The political economy of drought

by Rajan Philips-February 18, 2017, 7:29 pm

The drought crisis in Sri Lanka is not on the

same scale as the dreaded drought and famine that plagued
African countries in the 1970s or the Bengal famine much earlier.
Yet, the present drought is the countrys worst in 40 years and is
bad enough to attract the attention of the World Food Programme
(WFP), a UN initiative to identify and address food security
problems worldwide. The two sides of the globalization coin
cannot be more ironical. There is the fancied face of global
prosperity and there is the fretting fear of food insecurity for
whole communities, if not countries. Global food crisis is now a
topic even at Davos, the annual gathering for sustaining
conspicuous consumption. Our Prime Minister and the WFP
Executive Director apparently mused about Sri Lankas drought
when the two met at wintry Davos. The Director, Ertharin Cousin,
later visited Sri Lanka to check the progress on WFP initiatives in
Sri Lanka. All of this is good, and we cannot be choosy no matter
where help comes from.
My point about the political economy of drought is to ask how
much political clout does agriculture in general and rice
production in particular carry in the present governments
decision making priorities. Looked at it historically, agriculture,
rice production and self-sufficiency are no longer the privileged
paradigms of government as they were in the governments of the
two greatest of UNP Prime Ministers, DS Senanayake and Dudley
Senanayake. Even their most inveterate critic on the Left, Philip
Gunawardena, did not question the importance given to
agriculture and food production; he differed on the method
championing land distribution against wet zone landlordism and
dry zone land expansion. And a combination of methods over 70
years, reinforced by sustained research and technological
changes, has brought Sri Lanka to 95% self-sufficiency in rice
production. That is not unremarkable.

The social consequences are equally remarkable, as can be seen

in the settling and uplifting of communities on lands that were
once vast and empty. President Sirisena is a self-acknowledged
success story of this change rising from the settlements of
Polonnaruwa to reach the countrys highest office. Those SLFPers,
who laughed at him when he was the common opposition
presidential candidate because he was from Polonnaruwa, are
now egging him to run for a second term because he is from
Polonnaruwa.

A politically contentious aspect of dry zone colonization was the

change it brought about in the ethnic composition of the Eastern
Province and its consequence for the balance of ethnic
representation in parliament. State-aided colonization of the
Sinhalese in the Eastern Province became one of the main bones
of contention of the Tamil Federal Party. It is no longer possible to
unscramble what history has scrambled, rightly or wrongly. There
are as many Sinhalese in the Eastern Province as there are Tamils
in the plantations in the Central Province. The ancestors of the
plantation Tamils were also brought involuntarily from India by
colonial rulers to work the fledgling plantations. Their citizenship
problem, after years of machinations, is also a historically settled
matter now. Time has transformed the two political problems,
outdating old debates and negating old solutions. More than being
the art of the possible, politics is forcing on its actors the task of
moving ahead.

Agriculture and Food Security

And so is nature. The drought, like the tsunami disaster, is

unsparing and indiscriminating in its impacts. From Jaffna to
Hambantota 14 of the 25 administrative districts are seriously
affected by the drought, with at least one district in each
province. About a million people have been affected, more than
half of them very directly, involving 150,000 families. The Maha
season cultivation is reported to have been cut by as much as
two-thirds, and the Yala season this year is also going to be
affected. Water has become scarce for irrigation, power, and even
drinking. The government is easing import restrictions to prevent
a rice shortage, while stories abound about stored up rice from
the 2015 bumper harvest controlled by half a dozen mill owners.
They are the out-of-control mill mafia.

While the current drought crisis is forcing the government to pay

attention to satisfying the basic needs for water and food, there
appears to be a sense of structural neglect by recent
governments that is the sense among experts and practitioners
in the agricultural sector. A recent manifestation of this sense of
frustration in professional circles came on January 30, at a
seminar appropriately called "The future of Agriculture and Food
Security in Sri Lanka, organized by the Marga Institute and the
Gamani Corea Foundation. Participants included academics,
scientists from different research institutes, practitioners and
private sector entrepreneurs. According to one report,
government and political leaders were invited, but none of them
attended. The impacts of climate change figured prominently in
the presentations and discussion, along with discussions on the
current disconnect between government policy makers and the
scientific and professional community especially in regard to the
use of fertilizers, pesticides, and the lack of policy attention to
research developments. A rather daunting task for food
production was expressed by Prof. Buddhi Marambe, of
Peradeniya: Sri Lanka needs to increase its food production by
50% from current levels to satisfy food requirements in 2030.

How can anyone make this challenge become a concern of the

government, the cabinet, and parliament itself? It needs to
become a concern of every provincial government as well not
just in the dry zone provinces with vast irrigated lands, but also in
wet zone areas where, as one of the speakers at the seminar
remarked, there is a need for refocusing on food production. Food
production is basic to human existence, but those harping on rice
cultivation may seem as luddites to others enamoured by the new
megapolis economy in Colombo and the prospect of littering the
hinterland with amorphous industrial colonies. The new luddites,
however, are in great company insofar as the tradition of Sri
Lankas economic thinking goes. Dr. Gamani Corea, no less, was
insistently opposed to Sri Lanka abandoning its time honoured
tradition of rice cultivation tempted by the lure of comparative
advantage. GVS de Silva would have reached the same
conclusion, perhaps more pungently and from a different premise.
But there is more than tradition that is at stake here.

Becoming a middle-income country and reaching a certain per

capita income target in US dollars, has been the coveted
government goal over the last decade. While we seem to be
getting there in statistical and aggregate terms, we cannot lose
sight of a persistent social and economic reality: 1.8 million
families, i.e. six to seven million people, or a third of our
population, are still dependent on rice cultivation. Put another
way, the transformation of our economy is not along the text book
trajectory where industrialization is concomitant with the
mechanization of farming, thereby freeing up the rural population
to flood the cities and factories. While we acknowledge that Sri
Lankas economy has grown more complex and diversified, and
agriculture and rice cultivation cannot be privileged to the same
extent as they were under the Senanayake governments, we
must not also countenance the neglect of these sectors either by
default or deliberately.

One approach would be to identify and promote industries that

can complement and coexist with the lives and activities our rural
population. Province by province and district by district, there is
much diversity in what people traditionally do, in cultivation and
fishing, to make their living. New industries can be tailored to
complement these activities in their specific settings. I am not
rolling out any socialist scheme here, but I am going by the
initiatives of Hayleys Agriculture and the evidence for market
potential. Hayleys were also represented at the January 30
seminar. It is as if the professionals and the private sector are
taking the lead, and only the government and the politicians are
missing in action.

A new development in the last 10 years is the recurring effects of

climate change manifesting as floods and droughts in rapid
succession. After years of suffering persistent drought, parts of
California are now being buffeted by massive storms. We have
been building dams and reservoirs in rapid succession, only to see
our reservoirs end up dry time after time due to recurring
droughts. California put a squeeze on land development due to
water scarcity and power outages. Sri Lanka needs to think more
than twice before approving a single high rise development that
will involve excessive consumption of water and electricity.
Equally, proactive measures should be in place to address the
effects of drought where it hits most our rural population and
the agricultural sector.

One way to drive home the point to politicians is to warn about

the danger to their electoral prospects if they neglect electoral
districts that are more seriously affected than others by natural
disasters like drought. The present government has plans to win a
national referendum on the constitution while constantly
postponing the provincial and local government elections.
Government advisers should look at which way the districts now
affected by drought voted in the last two elections. The glitter of
Port City and the glamour of Megapolis will not sway voters in
those districts, and the government doesnt need any more votes
in Colombo than it already has in the bank. The business of
political economy brings into contradiction the economic interests
that a government bends over backward to please, and the
political interests it neglects. And we know who has the laugh
when it is time to vote.
Posted by Thavam