Culture of entitlement-2
View(s):Sometime last year, state universities and higher education institutions were told that recruitment to all categories including non-academic staff must follow a process of transparency, with prior approval being obtained and in keeping with state circulars.
This is the gist of a notification sent by the Ministry of Higher Education to the University Grants Commission (UGC), which oversees all such institutions, asking for strict compliance. Now universities are supposed to be independent, at least, according to regulations governing this sector, which means recruitments are also their prerogative.
However, the UGC – when it should act as an independent body – communicates these instructions in a Management Committee Memo to universities citing the ministry notification.
Leave that aside, a couple of months later when a lecturer made a request for new hires to fill non-academic staff vacancies, he was told to “wait for the ‘minister’s list”, implying that priority should be given to the minister’s supporters to fill vacancies in universities before the normal rules of recruitment takes place.
The same ‘rule’ is likely to be followed in other ministries and government departments where politicians seek jobs for their supporters.
This example is given in the context of recent comments by Dr. Harsha de Silva, Deputy Minister of Policy Planning and Economic Development, on the entitlement culture of the country’s youth.
At a meeting of exporters last week, the Deputy Minister was quoted as saying: “Every Friday, parents come with their kids (to the Ministry) — they’re 22, 23 years old – saying, ‘Please find a job for my son/daughter in the state sector’. If that is the attitude of 22-year-old kids, where is our future? How can I change that? This is the entitlement culture that we have created. We need 600,000 or 800,000 people working for the Government but we have 1.5 million people working for the Government. Where is this going to end up?”
However, it’s not only undergraduates who demand jobs as their entitlement but politicians too as clearly seen in the example in universities listed above.
The entitlement culture has eaten into every sphere of activity and is a deterrent to Sri Lanka’s march towards becoming a highly-developed nation. It is ingrained in society, firstly among politicians, whatever Dr. de Silva might think. Look in the mirror, Mr. youthful deputy minister!
For example, the manner in which politicians, from the ruling party or outside, with police escorts drive on the roads giving the public the impression that politicians believe they are entitled to speed through traffic breaking the rules in the process, as their entitlement. This kind of entitlement is as good as the culture of impunity which politicians are famous for.
This is the second occasion we are raising this issue, having done so on December 4, 2016 in a KAS column titled ‘Sri Lanka’s entitlement culture’.
At that time it was Central Bank Governor Indrajit Coomaraswamy who referred to a ‘deeply entrenched entitlement culture’ that along with populist politics has for decades stalled Sri Lanka’s march to progress. He had said that entitlement as ‘my due’ or ‘my right’ was deeply rooted in Sri Lankan culture and comes across all platforms like a plague.
Rather than blaming the youth, it’s the politicians over the years who are responsible for this culture and have helped carry it forward. In the December 4 column, we wrote: “… influenced by politicians on their ‘rights’, undergraduates demand government jobs as their entitlement. Rather than work hard – in addition to learning workplace culture and corporate ethics – and competing for jobs like anyone else, youngsters from highly-politicised rural areas are indoctrinated by politicians that they have a right to a job given by the governing party. The number of street protests by unemployed state graduates demanding jobs is a good example.”
The culture of entitlement began in and around the 1970s when politicians started doling out jobs to supporters, an exercise which virtually became sine qua non in our system without any challenge from society at election time! Politicians still go around promising jobs to their supporters during election campaigning and at a mega level, thousands of jobs as if they are entitled to give jobs, as and when they please, once elected.
On the other hand, only a ‘decent’ politician (rare commodity today or if there are examples we’d like to be told) would offer jobs to all and sundry, irrespective of whether that voter supported another candidate!
Then what about the old boys’ network which also operates on the premise of ‘you scratch my back, I scratch yours’ concept, helping find jobs for friends and friends of friends, their sons and daughters? That’s another entitlement culture and a powerful one too.
As discussed in the previous December 4 column, the entitlement culture extends to the police, the public service and the reckless bus drivers on the road (breaking the rules and then paying a bribe to cover their tracks) and many more. In the business and economic sphere, powerful chambers of commerce and industry influence policy-making to suit their interests and in the process affect the rights of smaller business groups who don’t have that much clout on the basis that ‘might is right’. Also in today’s context, street protestors believe they are entitled to disrupt traffic and inconvenience everyone – for the greater good of society!
So how do you get rid of a culture that functions with such impunity if we don’t tackle the root causes – stop promising jobs to supporters, enforce the full force of the law on everyone including politicians when they do wrong, ensuring equality to all before the law, ensure standards for university education that provides equal opportunities to the haves and have-nots, etc?
While it is encouraging to find politicians and intellectuals engaged in a discussion on the entitlement culture and its demerits and serious pitfalls, more needs to be done for Sri Lanka to get rid of this cancer which is spreading rapidly to all sectors of the economy and, at every point, challenges lofty claims of the country moving towards Singapore-styled or Dubai-styled economic benefits.
Hey … missing in today’s discussion is the ‘influence’ of Kussi Amma Sera. She has been taking a quick ‘afternoon snooze’ which she once claimed was her ‘entitlement’!