Thoughts from London

Moragoda's nostrum from the rostrum
There I was, on a brief visit to Colombo, switching channels to catch something interesting on any of the country's multiplicity of TV stations that have done much for quantity but little for quality, when I espied what I thought was the visage of Economic Reforms Minister Milinda Moragoda.

Other people you simply see. But those like Minister Moragoda, who was quite happy to hand over the world to US hegemony, you espy. I was not wrong. There he was caught in an oval frame, looking like a hasty cross-pollination between Rodin's "Thinker" and actor Telly Savalas as the programme titled "In Black and White" went on to, what in retrospect appeared, a much-needed station break.

Like a moth inexorably drawn to a bright light, I watched with increasing interest as Minister Moragoda expounded on economics-theory and practice- as that poor soul called an interviewer looked on with mounting fascination and bewilderment. Unfortunately I tuned in after the programme had started and so missed the name of the interviewer who seemed more like a dubious appendage whose only purpose was to dutifully toss some pre-arranged questions in what sounded sometimes like incomplete sentences.

It seemed to epitomise the tragedy of much of Sri Lankan television today, especially English programmes where highly over-rated 'interviewers' ask half-baked or inane questions that allow an interminable soliloquy, leaving Hamlet still in the starting blocks, ghost or no ghost.

So it was with Moragoda's monologues that took the viewer through a gamut of situations such as the printing of money and the impact of increased money supply, fighting inflation, supply and demand, supply side economics, free market policies, social policies and what not. As though disgorging a whole text-book on economics was not enough, he threw the entire caboodle of economic theorists and miracle workers at us from Keynes and Ludwig Erhard to Hayek.

Just in case somebody would accuse him of his penchant for free market policies he managed to get Lenin into the act reminding me of the late Mervyn de Silva's acid comment about a Trotskyist that a little Lenin was a dangerous thing. George W Bush that great friend of Sri Lanka (it is not too late for him to discover where on earth it is) promised the Iraqi people shock and awe.

Leave alone the Iraqis, Minister Moragoda was providing both in good measure. If the interviewer looked on blankly as though coming out of an anaesthetic, I was transported back to my fresher year at Peradeniya where Prof Das Gupta was trying to instil the basic principles of economics into 200 or more wandering minds at the Arts Theatre. But the real economics -- about dwindling money supply, inflationary spirals and deficit budgeting -- was learnt at the nearby central canteen, not in lecture rooms of universities.

Not all the lectures on economics and Asian economics I listened to at the University of Hawaii had answers to a simple question: how to make 10 Sterling Pounds obtained after much haggling with a tight-fisted Central Bank practising exchange control, go further than the distance from Colombo to Honolulu.

The moral of the story is this. All these economic theories are fine. But societies and people do not necessarily act as theorists and academics expect them to do. Minister Moragoda might theorise till he is blue in the face about supply and demand. But as one acquainted with the business world , he is surely aware that artificial shortages of goods are created by producers and manufacturers to heighten demand and inflate prices.

What of all those factors that have been carefully kept out of Moragoda's calculations, such as bribery and corruption at political and official level that often make nonsense of economic theory and nicely worked out equations?

That bribery and corruption are major factors in the social and economic life of this country and that they seem to worsen with each passing month, are truisms. The fact that these are facts of everyday life is bad enough. What is worse is that the government, of which Moragoda is a key element, prefers to act like the three proverbial monkeys, which see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

Only last week the state-controlled Daily News published a front page splash which said Sri Lanka had surprised the Asian region and the international community by not endorsing the Asia Pacific Action Plan to fight corruption which is part of an Asian Development Bank and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) initiative.

While 21 countries have endorsed it including our neighbours, Sri Lanka remains conspicuous by its silence. That is not all. While some 130 countries will sign the UN Convention on anti-corruption, Sri Lanka is once more fighting shy of doing so.
Despite official reminders to Sri Lanka to participate in drafting the convention, we have kept our fingers clean and possibly several wallets filled.

And this is the UNP, the main constituent of this government that spoke vociferously on election platforms about its determination to wipe out corruption. Moragoda said there are certain activities better performed by the private sector than government. Privatisation, one of the neo-liberal economic policies that Moragoda and others pay pooja to, of course, leads to corruption as state assets are sold for a song, especially to favoured businessmen.

By whom, to whom, what and where are well known to the public. Corruption is not restricted to the political establishment. Bureaucracies and banking circles have been guilty, too, as Moragoda must surely know. The Economic Reforms Minister claimed that some services should be provided by the state. The UN declaration of November 2002 held that access to clean water is a fundamental right.

Yet the World Bank-formulated water privatisation policy treats water as a commodity and many countries have been coerced into it. Surely as one interested in economic reform, Moragoda cannot be unaware of what happened in Cochabamba, Bolivia where the cost of water increased by some 300%, around 25% of the income of the poor, and even the collection of rain water at home was a crime.

Is Sri Lanka to be the next victim of the false prophets from Washington who are worshipped with great reverence? Studies by the Public Services International's Research Unit of the University of Greenwich revealed how corruption is an issue in water privatisation by multinational companies in developing countries
Today multinationals control 70% of the global water business.

Experience of water privatisation in Argentina, Bolivia, Puerto Rico and elsewhere and energy privatisation in India's Maharashtra State and California have belied the arguments of greater efficiency and lower prices.

Moragoda's economic nostrums from the rostrum don't hold much water, not even privatised water. And we haven't even dealt with other inequities of the globalised world such as the free movement of capital and what I might call the "Soros factor".

Moragoda sees everything "In Black and White". It is generally a sign of intellectual obtuseness when people see only the blacks and whites and not the shades of grey in between.

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