The country’s economic collapse gave it a bad rap — let’s face it — but what has the situation done to dent the morale of the people, and more importantly, to destroy institutions in the country?
If the country has been able to keep checks and balances intact, to keep basic standards with regard to consumer protections intact, among other things, and keep impunity in check, it would have done well.
Where do we stand on these yardsticks? It’s perhaps too early to tell, but here is a preliminary assessment. The Government Service has perhaps lost morale. Or has it? If the government servants are not enthused by the way their lot has been impacted by the crisis, and not enthused about the recovery, you’d expect that there would be State services on the brink of collapse.
It has not happened though. Is this a sign that in Sri Lanka, the basic institutions are solid? They may be. But even if they are, there could be systemic collapse in the short term. For a while, it appeared that there was nobody to monitor the basic controls and basic societal guarantees that are expected in a democracy.
There was for example, public disillusionment over the work of the police recently. There were all the notorious police shenanigans at the fuel-stations. Those aspects are known, though it is a fact that all police cannot be tarred with the same brush. By contrast, essentially, the judicial apparatus functioned allowing for the fact that there were suspensions — effectively — of Court proceedings due to problems of fuel-availability and before that, COVID.
This meant that there was much chance that the people would grow weary of systems that are dysfunctional. However, though there has been the usual apathy about politicians, there has not been the same sense of fatalism about the conduct of Judges, and Public Service bureaucrats etc.
This means that even though the economy collapsed and the political systems were seen to be in a state of utter disrepair, the essential struts supporting the State held.
OUTCOME
This is a good augur. In terms of standards of food distribution, food storages and food-quality, there is no real palpable collapse of confidence. Some may be of the view that it is too early to judge. Would there be a flurry of maladies resultant from failure to monitor food standards during the economic meltdown? Would the reality hit us on a later date — reality being that there was indeed a significant breakdown of monitoring systems, which went unnoticed due to the meltdown and the resultant chaos?
Of course the medical services were ailing. That’s a fact, but it had so much to do with the shortage of medicines due to the foreign exchange crisis. The medical personnel including doctors were not in the least fazed by how daunting their tasks were, and how difficult their conditions have been.
Doctors came to work in push cycles. You could say that they stood and delivered, even though doctors have previously, in far better times, been known for strike action at the most inconvenient hour. It seems in a way that when required, there was a sense that all of society is in this together. In times of relative prosperity, the doctors may be seen to be more interested in their own welfare — downright selfish even — but when all of society was on a death spiral of sorts due to recent events, physicians did not shirk in their commitment.
All of this bodes well for society, but it also gives more credence to the notion that where all of society is responsible, it’s the politicians that have been remiss, and glaringly at that.
If the people of this country did not come together — bureaucracy, public service, private sector and all — the outcome of the events of the last few months would have been disastrous.
As it was, everybody came to the party, and the country has been saved from total collapse, and bloodletting even. Some would say total collapse was what it was when there were petrol queues that snaked past fuel stations for over seven kilometres.
But that is the point. With society under that much stress, the sections of society that were supposed to ensure that the political chaos doesn’t translate into general chaos, more than did their job.
CRAZINESS
This probably is the difference between Sri Lanka, and some of the other countries that have been cited as examples of collapse and breakdown, such as say Lebanon for instance. Some would say that Sri Lankans have immense previous experience keeping their heads down and calm when everybody else around is losing theirs.
A long drawn out war was fought, two insurrections were quelled, and there have been near societal collapse each time the system was previously under strain due to these events.
What is perhaps Sri Lanka’s strength in this respect is the fact that though so many of the best brains are lost to the brain-drain, there are immense reserves of commitment and talent left in the country. None of this is to say that the country has fared well since Independence.
The failings have been manifold. Even so the craziness has been tempered by a sense of responsibility in society, though not among the leadership. Some would argue that the leadership has been much maligned and been dragged through the mud because of the conduct of a few extremely irresponsible individuals at the very top, at times.
Let’s say this though. In comparison to how the bureaucracy and the public services and of course the private sector have fared in times of crisis, the politicians have got the country entangled in all manner of crises, more often than not. This has not gone unnoticed. The people do not necessarily have the best regard for the public services as well. But in comparison to politicians, the bureaucracy is still respected despite the bribery and the corruption that often besets it.
Perhaps the most dangerous probable outcome of the recent meltdown that brought the country some notoriety unfortunately — to its politicians if not its citizens — was that the institutions that have always held up would collapse under the strain of everything that’s going on. But that didn’t happen.
In this regard, the positive outcome probably is due to the fact that the private sector delivered. Small business was unrelentingly stubborn in its refusal to cave in. That was inspiring, and the public service was basically shamed into working for the common cause.
REASSURANCE
Some would take umbrage at the word shamed. It connotes that the Sri Lankan public service is inherently tardy, unreliable, and not to be depended upon, in times of crisis or not. That would be harsh though.
There is a yes and no element about how our public services are perceived to perform. Yes, they do the job and they have been seen to have done it. But were they not part of the problem in the first place?
The public service has had it relatively good. The pressures regularly brought to bear upon private sector workers have not so much as touched public servants. Often their relative prosperity has been at the expense of the taxpayer, and that includes the poorest contributor to taxes at the grocery counter as well.
But yet even the relatively pampered were asked to stand and deliver and to a great extent they did. Perhaps they were doing it for themselves. Their own families’ lives were going to be impacted. It was co-exist or co-perish. What matters is that hope was salvaged. There is some reassurance that the despite everything the system holds — and if not the political system, at least the ballast that keeps governance viable was functional. This may have been the case in Sri Lanka over and over again. It does not seem to make the politicians want to get their act together — they can’t be shamed into doing better than their compatriots. But at least, this outcome of meltdown and near implosion, is one with a silver lining.
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