Will change come through red gates?
My former schoolmates are pre-ordering their copy of a coffee-table book entitled Through the Red Gates, a celebratory volume of 125 years of Ladies College, the school we attended on Flower Road, which celebrates this landmark event in 2025. Some former schoolmates (and others) are also agonising at the possibility that the gates to the country’s governance might turn red with a Malimawa/NPP/Anura Kumara Dissanayake victory in the Presidential election next week. The fear of a NPP/AKD victory takes several forms: it evokes the spectre of violence of the JVP (the main party in the NPP) forgetting that JVP are not the only perpetrators of terror. The political space, since 1 971 at least, has been seeped in violence - the JVP of the 1980s was particularly vicious, but s uccessive state regimes have unleashed state violence and given head to extra-judicial violent e lements that were equally virulent. As Lionel Bopage has said in a recent interview , the violence of the JVP (and a
.jpg)
Words, words, words - half a century of seminars, workshops and symposiums with the poor having got poorer and rich, richer, to show for it. And like a political party that needs to reinvent itself to maintain its currency, the 'development set' comes up with a new mantra each decade. In this decade it is 'Gender Isssues' (the theme in vogue in the Western funding capitals!). How can we make these intellecutal elites (some misguided, some opportunistic) less self-serving and more productive agents of the poor?!
ReplyDeleteInteresting if somewhat uninformed comment. I for one, believe in the power of ideas if not words, because there is a dialectic between ideas and practice, and while some of us have to chip away at the practice, others have to challenge the ideas. You are right that the rich have got richer, but lots of poor women, men and children are better off than they were in the last century. Which is why the old way of 'doing development' needs to be rethought. It's the gap between the rich and the poor that is widening and this is largely due to the neo-liberal thinking that drives the world economy. And please do not fall into the trap of labelling gender issues a western agenda: it is a very real issue in non-western patriarchal societies as any self-respecting anthropologist will tell you. Getting worse in post-war Sri Lanka with increasing rape and gender based violence.
DeleteIf the ideas are borrowed ones (and not home grown), or are foisted on naïve and opportunistic locals lacking in funds, the flawed practices of these ideas should logically follow.
ReplyDeleteThe pygmies and Kalahari bushmen are also better off than they were a century ago. No old or new ways of ‘development’ had anything to do with it.
That which has driven the world economy is a neo-conservative (not neo- liberal) agenda – with Economists and econometricians taking the lead, and Intl. agencies like the IMF, World Bank, USAID, and all the UN Orgs funding their ideas to maintain a patronizing world order with them on the one hand, and incompetent and corrupt govts.on the other, at the helm .
No Patriarchal or Matriarchal system (the Ahanthi) has remained stagnant over time. However, most of them have deprived their other half of realizing their aspirations – some of which could improve the economic condition of their communities. Change in these systems has also come at far too slow a pace (hopefully cell phones and in-migration will change this). But change, like development ideas, must be home-grown – or the pace and glue of religion, norms, values, cultural practices that hold communities together can be upended – with the corrosive effects one sees in the West. One could argue that the rape and gender-based violence in Sri Lanka is a result of this unbridled change that has occurred as a result of militarization, outflux of young men and women to the Middle East, and influx of money to rural communities at a mind-boggling pace.
Eilitist women who pushed gender issues in the West broke the glass ceilings that they aspired to do and went on to very comfortable lives - leaving their middle, working and poor classes to be exploited by their private sectors seeking cheap, abundant labour. With cheaper labour been offered in the developing world, these women have been left without jobs, broken homes and communities and a system that, unlike in the past, cannot survive without a two-paycheck household anymore. Notice how they are all breaking at the seams these days.
Next?