"Sri Lanka is one village, a classic Grama Raj that could be developed and sustained only by developing the village as its solid base."

The wonderful and thought provoking article on the tragedy of Walpolamulla, a village in Laggala Udasiya Pattuwa (not Dumbara as the writer had mentioned) by Jagath Kanahera Arachchi that appeared in The Sunday Divayina of July 6 prompted me to write this piece as an addendum to what Kanahera Arachchi has already pioneered.

As a villager who comes from an adjoining village, I thank him for his excellent revelation specially because what he has revealed regarding Walpolamulla has so far not drawn the attention of either the politicians, who are supposed to have gone to the parliament, provincial councils and pradeshiya sabhas, having promised to solve people’s problems, or the public officers appointed to be in charge of administration and development in these areas. One has to remember that both these categories are maintained by the state, for the service they are expected to render for the good of the people. It is also a pity that not even a sociologist or an anthropologist concerned with this type of problems has ever thought of focusing our attention to this national tragedy.

It may be that either they are ignorant of these problems or may be indifferent to and not interested in such problems. Because as they are so deeply involved in their own affairs they have hardly anytime to think about the problems of these unfortunate villagers who struggle with the good earth under the scorching sun, day and night for survival.

In my opinion what Kanahera Arachchi has highlighted is a very pertinent and serious problem that confronts our country at present that needs to be arrested immediately lest these villages get obliterated for good from the map of Sri Lanka. Kanahera Arachchi has written only about one small and isolated village which has only three families living there. According to him it had 21 in 1990, 12 in 1994, 9 in 2003 and 6 in 2006. His long felt love affair with this village is clearly demonstrated by the fact that he has been going their regularly since 1990, walking 8 miles through jungle infested with wild elephants, bears and poisonous serpents. On his last visit he took a bag of presents for these villagers . The tone of his article also shows how much he is concerned about them although he is not dependent on them for his sustenance as politicians and officials do. Therefore, apparently he has no moral or any other obligation or any debt to these people as politicians and officials do. On the other hand, the negative attitude of the officials is evinced by the statement attributed to the Divisional Secretary where he has said that he is taking action to relocate these villagers in another area as he could do nothing else about their present plight. If I had the power, I would definitely have appointed a man like Kanahera Arachchi to be in charge of the administration and development of this village and also sent such a man who has a genuine love for these hapless people to represent them in parliament.

Walpolamulla is only one out of thousands of such unfortunate and neglected villages in this country facing this serious problem of extinction. Among them I include all villages situated on the north western, northern, north eastern, eastern and southern slopes of the central hills which more or less share similar geographical characteristics.

Therefore, the same fate will befall all these ancient villages thereby leading to a mass exodus of rural people to urban ghettos in the future, if we don’t take steps to arrest this alarming trend lest they are overrun by the jungle tide. As they say decisions have already being taken to close down some of these villages. I have no doubt that you will begin to wonder how unfortunate we are to live in a country where we have such indifferent and ignorant politicians and state officers who decide to evacuate these villagers en masse from their ancestral lands which they loved and where they have lived for thousands of years, instead of addressing their actual problems and help them to develop their villages where they are. Good Lord! When and where do meet politicians who will perceive the problems of these poor villagers as their own with empathy?

All these villages are characterised by hilly topography descending from the central hills, often very steep, with narrow valleys and limited low lying areas drained by short and swift streams. They get rain only during the North East Monsoon between October – March period. Even the little water these areas have disappears during the April–September period due to the dry winds- Mudususlang- (kachchan) that sweeps across, devastating all that come within its grip. Most of these villagers have no proper roads. Sometimes they have to walk on foot for 10 -12 miles to reach the nearest bus stop. They also do not have a system of storing excess rain water that rush down to the sea during the rainy season. As a result for the better part of the year these villages have no water for cultivation. They have small extent of paddy fields and most of them are not cultivated during the yala season due to lack of water as the streams are not perennial. This situation has compelled them to fall back on Hena cultivation as the main traditional economic activity. Since hena cultivation is now banned by the government on the advice of armchair experts on Chena cultivation, as they call it, who knows next to nothing about hena cultivation and its role in the village economy in this part of the world, where more than 50% of the village economy is dependent upon it.

Some of these villages have schools. But they don’t have teachers and other facilities. Therefore, some of the most intelligent men and women, born in these villages, just fade away in the wilderness unheard and unseen by the outside world. Some others, specially the youth, migrate to the towns in search of employment and get lost in urban ghettos thus depriving the village the benefit of their skills.

It’s not only human beings who face this tragic end. The age old civilisation and culture that has been evolved over the centuries is also lost along with it. Once the villagers leave, wild animals will invade the fast spreading jungle and they will thereafter invade the neighbouring villages down stream as well, making life impossible for villagers living even in those villages. The resulting loss of agricultural land will badly affect the country’s agricultural production and loss of settlements will add more pressure on land in other parts of the country.

Now let us have a look in retrospect as to how these villages came into being in the past. They were not begun yesterday. In fact, their origin dates back to the time before Christ. As the Dry Zone civilisation expanded people began to walk upstream for two reasons. Firstly, they came up in search of additional water for their expanding DZ paddy fields. Secondly, they came upstream in search of lands for new settlements. It is this second category of people who settled down in these upstream valleys after finding sufficient water and flat lands for paddy. Where there was no flat land for paddy they invented the terracing technology and created a unique land use pattern on these hill slopes. They also invented the new amuna and ela technology to irrigate the fields and constructed small village tanks where there were no streams and filled them with rain water and water oozing out from fountains at the foot of hills. One can understand this long process of upstream settlement development by trekking along the Mahaweli and Kala Oya. Numerous archeological evidence found along these river valleys bears enough testimony to this long process.

They opened up their new settlements in the valley bottoms with paddy fields and home gardens at lower levels. Above the village they had their hena and beyond them, patan where they grazed the cattle. Above this set-up was the thick jungle never touched by the villagers? In fact, they were declared as forbidden forest by royal decree (thahanchhikele). The Mahawamsa described these forests as jungles infested by ferocious demons and man-eating wild animals. These villagers worshiped trees, rocks, mountains and streams. They identified them with gods like Gange Bandara, Gale Bandara, Pitiye Deviyo and Kandedeiyo (God of the mountain). That was the inseparable bond these early people had developed with the environment. In fact, they worshiped the environment as their god.

The protected watersheds that provided enough water right throughout the year. This resulted in the development of thousands of villages like beads along the streams all over the hill country sometimes going up 4000 ft above sea level supplementing the already flourishing settlement in the dry zone lowlands. Of course, these farmers did not have modern precision instruments like the altimeter. But they knew the upper limit of paddy growing by the rule of the thumb. Thus they invented a unique hill country agricultural civilisation that was rarely found anywhere else in the world. Those who grope in the dark looking for solutions to protect these villages, I think should seriously try to first find out as to how these villages sustained their existence for thousands of years prior to the advent of the British, particularly when there were more wild animals than now, before they try to uproot these villagers from their traditional homes.

The high watermark of this model is found in the Udukinda region in the Upper Uva encompassing the Uma Oya basin. The most intricate and intensive network of irrigation works found here have gone on record as a marvel of early irrigation technology invented by the Sinhalese. The Pattipola Bhoo-ela project ascertained to have been built around the early 14th Century could be cited as the crown jewel of their innovativeness and ingenuity, apart from their engineering skills in canal building, tunnelling and watershed management. In this case they have tapped the waters of the west bound Dambagastalawa Oya, an upper tributary of Kotmala Oya, at an elevation of almost 7000 ft msl and conducted that water for 9.6 km by a canal hung on the acclivity of the Totupola ridge and taken it to Uma Oya on the eastern side through a tunnel dug under the Pattiopola ridge. This tunnel is dug under 40 ft below the ground level and it had a 10 ft diameter and would have been at least 1000 ft long at its completion and would have employed at least 100,000 people. The discovery of this source, conceiving the idea of a trans-basin tunnel, planning and construction of such a feat is an engineering marvel even by modern standards. There was no seething through- out this tunnel. It solved the water problem of the Udukinda region which constituted the rice bowl of the Kandyan kingdom. It is the longest underground trans-basin tunnel constructed in these early days. Even at present it constitutes the tunnel and the irrigation canal found at the highest elevation in the island. This hydraulic feat invented and carried out by the ancient farmers of this country will bear testimony to the whole world of the wonders they did.

The end of this prosperity saw its day with the advent of the British in 1815. They took over the people’s land by force chased them out even from their hena lands and converted the entire hill country to coffee and tea plantations by removing the forest cover that sustained the civilisation of this island nation from the dawn of history. The natives first lost their hena lands and then they had to give up their paddy fields gradually as the streams ran dry.

The white people even took over paddy lands for tea in certain areas. The Manamuna paddy stretch in the mid Uma oya (LB) that took its water from Mana Amuna is a good example of such a tea plantation. On the top of these onslaughts they also imposed various taxes like the paddy tax which compelled the people to give up their paddy fields or sell them as they could not afford to pay the tax. These planters also opened up cardamom plantations on lands above the tea estates and expected the natives to work on their plantations as daily paid labourers. But they refused and the British brought nearly one million South Indian labourers to work on these estate. With the result the natives were confined to the valley bottoms and had to look up at the mountains prospering with plantation catering to a foreign market.

The white people only deprived these villagers of their high lands. But today our own governments have deprived them of their hena lands as well and now planning to evacuate them for new destinations unknown to them. This in short is the story of the so-called Kandyan peasants who have been reduced to a fast vanishing tribe on their own mother land. Today these heroic people who defended their mother land for some 300 years against the invaders and died in tens of thousands have become refugees in valley bottoms on their own mother land. The Indian labourers on tea estates are looked after better by every body and they are politically better organised and much more powerful than these sons of the soil. Although we have more than 80 MPP in Parliament supposed to be representing them there is none to air out the tragic plight of these neglected and forgotten and unfortunate human beings. That is the scenario in which the authorities decide to relocate people of villages like Walpolamulla in the scorching Dry Zone while spending billions to make alien estate labour happy and prosperous.

In the olden days these villagers had at least their local gods to tell their woes. But today they are also gone perhaps having seen the injustices inflicted upon these once heroic fighters but today reduced tot he level of virtual paupers living under abject poverty. Although we have elections, thanks to the present proportional system, they don’t have any one to represent them in Parliament either. Those who get elected by resorting to all foul means settle down in Colombo or at least in a provincial town after the elections, having acquired new wealth and power. Thereafter they get involved in eternal power struggles and get immersed in things of their own so much that they have hardly any time to think about the very people who have elected them to power. This is the reason why people like Kanahera Arachchi and I have to talk on behalf of people of villages like Walpolamulla. But in a country where everything is decided by the politicians, voices of lonely people like Kanahera Arachchi and me, are not heard and therefore have no relevance.

Even if we go on talking and writing for another couple of centuries, these villages could never be developed unless we understand the real reasons responsible for this situation. The main among them are lack of access, roads, water and market for their produce and basic facilities like education and health. If we fail to address these problems early the day these villages go back to jungle is not very far. This would finally result in mass exodus of rural people to urban centres adding more problems to their own. Some of them will end up in kitchens in the middle-east. The unique rural culture that has been zealously guarded by these people for centuries will also vanish. After that where could we listen to a pelkaviya or an andaheraya other than perhaps in an artificial and diluted programme displayed on TV in a Colombo 7 piduru pela on the compound of the SLRC?

Should we just look on until this happen and be silent accomplices to this national crime? I think we should not. Therefore I propose the following steps to overcome this situation.

First of all identify all these villages under the Gamaneguma programme of the present government and prepare a comprehensive development plan for each village.

1 The first item under this development plan should be a good road for each village on which public transport could operate without any problem Road builders should take sufficient precaution to construct these roads on the contour and provide strong structures and drains that could stand the brunt of the torrential rain in these regions.

2 The second most important issue is provision of adequate water both for irrigation and domestic use. This should be followed by a comprehensive water resources development plan. This includes two steps. I. Plan to make use of the existing resources for example repairing anicuts and constructing new village tanks to store available water wherever possible. This will improve the water table and also transform the ecology. II. Then look for ways and means of increasing water resources in the basin. This has to be done by protecting the watersheds. Remove Pinus plantations and promote appropriate local species in their place. Once this is completed existing paddy fields could be cultivated even for yala and new areas also could be brought under the plough

3 Remove ban on hena cultivation and provide adequate agricultural services like extension, inputs etc at least with one residential officer for each village.

Steps 1, 2, and 3 will lay the foundation for a strong and sustainable village economy.

4 This should be accompanied by a program of subsidiary food crops like green gram, cow pea, corn, onions etc and also yam fruits, banana, citrus and minor export crops like pepper, coffee and even rubber where possible. It should be accompanied by a livestock component as well. That will provide the draught power and fertiliser for agriculture and also milk requirements. This will diversify the economic base

5 Remove ban on cardamom cultivation and manage them instead of banning. This will give an additional income to the villagers. With these steps consolidation of the economy will take place.

6 Appoint qualified teachers to village schools and provide these schools with minimum facilities so that village children can prepare for the GCE O/L without going to the schools in the towns at enormous cost and inconvenience. Also introduce an incentive scheme for teachers and other public servants working in these villages so that that will motivate them to be there.

7 Provide minimum health facilities and other services like collection centres, cooperative stores, post offices etc. This will reduce the gap between the city and the village and arrest ru-urban migration. This new trend will also attract those villagers now residing in cities for consideration of better health and reasons of comparative economics benefits. Educate the people on the advantages of rural living like good food, better health, better air and natural exercise and longevity so that people will get attracted to come to the rural areas.

The completion of these steps will lay the foundation for the sustainability of the system.

In order to implement this programme effectively, first we must bring about an attitudinal change so that people will get motivated to come back to villages and realise why they should come back to the village. It may be required even to have an incentive scheme such as a tax rebate to attract them to villages or even some kind of compulsion as Mao SeTung did during the Cultural Revolution as apart of the Great Leap Forward to develop the villages that laid the foundation for the present economic resurgence in China. This type of development will not only improve the productivity of the village economy but it will also restrict exploitation of the village by the city and thereby raise their income levels. In the event of such a meaningful development program is being implemented I am sure very few will opt to leave the village and thousands of people will opt to return to their villages to be partners of this national reawakening. As for me I am ever prepared to go back to my village and get involved in this new village awakening movement, at least if there is a road that can take me safely to my village on these country roads. I am confident that if this kind of programme is launched it will be the Great Leap Forward Sri Lanka, that would take us to the development destination we all expect.

Finally I would like to point out that trying to bring about a change through programmes orchestrated from Colombo without resorting to an aggressive, dedicated and broad based down to earth village development programme, village development in this country will only be a another night mare.

I invite dedicated and committed people like Kanahera Arachchi and the producers of the Wahalkada programme of the SLBC to join hands to make this dream a reality. If that could be done not only Kapile mama, Ukkubanda, Ranmenika and Wijeratnas of Walpolamulla but also thousands of those who live in all the ancient and historic villages mentioned earlier and their future generations including those new comers under this scheme will live happily for another thousands of years enriching our heritage.