It is both a privilege and a deep personal sadness for me to be delivering the ninth Neelan Tiruchelvam memorial lecture. I have none of the distinctions or the erudition of those who spoke before me; and nor am I particularly well qualified to deliver this oration. My only claim to this privilege is that Neelan was a very dear friend, a mentor and a benefactor who left his deep imprint on my thinking and work. I am therefore very grateful to the Trust, especially to Sithie, Nirgunan and Mithran for giving me this opportunity to pay my personal tribute to a friend. Thank you so much.

I have missed Neelan every day since his passing away. My sadness today is greater than I have words to express. I wish the occasion for this lecture had never happened. His death has left a void in my own life. As I prepared for this lecture I often wished that I would rather have Neelan here today speaking to you in my memory than I in his. His life was so much more useful than mine can ever be; and, in a heart beat, I would have swapped places with him that fateful July day. Many of us were aware of the dangers to his life. I was then the Ford Foundation Representative for South Asia; and indeed only a month prior to his assassination I had visited him at Rosmead and tried to persuade him to accept a fellowship so that he could spend some time at Harvard and be out of the harms way. He assured me that his work was nearly done and then he would soon be free to take a sabbatical. That afternoon we drove together to the parliament and as he showed me around with pride, he spoke optimistically and with hope, about the future of his country and all the dangers seemed to fade far away. His optimism was infectious and to my persistent regret I did not press him harder. A month later he was snatched away from us; and here I am left to lament and mourn the loss of my noble friend.

My parents died when I was quite young. The pain was excruciatingly intense, I felt cheated by their loss, and was sorry for myself. Four decades later the pain is no less intense except that my senses have dulled. But what has really made it possible to bear the loss is the memory that I was blessed to have such wonderful parents albeit even if for so short a period. With Neelan I feel the same way. Death took him away from us at the prime of his life. Our time together was all to brief. But the pain, while still fresh, has been made tolerable by the memories of happier times together and the friendship I was blessed to have. His life has become a source of joy, inspiration and a beacon of hope. Today I propose, therefore, not mourn but to express gratitude for that friendship; to rejoice and celebrate that remarkable soul; and to remind ourselves of the meaning and message of that life.

Writing Neelan’s eulogy is like trying to add a colour to the rainbow or to paint a lily. Even though he was robbed from us by the assassins and his life cut short at the height of his intellectual and political prowess, he lived life to the brim. In fact he rolled several lives into one. He was a lawyer by profession but was equally distinguished as scholar who helped to make ethnic studies into a distinct field of study; an institution builder that created the International Centre for Ethnic Studies and the Law and Society Trust; a human rights advocate who helped to create the Human Rights Commission in Sri Lanka and gave the impetus for the South Asian Human Rights Initiative; a civil society activist for democracy who initiated the South Asian Elections Monitor Group and built a band of distinguished and dedicated South Asians who trooped from country to country to ensure free and fair elections; and a politician and parliamentarian he helped to shape the ground breaking constitutional proposal for a plural, multicultural, decentralized and devolved political structure that still holds the best of hope for peace and political accommodation. In each field of his endeavour he excelled and left an enduring mark. His spirit lives through his ideals, the institutions he built, the generations of young scholars and activists he mentored and nurtured; and his ideas that have helped to shape our political and economic discourses.

Neelan was born in family with a long tradition of public service; and indeed in many ways he epitomized all that is best in the spirit of public service. He was able to transcend the self so that he could serve others; to him politics was not expedience but conviction; and it did not matter to him if what was morally right was politically not shrewd. Politics and power for him was a means to an end and not an end itself. He was a proud Sri Lankan but his humanitarian cosmopolitanism was not constricted by the limits of his patriotism; and his beliefs and outlook were not coloured by ethnicity, religion, nation or even the region. He was a citizen of the world, who thought globally but acted locally.

But above all Neelan was a quintessential liberal democrat and this brings me to the theme of my lecture today: Restoring Social Justice at the Core of Governance. What unified the varied endeavours of his life was a deep and abiding desire to see a democratic Sri Lanka. As a lawyer and a social scientist, Neelan understood the centrality of democratic governance to his vision for Sri Lanka. An efficient, effective and inclusive government is the best guarantor of social justice and an orderly society. The societal primacy of social justice is also inextricably linked to what is virtually a universal aspiration for democratic governance. There is no question that a democratic government that reflects the popular will is better equipped to ensure social justice, to create an even playing field that allows its citizens the freedom to realize their full potentials and creativity, and to deliver the services and opportunities that people need.

The core democratic values - citizen participation, transparency, accountability, and pluralism; the protection of the rights and interests of all the people, resolving conflict through civilized norms of dialogue and the spirit of give and take; tolerance, freedom of expression, and the safeguard of fundamental rights; multiparty democracy in which the will of the majority was tempered by the voice of the minority; and a society ordered on social justice – were also the articles of faith with Neelan and informed all his work.

In the lecture today I will first explore the possible linkages between regime choice and economic performance. I will examine the record of democratic governments in managing economic growth and inquire whether their performance in promoting long term and sustainable economic growth is really worse than those of the more authoritarian regimes. In other words, is there a trade off between democracy and rapid economic development?

Second, I will argue that economic growth is a means to realizing certain socially desirable goals, and that democracies make it possible to achieve socially desirable public policy goals without actually waiting for high levels of income.

Third, I will talk about the democratic deficit. Even though the evidence suggests that the record of democracy both in promoting development and equity is superior, how does one explain the fact that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening more rapidly than at any time in history despite the significant growth in wealth? We will need to explain this glaring inconsistency in democratic audit, the failure of the democratic governments to perform their role as the custodian of social justice.

Finally, for the benefits of economic development to be equitably distributed, I will argue, there needs to be recognition of ‘entitlement’; but entitlements cannot be realized without developing adequate capabilities of the poor.

The question for us today is, therefore, whether Neelan’s advocacy for democracy was just based on his liberal and progressive ideological preferences or rather its desirability is based on superior record of democratic governments in managing economic, social and political development. We need to firmly establish a positive co-relationship between democracy and development.

In a path breaking study Professor Atul Kohi of Princeton University argued that the development performance of democracies in the developing world is relatively impressive. He has examined the development records of five diverse democracies, namely India, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Venezuela, and Costa Rica and compared them with countries that followed authoritarian routes to development such as Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Morocco, and South Korea in terms of three factors: economic growth, income distribution, and foreign debt management. His conclusions are revealing. The authoritarian group initially achieved high growth rates compared to the democratic states, but in the long run the gap between the two groups considerably narrowed. This is easily explained. Democracies, because of longer term political stability, were able to maintain steady progress and suffered little regression resulting from political upheaval or succession crises that often derails authoritarian regimes.

In terms of debt management, democracies showed markedly better performance while the countries with staggering and unmanageable debts were from the authoritarian groups. This is not surprising. Democracies enjoy legitimacy and therefore, unlike military regimes, do not have to borrow desperately to buy support. Popular legitimacy gives elected governments the mandate and authority to raise taxes and are therefore less dependent on foreign aid.