Success Stories: Then And Now

By Romesh Abeywickrema

Japan and the word ‘rise’ are difficult to keep apart. Known from time immemorial as ‘The Land Of The Rising Sun’ due to it being one of the first places on Earth to see the dawn of a new day, this land is certainly ‘a land like no other’ for all the right reasons unlike our claim to the same title purely for ‘marketing’ reasons.
Japan at about the time we received independence from the British, in 1948, was at best, a wasteland – having suffered immensely during World War II culminating with two nuclear bombs wiping out two of its cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Sri Lanka was left largely untouched by the carnage of World War II and its infrastructure was at a relatively advanced stage, so much so that Ceylon, as the country was known then was the envy of the rest of Asia.
That however is about as far as Sri Lanka’s ‘success story’ went with the arrival of power hungry politicians not surprisingly coinciding with the decline of what was, by all indications, a nation on the rise. The rest of course is history, a history we would be better off were we to collectively dump it where it belongs, in the dustbin and leave it there, but unfortunately we cannot count ourselves to be that lucky with our chosen rulers’ choosing to sustain themselves not by serving the people but by scavenging the dustbin of history. And this happens on a daily basis.
It is evident on any TV talk show, on any election platform, at any media forum or any discussion for that matter, where accusations of wrongdoing are quickly countered with ‘so they (the other party) did much worse…. Can you remember dooshanaya and bheeshanaya…. Remember the tyres and lamp posts…. Remember rice from the moon and food queues. They robbed so much… etc, etc.’ Our karma seems to be such that not even a national disaster of the magnitude of the 2004 tsunami which killed something like 35,000 Sri Lankans, managed to produce the right kind of political culture to bury this ugly past and start afresh.
We now see this ‘right’ political culture surfacing in Japan as it has before, following the apocalyptic-like earthquake and tsunami, which devastated a huge chunk of the country.
That Japan has learnt from history and elevated its standing to a plane high above the rest of the world in general and we in Sri Lanka in particular is plain to see for all those who wish to see.
Global news channels, or for that matter Japanese television NHK did not show people screaming their heads off in grief accompanied by chest beating and pleading to the gods. We did not see Japanese politicians accompanied by hundreds of goons rushing with foreign donated aid to meet victims. We did not see this not because the television channels cut off these scenes or missed out on capturing them, but simply because they just did not happen!
What did happen was people, be they old or young, queued up in a disciplined manner for water, groceries, fuel and whatever else. No pushing, no shoving, no cursing the government in power, no looting in shops even when expensive items lay scattered all over, and even when in the few shops that were open the power went off due to strong aftershocks, people put things back on the shelves and left quietly! The same way unguarded ATMs attracted no robbers or looters.
Instead what we saw was a shining example of patriotism, where everyone thought of country first like the ‘Fukushima Fifty’ who stayed back to salvage the damaged nuclear reactors despite grave danger to their lives.
And then they thought of each other – an aspect of patriotism we tend to conveniently forget; it’s the people that make a country and not the other way around as we delude ourselves in to believing. The Japanese people, in another shining example of patriotism, bought only what they needed to survive, so everybody could get something. Unlike here where traders jack up prices after the smallest disaster, it was the opposite that was observed in Japan where traders voluntarily reduced prices so that all could afford to buy what they needed.
Contrast all this with our tsunami response just over six years ago. Who could forget TV footage of the group of men in Galle who dragged out a young girl struggling to stay above the tsunami water, removed her gold chain and other jewellery and then threw her back in to the water, to die. This one incident sent shockwaves throughout the civilised world and it was only because of the media focus that the perpetrators were later caught.
Politicians now occupying the highest seats in government did much the same thing albeit in a much more sophisticated way where urgently sent tsunami relief money was diverted to private bank accounts. Once again like in the previous instance the money was returned only due to the media spotlight.
This then is the manifestation of the 2500 years of rich history that we boast of. As ironic as it may sound, a nation’s success can be measured by how it responds to a national disaster. We have had our fair share of disasters, both natural and man-made, and the response on each occasion, at least when it comes to the state, has been, more often than not, a bigger disaster. We have had plenty of opportunities to rise together like the Japanese did post world war, post economic crisis experienced a few years ago and now the earthquake and tsunami. On each occasion the Japanese grabbed the opportunity to rebuild better than before not only their buildings and infrastructure but more importantly, discipline, patriotism (the real variety and not what politicians define), and their way of life.
We have had our chances and squandered them at the alter of political opportunism, because we as a nation are yet to realise, to a man, that politicians are put where they are, to build the country and not the other way around. The Japanese who made this distinction long years ago have got an opportunity to repeat recent history and it won’t be long before we see them rise phoenix-like. No two words about that. In the mean time we can go back to our national past time of digging up our rotten recent history and then complain that history is repeating.