Averages and Outrages..
-- Nanthikesan
Hardly anyone would disagree that progress/development must
be viewed as having many dimensions - to name a few - health, literacy,
democratic participation, women’s empowerment, etc. Sri Lanka has been presented as a model system of redistribution
by most ‘good’ guys, (read: those on ‘our’ side). They point, quite correctly I may add, to the significant role
that state interventions played in improving public welfare. For instance, Sri Lanka has less than one
half the per capita income of Brazil – yet, a Sri Lankan child is likely to
live longer than her Brazilian counter part—on average. While an Indian female child is half as
likely to be educated as her male counterpart, a female child in Sri Lanka is
almost as likely to be educated as a male child – on average. Raising these averages are definitely
praiseworthy achievements, and it is worth reiterating that these gains need to
be sustained and extended; Given the record of other countries across the
globe, concern for the weak and the disadvantaged must be at the heart of any
progress.
Yet the question remains: Can averages tell us if we are
doing well or heading on the right track? More importantly, what is the right
track? If we are such hotshots in
sharing the benefits of progress more equitably, what explains the fact that in
the late ‘80s and ‘90s we had the highest rate of disappearances on the planet
(over a hundred disappearances per day - See Bopage’s article in this
issue)? What explains over a decade of
debilitating civil war?
I would like to take on three of the many plausible
explanations, each offering valuable lessons for the development plans of the
State, the LTTE and the international financial institutions such as the World
Bank.
Most obviously, when we speak of averages we
tend to ignore the strength of the injustice against those who
are systematically left out.
No doubt, benefits were distributed better than in most
countries, however, domestic inequalities do persist in important
ways and have consequences to the South as well as the North
– The civil war in the North and the East had, developmentally
speaking, pushed these provinces back by many decades. In addition,
the persistent marginalization / underperformance of Uva and
Central provinces relative to other parts of the country have
been a continuing feature of post-independent Sri Lanka.
In the plantation sector, one out of four women die due
to birth related complications which is ten times more than
the national average. According to the socio-economic surveys
of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, national inequality remains
significantly high – indeed it is higher than that of US (which
has the worst record among developed countries!) – and continues
to increase.
Secondly, while improving averages is important, it should
be accompanied by meaningful opportunities to participate in the different
dimensions of development and progress – political, economic and cultural. The upheaval in the South is directly linked
to this. Sri Lanka did manage to attain
progress in terms of providing education and better health status for its
people, it did relatively well in terms of promoting overall gender equality
etc. However, while human capacity was
enhanced, political and economic participation was not. This lack of balance did have its
consequences. For instance, university
graduates suffering long term unemployment and finding no avenues to influence
the policies that lead to stagnation, are not likely thank the State for providing
them with better education than most of their other third world counterparts.
Finally, we have learnt the hard way that averages seldom
matter when it comes to day-to-day perceptions of reality. These perceptions, even when ill founded,
can be as relevant as ‘reality’. Thus averages often fail to capture the sense
of deprivation experienced by different social groups’. That only a thin stratum of upper crust
Tamils were favored by the British legacy had little bearing on the Sinhala
nationalist world view that held that all Tamils benefited from this legacy;
similarly, the Tamil nationalist perception rejects the view that there were
winners and victims among the Muslims (and Tamils) in the East in favor of the
view that all Muslims in the East are
taking away the opportunities of Tamils.
All this is a round about way of saying that there are three
arenas in which how we lump/ /aggregate have vital significance. First, averages about quantifiable facts
cannot capture qualitative perceptions – how can we measure social
antagonism? Second, acknowledging that
we need to balance our priorities in many different dimensions of progress, how
do we settle in on the relative preferences of each of these - income,
education level, and political participation, etc.? Is there a democratic way of setting these goals? Finally, when we try to measure national or
regional outcomes: what does the average income of Sri Lanka mean when we know
little or nothing about the income levels in the North and the East? Whose
voices do this average represent? Whose voices does it silence?
