The incredible resilience of loving our nation

Love is a complex emotion at the best of times. In a season of expressive love, Daily FT in partnership with Emojot, a global pioneer in audience engagement, ran an intriguing poll using interactive emotion sensors and reaching out to its readership of business elites and various viewers of its digital touchpoints. 

The online paper, Facebook page, Twitter, email and Whatsapp were all utilised to share the emotion sensor link. In five days a wide array of responses from Sri Lanka and across the globe was received. Here’s an analysis of the outcome. We must caution you that the responses are from captains of industry and white-collar professionals among others. The outcome does not reflect the view of the man on the street. It is more a pulse of the movers and shakers of commerce - a discerning elite, we hope. They are the heartland of our readership.

Since love is multifaceted and complex and business people don’t like to be bombarded with questions, we decided to keep the poll simple and get a macro view with four straightforward questions. In subsequent surveys we may delve a little deeper to try and get a more nuanced view.

Love quotient 

Love is in the air. Yes. It is, at least for Mother Lanka. Despite the general mutters on the rooftops and corridors of seminars and chambers of trade and commerce, love for our country is still in full bloom.

The question was, ‘My feelings towards my country Sri Lanka are….’, with multiple responses permitted.

62% of respondents love or are proud of Sri Lanka. We do don’t we? Mostly when push comes to shove, we still do care. 21% are sad though. And, that’s not good. 7% feel apathy (frankly we expected more). 10% are nostalgic and by expressing this sentiment, they long for some golden past when times were better or possibly they don’t live here and long for home.

Factoid 

Since 1981, the World Values Survey (http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org) explores people’s national values and beliefs and refers to the average answer “for high income residents” of a country to the question, ‘Are you proud to be [insert nationality]?’ It ranges from 1 (not proud) to 4 (very proud)

Economic Outlook

Next we went for the jugular - ‘How do you feel about Sri Lanka’s economic outlook?’ Five parameters were offered and only a single response was allowed. Here we have a total reversal of mood. 72% pessimistic (14 % scared, 26% worried and 32% concerned) and 28% are optimistic (25% hopeful, 3% feel great) but in essence almost three in every four persons among this business elite are not happy with the state of the economy. 40% are downright scared or worried. The Government and the guardians of the economy need to take note that the engine of growth in the private sector needs confidence building. More importantly the economy needs priority, but then we already know this. The figures resonate a reality we see. We hope policymakers and the body politic see this as well.

Political governance

We then tossed a yorker – ‘Compared to one year ago, the political governance in Sri Lanka makes me feel….’ 

It is no doubt the present Government inherited a tough economy. There was debt to clear, post-war economic resurgence to be propelled, transitional justice to be managed and corruption to be stemmed - a tall order. The question is whether we are moving in the right direction? Do people feel we are inching along? We deliberately did not frame this for the 8 January 2015 regime change, but only with regards to a year ago. So it would not be a question of allegiance. Across the years, since independence, we have no strong role models of political governance. Thus, to shine from bad to good should have been the easier of tasks to fixing the economy.

Sadly, negativity and despair is very high (71 %, with a breakdown of 21% angry, 25% hopeless and 17% insecure) and echoes closely to the 72% of pessimism regarding the economy. If you look at the correlation graphic you will see a strong correlation in positive views of the economy and a positive view of political governance. Similarly the negative view of the economy stacks the negative rating on political governance.

And here lies the rub. Despite the hope with regime change, there is a strong current of negativity to the way governance (transparency, corruption, fair process, leadership with direction– the whole caboodle of words that we assume go with the idea of political governance).

Inclusivity 

Finally, we wondered despite the love, the pessimism and despair, how we felt about being a Sri Lankan in the context of unity and our post-war situation. We definitely avoided looking at measures of ‘patriotism’ as it has connotations of jingoism in some of its measures.

We asked: ‘In terms of unity, the phrase ‘I AM SRI LANKAN’ makes me feel….’ with multiple responses permitted. We are up again, being our happy, positive selves with87% are feeling really good (35% inspired, 29% included and 15% secure), 23% or just under a quarter are coping badly (9% ashamed, 5% excluded and 9% insecure).

Factoid

Some studies have tried to measure national love as a form of patriotism for various reasons, such as the Correlates of War project (http://www.correlatesofwar.org), which found some correlation between war propensity and patriotism. 

The results from different studies are time dependent. For example, patriotism in Germany before World War 1 ranked at or near the top, whereas today it ranks at or near the bottom of patriotism surveys.

A fourth of the people need assurance and solace but the majority at least is far more hopeful. It says something at least for the Government’s attempts at building bridges and reconciliation. But hope and love are still prevailing and a national resilience surfaces. Someday, over the rainbow perhaps, we feel we will make Lanka a better, more inclusive place. At least the majority of us are willing to think so.

Sri Lankans obviously love their country and show a high resilience inloving their country and how the country is run. ‘Love of the nation’ weathers the peaks and troughs of despair. But it seems we are less forgiving on economic outlook and how we rate political governance as a subset of this criteria. The million-dollar question is will the elites hold in favour of inclusivity over economic progress and better governance or is it a Hobson’s choice? 

(The ‘Love Sri Lanka’ poll was conducted by Daily FT in collaboration with Emojot. We are proud to have used this pioneering software-based emotion sensor technology to garner a snapshot of audience perspectives. Emojot is a global pioneer in voice of audience and customer and employee engagement. More information on Emojot can be found at (www.emojot.com). We will run this ‘Love Sri Lanka’ emotion sensor for a few more days. Please express how you feel by going to the link ft.lk/voice if you haven’t tried this emotion sensor as yet)