By Dr. Garvin Karunaratne
Former Govt. Agent, Matara,
Member of the SLAS

(Contineud from yesterday)
Increasing Employment in the Dry Zone. Providing agricultural land to the farmers has been for long the policy of the successive governments. Farming offers employment only during the season of cultivation. Even during the cultivation cycle there are times when very little labour is required. In the Dry Zone areas there is ample employment during the time when the fields are being prepared, at transplanting and at harvesting. In between there is hardly any work. Employment avenues have to be developed for the farmers in the off season.

Livestock offers employment. In actuality livestock is complementary to the cultivation of crops. Cattle provide manure for the fields, milk for the family, draught power as well as profit can be had by trading cattle. Sri Lanka imports milk foods to the tune of over five billion rupees every year,

from a range of countries like the Netherlands, Australia etc and the development of livestock in the Dry Zone will only serve to reduce imports. However it needs to be mentioned that the tanks have to be deepened for the cattle population to be sustained during the dry season. The Indian experience is that the percentage increase in employment per 1% increase in output (employment elasticity) is higher in milk production(0.78) as compared to crop production(0.53)

In the Comilla Programme of Rural Development in Bangladesh it was found that farmers can easily supplement their incomes through livestock farming. In the Youth Self Employment Programme of Bangladesh, designed and implemented by me when I worked as an Advisor to the Ministry of Labour and Manpower in 1982, it was found that livestock and poultry can offer incomes to farmers on an immediate basis. For this purpose it is necessary that training is provided in livestock and poultry to farmers in the Dry Zone. This training can easily be done on a mobile basis within a few months and like in the case of the Integrated Rural Development Programme in India,

grants should be given for the purchase of cows. It is wise to have Government farms attending to cattle breeding and to give cows to farmers who have been trained rather than give money to farmers for the purchase of cows. In India when grants of money were given for the purchase of cows, cows were endlessly resold on paper and the programme was a failure.

Agro industries have to be utilized to create employment.

The World Bank and the IMF in their Structural Adjustment Programme, which has been followed since 1977 in Sri Lanka has advised and compelled the Third World countries to follow a policy of raw material exports and consumer goods imports. The removal of tariffs on imports coupled with the high interest rate policy has had adverse effects on industrial manufacturing in Sri Lanka. The concept of self sufficiency in manufactures- the idea of making everything we need locally, creating employment in the process has therefore been thrown out of the window. Instead the Third World countries are expected to import their requirements. This is the covert method that is used to enable the creation of employment in the Developed Countries. For instance if Sri Lanka can become self sufficient in dairy foods, which to my thinking, is not a difficult task, there will be less employment for farmers in the Netherlands, Australia and such Developed Countries from which we import dairy products. This concept of import substitution is anathema to the World Bank and the IMF, but the Third World countries have to follow this concept if employment is to be found for the people.

In my 18 years service as a member of the Sri Lanka Administrative Service and in Bangladesh as the Commonwealth Fund Advisor to the Ministry of Labour and Manpower, I was responsible for employment creation and I did establish a large number of import substitution type of small industry. In Bangladesh, the Youth Self Employment Programme designed and established by me is today the largest employment creation programme in the world creating self employment for as much as 160,000 persons a year. This is a non-subsidy programme based on import substitution that has stood the test of time.

Can self employment be done on an import substitution basis in Sri lanka? The answer is yes. Sri Lanka has an enthusiastic, an enlightened and intelligent work force. One area for action is processed foods, where today we import over Rs. Five billion worth. from Developed Countries- Britain, the Netherlands, Australia-Singapore. As far back as 1971, when we imported only four million rupees worth of prepared foods, Dr N.M.Perera commented: ‘ It is really a matter for concern that a predominantly agricultural country like Ceylon should waste its valuable foreign exchange resources on the import of items which could successfully be produced locally(Budget Speech,1971) If we can dare to put the idea of this illustrious son of Mother Lanka into practice we can create employment for thousands. What is required is a crash programme of training- mobile, short term, and day- training, establishing the infrastructure of cooperatives and private sector industries and the necessary production of crops like tomatoes, pumpkins, fruits. A good portion of this can be done in the Dry Zone. The dry zone produces tomatoes and such crops in abundance. We can produce all our requirements within two to three years. Imports have to be subjected to high tariffs.

When I worked in Anuradhapura I asked for authority to get the farmers to produce corn. Corn grows wild without any weedicides or attention. I was told to shut up. In 1997 we imported corn to the value of Rs. 887 millions. The Dry Zone can produce all the corn we need within one year. What is required is to plan a chena corn crop. This is a simple task and if the mandarins in agriculture cannot do this then we can forget about agriculture.

The main problem will be the production aspect, because unfortunately the infrastructure for production in peasant agriculture has been neglected. Go to any Agricultural Extension Centre and one can find some diseased plants. Tarry a while and you will be directed to one of the nurseries run by the officers in their homes- a sideline employment. Ask a question about the use of fertilizer and you will be given the wrong advice. The agricultural extension service has yet to emerge from the illadvised President Premadasa decision to merge all Agricultural Overseers as Grama Sevakas. With this the technically agricultural qualified staff became white collar Grama Sevakas, pushing their pens on paper till their ink runs dry, sitting in offices.

This set up can be corrected overnight.

General Industries In addition to agricultural food processing industries, an attempt has to be made to set up industries in the rural areas, including the dry zone on an import substitution basis.

The Valachenai Paper Factory used straw as the basic raw material and very little paper pulp was imported. Today straw is not used due to environmental reasons and we import paper pulp to the value of over five billion rupees a year. In Developed Countries straw is baled, transported over distances and stored for use as cattle fodder and environmental reasons do not stop the use of straw. Straw is found in abundance in the dry zone during the harvesting season and there should be projects to make paper pulp out of straw and to sell the pulp to the Paper Factory at Embilipitiya. This is an area for immediate action, with proper measures being taken to safeguard the worker’s health. Under the Divisional Development Councils we made paper in Kotmale.

I have quoted these definite instances because there are many who doubt whether we can establish industries. If the UNP tirade the late against the late Sumanapala Dahanayake, the member of parliament who organized the crayon factory under my direction and who had the ability to continue it as a commercially viable cooperative industry till 1977 did not succeed, Sri Lanka would have been self sufficient in all its crayon requirements today. . This was an industry which was commercially viable within the first six months. The free-market policy followed since 1977 also contributed to its closure. Now we import crayons from the US, the UK, Germany and China and create employment for people in those countries Following the dictates of the World Bank and the IMF has ruined our industries, even without the politicians being aware of this.

Conclusion Sri Lanka is embroiled in a foreign exchange crisis today because it did not follow the policy of self sufficiency. The current drought in the Dry Zone

can be the nucleus of activity that can solve the foreign exchange crisis by enabling the people in the dry zone areas to become commercially viable entrepreneurs.

We do not require any new money for this. The Government has a massive number of officers and what is required is to get them to work in a productive manner. Funds can be moved from unnecessary projects to essential projects. The earlier mentioned Youth Self Employment Programme of Bangladesh, which I designed and established is a non-subsidy programme that was financed by reducing other non-productive programmes and it was implemented by the

staff that attended to youth work. In Sri Lanka today in every Department there is unnecessary staff that can be deployed for such tasks. I am aware that the suggestions made by me are not simple.

However, I am certain that there are able politicians and officials who can steer such a programme to success.

The people in the dry zone who are suffering have to be helped. The fact that there is no Solheim arguing their case does not mean that they should

be forgotten. Having worked for years for the dry zone peasant I can vouch for the fact that they deserve free rations, they deserve free fertlizers and the government can be certain that not a grain of this fertilizer will be made into bombs. They do deserve free cement and the government can rest assured that this cement will not be used to make bunkers. They will use it to repair their shanty homes. They are the innocent, non- belligerent, law abiding suffering people who have to be made into a national asset.

Anyone who requires more details of how the dormant and inactive people who are currently consumers and a burden on the economy can be converted and activized to become contributors to the nation are requested to read my book: Microenterprise Development: A Strategy for Poverty Alleviation and Employment Creation in the Third World: The Way Out of the World Bank and IMF Stranglehold (Sarasavi, 1997) available botin English and Sinhala.
(Concluded)