The country is still suffering from the New Year hangover, which has affected the public and the private sectors alike. Most shops remained closed and offices were half empty even yesterday, two days after the conclusion of the festival. Festivity is very likely to linger until next Sunday. Sobriety will return and people resume work, only after they have busted the last rupee.

The Sinhala and Tamil New Year, which has been celebrated since time immemorial, is an integral part of the country’s culture and the tradition should continue. Events like the traditional New Year symbolising the national ethos have helped preserve Sri Lanka’s culture which bonds the people into a cohesive society. Hence, the argument that the most effective way of engineering the downfall of a country is to destroy its culture.

Paradoxically, the manner in which a national festival is celebrated could make a contribution to the ruination of a nation. If one cares to look around, one will see the evidence of that happening to this country. Letting the economy slide into the doldrums for over one week in the name of a cultural event is the last thing that a developing country dependent on foreign aid could afford. But, we don’t give a tinker’s damn about productivity or the economy, do we? The band, we think, must go on playing even while the ship is sinking. It is time a study was undertaken to estimate the economic loss due to national festivals and allied events.

Ancient Sri Lankans celebrated the New Year having produced a surplus. Their merry making could have gone on so long as they liked but there is no evidence that they ever celebrated the New Year for ten days or so. Nor did they lack wherewithal for celebrations. They cooked milk rice with the rice they grew and never let their livelihoods suffer because of festivity. Celebrations began after harvesting and they were back to work soon afterwards. It was that work ethic that enabled them to build vast reservoirs and giant Dagobas, which fascinate even the modern-day engineers. But, today, we are celebrating the New Year amidst impecuniousness with imported rice bought with borrowed money. As for our achievements, not even a sewage system gets built without foreign expertise and funds! So, how can we disport ourselves in celebrations on a grander scale than our ancestors, at the expense of national productivity?

War is raging in one part of the country and prices of essential goods are soaring. Coconuts plucked on estates in Kurunegala are, cynics say, as expensive as precious stones extracted from mines in Ratnapura. Gas is beyond the reach of the ordinary people. Another fuel price hike is staring us in the face. Defence expenditure has reached an unprecedented level. There seems to be no end to the depreciation of the rupee. How can Sri Lankans afford to go on massive spending sprees like the one we have just seen? (They have two New Years to celebrate—one in January and the other in April!) Isn’t this the time for practising austerity?

Men who perennially grumble about their economic woes precipitated by decreasing purchasing power belied their claims by joining winding queues at liquor outlets to secure their quota of elixir for the New Year. One’s gorge must have risen at the ugly sight of hives of grown up men clinging on to wine stores’ counters like flies on muck. Super markets were chock-a-block with affluent tipplers desperately shopping for the juice that cheers. How many of those macho types would have obliged without kicking up a raucous row, had their wives requested them to fetch a bottle of coconut oil for making kevun or kokis? Some of those heroes who had had one too many, could be seen hugging the wayside lamp-posts or lying supine on pavements in the exalted company of stray canine licking their faces clean! An Islander informs us that in the southern township of Akuressa, the police were compelled to close one carriage way of the main road where three liquor shops are located to accommodate a seething crowd of dipsomaniacs jostling for arrack. At many a shebeen a bottle of arrack fetched as much as Rs. 1,000 after dusk. But, sales are reported to have been brisk!

Nekath or the so-called auspicious times are observed almost reverentially in this country. Nay, they have become an obsession! We had a complaint from a reader on Monday that some filling stations had remained closed during nonagathaya period, leaving motorists high and dry! We thought fuel was an essential commodity. Besides their astrological significance, nekath served a very useful purpose in the past in that they provided some training to the people in simultaneous action and punctuality. But, today, the nekath-observing Sri Lankans cannot even begin the day’s work together, especially in the public sector. Most offices that open at 8.30 am have workers leisurely walking in as late as 10.00 am. (Those who come to work late make it a point to leave earlier!)

Those who really benefit from the way the New Year is celebrated at present are businessmen who are now resting like bloated pythons after a heavy meal. It is only they who produce a surplus and, therefore, are in a position to celebrate the New Year on a grand scale.

Strangely, none of the opinion leaders who treated us to long lectures on the New Year ad nauseam through the media dwelt on wasteful expenditure and the economic loss the country incurred owing to prolonged New Year celebrations. It behoves them as well as the media to initiate a debate on the economic cost of national festivals, be they cultural or religious or political in a bid to retard the country’s slide into an economic abyss.

Sadly, national festivals have apparently become coterminous with national blunders. We have no one to blame but ourselves!

Worst of all, the wise President of this paradise island—Mahinda Rajapaksa is the name of that sage—declared Monday, too, a holiday! People get the governments they deserve, eh?