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| Sunday, 13 April 2003 |
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Features |  |
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How does LTTE see economic future of NE? by N. Shanmugaratnam In mainstream analytical literature, 'peace dividend' is generally interpreted rather narrowly in terms of the impact of cuts in military spending on economic growth performance. Military spending by the Government and the LTTE remains high. Our peace process has not reached the stage of decommissioning and demobilisation. The controversies over the High Security Zones in Jaffna and the occasional confrontations between the two armed forces are strong reminders of this reality. They also reveal once again that military considerations continue to enjoy top priority on both sides. Military spending is not likely to be reduced until a lasting political solution is found, and not before its implementation has progressed beyond 'the point of no return to war' and a programme of reintegration of ex-combatants (Government and LTTE) is instituted. Let us also bear in mind that demobilisation of combatants and dismantling of the war economy have their cost as they would involve loss of employment and income for many. Peace dividend in the sense of savings on military spending and their impact on growth may take a long time to be produced in Sri Lanka, and it is not easy to predict at this point how big the savings are likely to be, when they come. A broader conception Narrow economic conceptions of the peace dividend such as the above do not seem to have much operational value in today's Sri Lanka. No realist would chase after an illusory 'peace dividend' in the form of reduced military spending or its positive economic impact in this country at present. It is not rational to expect quick cuts in military spending when the protagonists are still trying to find a political solution to end a war bitterly and ruthlessly fought for twenty years. But it is possible to create a peace dividend in a broader sense by utilising the opportunities offered by the emerging environment. In popular discourse, 'peace dividend' has acquired a broader, though often somewhat loose, meaning to include economic as well as social, political and psychological benefits that accrue as a result of an ongoing peace process with or without significant cuts in military spending. Peace, development, conflicts In Lanka, we find ourselves in a context that is both promising and challenging in this regard. The peace process is promising but taking it to fruition in the form of a political solution is a major challenge. It cannot be denied that the ethnic conflict in Lanka is rooted to a great extent in conflicts over distribution of resources, opportunities and political power in what analysts regard as horizontal inequalities. These conflicts became progressively communalised on the basis of ethnic divisions, which were politically defined in colonial times and subsequently modified and redefined as communalisation advanced into structures of the state and the polity at large. Here, it is not my intention to go in-depth into the political economy of communalisation and the latter's enduring institutionalised presence in the phase of economic liberalisation that began with the change of government in August 1977. I hasten to repeat that there are distributional conflicts outside the ethnic conflict and to stress that they have been growing under the regime of economic liberalisation. The point I want to make here is that development can contribute to durable peace if it can be so governed as to make it socially, ethnically and spatially as even as possible. This should be the main premise of a broader conception of the peace dividend. Further, such a development process is a necessary condition for the decommunalisation of the Lankan polity. Paradoxically, the war has helped make a dent on rural poverty and unemployment in the South as hundreds of thousands of youths, mostly rural, found employment in the state's armed forces. As the war became protracted, the war economy expanded and absorbed a considerable number of people. Further, after more than a year of ceasefire, the vast majority of the people are more concerned about the rising cost of living, unemployment and social insecurity, as revealed by surveys and protests. Such concerns become even more serious when we turn to the North-East where the challenges of rebuilding and developing the war-torn society and economy are daunting. The war has redrawn the political, economic and demographic landscape of this region. It is widely recognised that, at the aggregate inter-regional level, there is a major development gap between the North-East and the rest of the country and that this has to be bridged in the shortest possible time in order to re-integrate this region into the larger economy and polity. North-East A fundamental concern, however, is how to achieve this without reproducing the uneven spatial patterns of development, deprivation and exclusion experienced in the south of the country. The government has yet to show how it proposes to bring about a transformation of the social geographies of exclusion in the south, and the LTTE too has not explicitly articulated its own vision of development. Of course, developing countries are subject to a global imperial authoritarianism when it comes to choosing national economic policies. Yet an enlightened political class cannot afford to disregard the crosscutting questions of legitimacy, stability and social reproduction. The LTTE, which is an equal partner in the peace process, which runs a de facto state in the North-East, and which is expected to be the dominant actor in a future regional government, has yet to make known its views on the Lankan experience with the neoliberal project. I think it is time we raised the question as to how the LTTE sees the future development of the North-East in the current global-regional context. |
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