The Story Of An Imagined Conflict: Development Versus Dignity
By Mahesan Niranjan -October 25, 2013 |
Prof Mahesan Niranjan
I am at my local pub in Bridgetown UK. My usual drinking partner, the Sri Lankan Tamil fellow Sivapuranam Thevaram is away this week. So I have come here with another buddy, Polgahawela Aarachchige Don Junius Rathmana Thanthiriya Bandarawela. We will call him Pol for short. Astute readers will observe that this friend is also a Sri Lankan and comes from the Sinhala tribe — not that this particular piece of information matters when friends are out drinking.
Pol and I are keen followers of the politics in Sri Lanka, and have recently read much about the elections to the Northern Provincial Council. We have been intrigued by the often repeated slogan “We did not vote for your development, we voted for our dignity.” That the further you are from that part of the world, the stronger is the preference for dignity over development, did not escape our notice. We recognized that if three members of the Tamil tribe were to engage in a discussion about the mandate given to the TNA by the Northern electorate, they will have four views between them on what precisely that mandate was. We have been amused by the post-election tug of war over ministerial appointments: one fellow wanting his brother appointed, one fellow threatening to resign from the party he is head of and several fellows boycotting the oath-taking event and threatening to take oath in Mullivaikkaal. Pol and I are agreed that the inverse relationships between the strength of their outbursts and the time constants with which they quietened down afterwards amply qualify them to become occupants of the new zoo that is being created in Battaramulla. Read More
What’s Wrong With Packer And His Casino ?
By Kusal Perera -October 25, 2013 |
Kusal Perera
This land of Gauthama Buddha, as the saffron clad owners of Buddhist “religion” claim, is not without organised and legal gambling. Last August, the National Lotteries Board celebrated 50 years of State organised gambling with the launch of a new lottery they call, “Mega Fifty”. Fifty years after, there are over a dozen State owned lotteries in the streets every where, sold especially to the poor.
There was much resentment in then Ceylon too, when the first State owned lottery was launched, that replaced the “Hospital Lottery” by an Act passed in parliament. In the absence of internet and social networking in cyber world, in the absence of TV, FM radio channels, smart phones and android tabs, protests against initiating a State owned lottery in then Ceylon, probably did not have the colour, the vogue and the hype as in present day Sri Lanka. Nevertheless in its own way, the government was pressured by Buddhist clergy and some sections of the puritanical Sinhala middle class society to “stop official gambling” as they called it.
Arguments were not very different. Buddhism does not approve and allow gambling they said. Its a bad example for children, poor people are those who get lured in to buying lotteries and they would get addicted going in search of big money, were popular arguments against the lottery. There was a political argument too that said, the government being inefficient in raising money for services and development, is trying to ‘pick the pockets’ of the poor to collect money indirectly, with an extremely high probability of winning the lottery. Since then, accepted without any grumbling it is the poor Sinhala Buddhists in millions who buy the larger number of these lotteries.Read More
