A lesson to all hard-boiled spoilers,
called Growth
There is eight percent economic growth forecast for 2006, and
seven per cent growth registered in the first quarter of this year.
These are Central Bank approved figures, not ours - and have the
imprimatur of the Treasury's Secretary on them.
We take it that Time magazine may have to re-write its entire
portfolio of Sri Lanka articles. We take it too that the New York Times
will have to do a copy rehash, and that the Agencies would have to hire
yuppie executives who see the glass as half full - when they keep
parroting the incessant untruth that it's half empty.
There is a growth that has not been witnessed in this country in 28
years, according to the statistics - which would be enough to give
coronaries to the several who have been portraying the current as the
time of reversal, recession and economic stagflation.
But it's unlikely that the rhetoric of the expert naysayers will
subside any time soon. We publish elsewhere in this paper an article by
Professor Karthigesu Sivathamby which faults the press for the worsening
of this country's conflict.
The press of several countries - - or at least of several countries
and their media tycoons - could be blamed for the portrayal of this
country, which is on a upward spiral, as one which has nothing going for
it except a war.
This is a malady worse than any kind of economic malaise.
It's global media tunnel vision, that usually succeeds in crippling
the economies of countries that are on veritable development overdrive.
But on this occasion, it appears that the pens of the agency boys,
and the keyboards of the Cassandra-Corporation are jinxed. It's a
commentary on the times we live in that a few under-trained boys and
barely pubescent women with pens could hold entire nations hostage by
despatching stories that could create a negative impact on finance and
investment. Generally, when these young men and women unlearn their
habits, and when the history is written on the times, it would be said
definitively that the sceptical press got its calculations skewed. By
then however, it will be a historically proved fact that the press
always determines what are eventual historical facts.
But, in contemporary Sri Lanka, there is a germ of what looks like a
challenge to this common media paradigm that's visible. Figures could be
cooked, but a growth rate that's touted to be the best in 28 years,
cannot be a statistic that's cooked beyond recognition. What's barley
may not look like barley when its overdone - but certainly it cannot
look like rubies. What's being said is that even considering that we
need to approach statistics with caution when there are some rumblings
of conflict on the horizon, there is still, a palpable current that is
upsetting all prognostications of the sceptics? The economy has finally
come into its own, as the forces that bargained to parley it into the
hands of the robber barons were summarily trounced. If the statistics
could lie even - there is a feeling that human emotions cannot hide the
feeling of resilience.
The worm turned
Repeat assaults on the economy by mismanagement and by gauche
commandeering of the economic apparatus by the rapacious rich came to a
halt with the entrenching of anti UNP governments.
But, even so, the economy was moving at the momentum that was created
by the robber barons and its pace was propelling it towards a sudden
skid.
But things turned the corner, it seems, when the management of the
economy was indigenised.
The engines of growth were left untrammelled and un-interfered with.
When the captains of the economy took over the politics of the nation
and kept running the economy as well, there was an inevitable conflict
of interests.
All that underwent metamorphosis.
The robber barons have now been shunted out to where they perform
best - the fastness of their petty business fiefdoms, where they could
go for each other's jugular. But that is the kind of cutthroat
competitions in business, which keeps economies humming.
Such unglamorous competitiveness does not provide the right kind of
impetus for turning the wheels of state, but it does, for turning the
treadmills of commerce.
What we have now is an economy in which the bureaucrats manage the
infrastructure, the politicians essentially keep their hands off, and
the captains of business run the engines of growth. But in this scheme,
the social fabric is not being vandalised by the vested interests of the
capitalist neo-liberal cabals.
That's enough to rig the economy on to a wave that touches 8 p.c
growth a once in 28-year phenomenon. |