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| Sunday, 23 October 2005 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Consumer Ombudsman : Competitiveness vs. the team spirit by the Consumer Watch Sri Lankans are competitive to a fault. While competitiveness can be a positive trait, it seems to be carried to an extreme in our small country. An often-heard complaint in Sri Lanka, extending from the political arena to all other spheres of activity, is the inability of our people to work together in a team spirit. Rather than let a fellow team member get the credit, kicking into one's own goal seems to have become common practice. Watching the local scene, makes one give serious thought to what it is that makes our society so fractious, fissiparous and competitive. Noted for our competitiveness, pithy jokes abound about this Sri Lankan nation trait. For example, an old but perceptive story is about the man who died and was given a tour of Hell's prisons by Satan. Their first stop was at an enclosure where every inmate was in chains and fastened to the floor. Upon questioning as to who they were, Satan explained that they were Chinese. They were all constantly trying to escape, and so had to be kept chained down. The second stop was at another enclosure where the inmates roamed free, except for one man who was chained. They were Indians, explained Satan. If you kept their leader chained, all the rest would stay put and make no effort to escape, as they venerated their leader and their place was beside him. At a third enclosure, everyone was roaming free. Do or die This was amazing to the visitor and he was quick to ask who they were. They were Sri Lankans, explained Satan, "We have no problem about them escaping, because if any one of them tries to escape, the others will pull him back". A revealing little tale about a strong national trait of envy, and the tendency to stall by fair means or foul, anyone who is in the way of a person's ambitions. Is this real, and how has this come about"? One explanation for this societal flaw is that this intense competitiveness stems from the smallness of our island and its multi ethnic, multi caste, multi religious communities who are constantly vying with each other for dominance. Be that as it may, one is also inclined to think other factors such as our educational system must also play a significant role, since it is geared towards fostering intense competition to succeed, first at the G.C.E. Ordinary Level examinations, and culminating at the G.C.E. Advanced Level/University Entrance Examination bottleneck which call for a 'do or die' effort on the part of our youngsters. The training and mindset that is nurtured for survival and success at these examinations, seems to be what guides them through the rest of their lives. The individual has been trained through the critical adolescent years during which character becomes mature and set, into being in intense competition with his/her peers all the time. It is difficult for those who have grown up with this mindset to shed it in later years and work as part of a team with shared responsibilities and shared success. The team spirit is thus lost to workplace, family and community. Often, the only experience of working together towards a common goal comes from participation in team sports and events. For the most part, those who have excelled in such activities are readily absorbed into the corporate sector which lays special value to this aspect. They are given recognition for team spirit and team performance, the right attributes that make for success in the corporate sector. Mature lives Others, who consider themselves the best and the brightest, enter the professions after obtaining the necessary University training in the fields of Medicine, engineering, the Sciences, etc., and continue to function along the same individual based competition, with the same 'self alone' focus on success. They carry this competitiveness into their mature lives and thus encounter many problems in their professional as well as personal family and marital relationships. Learning to couple self advancement with that of the others around involves a 'give and take' and a focus on goals outside of oneself. One might well ask why this problem appears to be more aggravated now in comparison to the situation some decades ago. One reason may be that families of that time were generally larger, and the extended family rather than the nuclear family meant there were more children who had to share toys, clothes and food, take care of siblings and in general learn to both study and play as a group. The self-centredness of the nuclear family was not central to it. Competition More importantly, although the competition to enter the university, in terms of actual percentages who sat vs. the those who gained entrance were about the same as today, the stresses endured by the current student populations were absent at that time. Today, in addition to the normal school hours spent on learning, the evening hours are spent on getting privately tutored in order to beat the competition. In fact, without this additional private tuition, a student today has little chance of getting the necessary aggregate score needed for university admission. The G.C.E. A/L student is thus a fully stressed out person who is conscious that his/her entire future depends on the performance at this examination. Is it little wonder that there is so much depression and stress related illness in Sri Lanka? This 24 hour schedule immersed in study did not exist for growing adolescents some decades ago, as the taking of tuition was not in the common culture. In fact it was to some extend an admission of 'failure' to have to resort to private tuition, and was then considered only as a last resort, unlike today. This sense of pressure is aggravated by the fact that there are not enough fullback programs for those who do not succeed in getting through the bottleneck of University entrance, such as technical schools where skills necessary for gainful employment can be obtained. This niche is evidently being addressed through a plethora of private institutions that have sprung up, although the credentials of these schools need to be tested. Wealth Getting into the adult arena, Sri Lanka's youngsters retain the competitive attitude and take it to the workplace, family, and society. We see the negation of the country's and community's well-being in favour of individual accumulation of wealth and success at the professional, bureaucratic and even at political levels, with no limits. Children have grown into adults who cannot stop themselves in their competitiveness. All the symptoms of a highly pressured industrial society are evident in this still developing environment. The statistics are clear in the increases of stress-related illnesses such as hypertension and myocardial infarctions, depression and related mental disorders, gastric and other gastrointestinal ulcers, and immune depression based problems such as asthma and even cancers. Competitiveness has been taken to an extreme and the society in badly in need of readjusting and taking stock as to what we are out to achieve and how we should be doing it. The anarchy on our roads is another index of the competitiveness and the resultant stress. Sri Lanka is not alone in searching for answers to these problems. But we should consider ourselves lucky in that we are a small country in which change will not be difficult to achieve. We have a literate and educated public that by tradition is moderate and will be accepting of the sacrifices essential if we are to survive as a healthy society. Due to our smallness, change can be brought about relatively fast so that the fruits of sacrifice can be evident, convincing, and encouraging enough for persistent follow through. But we need leaders who would be willing to work as a team, rather than with the aim of collecting glory; leaders with vision, visible commitment and the communication skills needed to harness and direct the strengths of this truly blessed nation, with its civilizational history, the enormous creative talents and resilience of its peoples, and the wonderful bounties provided by Nature. The National Consumer Watch of Sri Lanka can be reached at 143, Vajira Road, Colombo 5. |
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