Financial Times

Dressing up paddy farmers, a statue park and other matters …
By Random Access Memory (RAM)
A bumper harvest and the spotlights turn on the paddy farmers. The Colombo based business elite that had little or nothing to do with this 'informal' sector of the economy for so long are now seeking value addition. A Cabinet sub-committee is to look into how paddy farmers are to get a better price, beyond the traditional rice miller or the grinding mill. The engine of growth has once again been called upon to get firing, to add value and have formal systems in place. Linkages need be established, we are told, between the informal and formal sectors.

More rice noodles for both local consumers and those overseas. Learn from the Japanese and make more and more rice cookies and crackers, benefiting our govi mahathmayas, without merely supporting the US wheat farmers through the use of PL 480 wheat. Reminiscent of the pre-French Revolution times of 'Eat cake if you do not have bread' we are called upon to eat more kiribath, rice flour string hoppers and sweet meats. It is even better, if you can pack them all for the foreign markets. But before all of this, move from the gunny bag packaging culture to seeking better ways to store the bumper harvest, so creative value addition can be done, without loss of the quality of the rice.

As always, in our motherland, planning starts after a problem reaches crisis proportions. On a visit down to the deep-South last weekend, we observed that twice-polished red rice is on sale for a measly Rs. 20.

The signs are all over the place and the farmers are seeking hard cash after some trying times in the past. Of course Rs. 20 is nowhere near what the farmers took home and Rs. 28 is the lowest you see on the shelves in Colombo. Horror stories of clearing the old stocks of rice to accommodate the now abundant new stocks are heard. It is said that this results in near rotten stuff getting on the shelves of the newly refurbished 'to be sold' price tagged Sathosa's. What a pity that no one wants rotten rice for 'fertiliser', like Kenyans do with our tea sweepings.

Rice milling has been the domain of the powerful of the village economy. The politicos and their kith and kin often owned the mills and the farmers were almost always at their mercy. Some of them have now shifted to owning fishing vessels instead, as the laws of the sea are seemingly more relaxed than the laws on farmlands. There are the good, the bad and the ugly. The bad and the ugly turn uglier when the harvest is richer. The CWE steps in to buy (rice and perceived votes) at guaranteed floor prices and then face the reality of not having enough storage space.

The past year has been a blessed one vis-à-vis the weather gods, the rains were in and harvests were good. The concept of futures selling had not entered the paddy sector except by the small timers who lend ahead at hefty rates of interest to only collect the sacks of paddy at harvest time.

The risks are heavy, dependency on natural elements high and the going has always been tough for paddy farmers. We earnestly hope that there will be the much-needed staying power when the formal engines of growth link up with the almost virgin like innocence of the govi-mahathmayas.

Turning our spotlight elsewhere, we present you with an interesting idea that can impact on education, heritage and tourism in equal doses. It is about the significance of the many statues that are erected to celebrate the lives of our heroes of the past that now stand by our road- side, circles and junctions. Statues of Late Miggettuwatte Gunananda Hamuduruwo of the Panadura Vadaya (debate) fame, former Prime Minister Late Wijayananda Dahanayake of Galle, Late Gajaman Nona of Nonagama are but a few of the thousands that adorn our roadsides and inspired us to bring you this proposition.

We wondered if it would not be a good idea to bring them all together into one location to create a well laid out and manicured National Park of Sri Lankan Heroes, classified by the period in which they lived and contributed. In so doing, we must be careful not to lose their locational significance. Much attention needs be given to place them in the correct historical context.

We could tell each of their stories in greater detail and make these national treasures (most of them at least) come to virtual life, through good story telling and interpretation for our children and other local and foreign visitors to this park. We could have techniques to keep the crows away from settling on their heads often adorning them with undeserving left- behinds. Our national heroes deserve better. Our children and future generations deserve even better.

Lessons learnt of the past do not have to be limited to textbooks at school. Everybody loves a good story well told. How much better can we do, than having our heroes of the past facilitating it together, sharing a sense of unity and purpose.

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