Clean Sri Lanka and digital economy initiatives: New pragmatic face of NPP?

The two initiatives mark a milestone in the NPP path to consolidating its goals

In his New Year message, President Anura Dissanayake outlined three development goals – namely, eradicating rural poverty, implementing the Clean Sri Lanka project, and building a digital economy. 

As I see it, Clean Sri Lanka and the Digital Economy are not goals, but strategies aimed at the social and economic revival of the country. What is particularly noteworthy is that they are practical strategies devoid of ideology. In the context of some ministers still thinking that the road to economic revival is through State enterprises, claiming for example, that the State distillery can produce quality alcohol at cheaper prices than private competitors, the two initiatives mark a milestone in the NPP path to consolidating its goals.

The MPH or Meritocracy-Pragmatism-Honesty trio of attributes are thought to be the three pillars on which Singapore achieved its socio-economic revival. More importantly, the Communist Party of China liberated its people from poverty and made China a world power through pragmatism as embodied in Deng Xiaoping’s famous quote “It doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” 

We too will be winners if the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the driving force of the National People’s Power, too adopts pragmatism in place of outdated ideology.

Let us further explore the two pragmatic strategies proposed by the President. 

Clean Sri Lanka – for a social reawakening

When the President announced the Clean Sri Lanka program on 1 January 2025, he described its objective as “lifting society to a higher level through a social, environmental and moral revitalisation.” He also appointed a Taskforce for this purpose.

It is not possible to get a more detailed definition of the concept from the Clean Sri Lanka website. They use different words in different places to describe the same thing. If we compile the scattered information, it appears that the target sectors of the Clean Sri Lanka initiative are government, society and the environment and cleanliness is the physical cleanliness as well as cleanliness of behaviours and attitudes. 

Further, I find it useful to expand the target population in each sector as Sri Lankan individuals and institutions.

Based on these clarifications – a short definition of Clean Sri Lanka is “cleanliness in the behaviour and attitudes of Sri Lankan individuals and institutions and the cleanliness of their physical environments”.

To fully identify all the components that Clean Sri Lanka entails, the definition of institutions should include all institutions such as households, government institutions and non-government institutions and the environment component should include public places, private places, roads and vehicles, forests, waterways, oceans, the atmosphere and all types of environments that are not individuals or institutions. It will be interesting to think whether the category of individuals should be replaced with all beings human and animal!

Detailed in this manner, the behavioural and attitudinal changes or physical changes in each of the components can add up to hundreds of cleanliness indicators. An important task for the Clean Sri Lanka Taskforce is to select and implement the most relevant components.

Given the scale of the anticipated cleanliness operation, it is only natural that the Clean Sri Lanka activities will be erratic or ad hoc in nature in the first few days or months.

For example, the police operation on the cleanliness of motor vehicles that was launched immediately after the Clean Sri Lanka launch on 1 January is apparently carried out in accordance with the stipulations on modifications to vehicles, sound level of horns and attachment of various devices to vehicles causing inconvenience to the public as embodied in an existing Act for the purpose, but it does not appear that there was any prior notification of the operation to the stakeholders. Future operations related to vehicles, for example, should be carried out within a larger framework of cleanliness requirements in transport, roads and motor vehicles.

I am confident that such a thing will happen in the future because of what Sandhya Salgado, a member of the Clean Sri Lanka Taskforce and good friend, revealed in the Sirasa Pathikada program of 2 January. She said that they are preparing a plan that includes activities that can give immediate results as well as activities that can achieve long-term performance goals.

A Digital Economy – for an economic reawakening

The President has established a Ministry of Digital Economy and has appointed Dr. Hans Wijesuriya, an expert in the field of telecommunications, as its Chief Advisor. The concept or strategy of the digital economy has not yet been detailed. However, the mission statement presented for the ministry reads:

“To create and revitalise technology-based policies, strategies, priorities, programs, plans and guidelines to achieve the national goals of technological advancement, innovation and development through social and industrial transformation.”

I think this mission statement should focus more on economic development because social transformation cannot be directly achieved through a digital economy. Moreover, social transformation is the goal of Clean Sri Lanka.

In my view, it would be more useful to have a simpler mission, such as “to foster technological advancement, innovation, and development of the economy through policies, strategies, priorities, programs, plans, and guidelines based on digital technology.”

Digitalisation is essential for any strategy

It is imperative that not only the Clean Sri Lanka Strategy and the Digital Economy Strategy, but all aspects of economy and society adopt digitalisation.

Complementarity of strategies too essential for efficiency and effectiveness

By maintaining the Clean Sri Lanka and the Digital Economy as complementary strategies, we can avoid wasteful duplications. In fact, it should be the role of the National Planning Department to compare all the Government’s strategies, study if there are overlaps or issues not covered by any strategy and inform relevant parties.

Finally, I hope that this Government will be able to move forward on these two pragmatic strategies not forgetting the primary responsibility of the Government to maintain stability in public finances – that is, the balancing of Government revenue and expenditure. In that regard, no Government should be ashamed to follow a predecessor’s policies if they have proven to be successful. Country’s future is bigger than any ideology.