Sri Lankans can say no to bridge without

insulting India
by Rajan Philips-October 10,
2015

The
paper storm over a bridge too
near, across the Palk Strait,
shows all the small-country anxieties in the geopolitical dynamic involving
two neighbouring countries, one big and the other small. To wit, the US
and Canada; Australia and New Zealand; Malaysia and Singapore;
European Union and Britain, to some extent; China and Taiwan; Sweden
and its smaller neighbours; and of course India and Sri Lanka. What is
unique to the Indo-Sri Lankan dynamic is its huge atavistic dimension
the false burden of history weighing down modern realities. There is more.
Along with the weight of ancient history,there are also falsification of
history, ignorance, prejudices, and the absence of objective considerations.
They are all part of the political paper storm that is being stirred up to
blow away a potential bridge even before it could be sketched on the
drawing board, let alone be built across the strait. It is fair and of course
necessary to question the undertaking of any major infrastructure facility
in terms of its need and justification, as well its total (direct, indirect and
environmental) costs and benefits. But the pre-emptive protests against a
potential Palk Strait bridge seem to be over-the-top anti-Indian rhetoric
that is not conducive to rational decision making or good neighbourliness.
The Colombo Port City has been questioned on the justifiable grounds of
cost, impacts and the processes of permits and approvals. In fact, there
was hardly any storm, paper or real, when the previous government gave
approval disregarding process and technical concerns to the Chinese to
build the Port City. Even the present government might give the Chinese
permission to resume construction on the Port City under the new urban
obfuscation called the Western Region Megapolis. There has not been
much political fuss in the papers about the Uma Oya project that was also
launched by the previous government with Iranian aid including design and
construction, without proper studies and analyses. There was no storm

when Indian and Tamil Nadu governments were pursuing the Sedu Canal
project for digging a navigation channel across the Palk Strait. The Sedu
project will cause far greater environmental impacts than a future bridge,
but it is anecdotally known that the previous government suppressed the
publication of a report by Sri Lankan experts highlighting the adverse
environmental effects of massive dredging of the Park Strait to create two
shipping lanes. In all three instances, technical opinions have been against
the undertaking of the three projects. But political preferences prevailed
over technical concerns.
The bridge vision
The reverse seems to be the case for the bridge too near across the Palk
Strait. The political support for the bridge comes from Prime Minister Ranil
Wickremesinghe, and that seems to be as much a reason for the political
backlash against it as seem the prejudices against India. Mr.
Wickremesinghe comes across as a visioning politician. To wit: the peace
vision in 2002 that also included the Hanuman Bridge over the Palk Strait;
and the Western Region Megapolis vision now. But his vision for the
Central Bank and the distribution of ministerial responsibilities for matters
economic, fiscal, monetary and banking is problematic and inexplicable.
According to those who seem to know of him, Mr. Wickremesinghe is a
very clever man and a very stubborn man. No surprises there, given his
bilateral pedigrees. Few, if any, in Sri Lanka can match those. But his
problem is in carrying others to see his visions the same way as he does
see them. For every Royal College supporter he courts, he creates ten
detractors who denounce him. This is so despite the huge number of
preferential votes he amassed in the August election. His peace vision in
2002 was a "stunning" vision at that time, as a perceptive political
observer privately commented. But he could not take it anywhere
politically. That was a political failure even after duly allowing for the
wholly unreliable peace partner he had to dance with. The liability of that
vision and its failure still haunts him, as is evident in the brouhaha over
the bridge too near.
Not all politicians are visioning types. Former US President George Bush
(Sr) proudly confessed that he was not one of them. Our first Prime
Minister DS Senanayake had an agricultural vision which he shared with
his redoubtable Civil Service Asst. Secretary, CP de Silva, and his son and
future Prime Minister, Dudley Senanayake. Between them, they managed
to implement their vision through superb political and administrative skills,

while building along the way an impressive system of institutional and

procedural checks and balances. Their achievements in the fields of
irrigation and agriculture have served the country hugely well in aggregate
terms although they can be criticized and qualified from the standpoints of
equity, efficiency and best technical practices. Whatever development
vision the Rajapaksas may have had, they never articulated them well
enough to persuade anyone other than their immediate supporters who
were directly benefiting from their power and handouts, and the legacies of
their vision are a collection of infrastructure white elephants in aggregate
terms, and another collection of disasters in terms of checks and balances,
or processes and procedures.
Where do Prime Minister Wickremesinghes visions fit in? He seems to have
found an engineering political champion in Champika Ranawaka to
implement his Western Megapolis vision, but he will have a hard time
finding anyone to champion his Hanuman Bridge vision. Mr.
Wickremesinghe floated that vision in 2002, in a speech in Chennai. But
there were no takers for it in India at that time Tamil Nadu Chief Minister
Jayalalitha opposed it because she feared the Tamil Tigers would take it
over for their passage, and New Delhi did not show any excitement.
However, there was excitement among the engineering fraternity with the
Institution of Engineers in Sri Lanka and India (the Tamil Nadu Chapter)
organizing a successful seminar in Colombo to discuss the prospects of the
bridge project and its challenges. With the political debate dominating the
controversial peace process at that time, there was no space for diplomatic
and undiplomatic busybody bridge detractors who have become vociferous
now.
Things have also become more political and less technical after the
January election and the dispossession of the Rajapaksas. Speculative
commentaries have appeared in the Chennai and Indian media whether
the return of Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister will give a new life to
his old bridge vision. The Tamil Nadu government has not said anything,
but the Indian Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways, Nitin
Gadkari, has jumped the gun and said that India will be pursuing this
initiative and will be seeking the support of the Asian Development Bank to
undertake a feasibility study. Apparently, he did not think it was necessary
to discuss this with the Sri Lankan government before going public with his
intention. That was enough grist for the political mill in Sri Lanka to start
turning and stir up the paper storm.

The colonial legacy

In fairness to Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, he did not invent the idea of
a new Palk Strait bridge. Its genesis goes back to British colonial officers in
Sri Lanka and the Madras Presidency in colonial India at the turn of the
twentieth century. The rationale for the bridge was not the annexation of
Sri Lanka but the extension of the transportation network to link the sites
of the plantation system in Sri Lanka to its sources of labour in South
India. Besides, there was collaboration between British colonial authorities
and British engineers in Sri Lanka and in Madras in the development of the
Sri Lankan railway network. In the planning for the extension of the
northern line from Kurunegala to Kankesanthurai, with spurs to Mannar
and the east, there was consideration for narrowing the track gauge for
the new lines to match the South Indian metre gauge, instead of the broad
gauge used in the other main lines in Sri Lanka, in order to accommodate
a rail bridge connection between Talaimannar and Rameshwaram. The
bridge project did not go through but train services in the two countries
were extended as far (and near) as possible with freight services providing
the link over water.
It is conceivable that with time and resources a bridge could well have
been built across the Palk Strait by British colonial rulers and that would
have pre-empted the Hanuman vision of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe
and precluded the paper storm that is now being stirred up to scupper that
vision. As well, like every other piece of infrastructure that the British built,
unlike the Rajapaksa white elephants, the bridge too near would have
stood the test of time notwithstanding cotemporary fears of a mosquito
invasion from Chennai. I should not be too uncharitable - for mosquitoes
are too much a part of our politics. The left movement found its baptismal
fire in the fight against malaria and mosquitoes. In one of his more
mordant exchanges in parliament, Dr. Colvin R. de Silva declared that
"were it not for the invention of the DDT the name of DS Senanayake
would not be worth a mosquito"! Suffice it bear in mind that malaria has
appeared, been eradicated, and reappeared in Sri Lanka a number of times
entirely due to internal circumstances without any bridge connection to
South India.
Now nearly 70 years after the end of colonial rule, the criteria for deciding
whether or not a bridge should be built now across the Palk Strait, are
quite different from earlier considerations. What is the need, transportation
demand, or trade and commercial benefits that will justify the bridge?

What are the opportunity costs of investing on this potential bridge, not
just now but even in 50 years? There are no detailed answers to either of
these questions. These are fair questions to ask, and must be asked, even
if Sri Lanka does not have to pay a cent for the new bridge. And they are
quite different from the tendentious paper storm insistent on foreclosing
any consideration of the bridge for all time based not on rational
considerations, but on historical and impressionistic prejudices.
Posted by Thavam