it could have been hard work.

I am not an advocate of going back to an archaic ethnic ratio standardisation system. I even agree with Mr. David’s idea of an independent panel of investigators to eliminate fraudulent practices. Unfortunately, in the past no action has been taken against those exposed by university and national education commissions. After all, I have clearly shown that there are suspicious discrepancies that fall along ethnic lines in the admission and results of students in our national universities. Surely the Tamil lecturers of our universities must defend the marks they have awarded in the name of transparency.

I have presented facts in this article and the previous one that prove beyond doubt that the system of education in this country is still significantly unjust. The underprivileged ethnic group in Sri Lanka, are the Sinhalese. Without addressing Sinhalese grievances, we can never have ethnic harmony in this country. As long as the Sinhalese feel they are being discriminated against in sectors such as education, they will always look with suspicion upon the Tamil people. The current government of Sri Lanka clearly does not care about the Sinhalese side of the story, so perhaps we will have to wait for a more democratic government to see far reaching reforms.

Tamil academics themselves support the current proposals for a multiple choice question examination for university admission. Those students who get a minimum of three passes at the A levels would be eligible to sit for such an examination. Given the importance of conducting higher education in English, the test can even be modeled after the American SAT. If this kind of system is ever implemented, I am confident that the percentage of all ethnic groups who enter university will closely correlate their percentage representation in the population. The ultimate purpose after all has nothing to do with ethnicity, merely justice.

References:
1. Guneratne, Rohan, Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Crisis and National Security, 1998.
2. Hansard of 7th November, 1978.
3. Hansard of 11th December, 1978.
4. National Education Commission Report of 1961.
5. Sri Saddharma Wageeshwaracharya et al, Diabolical Conspiracy, 1978.
6. Statistical Handbook on University Education, University Grants Commission, 1995.
7. Swamy, M. R. Narayanan, The Tigers of Lanka: From Boys to Guerrillas, 1996.
8. University Commission Report of 1959.

Major service project
by Mattumagala Lions

The Mattumagala Lions carried out a major service project on September 20 at the Mahara Prisons which got off to a start with the arrival of the Chief Guest District Governor (306B) Lion Mallik Zaveer and K. W. E. Karaliadde, Commissioner General of Prisons the guests of honour and other distinguished invitees who were received at the entrance to the premises by President Lion Sarath Gunesekera.

The Project covered many areas of Lions Service activities such as (a) Environment Protection and Awareness, (b) Drug Awareness, (c) Sight First and Sight Conservation.

Over 800 saplings of different varieties of timber were planted in and around the premises by the District Governor, the Commisioner General of Prisons and all others present including the prison inmates.

At a meeting held at the Prisons welfare centre Zone Chairman Lion Upali Jayamaha made an inspiring and educative address on Drug Awareness. Senior S. P. Mr. Upali Dharmabandu welcomed all present whilst the introduction of dignitaries at the Head Table was done by President Lion Sarath Gunesekara. The meeting ended with a vote of thanks proposed by Mr. Weerasinghe, Chief Jailor, Mahara Prisons.

The meeting was followed by the Eye Screening of 220 prison inmates by Western Opticals Kandana.

Zone Chairman Lion Christie, Lion Upali, many Cabinet officers and Lions and Lion Ladies of the Lions Club of Mattumagala were present.

Good Governance Breached? Abolition of the PED in the Treasury
By M. Somasundram

Continued from yesterday

But before implementation, Mr.Ronnie de Mel sought the assistance of Mr. C. Balasingham to study issues and make recommendations. Mr. Balasingham was an outstanding Civil Servant of the 1960’s and his period, as DST in the Treasury of the 1960’s, was legendary. He was now in retirement but was yanked out for this study. There could not have been a better choice. Mr. Balasingham made an extensive study, particularly of the workings of the Indian Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) and offered a comprehensive report. One significant component was the addition of Advance Accounts to the portfolio of the future organisation. Advance Accounts are commercial activities of government carried out by government departments. Some of the largest organisations in Sri Lanka, whether in the public or private sectors, were advance accounts one example being the Food Department. They too needed to be made managerial. Mr. Balasingham recommended on the structure and processes of the new organisation, which he called the Public Enterprises Division (now department). The PED was to be built round the core of the earlier Corporations Division but with the addition of Advance Accounts. The Balasingham report was extensively discussed at the Treasury and accepted.

Mr.Ronnie de Mel then had to choose the first head of this division. The first stage needed distinctive capabilities in institution building. The selection was the serving Director of Budget.

This Director/ Budget was a Civil Servant and had converted, in 1974, an hoary Division of the Treasury called Supply and Cadre into the Budget Division with the simultaneous introduction of the Planning, Programming and Budgeting System (PPBS). The PPBS transformed a line budget into a program budget which applied to all ministries and departments at the same time. It was an enormous system change, which if not handled properly, would have led to a collapse of the finance system of Sri Lanka. The transformation was carried out without a hitch. The Budget Division was restructured on the lines of the US Organisation and Management Bureau (OMB).

A Select Committee of parliament was appointed to consider and report on the Standing Orders and the setting up of a new Committee of Parliament, as the corporation sector had expanded so much that it was felt that a completely separate body ,similar to the PAC, should perform these functions for public corporations. The recommendations of the Minister of Finance specifically stated that PED will provide the skills to the new committee. Subsequently parliament amended the Standing Orders to set up a new Committee on Public Enterprises as recommended by the Cabinet of Ministers and approved by the Select Committee. Consequently parliamentary review of public corporations was shifted from the PAC (now COPA) to this new Committee of Public Enterprises (COPE). But there was a significant change in COPE’s list of responsibilities. Earlier the PAC was charged only with reviewing accounts that is of past activities as presented by the Auditor-General. COPE, in addition to this responsibility was to monitor (that is review the present) and check on corporate plans (that is analyse the future).

In both these activities COPE was to be assisted by PED, a distinct structural change in governance. By this measure the legislature and the executive were to work in closer collaboration. The PED was able to undertake the activities because it was the focal point for all matters pertaining to public corporations. Therefore it knew everything about each individual corporation, its attempt being to know more about it than their managements. In this it was successful as the enthusiastic support given by COPE to its recommendations testify. If bits and pieces of its responsibility had been distributed to other agencies in the Treasury, the impack of PED initiatives would have been minimal and COPE would have become another COPA for public corporations concentrating only on the past, as revealed by the accounts presented three or four years later.

Mr.Ronnie de Mel also arranged a 7 week tour for COPE where it visited the United States, Costa Rica, Britain, France, Yugoslavia and India and the institutions of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, UNDP and the International Centre for Public Enterprises, Following on this study it made its first report called " Parliament and Public Corporations" in 1980. The COPE spelt out its credo, what it expects to do, and how it expects public corporations to be reviewed. In this report it emphasised that the processing required for the analysis of performance be undertaken by the PED. The COPE said that "it will require its (PED) specialised skills if it is to radiate modernising influences into public corporations". From all accounts the PED has fulfilled these expectations of COPE from 1980 to the present day.

In addition to the Balasingham and first COPE report, the new Director benefited from the recommendations of a international team of experts on how this focal point should be structured and function. The team was headed by Praxy Fernandes, the Secretary, Ministry of Finance Government of India and a former head of BPE and two British academics specialised in public enterprises. This report was reviewed extensively by heads of corporations and approved by the Cabinet Secretary Mr.G.V.P.Samarasinghe as Chairman of the Committee of Secretaries. Once the PED was created an extensive programme of training was undertaken which included the politicians forming the COPE. They were marooned in Hunas Hotel for a week where they benefited from an intense program of management training.

By end l983 the first Director felt that the charismatic stage was over and the routinisation stage has to take over. He voluntarily withdrew from the post but was asked to nominate the successor. He accepted an international assignment in which he was instrumental in setting up similar focal points in Tanzania, Jamaica and Seychelles. He scanned the SLAS list but found that there was no one with the required skills to fill the post. He nominated his senior deputy, a senior Chartered Accountant who has gained . post graduate qualifications from the ISS Netherlands on public sector management and a Masters from Harvard in Management. The nomination was accepted and she has been holding the post from 1984 upto today.

Under her direction the PED has not only satisfied the COPE and public service expectations but the Institute of Chartered Accountants has nominated the PED for training of its chartered students. The only other agency recognised in the public service for this purpose is the Auditor-General’s department. This testifies to the excellence of staff working in the PED, which staffs now threatened with dispersal. With PED abolition the staff are entitled for retirement with abolition of office terms. At a time when a brain drain is affecting the public service, a policy of sponsoring the draining of brains is hardly a policy of good governance. It should be mentioned that PED staff had undertaken short term international assignments in Seychelles, Tanzania, Nigeria, Botswana and South Africa.

Public Corporations are now facing challenges both at vertical and horizontal levels. At the vertical level globalisation and liberalisation has compelled them to take a fresh look at their vision and mission and develop appropriate structures and systems. At the horizontal level they have to shift from a public department to a corporation to company and to privatization. All these changes have to be thought through and choreographed by a focal point on public corporations. Public Corporation numbers are also in the increase. Even today parliament’s order page has a proposal to create a corporation called the Aqua-Culture Development Authority. Distributing bits and pieces of PED to other agencies is not the answer. If other agencies are dealing with aspects of public corporations the rational approach would be to transfer them to PED, though this is not recommended since there must be some reason for such a practice.

The PED was created after considerable study the seminal document being the Balasingham report. It also benefited from the Praxy Fernandes report which was published and extensively discussed. It is claimed that the abolition of the PED was based on a management report the composition of which is not known nor its contents. Mr.Vasudeva Nanayakkara M.P. a concerned member of COPE, has asked that a copy be tabled in parliament. This is not a confidential document and when it is presented the reasoning would become evident. But the proposed manner by which the proposal is to be implemented does not offer inspiring moments. The Corporations Division was created to implement Finance No 38 of 1971. This is yet in operation. But no agency has been given this load bearing responsibility under the new dispensation. Also deficiencies of management principle and management practice are legion. The present proposal to abolish the PED and the manner proposed for distribution of its functions will become a case study of how management change should not be undertaken. Some management familiarity by its authors would not have come amiss.

However an institution that has existed since 1970, developed so carefully by excellent Finance Ministers like Dr N.M.Perera and Mr Ronnie de Mel, and which has performed its tasks without criticism needs better justification for abolition than a secretive report. It is the tragedy in Sri Lanka that some of its best institutions have been abolished because political leadership had been misled by bureaucratic scheming. An excellent example is the abolition of the Ceylon Civil Service a decision which everyone now bemoans including those who abolished it. A more recent example is that of SLIDA, details being found in a case study called "Bureaupathology at the SLIDA" published by Konark in the book "The Third Wave: Governance and Public Administration in Sri Lanka".

The destructive hurricane from the SLIDA has now come to the Finance Ministry. Ittakes giants to build but only pygmies to demolish. It is best if the decision to abolish the PED were kept in abeyance pending a th0rough review. In this review the views of COPE would be important. Similar to C.Balasingam recommending on the PED an outstanding public servant should review all aspects of the proposed abolition. Mr Gaya Kumaranatunge,a former DST,a Director of the ADB and currently in the private sector springs readily to mind.

From the book 'The Palm of his Hand' by E. C. T. Kandappa
Tourists who missed Kandy Perehara concerned a big loss

(C) E.C.T. Candappa

(Continued tomorrow)

"Now what about this Perera?" Raj asked Patil.

Since the Indian had arrived not a day had passed without his expressing a keen desire to meet a vague Perera. Now Pereras are as common in Sri Lanka as Smiths in England or Wongs in Hong Kong.

And now the time had come for him to leave. The Indian’s face glistened with excitement, and his dark, beady eyes grew wide with puzzlement. There was a hint of amusement around his betel-stained smile.

He had enquired of many concerning this elusive Perera but apart from displaying huge amusement, none had been able to end his quest.

"So how will you find him, Patil?"

The grease on the Indian’s face ceased to glisten and his smile faded.

"What are you saying? It’s not a man. It’s the Kandy Perera, with elephants."

It was Raj’s turn to be stunned.

"You mean...?" He broke into spontaneous laughter.

"You mean the perehera?"

The Indian’s face began to glisten again. The smile was restored to its full brightness.

The perehera or procession which the Indian so eagerly sought to witness was a pageant hallowed by history, a spectacle of unbounded splendour ranking among the best in the world. It was one of the most photographed and filmed events. Tourists who had visited Sri Lanka and not witnessed it counted it a great loss.

Tens of thousands from all over the country and abroad line the streets, sit on the kerbside, on paid stands, or merely stand five to ten deep, or watch from various vantage points the nightly spectacle.

Raj remembered the thrill the first time he had seen it. He had gone with some of his cousins at the invitation of a very large-hearted man, an accountant who had a large family of seven children and lived in Kandy town very close to the route of the pageant.

The man had a small Austin into which he packed as much as it could hold and a little more.

Raj remembered he had a small head on top of his huge frame, his jet black hair was parted in two, and he wore a small black "Hitler" moustache. He had a booming voice and booming laughter.

Remembering him was a heady feeling.

If ever Raj had known the meaning of the word welcome in all its warm dimensions it had been in that home.

No one knew how ill he had been then for he had died young, at the age of fifty one. Raj remembered his smiling face above all the bright lights of the perehera.

He returned from his reverie.

"You’re dreaming" said Patil.

"I’m sorry" said Raj, smiling. "Ah, well," he added, "there’s still time. You can see it this year."

"But what about the operation?" he asked. "Will it be good for me to travel."

"You’ll have to ask the surgeon."

They talked about their routines. Raj told the Indian about the unsettled way of a journalist’s life, how he rarely if ever had two days alike, that although he was expected to begin work at one in the afternoon and finish at nine, very often he began earlier and finished much later. On days when Parliament sat, he left home at nine in the morning and returned at eleven at night, and when Parliament sat late, sometimes the following morning. The times when the business of government was transacted in a predictably orderly manner had ended when the present Prime Minister Bandaranaike had been swept into power. His agenda was such that late sittings, suspension of standing orders, marathon debates, filibustering by the grand daddy of all filibusterers, the brilliant mathematician, university lecturer-turned-Parliamentarian and trouble shooter, Suntheralingam, became the accustomed practice. Reporters were expected to be on call twenty four hours a day.

A journalist’s world was a weird anti-routine world.

"So when are you planning to get married?" Patil asked, for that was a matter very much on his mind.

His orthodox Memmon parents were keen that their third son should marry early and go into the family textile business, like his two older brothers.

At present Patil worked as a clerk in a bank run by members of his community.

"I don’t have time to get married, Patil," exclaimed Raj. "Sometimes I don’t have time to have lunch."

Patil grinned devilishly.

"So can you remain every day like this?"

"Like what?"

The Indian’s black eyes twinkled with glee.

"Don’t you want to have children?"

Raj looked away. There was pressure from his parents, too. A journalist was a good proposition. He was high in the dowry market. They also had the perennial parental obsession with a future grandchild.

"Nah," he said, "I want to write books. Books will be my children. What about you? What do you do every day?"

Patil’s life was as orderly as a bank. He went to work at a certain time, returned at a certain time, ate at a certain time, went to the mosque daily, his bank was right behind one of Colombo’s biggest mosques, prayed dutifully five times a day, twice at home, went to the Galle Face promenade once a week, frequented the cinema mostly to see Hindi films, visited friends of whom he had dozens on visiting terms. And when he wasn’t visiting them, he was writing letters to them.

Jinasena, the union leader, was entirely scornful of such a time-consuming hobby as letter-writing.

"Doesn’t this one have anything more useful to do," he had once asked Raj, motioning with his head towards Patil.

Patil suggested that they should meet after they left the hospital. They would visit each other in their respective offices, homes, they would meet at the Galle Face Green, in the Queen Victoria Park, they would see films together.

Raj thought, I hope I’ll have time to meet you at all once I get back to work. Sometimes I don’t get to talk to my father for days.

But he said: "Oh, sure, that’ll be nice."

"And we can come back and see the other patients?"

"What for?" Raj asked.

The Indian bared his betel-stained teeth mischievously.

"Then we can see the nurses." He paused, and said: "You like Miss Hapangama, no?"

Raj blinked. Surely it had not been so obvious?

Patil added: "She likes you, too."

"How do you know that?"

"I can see everything."

Raj punched his cheek gently and left him.

He busied himself with his journal and entered the suggestion made by Patil. It was easy in that rosy mood to start conjuring with idle thoughts.

What were the chances of his marrying Miss Hapangama on the premise that she would want to marry him?

First, the contingency was remote, as Jeeves would have said, as pupil-nurses were not permitted to marry so that put it about four years away. Secondly, both sets of parents would object strenuously as they represented as wide a matrimonial gap as could possibly be imagined in Sri Lankan society. They were separated by religion, race and caste. The aristocratic Kandyans would spit upon Low-country Sinhalese even if they were Buddhists, but a Tamil Christian was the dark side of the moon. They wouldn’t stop at murder to prevent such an union. But, of course, theoretically, it could be done. They could elope and live the rest of their hunted lives in fear. But such marriages had taken place and murders had not resulted, and families had been united especially after the birth of the first grandchild. So there. What if he asked her?

Raj returned to the normal world with a shock.

While he lay back on his pillow gently amused by his wayward mind, dusk had fallen, the lights had been switched on, a semblance of silence prevailed. The street sounds were fading away and in the gaps he could vaguely hear "official" sounds: the clatter of pans, an attendant calling out to another, the voice of the matron, and the occasional clatter of nurses’ regulation shoes.

Such a clatter passed his bed, and then he distinctly heard Miss Hapangama say "poddak inna," a request for her companion to tarry awhile.

About the author

E.C.T. Candappa was one of Sri Lanka's been feature writers in the mid-fifties till the seventies. He was an outstanding journalist at Lake House and distinguished himself as a reporter and feature writer. He is now domiciled in Australia but still very much interested in his country of origin. He visited Sri Lanka last year and interviewed many of the personalities featured in this book.

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