Sri Lanka crisis and Rajapaksas’ political hubris

The Indian strategic and security experts, as well as members of the commentariat, have refrained from talking about the political crisis that erupted from an economic meltdown in Sri Lanka and which has led to the fall of the Rajapaksa regime, comprising former prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, finance minister Basil Rajapaksa and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is set to resign. It would indeed be interesting to unravel whether it is the unchecked political dominance of the Rajapaksas that triggered the economic collapse in Sri Lanka, or whether the economic crisis was a result of the unforeseen war in Ukraine. It might take a long time to figure this out, but the one aspect that stands out is the monopoly of power of the Rajapaksas. That they were allowed to get away with it and that it was based on popular mandate makes it quite intriguing. It is easy to interpret that Sri Lanka is a typical Third World country where a strong leader can easily manage to gain total power. But it is both necessary and useful to understand how this happens.

The leitmotif of the aggressive politics of the Rajapaksas – it is true that most Sri Lankan parties and leaders have accepted the domineering role of Buddhism as a defining aspect of Sri Lankan nationalism – is the unchallenged dominance of Buddhism, Sinhala language and the numerical majority of Sri Lankans who are Buddhists. There is strong resistance to devolution in political power, fearing that regional autonomy in a federal set-up would weaken the unity of the country and erode the dominance of the majority Sinhalas. The political success of the Rajapaksas is seen as ending any discussion of political devolution. Surprisingly, trouble did not come from the defeated Sri Lankan Tamils. Trouble came from within the Sinhala majority. And it hinged on the economic stresses within the dominant majority, made critical by the failure of the political judgment of the Rajapaksas.

They seem to have felt that bringing in China as a major investor in the national economy could be advantageous because then they do not have to think of an economic plan for the prosperity of the country. Foreign investors would take care of it. India and Japan were minor foreign investors too. But the idea of delivering prosperity through foreign investments is the faultline of the regime's thinking. They overlooked the need to energise the society at home, which would generate ideas that would, in turn, energise the economy. But the dynamics of dominance is that homogeneity and uniformity is the preferred mode. There cannot be a vibrant economy without a vibrant society, and vibrancy in society needs diversity as well as rebellion in many quarters.

The growth statistics from 2000 to 2020 tell an interesting story. In 2001, there was a sharp nosedive into negative territory with minus 7.55 per cent and minus 5.75 per cent in 2013, followed by minus 5.82 per cent in 2020. The peak growth rate was a modest 5.51 per cent in 2003 and 4.48 per cent in 2010. The other years which recorded growth ranged below two per cent. And the social indices are impressive as well. Sri Lanka ranks 72 on the Human Development Index (HDI) compared to India's 131 and Pakistan's 154 in 2019. It seems that the island nation of 20 million-plus population could not make the big leap and forge the economic miracle as did South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore. The educational levels were low, and the majority of people lived in villages and depended on agriculture. Perhaps Tamil participation in the national economy might have made some difference. But political divisions did not allow it. And if the Sinhalas and the Tamils continue to exist in separate spheres, the economy might continue to be in the doldrums.

The Sinhala parties also made the big mistake of plunging into grandiose plans. The building of the Hambantota port in Colombo with Chinese loans taken at high interest rates could be seen as the beginning of the economic troubles. It is not that the Sri Lankans had walked into the China camp. They did not. When Gotabaya Rajapaksa became president, he wanted to revoke the agreement between the two countries, which gave China a 99-year lease of the port, and it seemed that Sri Lanka was trying to wriggle out of the Chinese stranglehold. India got its slice of the pie as well when the Adanis signed a contract for building a container port. The expert view in Lanka is that it is not the Chinese factor in Hambantota that set off the economic crisis and that it was due to the fall in exports and in FDI inflows that made debt servicing and repayments difficult. The Sri Lankan state became a prisoner of the Rajapaksa regime, and with the exit of the Rajapaksas, the bruised and maimed Sri Lankan state is sure to get back on its feet.

The temptation of a political party and a political leader to have all the power that one can democratically and constitutionally wield is irresistible, and the political bottleneck it creates affects the whole of the government and the economic system. The success of the Rajapaksas and its disastrous end reveal that populist political leaders like Mahinda Rajapaksa cannot hide behind virulent nationalism and hope to override every other problem. Nationalist rhetoric does not help deal with economic challenges. The Rajapaksas' response to economic challenges has been whimsical, as in the decision to adopt organic farming across the whole of the agriculture sector, or in Mahinda Rajapaksa setting out to construct the Hambantota port with loans from China's Exim Bank at high interest rates more than a decade back. The small pool of expertise that the Rajapaksa clan commanded was wholly inadequate to take Sri Lanka into the high-growth orbit. Democracy is the best guarantor of political and economic sovereignty, but it is endangered when a party or a leader gets the delirious mandate of a brute majority. Sri Lankans have learnt a costly lesson from the Rajapaksa experiment in populism.

(The writer is a New Delhi-based political commentator)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.