Keeping clean and classy…!
View(s):I had a very good driving trainer from whom I received my training to drive motor vehicles. Those days, the most common motor car used by driving trainers was the “Morris Minor” from England.
As there were no AC components fitted in the older cars, it was not unusual that during daytime we were sweating inside the car. The shutters were always kept opened for ventilation.
“Let’s switch on AC”, my driving trainer sometimes said, while adjusting the triangular shape small shutters on either side. It lets the wind flow from outside towards our sweating faces.
Trash on the roadsides in Sri Lanka
Others are all mad!
One day, as a trainee I was driving the Morris Minor car slowly on a main road, paying attention to the instructions from my trainer. As usual, he was sitting in the front passenger seat on the left side. A bus driver, who had lost patience because he was unable to speed up overtaking us due to traffic flow from the opposite side, started honking his irritable loud horn behind us.
“You must also learn to ignore unnecessary honking by others”, my trainer advised me. One of the interesting things I liked about him was the way he gave me some additional instructions to drive on Sri Lankan roads.
One day he said: “When you drive your vehicle, you must think that all the other drivers on the road are mad…!”
I never forgot that instruction. It is not about the technical accuracy of what he said, but a more effective way of reminding oneself about the uncertainties and risks on the roads. Unlike in the countries with more disciplined driving practices, here in Sri Lanka we must always anticipate erratic behaviour of many drivers.
Clean Sri Lanka
During the past 30-40 years, Sri Lanka’s road discipline seems to have deteriorated, instead of any improvements. Reckless driving and indisciplined behaviour on the roads are even justified, because they have become our acceptable norms today.
The responses by some of the bus drivers and the tuk-tuk drivers to the new traffic operation plans under the “Clean Sri Lanka” initiative confirm that we all can define the rules as we want them. Everyone can have their own set of road rules for driving, turning, overtaking, stopping and parking.
Interestingly, as per the news reports drivers have requested “more time” from the authorities to keep on violating road rules and to slow down the inspections on such behaviour. In a way, it makes sense: When the reckless and erratic behaviour becomes the style and norm, we need more time to change such habits!
“Clean Sri Lanka” is, however, a commendable initiative. It covers four broad areas of clean-up operations to achieve sustainability: environment sustainability, social sustainability, governance sustainability, and economic sustainability.
First World standards
When a country is becoming “developed”, an essential element of development must be reflected through people’s habits and behaviour everywhere – on the roads, their homes, at the office, and in public. To my surprise, past governments of Sri Lanka and the respective government agencies did nothing much in this area.
Teaching road discipline, training to care for environment, establishing people-centric public sector and promoting corruption-free society, all were easier things to do and with no significant costs; in fact, such activities can also provide a good source of non-tax revenue for the government. Nevertheless, it is surprising that past governments have never been serious about teaching “first world standards” to the people.
Let me quote from Lee Kuan Yew, the late Prime Minister of Singapore, who believed in his vision that he would bring Singapore from the Third World to the First World. Because he knew that Singapore is to be a “first world country, he was concerned about setting the “first world standards” at the time that Singaporeans were living in slums and shanties.
Lee Kuan Yew wrote in his book, From Third World to First, The Singapore Story: “After independence, I searched for some dramatic way to distinguish ourselves from other Third World countries. I settled for a clean and green Singapore. One arm of my strategy was to make Singapore into an oasis in Southeast Asia, for if we had First World standards then businessmen and tourists would make us a base for their business and tours of the region.” [pp. 201-202].
Third World habits
It is absolutely bizarre to think that we continuously had a lukewarm approach to what Singapore thought of adopting there for over half a century ago. In fact, Sri Lanka’s starting point was much better than that of Singapore, as confirmed by the following quotation:
“The physical infrastructure was easier to improve than the rough and ready ways of the people. Many of them had moved from shanty huts with a hole in the ground or a bucket in an outhouse to high-rise apartments with modern sanitation, but their behaviour remained the same. We had to work hard to be rid of littering, noise nuisance and rudeness, and get people to be considerate and courteous.”
For a government, it is easier to build infrastructure; but what is more difficult is to change people’s attitudes and behaviour, as Lee Kuan Yew pointed out here. Because of this reason, the Singaporean government had to work hard to deal with eliminating people’s “third word habits” although Singapore is yet to be a first world country.
Since the 1960s, the Singapore government attempted to stop people’s third world habit of “spitting on the roads”. But as Lee Kuan Yew commented, “…even in the 1980s, some taxi drivers would spit out of their car windows and some people were still spitting in markets and food centres”.
An oasis in the Third World
Lee Kuan Yew intended to bring the nation to the first world not only by changing people’s habits but also going beyond that by adopting “first world systems” in the country. He did not wait, until the Singaporeans become rich and change by themselves:
“…My strategy was to create a First World oasis in a Third World region…. If Singapore could establish first world standards in public and personal security, health, education, telecommunications, transportation and services, it would become a base camp for entrepreneurs, engineers, managers and other professionals who had business to do in the region.”
A strategy of establishing first world oasis means, changing people’s mindset:
“This meant we had to train our people and equip them to provide First World standards of service. I believed this was possible, that we could re-educate and re-orientate our people with the help of schools, trade unions, community centres and social organisations. If the communists in China could eradicate all flies and sparrows, surely, we could get our people to change their Third World habits.”
“We had one simple guiding principle for survival, that Singapore had to be more rugged, better organised and more efficient than others in the region. If we were only as good as our neighbours, there was no reason for businesses to be based here. We had to make it possible for investors to operate successfully and profitably in Singapore despite our lack of a domestic market and natural resources.” [pp. 76-77]
The lessons
With a small population and poor spending ability, Singapore did not have a domestic market, neither was it blessed with natural resources. But its government with a visionary leadership could overcome such barriers and make way for the country to become today the richest nation in Asia.
Cleaning Sri Lanka is timely and necessary initiative, but it is not sufficient. Sri Lanka too must go further by establishing a conducive environment for “entrepreneurs, engineers, managers and other professionals who have business to do in the region” to come and engage in these affairs on Sri Lankan soil. We may not want to live as a “poor in a clean country”. Clean and classy standards go with wealthy people of a developed country.
(The writer is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Colombo and can be reached at sirimal@econ.cmb.ac.lk and follow on Twitter @SirimalAshoka).
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