1 week Ago By Thilina Walpola
Soon after the 1977 elections President J R Jayewardene’s secretary, Menikdiwela who had been my assistant in the Dudley Senanayake administration telephoned to say that he wanted to see me at his office at Republic Square about a new position in the government. I had kept my links with ‘Meniks’ during my seven year exile. He was a man of strong attachments and a committed fighter for a cause.
I was very touched to see him wish me farewell on the platform of the Fort railway station the evening in 1970 when Damayanthi and I took the lonely train to Batticaloa to begin our posting in Ampara. He and another of my former colleagues were the only ones who had taken the trouble to do so. We discussed the possibility of my having to break my contract with the IPPF.
That evening I discussed the question of whether I should stay with the IPPF or come back to government with Damayanthi and Esala. Esala was most forthright in saying that my place was with government, and if I was wanted, I should go back. J R was all smiles when I met him.
He had been informed by Meniks that I was prepared to chuck up the regional directorship and come in as a permanent secretary in his administration. He made an offer of one of the four positions. He inquired which I would like best.
The options were defence, public administration, plantation industries and agriculture. I thought for a while and said that the only one of the subjects I really knew anything about was public administration, which was coupled with home affairs at the time, and said I might be able to do something worthwhile there. About defence, I certainly didn’t want to take that, because I would find it very difficult to suggest that the government go to war at any time against anybody.
J R countered with asking whether I knew anything about plantation industries. I ruefully said ‘no’, that my only acquaintance with tea, was spending delightful holidays with my younger brother Peter, who was a planter up-country. J R then surprised me by saying, “Aha! then that is exactly what you must do plantation industries.
” He explained that the state was now the owner of hundreds of thousands of acres of tea, rubber and coconut plantations, taken over by the last government under Land Reform, and that everything was in a dreadful mess. He wanted somebody who knew nothing of the subject to start with a fresh mind and bring about some order. He said that I would have one of the finest gentlemen to work with as minister, M D H Jayawardena.
M D H knew quite a lot about plantations, having owned `estates’ himself. He had been an excellent minister of finance in an earlier Cabinet and knew the ropes of government. He was very quick with papers and short in discussion.
It was a delight working with him. I decided that to learn about plantations, one would have to actually go on to the estates and see what was happening. This gave me the opportunity of many visits to the tea and rubber growing areas.
I loved going up-country and making a string of acquaintances in the planting industry. They were all experts at their job and generous in passing on their knowledge. The new technology introduced to the factory was not only interesting but had the most suggestive names.
I soon became familiar with ‘fluid bed dryers’ and ‘vibrating tea sifters’. The Tea Research Institute at Talawakelle like the Rubber Research at Agalawatte was full of information. It was the time of transition in tea planting from ‘seedling’ tea, to VP (vegetatively propagated) tea.
It was VP that was giving a new beauty to the many shades of unbroken green hillside that greeted the driver as he rounded the bends in the tea country. Some of the innovative ideas of the planters like the cutting down of shade trees were bearing fruit. But this question of whether to cut or not to cut, was giving rise to controversy and some of the older ones favoured leaving the trees standing for shade.
The ‘planter language’ was also something one had to get used to. The main road was the ‘cart road’. You do not ‘pick’ tea, but ‘plucked’ it.
In a Tea Research Institute instruction booklet I was confounded by the phrase ‘manual defoliation’. On seeking an explanation, I was told that this meant ‘Plucking’. Planters did not go ‘on leave’; they took ‘furlough’.
Much of the planting fraternity culture had grown around English or rather Scottish custom and usage, and the habits persisted long after the Scots had left. Short trousers with stockings and green garters appeared to be the proper dress for the field, with the ‘polo’ hat to match. Only a kangani would use a black umbrella to ward off the heat of the tropical sun.
The club, after the day’s work, was a favoured retreat, and cream or grey flannel trousers and tweed jackets were part of the strict dress code. Entertaining each other, or visitors from Colombo, who seemed to be always welcome, was a regular occurrence. These were occasions for lavish hospitality and fun until the JVP incursions into the estates in the early seventies and their menacing ‘chits’ put the brake on this high-profile lifestyle.
I began to get very interested in the social condition of the labour and life in the line-rooms. The birth rate on the estates was much higher than the national average and so were maternal and infant mortality. Family planning had been popular at one time through the mobile clinics which had offered female sterilization.
This had been by far the most popular method, but now abortion seemed to be the choice of the women workers. Women made up the major part of the workforce and there seemed to be a surplus of men lounging around and getting drunk in the evenings. As productivity on the field increased, and more sophisticated machines were brought into the factory, unemployment grew.
There were many things to be done in improving the levels of health and education. But equally important appeared to be the elimination of the disparities between life on the estate and life in the neighbouring village. I thought much of the tension was on account of this.
Estate people spoke Tamil and the villagers Sinhalese. Estate people earned regular incomes. The villager subsisted on whatever crop they grew and the hire of irregular labour.
The villagers were citizens of the country and voted. On the estates many were non-citizens and did not have the right to vote. The estate worker lived in a line-room which he did not own.
The villagers had land and a home. These differences were separating the groups and creating potential zones of bitterness and future strife. I worked with the minister on what we called estate-village integration.
We thought out and put into practice, through the estate managers, some innovative ways of bringing people together. The ministry of plantation industry’s mandate did not end with looking over the management of the huge national asset which had now become the responsibility of the state. This in itself was a large enough responsibility to occupy all the time of the minister and his staff.
In addition was the responsibility of working in the international arena to obtain remunerative prices for tea, rubber, and coconut products. I found this aspect of my work very exciting. It took me on several missions to Rome where FAO is located, and Geneva where UNCTAD was most prominent through the exertions of a fellow Sri Lankan and old friend, Gamani Corea, who was secretary general of the organization at the time.
Sri Lanka as the leading tea exporter of the world – the country exports almost 95 per cent of its production – had a big role to play in the international discussions, as part of the group of producer countries, along with our competitors – India and Kenya. I found myself in the forefront of lobbying for better prices for tea in the world markets. We had some powerful delegations from the tea consuming countries, notably the United States and Britain who felt that the price the producer got for its tea – the cheapest drink in the world – was good enough.
We became firm friends at work but were often locked in bitter debate on the many issues surrounding commodity prices. On the technical side, I used to have quality support from Mahinda Dunuwila, then executive director of the Ceylon Tea Board and T Sambasivam his deputy. On the marketing side, Leelananda De Silva, an economist who came in to the ministry as an additional secretary made extremely able presentations in the working groups.
I recall chairing many plenary sessions. Sitting alongside were helpful advisors from UNCTAD – many of them, like us were from the developing countries. I found that we had many friends and could easily win on the voting, if ever it got to that, but that the other side, the developed countries were better prepared in the arguments and had obviously done their homework more thoroughly.
OPEC and what the developing countries had done to obtain higher prices for oil in the 1970s made some of us think of the possibilities of buffer-stocking for tea. Unfortunately, the extreme rivalry for short-term gain which we had from our erstwhile colleagues, especially India and Kenya who worked to maximize production at all times, did not make it likely that the prospect for buffer-stocking arrangements would ever materialize. All of our effort to obtain a better price for our tea at the auctions, either in Colombo or in London, was to pass it on to the producer so that he could optimize his profit and gain something more than his costs of production and so that the surplus could be used for investing on machinery, in the field or on the welfare for the worker like improving the housing.
This was obviously what would have happened in the days the estates were privately owned. However now that the estates had been nationalized and belonged to the state, the treasury had an eye on the profits, if any, and would seek to capture as much of it through the export tax on tea. Trying to cure this and opposing the treasury on the increase in export duty had the unfortunate effect of costing M D H his portfolio.
When the 1978 budget attempted to do just this – increase the duty – M D H lost his cool and attacked the Minister of Finance Ronnie de Mel and his short sighted policy during the debate on the budget. Ronnie complained, J R was embarrassed and had to ask good old M D H to tender his resignation. I remember him coming back to office that morning, admitting that he had erred in attacking Ronnie’s policy on the floor of the House and bidding me goodbye with tears in his eyes.
I thought he never recovered from this lapse, for soon after he had a stroke which left him paralyzed and helpless. He died a few months later and I was deeply saddened at the downfall of this man of quite exceptionable nobility. They don’t make them like that any more.
It was about this time, with Montague Jayewickreme taking over the ministry of plantations and things getting rather unsettled there, that Premadasa, then prime minister, who was looking for a secretary telephoned to ask whether I would come over to work for him. I think he had seen me at work with Dudley in the 1965-70 period and had perhaps felt that I would be useful. His own secretary Eardley Goonewardene, who had been with him from his local government days had fallen sick and wished to retire and the position was open.
By now I had done the job six times already with five different PMs but felt that considering Premadasa’s energy and unothodox ways it would be an experience with a difference. As it turned out, it was quite something. (Excerpted from Rendering Unto Caesar by Bradman Weerakoon).
