Alleviating the people's lot

There is some comfort in the thought that the cost of living burden is receiving the attention of no less a person than President Mahinda Rajapaksa. He has called on his officials to come out with practicable programmes to ease the consumers' lot and this is how it has to be.

This amounts to an admission that the state machinery and bureaucracy are not doing enough on this front and frankness is a first step towards taking on the very substantive problem of the current cost of living.

The addressing of such issues at a time when the Cooperative Movement is very much in focus on account of the anniversary of its founding is most appropriate. The spirit of cooperation needs to be strongly established among the people and the state would do well to revive those institutions of the past, such as the traditional cooperative outlet, which did not prove to be the most vibrant of public institutions but helped to a degree in alleviating the cost of living burden by providing for the people essential commodities at reasonable, purse-easy prices.

Today's Sathosa outlets are to some extent meeting the aims of the 'cooperative stores' of yore and our hope is that these institutions would continue to function dynamically. However, they need to be popularized more and more among the public and this task too must be taken on by the state.

It cannot be overlooked that price control is central to the task of containing the cost of living. This approach is no longer fashionable in these times of mainly the 'market economy' but the state would need to have a degree of supervisory control over the prices of food commodities in particular, if a dent is to be made in the living costs question. The Consumer Affairs Authority is a state organization of the desired kind in this context and one could be glad that it is doing its best to check and contain the prices of essential goods and services. However, bodies such as the CAA should project themselves more pronouncedly in public for a more effective controlling of living costs.

As the state authorities themselves have noted, some relief given by the state to importers of essential goods are not percolating down to the consumer. This is an aspect of the cost of living question which must be examined further and remedied.

The state would need to ensure, by evolving the necessary machinery, that relief offered to the producer or importer is passed on to the consumer. In the normal course of things, the numerous middlemen who stand in between the producer and the consumer earn substantially by progressively inflating prices, very often very arbitrarily.

It is for these reasons that the spirit of cooperation and the institutions that go with it need to be revived and rendered robust once again. It is our belief that if these middlemen could be side-stepped, goods and services could be offered to consumers at reasonable prices.

President Rajapaksa is doing right by visiting the provinces and seeing for himself how local level public institutions in particular are functioning.

If the cost of living burden is to be lightened, it must be ensured that these bodies prove truly participatory organizations where people could interact and work out solutions to their problems in a spirit of unity. Besides, they must agree on ways of getting their produce to the markets independently and on distributing the proceeds equally.

However, consumers must themselves work more vibrantly towards their just interests. This spirit is sadly lacking among the local public. 'Anything goes' seems to be their attitude on consumer issues.

If the consumer is to get value for his money, not only must the state work towards this end, consumers themselves must forge ahead collectively and vibrantly towards the fulfillment of their needs.