Through The Eyes Of The Damned…
Instead of administering the country on a sound and steady strategic premise, the governments that followed, first of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaranatunge and later of the Rajapaksas, essentially governed the country on a crisis-management basis on the one hand and a deal-making basis on the other.
“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.” —Confucius
The culvert has gone into neglect for a long time. The government civil engineer had promised the villagers that repairs would be effected soon but that ‘soon’ does not seem to have any definite timeframe. The dilapidated condition has rendered the culvert worthless; its primary function of circumventing the gushing of water from the tertiary canal and inundating the gravel path that leads up to the homesteads of the settlement seems to have been abandoned. The presence of the engineer is urgently required and in fact, awaited by many soon; otherwise the hamlet consisting of fifty to sixty homes, some complete and others still in construction but dwelling condition and their home gardens, would soon become virtually inaccessible by any motorized vehicle, agricultural or otherwise. The hustle and bustle of activities that was observed during the early days of settlement is now gone.The coming-in and going-out of busy land officers, community development officers, irrigation engineers, unit managers and block managers and other staff who belonged to the Authority that was in charge of the downstream settlement programme had brought a vibrancy to the new environment, raising hopes and aspirations of a people, who up to the time of uprooting from their traditional habitat, had led lives on the level of subsistence farmers.
