Some worthy appearing on an ITN Sinhala Program the other day, blamed the lack of a spirit of community or community sense on the colonialists. Are the British who left us fifty years ago still responsible?

They handed over power to a political class, which had a modern outlook. But in 1956 power passed to the hands of a new political class said to be drawn from the Sangha, the ayurvedic physicians and the Sinhala teachers (sangha, guru, veda). This class lacking in a sophisticated modern outlook thought of taking the country back to the 16th century treating the colonial age as an aberration in our history.

But other countries subject to colonialism like China or those not subject to colonialism like Japan or Thailand realized the need to modernize adopting the science and technology of the West which enabled them to colonise the world. But we like Burma did not take a stand on this issue. So pseudo intellectuals who could only mouth slogans like the "Jathika Chintanaya," a mere shibboleth pretending to be a system of thought; using post-modern relativism despite deprecating western science and philosophy, pour scorn on the western educated. They bad mouth them as ‘tuppahi’ though they don’t dump everything western.

Michael Foucault decried western rationalism and praised Khomeini’s Iran. They speak out against modernization while educating their own progeny in modern knowledge and skills.

The emerging elite (a term used by Marshall Singer) in the 1950s proceeded to refashion the state in the feudal image to get power for the MPs who were really elected to be legislators rather than function as the Executive. Of course the colonial administration of indirect rule through a bureaucracy sidelined the masses.

Under this system the Permanent Secretaries supervised the departments and the Minister was confined to policy-making. An independent Public Service Commission appointed the Heads of Departments and the top officials under this system from the career services. But the new SLFP Ministers want to exercise power themselves and the plenitude of power at that. They knew that they lacked the ability, knowledge and expertise to run the administration. But yet they wanted to exercise power over the operations of the administration.

They wanted to give jobs to those they liked, never mind their suitability or qualifications. They wanted to decide on promotions for their men. They wanted to safeguard their followers who fell foul of the laws and regulations by interfering in disciplinary matters. They could get all this done only indirectly and that too only if they appointed stooges to the top posts of Heads of Departments or Corporations. So T. B. Ilangaratne proclaimed the doctrine of loyalty. In 1960 he stated that public officials must be loyal to the Ministers and wanted to appoint to his Ministry only those whom he handpicked as loyal to him.

Officials would soon belong only to the same caste or class as the Minister concerned. This was a new doctrine since traditionally the officials were required to serve the people and the public interest. Now the Ministers could pursue their personal and party interests instead of the public interest. The concept of a just and fair administration irrespective of political affiliations was thrown out of the window. In future the officials hand-picked by the Ministers would serve him and not some objective public interest.

In order to get rid of officials who were already in place, various devices were resorted to. False allegations were brought against some, either they were supporters of the opposition party and could not be trusted or that their honesty and integrity were questionable. It was all a part of a whispering campaign resorted to by party supporters and trade union activists who found that their unjust demands were being resisted by such officials who refused to bend the law. In some cases the officials were assaulted so that they could be transferred as happened to the Deputy Port Commissioner who was slapped by the trade union official.

The more recent example is that of Mr. Manapperuma who was locked out of his office by his Minister. What did the Prime Minister do? He sided with the lawbreaker and let down the public official who sought to follow the rules. What is the net result? The most incompetent and corrupt public service in Asia.

This status quo was legalized by the 1972 Constitution, which made the Public Service Commission a rubber stamp and gave the formal powers of appointment, promotion and discipline to the Ministers and the Cabinet of Ministers (same as the Minister for the Cabinet worked on the rule of mutual back scratching). Anything wrong in that? No not really since in USA elected officials are appointed as sheriffs and even judges. The US President appoints to his Cabinet not the Congressmen but people drawn from business, particularly the large Corporations, from the Universities and Think Tanks. These people are of course loyal to the party in power and the President.

But there is a strong civil society and a free press there, which continually monitors their work and passes stingent criticism even demanding resignation or dismissal of the Ministers who err. We unfortunately do not have large corporations where prospective Ministers can cut their teeth in the administration. So although we gave up the British system of permanent career officials as Heads of Departments and Permanent Secretaries we did not go the whole hog to the American system. Nor did we continue the checks and balances of the British system which required the Ministers to supervise the work of the officials while giving them the freedom and initiative to act yet requiring them to follow the rule of law.

Government in the British system is government according to law and rules and regulations. But if we were to follow this system how could the Ministers exercise arbitrary power? So the Establishment Code and the Financial Regulations were never made binding on the Ministers and the political appointees. Previously it was not necessary to do so since the officials and not the Ministers exercised the powers. Ministers then had nothing to do with tenders or purchases, a fruitful source for making money. So even today there is no Administrative Procedures Act as in USA and no rules and regulations that govern the internal management of departments are binding on the Ministers.

The present system of public administration by elected MPs as Ministers requires a different caliber of Ministers. We appoint our Ministers on the basis of their seniority in the political party and their political clout in the country. But these do not guarantee that we have men of competence who can govern the country. They must be not only intelligent and knowledgeable but also have experience in administration or management. If not they will only blunder and muddle along as we have done for the last thirty years. We had a few outstanding men as Ministers like Felix Dias Bandaranaike, Lalith Athulathmudali, the LSSP trio of Dr. N. M. Perera, Dr. Colvin R. De Silva and Leslie Goonawardene. But since the departure of these men there has been a vacuum. It’s no wonder that the state has collapsed.

The management of any organization is only as good as its Chief Executive. A CEO of a company who appoints men whose only qualification is their loyalty to him will soon take his company and himself to the morgue.

So the malaise affecting our country is not so much a decline in the spirit of community but of incompetence in government and failure to mobilize the people in the process of governance as India did with the Panchayati Raj. A decentralized order of power is needed to empower the people.

The question of individual versus the community is a complex issue. There has been a decline in the community with the transformation from an agricultural economy to an industrial urban-based one. There are those who blame the liberal ideology and the free market economy for the decline in community spirit. Under the rural agricultural economy the individuals, particularly the poor farmers, the women and those considered as low caste, had no individual freedom. They had to accept their position in society. But the market economy and the age of commerce changed all that.

The market relationships are impersonal and it did not matter whether the buyer or the seller owned land or property and belonged to the high castes or the low castes. It was no longer necessary for the barber or the washerman in the old economy to remain in his ancestral occupation. He could move to the urban areas and practice any occupation and nobody would ask him why he gave up his traditional caste occupation and started a business or ran a shop. He could sell his wares to anybody and nobody bothered about his caste or social status as long as the price was competitive. So the age of commerce removed the shackles of bondage to the feudal community and bred individualism.

This phenomenon is observed even in USA where De Tocqueville had observed a profusion of community organizations in the 19th century. There has been a decline in togetherness in all sorts of communal behaviour from going on picnics to joining political parties or trade unions as observed by Robert Putnam in his famous work "Bowling Alone".

But the new society also needs to be orderly. It needs a community spirit and social control of individual behaviour. Such social control may have to be enforced by social rules. From where do we get such rules? We may have to look to other countries which have prospered like Singapore or South Korea. It is not that we don’t have community level organizations but that they too are too disorganized and dominated by a few.