The Island Editorial

When small is not beautiful

30 August 2016

Minister of Ports and Shipping Arjuna Ranatunga has embarked on an ambitious project as is his wont. He has undertaken to put up the world’s tallest Christmas tree on the Galle Face Green! There has been a mixed reaction thereto.

Schumacher’s aphorism, ‘Small is beautiful’ is not for Sri Lankans, who seem to think ‘the bigger, the better’. We think so big that we end up achieving too little paradoxical as it may sound.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe keeps telling us that we can be proud of having the world’s biggest swimming pool aka the Hambantota Port. Many a true word is said to be spoken in jest. Time was when we used to boast of the sheer size of a sugar factory, which is now ‘rusting in peace’. The last government, known for its penchant for gargantuan projects of Ozymandian proportions, began the construction of the Chinese-funded Lotus Tower. That administration, in all its wisdom, also dug up land to build an inland port and started reclaiming land from the sea to build a city! A couple of moons ago President Maithripala Sirisena unveiled a huge Buddha statue. So, former ICC World Cup winning skipper turned Minister, Ranatunga may have thought of launching a mega project in the belief that he may be remembered for that.

Minister Ranatunga’s Christmas tree initiative may have warmed the cockles of many a heart. We don’t intend to discuss the merits or the demerits of his project or contest his assertion that the project will boost the government’s reconciliation efforts which are, no doubt, laudable; lack of ethno-religious harmony has been the bane of this country. Instead, we wonder whether the government has got its priorities right.

It was only recently that outspoken Archbishop Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith, together with a group of other religious dignitaries, staged a walk against the ever worsening drug menace. He made a shocking revelation; many students of a church-run school were addicted to cannabis. The situation must be more or less similar in most other schools, we argued in a previous comment.

Successive governments have failed to tackle the narcotic problem; they have been only scratching the surface thereof. The best way to safeguard the interests of any community, religious, ethnic or otherwise, is to help save its young members from evil. Programmes to prevent narcotic addiction and rehabilitate addicts require a great deal of funds. The Ports Authority can contribute to this worthy cause championed by the prelates.

Yesterday, a senior Buddhist monk visited our newspaper office, complaining that the newly introduced rural electrification programme for low income groups had not benefited the places of religious worship in pecuniary difficulties. He said he had appealed to the powers that be to supply electricity to the poor religious institutions such as Buddhist temples, churches, mosques and kovils in rural areas.

This is an issue Minister Ranatunga can take up at the Cabinet level. The survival of places of worship is a prerequisite for bringing about religious amity. We wonder whether the Colombo Port can utilise a fraction of its profit to help the religious places on the brink of closure.

There are many orphanages run by the Church and other religious institutions and they are experiencing severe financial difficulties. Minister Ranatunga should give serious thought to directing the Colombo Port to cut down on waste and use funds so saved to help such places.

Minister Ranatunga cannot be unaware that in his home district, Gampaha, there are many poor Christian families, especially along the coastal belt. They need government assistance. Leaders of the present administration claimed before the last presidential polls that they were among the people to be affected by the Rajapaksas’ Port City Project, whose construction is to be resumed under a different name shortly.

Let Minister Ranatunga and all others who have launched the tallest Christmas tree project—of course, in good faith—be reminded what legendary, versatile priest, Fr. Marcelline Jayakody famously wrote: Mage naththala dugiya bath kanadaya—which roughly put into English means ‘my Christmas is when the poor dull their pangs of hunger’.