5 big ideas to transform the north

Tuesday, 8 September 2015 00:01 -     - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The north needs a vision beyond Eelam. For the past five years the northern provincial regime hasn’t done any meaningful change except for cold-fighting a lost cause. They’ve failed to give the Sri Lankans of the north a radically new vision for a better future. You can’t blame them because those good old uncles at their age must be lacking far too many things, let alone visionary thinking, creativity, innovation and strategic planning. So here are my five ambitious ideas for north.

 

 

1. A circular railway system connecting the whole of the north

If you’ve travelled in, around and deep in the north, you can see how people are cut off from each other and central cities. Farmers and fishermen struggle to transport their produce on their broken vans and bicycles on broken roads, while eating dust. Women walk miles and miles holding their babies, getting baked in the sun, while risking their safety. A simple thing like a family watching a filmDFT-12-1 in a theatre in central Jaffna itself is a long, unpleasant journey. 

They may have mobile phones, but without real physical connectivity where people can move and move their things easily, which is important for social development. Roads are expensive to build and to maintain, especially on sandy soil. People still can’t afford private vehicles to drive on them. You don’t need to recreate another private bus mafia there either. Besides, at the rate of depletion of fossil fuels, it’s not wise to build roads. But a well-planned, circular railway with modular or mini carriages running every 10 minutes will be a novel experience for the people. 

It should be planned in such a way that in the future it will be expanded to cover all parts of the north and run on renewable energy. The north can build this because we still have plenty of free land available. Imagine in five years, every person having a train station within just 10 minutes of walk. We can ride our bicycle to the station, park or even just get on-board with it. A good transport system can inspire, mobilise and build new connections between people, more than you think.

 

 

2. A brand new agriculture system

The north has plenty of arable land and a resourceful sea, but used in complete disorder. There should be a new agriculture institute for the north not just to employ lab-coated people sitting around and chatting, but with a dynamic leadership with a five-year plan to increase their harvest by 100-fold, and export the bulk of it. 

We need to have a highly-trained team on the ground, pushing and supporting the farmers to achieve their targets. We should only focus on the crops that are most resistant for northern land and seasons. Farmers should be heavily incentivised for their performance. The more the farmer produces per perch, the higher the discount on fertiliser, seeds, machinery and equipment. 

We should introduce high-priced crops such as nuts, plants to extract essential oils, etc. The local government should buy-back the produce without any strings attached. The north also has the most of the uncontaminated farmlands in Sri Lanka. ‘World’s best organic farming’ should be our USP.

 

3. A high-end private tourist haven

The northern shores are beautiful, shallow and mostly untouched, especially the stretch beyond Point Pedro towards the east is vast and secluded. The only activity you’ll see there is sporadic fishing. There are plenty of areas where there are no roads. 

Given the scarcity of civilisation, it is easy to separate large sections of the beach and inland as private tourist plots. Each of these DFT-12-INplots should be developed like the Maldivian Atolls, with a luxurious bungalow, a deck into the sea, chalets on the water, your own butler and all that jazz for the world’s rich and famous and the Arabs to spend a week or two in complete isolation. It’s so isolated, you can only reach it through seaplanes. 

The old hotels and guesthouse system is just not viable enough to build a thriving tourism sector anywhere. Jaffna crabs are grossly underrated and deserves only to be a rare delicacy on a plate served to a sultan, Madonna or Mark Zuckerberg for a hefty price tag. The northern shores will be among the top three most expensive tourist destinations on Lonely Planet.  

 

 

4. Two large-scale factories 

One for food processing and one for manufacturing. The harvest produced by the super farmers of the north should be processed for value addition. A state-of-the-art factory employing over 5,000 workers will process and package millions of dollars’ worth of food items every month ready to be shipped to all corners of the globe. The Jaffna mango alone will be processed to 12 different products and will be available on the shelves of Walmart and Carrefour. Sorry boys, you will not find rotting mangos under the trees anymore. 

The second factory should be manufacturing electronics. All those bigwig (or bold) Tamil diaspora engineers, stop talking nonsense at your fancy conferences, come and build a Foxconn (but with ethical employment standards of course) right here in your home country. Start by making flash drives, headphones, home theatre systems, then assemble laptops, then assemble a smart phone and then let’s make our own microchip. It should employ at least another 5,000 people. 

University of Jaffna, enough wasting time, please act entrepreneurial, get rid of those brain-dead professors, throw away those old syllabi and re-write modules to meet the demands of the future of North. No large-scale apparel manufacturers will be allowed because we don’t want another set of social and environmental problems with it. We need to create intellectual labour.  

 

 

5. A complete ban on selling liquor

Jaffna youth with their new found freedom and with the money still coming from their aunties and uncles in Canada and Australia are getting too drunk. There are far too many wine stores in the north selling legal and illegal substances freely to the youth. A wasted youth is no good for the country. They vandalise public property, abuse women and are a nuisance to the highly-cultured northern society. 

The local government should completely ban the roadside wine stores. If you care about the future of your people, then please use your powers for something meaningful for once, and strictly control selling of liquor and cigarettes. Don’t create a generation of impotent heart patients who will die of lung cancer in vain. The youth of the north is a critical resources. Take care of their body, mind and soul.

There are more ideas on my list, but these are my top five. Please send in your own big ideas to [email protected]

(The writer is Co-founder of Social Enterprise Lanka.)

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