A Monumental Contribution to Sri Lankan Studies
from Professor G H Peiris
Reviewed by Sam Samarasinghe
G. H. Peiris, Sri Lanka: Challenges of the New Millennium. Peradeniya: Kandy Books, 2006, pp. vii+500, Rs 1,400.

In any developing country the challenge of sustainable development, broadly defined, encompasses economic development and poverty reduction, protection of the environment, and building a viable democratic state. Handling one of these themes, let alone all three, with even a minimum level of competence is a daunting intellectual challenge. Professor Gerald H. Peiris (Professor of Geography Emeritus, University of Peradeniya) in his latest book Sri Lanka: Challenges of the New Millennium takes on all three themes with an extraordinary level of proficiency and scholarly integrity that in my view no other scholar working on Sri Lanka would be able to match.

Professor Peiris belongs to the school of geographers who were trained to look at society and environment holistically as an integrated system. In his present book as well as in almost all his previous work he quite rightly has ignored the traditional boundaries of disciplines in the social sciences. Perhaps that is what is expected of a geographer such as Professor Peiris who has studied human space and asserts the “irrelevance of excessive discipline-based epistemological introspection to productive research.” (p.ii)

The book under review is divided into three parts. The first deals with “The Environmental Challenge” and covers about one quarter of the book. Next comes “The Challenge of Development” that takes up about 40%. The last section that absorbs the remaining 35% is devoted to “The Challenge of Conflict.” This last section mainly focuses on the protracted ethnic conflict that yet remains unresolved. In that sense it is not a comprehensive treatment of what I identified earlier as the third main challenge - “building a viable democratic state” - confronting any developing country in the new millennium. Such a discussion will also include an analysis of democracy and democratic transition in the country in question. However, for Sri Lanka, at the present juncture of its political development, the resolution of the conflict is a pre-requisite to successful democratic transition and the building of a viable state. Thus Professor Peiris, quite rightly, has addressed the central political problem that faces the Sri Lankan polity at present.

The author in his Preface states that “In the first two parts of the volume, in particular, my main objective is that of contextualising and synthesising (existing) research …….” In the discussion on the conflict he relies more heavily on his own research. But in general in synstehsising existing research Professor Peiris has done a great service to Sri Lankan studies. It is only somebody with an extraordinary grasp of Sri Lanka's history and colonial and post-independence development that could have accomplished such a task. Professor Peiris is the only person I could think of among scholars today who could do this.

In a short review such as this, one cannot do justice to the large volume of information and rich analysis that Professor Peiris presents in his book. Among other things, the book covers Deforestation, Environmental Pollution, Land Utilization, Mineral and Water Resources, Economic Transformation Under Colonial Rule, Macroeconomic Changes in Independent Sri Lanka, Rural Poverty, Social Welfare, Dry Zone Colonisation, Group Identities and Political Mobilisation, Economic Causes of Ethnic Conflict, Youth Unrest, Prospects for Peace, and many more. I will pick a few themes for comment in the hope that it would arouse the curiosity of the prospective reader who would want to get at the real thing by reading the book.

In Part I on the Environment I was impressed by two important features in the analysis. One was the reference to history that immediately makes the present far more intelligible. For example, we know that today any major downpour in Colombo floods some parts of the city. Professor Peiris notes that “…… Colombo is the product of extensive land reclamation (and that) “(M)ost parts of the city stand on what three-hundred years ago was an extensive wetland ecosystem …….” (p.31). Questioning the popular theory that recent land reclamation is responsible for the periodic flooding of the city he points out that the “principal cause” for the flooding is “….neglect of the drainage channels” and the “… lack of proper maintenance of the sewerage system …” He concludes his analysis of Colombo's environmental problems by arguing that not all changes that have occurred in Colombo in the past 200 years driven by socioeconomic needs are associated with irreparable damage to the environment. His basic thesis is that we need to have a sensible balance between preserving the environment and making changes for development.

In Part II of the book on Development Professor Peiris is at his best when dealing with Sri Lanka's agrarian issues, a subject on which he has done extensive research over nearly forty years and is the undisputed expert in the country. What he has to say about Sri Lanka's small rice farmer model of agriculture should be food for thought for everybody, especially our politicians who declare their eternal commitment to protect the small farmer.

Man verses elephant

Citing the latest and best available research he points out that paddy has become an increasingly unprofitable occupation in many parts of the country. In Kurunegala, Kandy and Kalutara districts a farmer suffers a net loss by cultivating rain-fed paddy. Even more disturbing is the fact that despite the massive expenditure on irrigation over 1948-56 40% of public investment was on Dry Zone settlements and the early phase of the Mahaweli absorbed nearly 50% of public investment - in the last fifty years cropping intensity in paddy has not increased appreciably. On average only 25% of the asweddumized paddy land has been cultivated in both Yala and Maha seasons. Less than 60% of the irrigated land is regularly double cropped. The almost total absence of water management in irrigation systems is one reason for this situation.

Professor Peiris has some remedies to solve these problems of the paddy sector. If there is the political will water conservation and water management would help increase the cropping intensity in irrigated paddy. Second there is a strong case for encouraging integrated agriculture that encompasses several activities such as animal husbandry, freshwater fisheries, and floriculture and so on. Of course this requires a significant reorientation of the attitude of our farmers as well as policy makers and officials.

The Victoria dam

Professor Peiris concludes that our agrarian policy that was designed to ensure the welfare of the small peasant has more or less failed to achieve that goal. He notes that the colonization schemes have not always led to the hoped for poverty reduction (p.244-248). To an economist this is not surprising. By a happy coincidence one policy tool could achieve two or more desirable goals. But in general it is safer to have one major goal for one policy tool. That means if the goal of colonization policy is to achieve self-sufficiency in rice it is best to have that as the goal of colonization. Peasant welfare needs to be handled with another policy tool depending on the circumstances.

As I noted above, in Part III of the book that deals with the ethnic conflict Professor Peiris relies heavily on his own research that was done mainly in association with the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy. In his discussion on the conflict he points out that there is no valid basis in demography or history for the Eastern Province to be claimed as a part of the “traditional homeland” of Tamils as the LTTE insists.

Conflict

He also challenges the theory strongly advocated by, among others, some American scholars that the Government of Sri Lanka has discriminated against the Tamils in the allocation of state land under colonisation schemes. In the case of the Mahaweli he points out that the ethnic violence and political instability in the area has delayed the implementation of the very part of the scheme System A and the Right Bank Scheme of System B - that would have greatly benefited Tamil and Muslim settlers.

In the last few pages of Part III Professor Peiris readily agrees that we should continue to search for a peaceful end to the conflict. But his analysis leads him to the conclusion that the LTTE's aim for a separate state of Eelam remains unchanged, the so called Oslo declaration notwithstanding. He warns against any settlement that is a “capitulation in the face of terrorism …. guided by short-term considerations ….. that could set the country on a path of conflict far more intense and intractable than at present.” (p.465)

The thread that runs through most of the book is the concept of “sustainable development.” I would have liked if Professor Peiris had made an attempt to more strongly and purposefully link the three parts of his monumental work using that concept. I felt that a final concluding chapter that pulled the diverse themes together could have accomplished that task. That also would have created an opportunity to examine the theoretical implications the pros and cons of hitching our economic future to India and the global economy, the balance between rapid growth and modernization verses a more welfare-oriented strategy, the respective roles of the market and state and so on - of Professor Peiris' penetrating analysis of some of the major issues that the country is facing.

The book provides the reader deep insights into many major issues. But in the absence of a strong concluding synthesising chapter it fails to give the reader a grasp of the overall direction the country should choose in facing the challenges of the millennium that Professor Peiris so eloquently analyses. But this is an opinion coming from a reviewer whose discipline Economics is often given to over-theorising at the expense of facts and realty. The great strength of Professor Peiris' work is his meticulous adherence to facts to drive his analysis.
In conclusion I can confidently say that no future research on Sri Lanka would be complete without significant reference to Sri Lanka: Challenges of the New Millennium by G H Peiris.