Media can play a crucial role to encourage cooperative ethic today

Veteran electronic and print journalist Kulasri Kariyawasam specialises in rural development analysis and currently serves as the Editor of the Aruna newspaper. Kulasri is the author of the book on the Sanasa University, Sanasa Development Bank and Sanasa Insurance founder, P. A Kiriwandeniya. The book is titled ‘Janathawa Wenuwen, Janathawa Athurin, Janathawa Samaga; Yuga Mehewara,’ authored in 2016. 

The book looked at the history of the cooperative movement in the world and Sri Lanka. It examined how the cooperative movement arose in the wake of gross poverty caused by industrialisation and in the focus on Sri Lanka traced the leadership skills of P. A. Kiriwandeniya (80) who played a pivotal role in resurrecting the loan-giving cooperative movement from 1978 onwards. 

The following interview is done to start a discourse on village entrepreneurship, wellbeing and indigenous village economic ethic to see how these could be promoted in these current times. The intention is to create a possible media culture that will start searching out the holistic in development policy and encourage the promotion of the philosophy of sustainable wellbeing in lieu of gross over development we see manifested through over indulged materialism that has ruined both man and planet. 

Following are excerpts:

By Surya Vishwa 

Q: What do you think we can do in the current contexts to disseminate among people our intangible cultural heritage of kindness and compassion that is part of our Buddhist heritage?

A: There is a lot that all can do but the question is that we are not doing it.

Q: Why do you think this is so?

A: It is possibly that we have become a different set of people compared to what our grandparents were. They lived a life of contentment. They did not know any grand theories. They knew the theory of simplicity and generosity and they put it into practice. Whether they did their agriculture or ran a shop this generosity and simplicity will be manifest in each and every action. This is how we grew up. Today we are governed by a total different set of values and we the media can change it but we too are part of this vicious cycle. 

Q:Could you speak of the link between the cooperative movement in Sri Lanka and its current relevance?

A: It is I think more relevant today than any other time in our history but then even efforts like Sanasa to have a development bank that was owned by the rural community ran into difficulty because the ownership of it is no longer with the village owing largely to our central banking structure being unused to a mainstream bank being owned by the poor, 

I have always been interested in the evolution of the local and international cooperative movement and the book that I wrote 5 years ago traced some of this journey and the journey of the Sanasa movement. My interest was mainly after I started working for the Sanasa newspaper which was published in the 1980s. Thereafter in 2015 I began writing a book that combined the changes within the cooperative movement and the local socio-political history of Lanka that led to the rise and fall of the loan providing cooperative societies from the 1940s to 1970s. 

The loan providing cooperatives went extinct for a while ironically under the socialist regime of Sirimavo Bandaranaike which was supposedly committed to promoting these for the purpose of food security. Today we have some of the same economic concerns as then and I think as a whole the media has lost contact with rural mechanisms such as the cooperatives. We have forgotten the service to the rural community in the 1940s carried out by the cooperatives. 

Q:What can we do today to enhance rural entrepreneurship, especially heritage entrepreneurship associated with the village?

A: First of all we have to explain to the media that there are such things! I am not talking about the English media but rather even the Sinhala media are separated from the everyday pulse of the village. The cooperative ethic of the 1970s that Dr. Kiriwandeniya rejuvenated was based on the concepts of national heritage as he was in the National Heritage movement.

Q:What is your personal opinion on volunteer movements and the relevance for today?

A: The spirit of voluntarism is part of our intangible cultural heritage from which words such as aththama (community helping hand in agriculture) and kaiyya (assistance in planning and practice of community related work) have arisen, the concepts such as the maranadara samithiya (funeral societies) that assists any family of the village deal with both grief and the economic needs of such a situation, are all hallmarks of a value system that is part of our heritage of empathy and compassion. 

Along the way we have disassociated ourselves with it and in this current situation we all face it is possible a time to begin a media discourse on reviving this reality which we had. The history of the cooperative movement is completely interwoven with the volunteer movements that those such as P. A. Kiriwandeniya and A. T. Ariyaratna were part of. 

Q:What we have today is more of an NGO sector without any vestige of volunteerism isn’t it?

A: Prior to the 1950s, the fad of providing aid to developing countries had not begun. I am not saying it is a bad thing as there are pluses and minuses in this trend as in anything else but impacted Sri Lanka’s volunteerism significantly. And yes, today we have more of a NGO sector where everything is depended on aid and the result is that there is not much interest among people towards self-sufficiency unless there is a fund. 

Q: Do we even know today what the cooperative ethic is?

A: No one seems to be that interested in it. The cooperative was and can even now be the lifeline of the village if it is given a new lease of life. The entire value system that the cooperative movement was based upon has changed quite drastically. The village wants to become the town. Any call to revert to the identity of the village could be seen as encouraging rural poverty. Gross materialism has invaded all of us and this begins with the education system. This is what Dr. Kiriwandeniya realised so long ago and in his way tried to change it. 

However for changes to be felt within a country there must be consistent joint effort and I think this is where all of us should join in. We need yet another epoch in rural development in Sri Lanka that is not alien to our resources and knowledge. Maybe we could discuss this further as we begin this conversation in the weeks and months to come in the mainstream media.