By Rajiva Wijesinha
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air (Gray)
I was back in England last week, and was pleased - and perhaps not entirely surprised - to find it a country run by my own generation. Tony Blair had in fact been an exact contemporary at Oxford, though I had never known him, spending my time on irrelevancies like Union and Common Room and Labour Club politics when he had served a much more sensible apprenticeship to real power in pubs and church. And I am afraid none of my contemporaries in the Labour Club are of any consequence in government, except a rather enthusiastic young lady who is now an enthusiastic old lady, trotted out to make excuses when Labour gets even tougher on immigrants.

But the Tory front bench, apart from their dynamically unintellectual leader, is largely Oxbridge. Many of them, including their now apparently very proper Chairman, spent much time at the offbeat parties that characterized our time there, and one of my flatmates - who got a first class in the term he was elected Union President - seems now to be the brightest of their shadow Ministers. And several more went into public service, some to make policy on subjects such as Defence and Disasters, while four have already been made ambassadors, to fairly serious places.

Of course one’s best friends are those one knew at university, and in that sense I could understand, during an immensely full fortnight, why I seem in comparison to have few friends at home. But when I reflect too on those who occupy similar positions here, I begin to understand more why we have fallen so disastrously behind countries like Singapore and Malaysia which once looked to us as a model.

Most of my old school friends are now abroad, in England or Switzerland or America or Australia. They went with varying degrees of bitterness, being of the first batch who suddenly saw their hopes of university blighted when the government introduced standardization. It is no coincidence I believe that Prabhakaran belongs to the same age cohort, and a number of his contemporaries moved to militancy when they found opportunities closed against - them so dramatically. Such opportunities were after all even more vital for bright youngsters in Jaffna, who did not have the alternatives of lucrative private sector work or education abroad to which Colombo students could turn.

Now I am not criticizing positive discrimination in itself. I can understand an argument that claims that some children are deprived of decent schooling for circumstances not in their control, and therefore they should be compensated in later selections. But to have continued with such policies for thirty years means that you are continuing to deprive the vast majority of such children, for whom no compensation is available. To put it bluntly, we have recognized for thirty years that most rural schools are terrible, and therefore we give one or two of their students a handicap when it comes to selection to university. The others who go to such schools continue to suffer.

Again, in most countries where there is positive discrimination, there are outlets for the so-called privileged who lose out. There is private sector education for them to turn to, and there are many professional courses. In Sri Lanka these are severely limited, and to make proper use of them requires levels of English that most students do not have. Meanwhile the most able go abroad in search of academic qualifications, and this in fact increases every year, with a number almost equal to those in universities here now paying for education abroad.

The drain in resources and in manpower is massive, but we do not care. Because we have set our faces resolutely against excellence in any sphere. In our Administrative Service, which still enrols a number of very bright youngsters (though alas no Tamils, nor even Muslims last time), the brightest soon get frustrated and leave. They are rarely given responsibilities commensurate with their intelligence, so instead of a pyramid of increasing talent, the service seems to be structured the other way.

And the same alas seems to be true of politics. Having seen meetings with World Bank and IMF officials, I have realized why we end up getting such dreadful deals. This is not the fault of those august institutions, which are really much more passive than we are led to believe. It is rather that our politicians and administrators go into meetings with no clear cut policies, no idea of what they want (except a few trips), and no idea how to achieve it. And as for ensuring that whatever contracts are drawn up are implemented, that is light years away from their thoughts.

Now when it comes to wastage, I am told by these lending officials, that Sri Lanka’s rate of wastage, though it sounds massive to me, is not as bad as that of several other countries. But I object to being classified with the countries they mention, where international aid is often seen as a support mechanism for corruption. And I compare the World Bank officials I meet, who are on a par or less able than the Civil Servants I know in Britain, with the Sri Lankans in the World Bank who are streets ahead of their contemporaries here.

Lee Kuan Yew knew what he was doing when he developed a culture of intelligence and excellence in the Singapore administratio n. Ranil has often looked to Singapore as a model, but its policies cannot come to fruition without the right people to implement them. The continuing failure to build for the future, through proper training for public servants as well as politicians, is what will continue to hold us back, whether we achieve peace or not.