The Prime Minister’s call will exacerbate Horizontal Inequality in Sri Lanka

I do take Harsha de Silva's well argued, and evidence based point in yesterday's Daily Mirror opinion   that the Prime Minister's call to ban  wheat flour could affect certain segments of the society more than others, but I do see a need to encourage other staples other than wheat flour, both from a nutritional and food security angle.  The long term goal of the Prime Minister's initiative could be positive even though the method employed is rather ham fisted.  (This is the same with the breaking up of illegal constructions on the beach in Unawatuna, where in the name of protecting the environment, the environment itself is currently destroyed - see http://indi.ca/2011/12/the-unawatuna-demolition-first-hand/)

 Wonder how many readers remember how wheat flour crept into and lodged itself firmly into our diet.  There was the PL480 grant, an outcome of the US Marshall Plan; there was the Prima Factory built in the East; there were the efforts of Unilever in training and transforming our bakeries.  All these, mainly a consequence of post 1977 economic liberalisation was at the expense of indigenous food production and consumption - not just rice, but thosai, kurakkan, pulses.  I do not have personal experience of food habits on the plantations or in Jaffna pre-1977, but I do know first hand that in  Moneragala district for instance, families that had thrived on green gram (mung), cowpea etc from their chenas, challenged by both the spread of sugar cane cultivation and the availability  and convenience of cheap white Prima bread, changed their eating habits, in much the same way as with the marketing and distribution of coca cola and fanta, visitors to a village home in most parts of rural Sri Lanka ceased to be served the most welcome kurumba or thé,  but a hastily purchased coca cola or fanta buddy bottle from the nearest kadé.
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Given that we do not grow wheat in this country, maybe the sensible thing to do is to incentivise the growth/production of the more nutritious traditional meals (what happened to thosai in Jaffna?) rather than unilaterally banning wheat flour...(Incidentally atta flour is also from wheat, but is it of a different variety?)

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