Reply to Cat’s Eye Where have all the comrades gone, sisters? Indian rope tricks which boomeranged The turn of the screw and Indian intentions - Part II Reawakening the crusading impulse Reply to RMB Senanayake A show of desperation in defending the indefensible New microbe from Jaffna in two U.S. patents: A case of patenting products and producer Schooling in my paradise Reply to Cat’s Eye Where have all the comrades gone, sisters? by Nalin Swaris Cat’s Eye ended its brief reply (Island 26 June) to my article with, "Hey, Comrade Nalin, we thought you were our friend". So I lit a lantern and went in the bright noon day light asking, "Where are the comrades? Where are the comrades?" Finally I found them dancing with joy on the free market place. When they saw me they burst into tears of laughter and poking each other in the ribs with their elbows they asked: "Poor chap, where has he been all these years? Does he not know, Karl Marx is dead, Solomon East (is Blue) Middle Way is dead? That Francis Fukuyama lives?" A veteran ideologue of the Equal Society Party stepped forward and said "Lenin got it wrong when he wrote ‘Imperialism is the Highest Stage of capitalism’. For us imperialism is the first stage of capitalism. The brightest luminary of the same party joined in "WHO’s goal of health for all in the year 2000 is a sick joke". Trotskyite and Stalinist comrades had in the past each bashed each other’s heads arguing about permanent revolution or socialism in one country. Now they were holding hands and singing. "Permanent devolution, No socialism even in one ministry". My dear Maoist comrades were on the furthest right. They were waving little Gold (credit) Cards and cheering. "Promote Self. Forget the People". Just then a former left adventurist drove up in a Think Tank called Liberal. Pensively stroking his stubbled chin, he said: "No governance is good governance. Actually, what we need is rapid capital accumulation". Then with gleaming eyes he called out. "Let’s hold UP the World Bank" and charged away. All the comrades ran behind him into a dark alley called Walled Street. But abruptly, they stopped in their tracks. A large feline was burning bright. Like a diamond in the night. They beat a hasty retreat and took a full page ad in all the newspapers. "We must end the war so that the economy can turn - like we did". Since then oh my sisters, it’s been all quiet on the Northern Front. So much for camaraderie. I am still troubled by that Review. My article does not prove, that I had not understood the review, as Cat’s Eye says in its reply. It may have shown. But then we have to show cause, haven’t we? Does suicide killing by poor working class women, epitomise "the concept of female agency?" Should a woman’s body be instrumentalised for lust or hate? Cat’s Eye’s call "To show some degree of respect towards the convictions of the members of the LTTE" is preposterous. It is pure sophistry to say we may not condone actions but that we must show respect for the convictions that motivate the actions. What can Cat’s Eye say to that moral zealot who wrote to this very paper to suggest that the best way to cure lesbians is to unleash convicted rapists among them so that they could "get a taste of the real thing?" Mr. Alles, I am sure, is a God trusting man. It is only after I read his letter that I understood what Ms. Arundhati Roy must have meant by "The God of Small Things". Now the all male Press Council tell us Alles is entitiled to ventilate his little conviction. But the Council (with its febrile fantasies about female sadism) missed Alles’ point. In his penetrating view, it is not de Rose, boy but the women, who lack a locus standi. Speaking of female agency, Rajani Thiranagama Rajasingham shines like a bright star in a firmament darkened by hate mongers, political opportunists, hair-splitting and sycophantic intellectuals. After the Anuradhapura massacre she stated publicly, "If this is what it takes to achieve Tamil Liberation, it is not worth having at all". She was right when she wrote from Jaffna in November 1987. "Today we are trapped people. We are made to walk this suicidal trip. Our great defenders and freedom fighters, lure the enemy to our doorstep. Ignite a landmine, fire from each and every refugee camp, escape to safety. And then come the shells whizzing whizzing. Bloody hell! The Tigers have withdrawn and we the sacrificial lambs, drop dead in lots... Our society has no will to organise. It is totally crumbled. There isn’t a single civilian structure to connect up with. The era has demised with so much loss and bitterness all around". Rajani believed in redemptive female agency. "I want to prove", she wrote, "that ordinary women like me also have the courage to fight alone and hold our inner selves together". Far better than shattering oneself to kill indiscriminately. The only way to honour Rajani’s memory is not to compromise the principles for which she was killed, by the LTTE. Terrorism, whether perpetrated by the State or anti-State agencies is a Crime Against Humanity. We cannot be ambiguous or ambivalent about this. Indian rope tricks which boomeranged by Ravana The one night stand visit to Sri Lanka by Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh, has all the hallmarks of a desperate attempt to resurrect yet another rope trick on Sri Lanka that failed. With the benefit of hindsight, a simulated reconstruction of the latest Indian rope trick maybe spelled out as follows. First, India and its partner Norway (the twin candidates for two permanent seats on the Security Council) intensify surreptitiously the pressure on the government to raise the white flag and invite the LTTE for peace talks, after Prabakaran raises the Eelam flag in Jaffna. Public support for the war had to be overturned into opposition to the war. What better way to achieve this than by folk drama. Thus, with generous funding by Norway a drama from a crisis was created. It was called Thalavama. For full effect, Norway very ingeniously engineered for an unsuspecting government agency to stage the drama, in towns and villages. The goal was to destroy not only the popular support for the security forces, but to prevent the youth from responding to the call by the government and security forces to join the army. Yet, another goal was to demoralise and confuse the security forces. This fact became loud and clear by the awkward question put to - the president, when she addressed a group of army officers via satellite. The question was whether the government is pursuing the military offensive against the terrorists, or the peace offensive? Thavalama staged like a traveling circus by one arm of the government, dramatically showed the confused policy of the government, it is case of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. The stage was then set for the LTTE to attack Elephant Pass, the gateway to Jaffna. On cue therefore the LTTE launched the attack on the major camp at Elephant Pass in March this year. This they did, after first cutting off the water supplies to the camp. A demoralized, confused arid bewildered army abandoned the camp within a few days making a ‘tactical withdrawal’. The LTTE followed the army in hot pursuit even with depleted strength, hoping to do a cake walk to Jaffna. The strategy adopted by the LTTE appears to have a RAW stamp. India’s twin partner Norway in the meantime played its role by intensifying the tempo to pull back the government from seeking a military solution. Strangely no such pressure was exerted on the LTTE which was intensifying its desperate attacks to recapture Jaffna. The LTTE appeared to be operating under the umbrella of India while Norway played its role as allocated to take care of the government. The operators of the rope trick betrayed themselves by launching the third stage prematurely. Like the doomsday reporters of the US weekly Time magazine, Indian South Block Kautilyas expected the fall of Jaffna to the terrorists as inevitable. Hence the button was pressed to launch the third stage. The already assembled naval fleet was promptly offered to the Sri Lanka government to evacuate our troops. The infamous humanitarian aid was also offered as if the insulting offer to evacuate the troops was not enough. Neither was asked for by our government but both sounded like Prabakaran’s prayers being answered by the godfathers of India. The humiliating offer by India raises several questions. First, are the Indian leaders (or is it the kautilyas of the South bloc) are so insensitive or intellectually bankrupt, as to make an offending offer to a friendly neighbor engaged in a war against the terrorists created by India. Or could it be somebody pressed the button prematurely without realizing. The third stage of rope trick had failed. What would have been India’s response if Nepal or China offered to evacuate Indian troops from Kargill when Kashmir militants were on the offensive. Cho Ramaswamy, the famed Indian journalist who wrote against the LTTE, whilst in Tamil Nadu, recently said in an interview, "there could be nothing more inhuman between one country to another than this humanitarian offer by the Indian government". India’s plans and calculations went haywire when Sri Lanka’s genuine friends China, Pakistan, Russia and Israel responded promptly with supplies of sophisticated military hardware and other forms of assistance. Equally when the governments placed the country on a war footing, India saw a red signal. India caught with its pants down and without a plan to face the unexpected events, panicked and quickly dispatched the foreign minister to resurrect the collapsed rope trick. Unfortunately his one night act made the situation worse. The number one diplomat of India, offended all the political parties other than the Tamil racist parties. UNP leader and the President with whom he had discussions. Even if the number one diplomat of India was so arrogant to ignore the political parties whose views represent those of the Sinhala majority which constitute seventy percent, the Indian Embassy should have reminded the number one diplomat that no political solution would be possible without the support of the majority. Perhaps the number one diplomat felt the Sinhala majority could be bought with a hundred million dollar loan to purchase food from India only. To make matters worse, the number one diplomat of India dropped yet another multi ton brick with a statement on his return to New Delhi. At a press conference he announced that India would provide advice to the Sri Lanka government and our political leaders. India which offered ships to evacuate our troops and provide parippu aid to the Tamils in Jaffna, when our President asked for military hardware should be told that our advice to India is to solve its fifty year problem in Kashmir by implementing the UN resolution calling the Indian government to hold a referendum allowing the Kashmiris’ self determination. It is somewhat mysterious throughout the operation of the latest rope trick, the Indian minister of defence, a valuable ally of the LTTE famous for shooting from the hip maintained a mysterious silence. Perhaps he was very busy! Rope tricks of Indira Gandhi... India’s foreign policy since independence, has displayed an incurable inferiority complex. Thus J. Nehru devoted most of his time and energy to strut on the world’s stage like a statesman of a superpower, while millions of Indians were dying of starvation and even exposure to the natural elements. This was in sharp contrast to Mao Tse Tung who devoted his full time and energy to build a great nation with a strong economy. China was in ruins in 1949, while India inherited a well-managed state from the British. It is no wonder then that today the young intellectuals of India blame both Nehru and Gandhi for the monumental problems faced by over one billion Indians due to egoistic policies of its leaders. Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi followed the imperialistic traditions of the family. Like her father who made an enemy by his reckless policy towards China, Indira Gandhi converted all the other neighbors to enemies or less than friendly countries. I could do no better than quote Indira Gandhi who as the guest speaker of the Belgrade UNCTAD meeting in 1983 declared that "India has to allocate a large percentage of its resources on defense, since India is surrounded by hostile countries". She did not exclude Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, or Bhutan. I too attended that meeting and was shocked by her undiplomatic and arrogant justification of India’s defense policy. As seen by the results, Indira Gandhi’s foreign and domestic policies were recipes for disaster. Secessionist uprisings within India reached their peak with the infamous attack on the holiest shrine of the Sikhs by the Indian army in which six hundred civilians were killed. Geographically bifucation of Pakistan by the British into West and East Pakistan with India in the center, was used by Indira Gandhi to split Pakistan into two states. Yet the crude diplomacy left the new state of Bangladesh with a love/hate relationship with India. Indira Gandhi’s foreign policy towards the neighbours was mostly escapism from domestic ethnic conflicts. Like her father who fought a disastrous war against China, Indira Gandhi fought two wars against Pakistan. The result is the development of nuclear weapons by two developing countries, which should devote their resources to eliminating poverty. Indian dreams of becoming a regional power without the friendship of her immediate neighbors is bound to remain a dream like the imperialistic dreams of J. Nehru. Sri Lankans in particular should remember how J. Nehru pulled up Sir John Kotelawala for making his speech at the famous Bandung conference in Indonesia, without first showing to Nehru. Arrogant Nehru failed to realize that Sir John Kotelawala could hit back as strongly as he would wish, and that he did. Sir John asked Nehru whether he showed his speech to Sir John before delivering it. Indira Gandhi’s plan to invade Sri Lanka... Most Sri Lankans may perhaps not be aware that Indira Gandhi finalized the plans to invade Sri Lanka in August 1984 after the numerous terrorist groups prepared the ground with the insurrection. Dr. Rohan Gunaratne the world’s number one authority on the terrorist insurrection in Sri Lanka, describes these plans in his book War & Peace in Sri Lanka. As stated by him in his book, by a quirk of fate the plans to invade Sri Lanka were found among the documents which an Indian agent was paid by France to spirit away secret files on Indian defense. Sri Lankan government as usual was alerted only after the event. According to Dr. Rohan Gunaratne and as exposed by several Indian journalists the 50th Independent Para Brigade of the Indian army was to spearhead the attack and carry out the task and capturing Sri Lankan airstrips of Katunayake, Jaffna and Trincomalee to simplify the landing of Indian aircraft with troops. A top secret meeting between premier Indira Gandhi and her advisors was convened to discuss plans to invade Sri Lanka. By this time, in 1984, JR’s foreign policy and the ‘all countries’ seen foreign minister have made Sri Lanka friendless. This prompted JR to say that he would collaborate even with the devil to fight the LTTE, however even the devil did not respond! Indian intelligence knew that not a country would come to Sri Lanka’s rescue if lndia invaded Sri Lanka at that time. According to the invasion plans as descried by Dr. Rohan Gunaratne in his book ‘War and Peace in Sri Lanka the 50th Para-Brigade’ was kept at Agra, while amphibian troops were kept at Trivandrurm. Plans for the invasion were put into motion in August 1984 and the troops were kept on full alert. The paratroopers and the amphibian forces were waiting for a signal from Indira Gandhi to commence the invasion. Fortunately, once again the imperialistic designs of Nehru’s descendant failed, when Indira Gandhi was assassinated by a Sikh bodyguard on 31, October 1984. Perhaps even the Sri Lanka VIP mourners who attended the funeral would not have realised at that time that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was saved by the assassin who avenged the killing of 600 Sikhs in their holiest temple. Rajiv Gandhi who inherited the legacy of the imperialistic Nehru family, almost achieved his grandfather’s dream to annex Sri Lanka which was proposed to J. Nehru by our own leader J. R. in the 1940s fortunately for Sri Lanka and as it happened to his mother the rope tricks on Sri Lanka boomeranged on Rajiv Gandhi with Australian efficiency. The grandson of J. Nehru was sent to his grave by the monster created by his mother. The IPKF and R. Premadasa... Critics of R Premadasa (with added courage after his death) and lead by some ola-leaf-reading ex-diplomats who repeat the mantram, the cornerstone of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy must be friendship with India) have been sympathizing with India for the unceremonious departure of the IPKF as ordered by R. Premadasa. That the order to the guest who overstayed to leave was unseemly, is indisputable. However the one million dollar question does not appear to have been asked by the critics: What would have happened according to plans laid down by the Gandhis if the IPKF succeeded in defeating the LTTE? Clearly, the IPKF would have established unchallenged military rule in the north and the east as was done throughout the IPKF operations. The hapless Jayewardene Administration would have had to take orders from the Indian government and the IPKF Generals. J. Dixit has said recently that if the IPKF was allowed to remain in Sri Lanka for another three to four months the job would have been completed. What he does not say is what India planned to do after defeating Prabakaran. Is there an optimist in Sri Lanka whose upstairs is so bankrupt as to believe that India would have voluntarily withdrawn the IPKF and invited the Sri Lanka government to restore its suzerainty over north and east? There could be no doubt India would have arranged a merged north and east to hold a referendum to decide whether to become a federal state of India or to remain as an integral part of Sri Lanka. Viewed in this light President Premadasa saved the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. By his undiplomatic action, for the third time Sri Lanka was saved from the imperialistic Gandhis. Obsessed with India’s superior physical size in South Asia, Indian Government ethos has been to project power and be on the offensive in defense of its selfish interests as a regional super power. This is seen by India sabotaging of every attempt made by South Asian countries to form alliances/arrangements even on harmless subjects such as protection of the environment, prevention of marine pollution and development of marine resources were sabotaged by India. The killing of the South Asia Cooperation on Environment Protection (SACEP), Indian Ocean Marine Affairs Conference (IOMAC) attempts by Mr. L Athulathmudali as Minister of Shipping to hold a Ministerial meeting in Colombo to adopt a regional plan on prevention of marine pollution was killed in its infancy by India. This was done even despite the very keen support by Mr. S Srivasthawa, former Secretary General of IMO. South Asia is the only region without a regional plan to tackle marine pollution. SAARC is the only regional organization that was allowed to be born, but that too has been put in cold storage by India, on the flimsy ground that Pakistan is having a military rule. The form of government of a member country is outside the scope of SAARC. There was no democracy in the Soviet Union, when India was enjoying a honeymoon with economic trade, cultural and defense pacts. This was done by Indian leaders while pretending to be a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement. While the Kautiliyas of the South Block put pressure on Indira Gandhi to invade Sri Lanka, as well as to kill all attempts by South Asian countries to cooperate, Indian diplomats engineered to use Sri Lankan diplomats to get the United Nations to declare the Indian ocean as a Peace Zone. India’s plans were blindingly obvious, namely to keep the fleets such as those of USA, UK, France and China out of the Indian Ocean. The Indian Navy could have then dominated and dictated terms to all the countries bordering the Indian ocean. Our diplotnats who allowed themselves to be used to pull India’s chestnuts were either intellectually blind or their loyalties were misplaced. If our diplomats manoeuvered to get India to implement the Srima-Shastri Pact and send back over 250,000 Indian estate Tamils before moving the UN to declare a peace zone our diplomats would have justified their existence in the Service. Prime Minister Shastri was indeed the best Indian leader after independence, who could have won the friendship of all the neighbors and settled the Kashmiri dispute, perhaps he was too good to be a politician. As pointed out by an Indian journalist recently the title "ugly Indian" has been transferred to India, a title which was conferred on the Americans in the 1960s. Sri Lanka’s ability to withstand the Indian/Norwegian onslaught will determine Sri Lanka’s future as an independent sovereign state. The ability to do this rests largely with the powerful Executive President - a monstrous creation of JR. The Executive Presidency was abused by JR to push the infamous 13th Amendment down the throats of UNP MPs who were kept under 5 Star Hotel arrest. That was democracy JR style! Sri Lankans irrespective of race, creed or politics have a choice; wake up to defend the independence or lie down to die. Historians will record, that India gave Sri Lanka the most precious gift - Buddhism- as well as the worst — the world’s most ruthless terrorists. The turn of the screw and Indian intentions - Part II by Gunadasa Amarasekara It is well known that both the SLFP and the UNP have hitherto subordinated the national interest in both military and political decision making to retain the support of the Tamil and Muslim political parties. The subordination is so complete that at present the majority Sinhalese have no mechanism whereby they can ensure equitable social, economic and constitutional rights for themselves. The Tamil and Muslim political leadership have been shown to have an ingrained Shylock complex in their dealings with the UNP and SLFP. However the cynicism with which the Sinhalese psyche has been manipulated, fragmented and alienated by the SLFP and the UNP shows a level of political amorality, indeed of moral idiocy, unparalleled in modern democracies with legislatures elected by the will of the majority. The proposed package of constitutional reforms is intended to take this process of reducing the majority Sinhalese to regional minorities in a national confederation of regions. Each of these regions will inevitably become the domain of a warlord like Pirabakaran. The ex-professor of law, G. L. Pieris, has invented a unique constitutional methodology. He has found a way to fragment a well-knit society consisting of many racial, religious and linguistic groups with a stable civilised way of life that had evolved over many centuries, into nine warring tribal societies. This dreadful Pandora’s package has been examined, analysed and discussed by people from different walks of life over the past so many years. So much so that there is very little new that anyone can say on the subject. It is despite convincing, valid arguments offered against this package by many knowledgeable people that a cabal drawn from the SLFP, UNP, TULF and SLMC have chosen to make this package the centre-piece for a new constitution. Sad to say, intelligent individuals transformed into moral idiots by political expediency, become immune to reason, decency, democratic norms and morality. The national consequences of the actions of such people are reaching disaster proportions for our society and national status. The people of all walks of life, who should be deciding the future of our society and nation, have become puppets manipulated by the puppet masters of the SLFP, UNP, TULF and the SLMC. A democratic parliamentary system must offer its electors the freedom to choose between the manifestos offered by diverse political parties. It is this freedom to choose in an area fundamental to their democratic rights, namely the nature and content of the constitution, that has been subverted and manipulated by the cabal of party leaders. The modern political structure of Sri Lanka has been that of a liberal capitalist democracy, The liberal concepts which were already there in indigenous social and political institutions, were formalised and legalised by the democratic ideals of Western modernism in the 1940’s. From 1956 to 1976, the liberal foundations of these institutions were gradually modified by socialist ideologies influenced by Marxism. The social institutions that ensured freedom of choice for the people, which is the fundamental basis of liberal democratic social organisation, came under centralised political control of the State in the 1970’s, under the leadership of the SLFP. Ironically, this paved the way for the final transformation to State control of all democratic institutions combined with an open market economy brought about by J. R. Jayewardene. Chandrika Kumaranatunga, J. R. Jayewardene’s inheritor, has further consolidated State control of social institutions in a globalising capitalist market economy. Capitalism is an invention of Western modernism. Its viability is tied up with its union with the liberal democratic political ideals that emerged with the French Revolution. The political leaders of Western democracies know that state control of institutions destroys the freedom of choice and liberal essence that reduces the inevitable inhuman excesses of the exploitative consequences of capitalism. The foolish attempt of our leaders to combine socialist control of social institutions with capitalism has resulted in the combination of the worst aspect of Marxism-Leninism, namely Communist bureaucracy, with capitalism. As a result, the institutionalised liberal democratic traditions and freedom of choice that enabled the modification and amelioration of the inevitable exploitative consequences of capitalism, particularly harsh in an under developed country such as ours, were replaced by mindless and heartless bureaucratic State control. Choice is no longer determined by the electors. It is determined by the elected. Not surprisingly, the clearest presentation of the contemporary realities facing this country and guidelines for action have been defined not by the political leaders of the SLFP, UNP and the TULF, but by nationalist ideologists and intellectuals, both lay and religious, who have not allowed affiliations to political parties to cloud their judgement. The signs are that the present upsurge of mass nationalism will not be drawn into the net of ethno-political intrigues and manipulations that has become a way of life for the dominant political parties of the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims. Only a political leadership that can reject manipulations of the national interests by minority interests can give leadership not only against the fascist LTTE, but also against the growing warlordism and criminalisation of politics that is becoming widespread both in the North and the South. The first steps towards rejection of State control of their lives and their institutions will hopefully emerge from such nationalist movements. The upsurge of enthusiasm for the Sihala Urumaya Movement today is reminiscent of the nationalist enthusiasm that preceded the rise to power of the SLFP in 1956. I hope the leaders of this political movement are aware of the lessons of the past. If they can without giving into opportunist elements give honest leadership to the upsurge of nationalism we are witnessing there is yet hope that it will not be exploited and manipulated in the power struggles of the dominant political parties of the Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims. The moral idiocy that characterises contemporary politics calls for radical new structures to defend the democratic process itself. Movements such as Sihala Urumaya have an opportunity to introduce such innovation. For example, the violation by politicians of the democratic rights of social institutions, and the sanctity of the people’s freedom to choose must be made a criminal offence. Without such provisions, Judicial, Public and Police Commissions could never function as independent institutions free of political manipulation. The ruthless terrorism of the LTTE is the outcome of the ethno- politics of Chelvanayakam, and Amirthalingam, just as the ruthless terrorism of the JVP was the outcome of the class politics of the Marxist politicians. The LTTE and its Tamil constituency have justified terrorism by making outrageously false claims of linguistic, cultural and economic exploitation. The Tamils constitute a minority that is equally if not better placed than the majority Sinhalese economically, socially, professionally, and educationally. Their problem is that they resent the fact that there are more Sinhalese than Tamils and are therefore an electoral minority in the parliamentary democracy. If the Tamils are after electoral parity with the Sinhalese, or political domination of the Sinhalese by manipulation of the political system, they will be in violation of the fundamental basis of democratic electoral practice. Thereby they will be undermining the foundation of democratic social institutions of which they are themselves substantial beneficiaries, and break up a well-knit society into warring tribal groups. Much of the sufferings of the Tamils in the North and East are the long term consequences of manipulative racist politics introduced by S J V Chelvanayakam. It is the misfortune of all the people of this country, including the Tamils, that Chelvanayakam chose to leave Malaysia and come to live in Sri Lanka. It is worthy of note that the Tamils of Malaysia who do not have any of the rights that Mr. Chelvanayakam fought for in Sri Lanka, are far better off than the Tamils of Sri Lanka today, because Malaysian Tamils have not squandered the social integrity of Malaysia to fight for imaginary grievances, or grandiose fantasies of a Great Tamil Eelam. But we should not attribute the Malaysian success entirely to the fact that they were free of the likes of Chelvanayakam. Malaysia has had the good fortune to have a nationalist political leadership ofthe majority Malays, who did not permit minority manipulation detrimental to the national majority to take place, and thereby ensured the smooth national integration of all minorities in a successful multi-ethnic society. Sri Lanka on the other hand has had the double misfortune of being saddled with Chelvanayakam and many of his ilk, as well as an anti-national political leadership of the majority Sinhalese who have bartered the rights of the majority for the votes of the minorities, and reduced a once civilised multi-ethnic society to a state close to barbarism. The leaders of the SLFP, UNP, TULF and the SLMC, the LSSP and the CP have devoted almost the entirety of the life-time of the present parliament to dwell ad nauseam on the grievances of the Tamil people, their sufferings, the encroachments on their democratic rights, and the moral justification for LTTE to indulge in terrorism on account of historical Tamil grievances. Millions of rupees have been spent by the government and the NGO’s financed by foreign funds to propagandise the purported grievances and sufferings of the Tamils. In fact this has become a lucrative industry for many. Let us compare this with their attitude to another deprived constituency represented by the JVP. Unlike the Tamil constituency, the JVP constituency has real linguistic, cultural and economic grievances under the governance of the English speaking minority class consisting of Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, who control the political and economic institutions of the entire country. The JVP constituency as a whole is in fact worse off than the Tamil constituency. More than sixty thousand Sinhalese, mostly youth are estimated to have died in the JVP uprisings intended to correct the sufferings of millions of Sinhalese living below the poverty line, with no access to democratic right worth talking about. Yet there is no one in parliament to talk of the grievances of these people, of encroachments on their democratic rights, the moral justification for JVP terrorism on account of deprivation that goes back to colonial times. There are no government or NGO funded propaganda on behalf of the JVP constituency. Pirubakaran is promised clemency, asylum and even monetary rewards. Wijeweera is given extra judicial execution. The Sinhalese political leaders who have ruled this country have never given in to Sinhalese extremism. On the other hand, they are always ready to give into Tamil extremism. The Mahanayake of Malwatte has made the reasonable comment that the minorities should face the reality that without the goodwill of the Sinhalese masses, no progress can be made in the resolution of not only minority problems, but all national problems facing the nation. Deals made between opportunistic, unscrupulous Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim political leaders, supported by regional and international interventionists with their own agendas, will only increase the deprivation of all, and eventually lead to extremism and anarchy. A nationalist political leadership that can reject the manipulations of and manipulation by ethnic minorities is required, to tap the mounting moral indignation of the mass of the Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim and all other minorities, not only against the fascist LTTE in the North and East, but also against the growing warlordism and criminalisation of politics of the SLFP, UNP, TULF and the SLMC. It is only then that we will acquire the credibility to handle the complexities of regional and international pressures as a sovereign nation should. Reawakening the crusading impulse by Jehan Perera Overshadowed by the final meeting of the government and UNP, but significant nonetheless was the launch of "Towards Equity", a collected edition of the speeches of Prof. G. L. Peiris over the past five years. During this period the learned professor has played an undeniably important role as Minister of Justice, Constitutional Affairs, Ethnic Affairs and National Integration, Deputy Minister of Finance and as key architect of the draft constitutional reform proposals, in particular its chapter on the devolution of powers. When Prof. Peiris left the University of Colombo where he had been an outstanding teacher, and joined directly into mainstream politics, there were many of his colleagues and friends who thought he would not be able to survive long in that arena of pragmatism and absence of principle. But except for the LTTE assassination attempt on President Chandrika Kumaratunga that also severely injured him, Prof. Peiris has so far not faced any serious threat to his political life. In fact there are now those, even within his own party, who regret that Prof. Peiris may have become too much of a survivor in party politics. In the recent past the crusading impulse in him seems to have got diminished. Indeed, it came as a disappointment that Prof. Peiris did not speak at all at the book launch that was organised in his honour. Perhaps he preferred to let his past thoughts speak through his book rather than his present thoughts. There is a belief that this change occurred with Prof. Peiris taking up the challenge of fighting for a seat in Parliament through the directly elected district list, rather than coming into Parliament on the national list on the basis of his party’s overall performance. In the early part of his ministry, Prof. Peiris took up a number of causes, including unpopular ones that were essential to the long term viability of a democratic Sri Lanka. One of these unpopular but essential tasks was the transformation of Sri Lanka’s unitary constitution to a non-unitary or federal one in which sovereign power was devolved and shared between the centre and regions. ELITE RESISTANCE Historically, the demand for regional self-government did not come from the Sinhalese majority, but from the Tamil minority. In the context of today’s ethnic separatist movement, devolution becomes a threat to the notion of island-wide government and administration. Devolution is not seen as primarily a democratic right which must be promoted for the sake of good governance for all, but as a Tamil ethnic demand to be resisted. But it must not be forgotten that on two occasions the Sinhalese at the periphery too revolted against the centralised state, at tremendous cost to themselves. Their slogan was "milk for Colombo, but bitter gourd for us." This may be why there is a much better response to the prospects of devolution at the grassroots level, than in Colombo amongst the social and economic elite. The resistance to devolution and sharing of power in Colombo was witnessed last month in the same hall of the BMICH at another conference on the ethnic conflict. Last month’s conference was organised by the SLAAS, which would count as the country’s premier body of scientists and academics. The conference had a large participation, exceeding 300. One way in which this opposition may be overcome will be to present the constitutional reforms to the masses of people, both in the north and south, not simply as the dry bones of constitutional law. The economic and material benefits that will flow out of the devolution of power would need to be emphasised. The proposals need to be presented to the people with economic flesh and blood added to the framework of law. The old crusading impulse of Prof. G. L. Peiris will be a most powerful force in this task and will need to be reawakened, perhaps after the general elections due by October. It can be said that Prof. Peiris became the most effective champion of the spirit of devolution in the country. It is true that before him there were others, such as a host of Tamil politicians belonging to the Federal Party and TULF, such as the late S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and A. Amirthalingam. But they addressed only the Tamil constituency, and failed to win either the trust or hearing of the majority Sinhalese. There was also the late Liberal Party leader Dr. Chanaka Amaratunga who championed a federal constitution, but his was a voice that reached only the upper social classes. By way of contrast, as a leading and highly respected member of the PA government, Prof. Peiris’s views on constitutional reform penetrated into the very heart of the country’s political discourse. Prof. Peiris’s expositions on why the unitary system was not suitable for a multi-ethnic polity reached into all levels of society. Due to contributions such as Prof. Peiris’s today there is a bipartisan consensus at the highest political level on the need for the devolution of power. This is a major accomplishment that needs to be strenghtened in every way possible. AFTER ELECTIONS There are those who denigrate this bipartisan consensus by saying that the substance of it is very little. And indeed the consensus appears to be running into difficulties due to the pressure of the forthcoming general elections. Further, the Tamil parties too appear not TO be keen on supporting the consensus that has emerged. As opposition leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said, there is a great distance to journey for peace, but there is hope now that the mainstream political society will be taking those steps together. For the first time since Sri Lanka received independence, the two major political formations in the country have sat together and agreed on a substantial departure from past constitutional practice. While there were all-party conferences in the past, this is the first occasion in which the leaders of government and opposition have spent hours and weeks sitting at a table with each other working out details of an agreement. According to the latest drafts of the constitutional reform proposals, sovereignty and executive, legislative and judicial powers are to BE shared between the centre and regions. This would mean that the unitary constitutional principle of centralised governance that has existed IN Sri Lanka for the past 52 years will finally be superseded by something more in keeping with Sri Lanka’s plural and multi-ethnic society. As envisaged in the agreed PA-UNP proposal, the draft constitution would see an important shift in the locus of political power. The fact that the term "union of regions" has been removed from what Prof. Peiris and his slain TULF colleague Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam envisaged will not change this reality. Sovereign power is to be shared between the centre and regions. What is to be shared remains to be negotiated, and will determine the federal character of the new constitution. The details of the power sharing agreement are not yet spelled out, and that will depend in part on the bargaining with the Tamil and Muslim parties. It is not realistic to expect too much detail on this score at the present time with general elections being but a few months away. Reply to RMB Senanayake A show of desperation in defending the indefensible by Eymard de Silva Wijeyeratne I refer to R.M.B Senanayake is (RMBS) piece in the Island of 28th June in which he declares an indissoluble union between the everyday ethics of Capitalism and the religious tenets of Christianity. If John the Baptist, the voice crying in the wilderness, prepared the way for Jesus Christ while living on locusts and wild honey, RMBS is the voice in the supermarket extolling the use of hocus-pocus and money (capital) to clear the path for a bureaucratic church that is now hell-bent on getting embroiled in religious and ethnic politics. I like to puncture windbags who try in vain to pump the air of dignity and credibility into institutions to which they are beholden. Just as a balloon when punctured gets into turbulent motion on a zigzag path, windbags lose control of themselves at the point they despair for want of air. At this point they make racist remarks about another is the Sinhalese pedigree. I regret I will not reciprocate with either fatuous remarks about anothers racial pedigree or with assays of their mental condition. I work on the assumption that all men are possessed of the critical faculties of mind, but if there is evidence that they are either unable or unwilling to use those faculties in dealing with matters of public interest, I will deal with them in an open forum where comment is free but talking sense is highly priced. Another Imputed Madness a certification of one’s dubious sanity RMBS relies on an observation supposed to have been made by G.K. Chesterton about arguing with a madman: "that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle". Chesterton’s own mental condition is suspect if he had, as RMBS states, tried to argue with a madman. Chesterton, though a loyal Roman Catholic, was a pedestrian writer, who failed to make even a slight impact on the course of English literature. Both Chesterton and RMBS fail to realise that "narrowness" refers to the ratio of breadth to length when that ratio is significantly less than unity. A circle cannot be narrow, because all points on its circumference are equidistant from the point called its centre. In condemning a madman Chesterton has posthumously condemned himself as well as RMBS. Since RMBS makes a public declaration that he is an economist when he says that EW repeats the common misconception among non-economists that Adam Smith justified self-interest, I would like to refer him to what an economist, whom he quotes while skidding gleefully on the surface of his learning curve. Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist". (Kenneth Boulding). Whatever, book-learning yields in the process of skimming to and fro from Adam Smith to Amartya Sen, one should not populate one’s mind with madmen in order to prove one’s own sanity. The Roman Church RMBS is very correct when he says that I seek to separate Jesus Christ from the institutional church. I do this with great zeal because Christianity and its founder Jesus Christ have been brought into disrepute by the institutional church, especially in Sri Lanka. The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka has not limited its activities to matters relating to faith and morals, but extended them to include those, which enhance its position as a source of power. This role of the church is well captured by an internationally renowned Sri Lankan theologian, who, in reference to the takeover of Catholic schools by the State says, What this event revealed is worth reflecting over: that the dominant ecclesiology of the day inspired the church to show its social muscles in order to retain the ownership and management of institutions that provided power nearly four decades later it would get the State to change the date of election because it fell on Holy Thursday, (The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka during the First Fifty Years of its Independence, Fr. Aloysius Peiris S.J., Dialogue, Vol. XXV-XXVI ). Just as much as the Catholic Church in the 1870s, according to Fr. Peiris, empathised with the Buddhist community as co-victim in the unjust educational system that operated in favour of a tiny Anglican minority. Today, the Catholic church brushes off the horrendous acts of terror that are purportedly executed to enforce the rights of a minority, to show the world that it too, as an institution representing a religious minority, faces the insidious threat of discrimination Raving, Ranting and Rambling RMBS reveals his role as a defender of and spokesman for the church, when he says that it ignores his (my) ravings and rantings. Firstly, raving, ranting and rambling are responses of a mind that declares its uncritical loyalty to an institution, which demands servile fealty as a condition for being saved from the fires of hell. Secondly it is a property of a mind that tries to grapple with subjects that are beyond its grasp. There are two glaring examples of such ranting, raving and rambling. The first is,The Pope’s Apology for Historical Injustices", (Island, 24th May). RMBS uses the term historical injustices as an euphemism for crimes against humanity and then proceeds with significant lack of shame to play down the atrocities committed by the Spaniards and Portuguese. He goes on to say, Most Spanish conquests were skillfully manipulated intraventions in internecine war, which were already going on. It was not very much different in our own country, where all three colonial powers were invited by the local rulers. The second is found in, "Evolution and Rebirth" (Island, 5th July). In this piece RMBS says Mr. W. perhaps is referring to the experiments of Pavlov on animals in the Soviet Union when he refers to experiments on the paranormal with respect to animals in the 1960s. In the first place Pavlov’s experiments were designed to support a hypothesis known as "Behaviourism" which highlighted the causal relationship between stimulus and response. These experiments, which had nothing to do with investigating the paranormal (also known as Extra Sensory Perception), were conducted long before 1960. Perhaps RMBS vain hope is that the hidden hand he uses to convert the socio-cultural environment in Sri Lanka into a superficial Euro-Christian one would be hailed as being on par with Adam Smith’s invisible hand. A reckless venture reducing a majority to a minority RMBS, being unable to cope with nuances of language, makes a mess of my reference to a mess of pottage. Recognition of the fact that any minority enjoys the same inalienable rights, which the majority enjoys, is both axiomatic and morally binding. Moving from this premise, it does not mean that one must accept all strategies devised by peace-engineers to reduce a majority to a minority, with constitutional measures such as the devolution of power. Power lies at the root of every social problem. Peace engineering has now become a pathological impulse as well as the exercise of demeaning entrepreneurial skill. Yes, there is considerable suffering among people in this country, not only in the North and East but in the South too, due to the practice of terror. In RMBS dissertation on the Pope’s apology, which I referred to earlier, he says, "From a victim’s" point of view all massacres are equally horrible. A bloodthirsty neighbour is no different from invaders from afar". Yes, despite ranting and raving to divert attention away from the atrocities committed by the Portuguese and Spaniards, RMBS diagnosis is right as it applies to the butcher’s operas that were staged at Aranthalawa, Dollar and Kent Farms, Sri Maha Bodhi, Gonagala and several other places. The Catholic church (especially Bishops, Rayappu Joseph and Malcolm Ranjith, a few other activist clergymen) while mouthing maudlin sentiments of condolence or maintaining a stony silence as a response to horrendous acts of terror, is stridently vocal in condemning war. RMBS would do well to read, over and over again, Dr. Nalin Swaris’ masterly analysis of the terror unleashed by the LTTE. He says "A political group loses the moral right to call itself a liberation movement if it resorts to methods that are flagrant violations of civilised norms that should govern the conduct of warfare. Even literary criticism and the review of the arts are so downgraded that themes dealing with the emotional outcrop of minority struggles and self-destruction are used as criteria for identifying excellence. RMBS has no need to vex his mind with the burden of liberation theology because a Catholic priest has given theological sanction to the liberation attained by suicide bombers whom he says are martyrs. Defence of Capitalism RMBS ineptness in engaging meaningfully in theological discourse harmonises with his views on economics. Capitalism is as steeped in ideology as Marxism. He contradicts himself in his rambling discourse when he talks of the everyday ethics of capitalism, on the one hand and of the need to separate economics and ethics primarily for purposes of analysis". While the first Adam fell by eating the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden, the second Adam (Smith) believed that self-interest, functioning as a behavioural impetus, would bring forth the fruits of the earth in abundance. RMBS as the third Adam conjures a land of robots where capitalist enterprise alone will mechanically load and bless with fruit not the vines that round the (peasants) thatch-eaves run(Keats), but the shelves of supermarkets. The sublime quality of compassion in Buddhism or love in Christianity, which ennobles the enfleshed and finite element in humanity, is surgically excised in RMBS robotic paradise. This is evident is his abominable statement, The individual may be of immense worth as stated in Christianity but the preservation of a single life can cost too much and a family that spends everything it has to save the life of a single child might put the welfare of all others in the family in jeopardy. This statement reveals RMBS inability to distinguish between relative value, price or opportunity cost in economics and the unique, intrinsic and absolute value of a single human life, which is nicely enunciated in the parable of the one lost sheep. Smith simple behavioural hypothesis has been thrown out of the window, because his successors who may be loosely referred to as neo-classicists, go beyond separating economics and ethics for purely theoretical purposes. Whilst insisting that all economic activities should be left to the market mechanism they leave the problem of the immiseration of the majority to be handled by do-gooders in civil society organisations (NGOs). The invisible hand fails when it comes to allocating resources for the satisfaction of basic needs, though it may allocate resources successfully in satisfying ever expanding wants. Since there appears to be no viable alternative to the market economy, adequate provision has to be made in terms of government policy interventions to deal with market failures in the areas of public goods and natural monopolies. Food security, internal security and the alleviation of poverty are other issues that require government intervention. Unfair and restrictive trade practices and corporate misconduct such as insider trading, which are a mocking response to RMBS everyday ethics of capitalism, require the enforcement of strong penal deterrents. Though RMBS derides the welfare state as an agency that doles out free lunches, the present state of the developed countries is founded on welfare measures that have been in force for centuries. Colonel blimps pomp and circumstance march RMBS patronising attitude towards the people of Sri Lanka whom he dismisses as servile, State-dependent malingerers and lotus-eaters, who abhor manual work, evokes the image of David Low’s cartoon-character, Colonel Blimp, a pompous, reactionary diehard. Those who claim to labour in the vineyard of Lord could also be found puffing and panting when trying to plant a seedling in their home garden. Although it is true that the present state of Sri Lanka economy is perilous, that condition is not due to the character of the people but due to poor economic management on the part of successive governments, who have ignored the particularities of society while adhering to text-book theories and playing political games. To lay the blame for this catastrophe at the feet of the nature of the people of the country is to vitiate the very foundation of the discipline of economics. This is an indirect way of placing the blame on the Sinhala people, a majority of whom are Buddhist. RMBS has the habit of making generalisations which are derisive of ethnic origin. In another piece (Island, 19 April 2000) he refers to the Sinhalese majority who believe in cultural hegemony and then talks flippantly of a Burgher friend who spoke disparagingly of both Sinhalese and Tamils. Abuse of Scripture RMBS profanes the Holy Bible by deliberately misquoting and distorting passages therefrom. Jesus did not say that "He would be with his church till the end of time". The proper reference is, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age". (Matthew, 28:20). The reference to church is found in the following passage: "And I also say to you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church, and gates of hell shall not prevail against it"(Matthew, 16:18). Now this passage refers to the meeting Jesus had with his disciples in Caesarea Philippi, when Peter declared that Jesus is the Christ. This same meeting is mentioned in Mark (8:27) and Luke (9:18) but there is neither mention of the term ‘church’, nor of Peter’s appointment as its head, nor of the church’s immunity from assaults from hell. The only other reference to ‘church’ in the gospels is to be found in Matthew (18:17). It does not mean that I challenge the authenticity of this passage. The term ‘church’ in Greek (ecclesia) which means assembly, gathering, a community or a congregation is derived from the Greek word ekkaleo, which means ‘to call’. Its usage is found in the following passage, "Out of Egypt I called my son". (Matthew, 2:15). From these references it is abundantly clear that what is referred to as ‘church’ is not the monolithic, autocratic and bureaucratic institution known as the Roman church. The reference "to each according to his needs and abilities" which RMBS uses to support capitalism, is not found in Scripture. Though that passage is perceptively realistic and egalitarian so as to function as a basis for sharing, it is not authentic. There are several verses in (Acts 2:44-45), (Ezra, 2:69) and (Philippians, 4:19) which deal with either abilities or needs but not both together. It is evident that RMBS refers to the following passage, "The Kingdom of heaven is like a man travelling to a far country, who called his servants…To one he gave five talents, to another two and to another one, to each according to his own ability". (Matthew, 25:14-15). The travelling man expected his servants to invest that money wisely, which each one except the last did. The moral of the parable is given in the following passage. "For to everyone who has more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have even what he has will be taken away". (Matthew, 25:29). Milton Friedman like RMBS uses this passage to justify unabashed capitalist exploitation. To give a literal interpretation of this parable is to display a perversely capitalist cast of mind. The characters in Jesus’ parables, with a few exceptions, are shown to engage in amoral and in some cases even immoral activity. The practical expediency shown in the actions of these amoral and immoral agents is used to convey an ethical and religious meaning. The qualities of prudence and cleverness that are required of those engaged in financial investments are transposed as the qualities of moral discernment and wisdom, which promote spiritual progress. Parables like metaphor make use of unrelated things or attributes to enhance and sharpen meaning. Jesus used these parables because he was fully aware that the spirituality of his audience was limited to exhibitionist piety and helpless dependence on ritual. New microbe from Jaffna in two U.S. patents: A case of patenting products and producer The granting of patents to useful microbes and the pharmaceutical compounds produced by them is happening in the United States of America for the past two decades. In many cases, the microbe had been discovered in a distant country but the monopoly rights afforded by the patent had been assigned to a major pharmaceutical company based in U.S.A. or another developed country. A recent example is the patent (U.S. 5,541,181) covering a new species of Micromonospara discovered from Sri Lanka and the active compound BU-4664 L produced by it. Since a patent issued in U.S.A. is valid for a period of 20 years a check on the database for any other such microbe related patents revealed two patents issued in the early 1980’s to a microbe discovered from Sri Lanka. The first one of these is U.S. 4,293,546 issued on 06.10.1981 titled Anthracycline antibiotics produced by Streptosporangium fragilis Shearer sp. nov. ATCC 31519. The other is U.S. 4,385,122 issued on 24.03 1983 titled Anthracycline Antibiotics produced by Streptosporangium fragile. The patent case text of the second says that it is a division of application of the previous patent. The application for the second patent had been filed on 21.08.1981, just 45 days before the patent was issued to the first application which had been filed on 24.07.1980. The inventors in both are Claude Nash, Marcia Shearer, Kenneth Snader, Joseph Valenta and David Cooper, all from Philadelphia, U.S.A. The patents have been assigned to Smith Kline Beckman Corporation of Philadelphia, U.S.A. The subject of both patents is the same microbe, though it has been named A. fragiles in the first and as A. fragile in the second. This is proven by the descriptions in the test and that both names are given to the microbe that has been deposited at the American Type Culture Collection under the accession number ATCC 31519. The abstracts, desciptions, examples and summeries of both these patents are identical and the only difference lies in the claims. According to the patents, the microbe that had been named Streptosporangium fragilis Shearer sp. nov. ATCC 31519 or Streptosporangium fragile sp. nov. SK and FBC 2496 (ATCC 31519) has been isolated from a soil sample collected from a cultivated field lying fallow after a paddy crop in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka in the village of Anaikota, about five miles from Jaffna. It has been described and named as a new species by Marcia. C. Shearer whose name appears in the patents among the inventors. The specific name fragile has been given, according to the patents, because the fragility of the sparangial walls makes spares to coalese into large irregular masses if kept together for same time The patents are silent about who collected the soil sample, who discovered the microbe or brought it to the attention of Shearer and others. Neither of the documents name any Sri Lankan institution or person, nor do the references contain any document by such. It is probable that one of the inventors would have been collecting soil samples for microbes and discovered it in the process. But another likelihood is that it had been found by a person and subsequently sold it to the inventors, who opted to remain anonymous. Since the new microbe has been described as a new species, it is likely that the type locality (the place from which it was first found) is correctly given. The characteristics of the new micro-organism is given under the sub-title "Micro-organism" in the description.The patents say that this microbe was grown in 14 different growth mediums and gives the results. The mycelia or filaments that grow on the medium range in colour from brown, brown-black to black and the aerial mycelia or the filaments that grow above the medium are said to be white turning to a light pink or a light grey pink colour. The microbe has been observed secreting a pigment that is light brown or brown according to the different growth medium. This microbe needs aerobic conditions to grow and the temparature ranges from 150-450 Celcius, the optimum being around 280C. The nutrient medium need a source of carbon such as sucrose, lactose, maltose, fructase, glucose or soluble starch and a nitrogen source such as fish meat, peptone. Soyabean flour, peanut meal, cotton seeds meal or corn steep, but does not need any vitamins. The antibiotics secreted by it had been called the fragilomycin complex and one active compound Fragilomycin A has been isolated and described. The fragiliomycins are said to belong to the anthracycline class of antibiotics. The compound Fragilomycin A had been described as a red-orange solid having the melting point between 1970-1990C. It is only slightly soluble in water if the PH is 6.0 or below (acidic), but dissolve well in methyl alcohol, dimethyl sulfoxide or methyline chloride. It had proven to be effective against becterial infections in human beings and animals. It can be administered as solid compositions in the form of tablets, capsules, pills, powders or granules to be given orally or in the liquid form such as solutions, suspensions, syrups or elixers or can be injected to the body. A patent grants exclusive or monopoly rights to inventions. The main features of an invention that need to be protected by the monopoly are given out as a set of statements known as claims, which really summarises the invention described in the patent. Each claim usually summarises one essential feature that needs to be protected. The first patent (U.S. 4,293,546) has nine claims. The first claim covers the antibiotic compound Fragiliomycin A and provides the essential features of this substance in yet another nine (numbered (a) to (i) under claim 1) sub-headings. This is the main claim of the patent. The next five claims (2 to 6) covers the process of producing the fragiliomycin complex under various growth conditions by cultivating the microbe and the isolation of the active agent Fragiliomycin A from the complex. These are process claims that cover a novel way of doing a thing or a novel process. Since both the microbe and the antibiotics are novel, the cultivating of it and the isolation of the active ingredients and the substances can all be covered in the claims. The antibiotic complex is covered in claim 7. The other two (8 and 9) cover compositions containing effective amounts of the fragiliomycin complex and Fragiliomycin A. These two as well as claims 1 and 7 are product claims that cover a new product or a new discovery as in this instance. The second patent (U.S. 4,385,122) has only two claims. The first claim covers a biologically pure culture of Streptosporangium fragile capable of producing Fragiliomycin A in recoverable quantities upon cultivation in an aqueous nutrient medium. The second claim covers a culture according to the first claim that is capable of producing an antibiotic complex containing Fragiliomycin A. These claims cover the microbe and all mutants that are capable of producing Fragiliomycin A amongst other anthrocycline antibiotics. They are designed in a way not only to cover the known form, but any subsequent variations that could be found or developed from the original if it meet the criteria of producing a fragiliomycin complex containing Fragiliomycin A. Since the patents have not described the component compounds in the "complex" they have cleverly used the already known bioactive compound Fragiliomycin A to identify the complex, or in other words, any combination of anthracycline compounds containing Fragiliomycin A as one of them. The more interesting, and to some unbelievable, is the extension of patent protection to an already existing micro-organism, since there can be nothing new or novel in it. Therefore, it is important to know how this can be achieved. In the U.S.A. discoveries and living things are deemed patentable. In discoveries, the subject matter is treated as novel if it is isolated and purified and shown as different from the naturally occuring state. Thus a "biologically pure culture" of a micro-organism provides the required novelty as it is isolated, cultured under controlled conditions and is therefore not in the naturally occurring state. The process of isolation and culturing of its specific nutrient mediums and the optimum condition for its growth satisfy the criteria of non-obviousness or inventiveness. Unlike in some others, the clear, explicit nature of the two claims in U.S. 4,385,122 makes it a good example to understand this extending of patent coverage to naturally occurring micro-organisms. Schooling in my paradise by Vijaya Jayasuriya When I reached the school on my schedule that day (9th June to be exact) they were having their morning assembly. It was a matter of just 24 miles from my home, yet I had had to take three buses across rural hinterland with sparse facilities, and the journey took full two hours and even that after travelling half the route by intercity express bus paying double the fare! I normally start early to be there at least five minutes before the school begins in order to watch the pantomime enacted by late teachers! The instructors handling different subjects were mostly from around 10 miles’ radius (as were the teachers there), yet none came until 9 o’clock when the first period was over. An old dictum which I had in my collection (thanks to good old ‘Daily Mirror’ edited by Reggie Michael) naturally came to my mind: ‘I am a believer in punctuality, though it makes me very lonely — E. V. Lucas.’ When they arrived well past 9 o’clock I had gone a long way in my inspection of the administration aspect of the school, finishing which I was determined to observe some classes too which was of course their sole duty. So when they at last turned up I was a bit happy too, yet could not help quipping: ‘morning sirs, you’re in good time’ not without a sarcastic smile too. The message hit home, for throughout the rest of the day some of them were wearing a wan expression when they happened to confront me! They were unhappy as I insisted on their commitment to the job at hand which they were reluctant to comply with. The biggest joke of it all was that there was one among them who had a few weeks ago urged me (as soon as I assumed duties in this god forsaken region) to try to reform his Alma Mater by giving the personnel there a piece of my mind. It is indeed a pity why those who want others reformed are not ready to toe the line themselves! (I know of a teacher who took several half day’s leave to go and blackguard her daughter’s class teacher in another school for missing some lessons! (Physician, heal thyself!) At a time when a very ambitions spectrum of educational reforms is supposed to be in full swing in our school system, it is the personnel at grassroots level who actually implement them however preposterous or pragmatic the assumptions made by the planners may be. And consequently it is their level of motivation, their state of morale and their sentiments and beliefs often governed by a welter of actual real life forces that determine the amount of success that can be achieved at school, however well-intentioned the reforms may be or however foolproof the trainers’ training happen to be. The objective of the present article is to expose such constraints that militate against the effective implementation of the new reforms according to my experience of three decades in the sphere as teacher, teacher educator and then administrator. More than 50 per cent of teachers I have met in schools (and if formally researched this amount might even be more) teach lackadaisically, come to school late and attend to other work reluctantly. This demotivated attitude has obvious reasons — psychological, financial and sociological. Yet none of these can justify neglect of one’s duty by the nation — a whole generation of future citizens whose destiny is placed squarely in the hands of the teaching hierarchy. Except for the primary school where most of the teachers write a regular and fairly comprehensive lesson plan, the majority of teachers either do not write any note or write some technically inferior stuff. Teaching without planning stems not as much from any conviction on the part of teachers that one can very well teach without any preparation as from an ingrained lethargy or may be a mixture of both these tendencies. I have also met a rare specimen who teaches extremely well without a wee bit of a note, the experienced maverick producing excellent exam results as well as the fake blundering about while sporting a comprehensive (yet dubious) lesson plan. The former, as a matter of fact, is the ideal - the veteran practitioner who is well up in his subject matter and is also so experienced in the craft that he can implement a lesson within minutes of assignment. However, even in such very rare cases some kind of ‘logging’ is essential in order to keep track of one’s course while at least a brief note jotted down in advance is always better in order to organise one’s teaching act. With the launching of the New Education Reforms a more ‘learner-centred’ paradigm of teaching has been introduced into our classrooms. This is by no means an entirely new model, for an attempt was made to orientate our classrooms towards learner activity in 1985 when the new English Every Day series was introduced. In the wake of radical changes that took place in the West with regard to teaching of English, more activity-based problem-solving mode of teaching emphasising concepts like discovery learning (working out solutions to problems by students themselves) was advocated in the implementation of the syllabus. (This should in fact be nothing new to us in the Orient if we care to look at the classic techniques used by the Buddha to teach his disciples, i.e. the task assigned to Kisa Gothami; His invariable opening gambit querying what discussion they were having on his arrival at the pulpit - readers are referred to Dr. Mrs. T. Kariyawasam’s paper on the topic in ‘Pragna Deepani’ - Jan. ’90 - N.E). After 15 years of practice most teachers of English have not yet grasped the value or the art of ‘learner-centredness’ in their teaching. They did not take to this style of handling their classrooms mainly owing to lack of ‘vetting’ of training courses, both pre-service and in-service and also due to the ill-managed supervisory systems. Finding fault with the prescribed methodology for not delivering the goods is where our policy-makers, curriculum - planners as well as course-writers went wrong and have now decided to adopt ‘an eclectic stance’ in teaching the new series of textbooks recently launched in Grade 6,7,9 and 10 classes under the New Reforms. What we have to admit is that this ‘odd mixture’ of favourable techniques called ‘eclecticism’ is amply enriched today with recent innovations in language teaching technology, mostly those stemming from the latest in the field - Communicative Language Teaching. The best example is the very orthodoxy currently prescribed in handling the new series. However, in spite of their professed learner-orientation, the materials in the new series betray a deep-rooted allegiance to an old-school credo while prescribing tenets of (barely understood) mainstream orthodoxies in applied linguistics thereby producing a hybrid genre put together within a largely ad hoc framework. One redeeming feature, however, that saves this grotesque ambivalence is the provision of more scope - even that not unobtrusively - for the integration of the four major skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing than in the previous series. Even this positive quality would be lost at the hands of a teacher ill-equipped to handle them properly. The major problem that arises from this situation is that it invariably takes a veteran teacher to perfect a good learner-centred lesson on these materials whereas the earlier series was more technically perfect although unfortunately it largely failed due to lack of ongoing training and supervision. What we consequently see in our English classrooms today is the false facade of learner-centredness - students ostensibly sitting in small groups but not working in groups! It is only the most experienced teacher, as I said earlier, who can get them to interact effectively and even that in a situation where there has been a continuation of good prior attainment by students. A very comprehensive assessment scheme called School-based Assessment (SBA) has been introduced into the classroom under the New Reforms with a multi-faceted testing and accounting process. The method is equipped with an in-built instrumentation ensuring learner activity in that the teacher is compelled to measure student performance in the process of their learning itself and take into account his personal qualities as well. Applied to the English classroom this makes an excellent model for a highly learner-centred teaching process for example to gain points for reading, the student has to actually read and display the outcome of employing a particular skill while in speaking, assessing oral performance in a group discussion happens to be more authentic and effective while it solves administrative problems as well in that it consumes much less time than the individual interview technique. Thus the new assessment scheme eminently fits in with the learner-centred thinking introduced into the English classroom nearly two decades ago though it did not function as anticipated. While progress charts, student profiles and other display systems like polargrames, ensure efficient demonstration of outcomes observation sheets etc takes a step ahead of former methods by systematizing accountability vis-a-vis the parents. All this is well and good, yet what is happening in actual practice at the moment appears to leave much to be desired. What we see on our school rounds is a situation where only a small section of the teachers are really performing all the tasks required by the SBA while the majority only pretend to be interested in it doing just a fraction of what is expected. This cannot be called; ‘teething troubles’ as the scheme took effect several months ago. It would have been better if the SBA had been launched in stages — its various items broken down into manageable units to be started by degrees - rather than letting it come down on the school like an avalanche. What we often do not realize is how impossible the task of teaching is in spite of the fact that a fool can spend a lifetime taking the task very lightly — often equating ‘talking’ with ‘teaching’. Since most training courses fail to equip teachers with vital professional skills they become more footloose as it were, yet develop a mental complex muddled up with angst about one’s inadequacy. This is the state of mind in most cases today and when a formidable task with many ramifications (like the SBA) is dumped on them like a ton of bricks, small wonder they only go about doing it haphazardly! Bad teaching is not a phenomenon limited to Sri Lanka. In Britain there has been an ongoing debate about introducing what they call Performance-Related Pay (PRP:TES: 05.11.’99) scheme in order to improve teachers’ quality of performance. There had also been a contract system of giving individuals places in the teaching profession in Britain in which a novice teacher’s appointment is made permanent only on expert recommendation — in several stages. If we adopted a similar scheme where those who join the profession are compelled to ‘gain’ their post only by improving their skills the present lukewarm attitude of most teachers would hopefully change into a more dynamic one. I wish to end this article with a comment made to me by an elderly lady teacher on the verge of retirement — a veteran whose track record stands above ninety per cent of both O/L and A/L passes thus producing a vast number of university entrants for several consecutive years: ‘I wish I had a clerk to do all my paper work in this new assessment scheme. Otherwise I am compelled to neglect my duties as a housewife, a good mother and a spouse when I stick to the drudgery of preparing and marking of tests and recording them on various documents and charts.’