Megalomaniacal Megalopolises

ON THE FAST TRACK: A new 80+km rail track from Kurunegala to Habarana via Dambulla under the five-year ‘Let’s Awaken Polonnaruwa’ District Development Programme (2016-2020) – note the terminus a quo and terminus post quem – had been identified as “an essential and prominent task” by the present government. While the project expects to provide convenient transportation for people in the Eastern and North Central Provinces, it is China’s role in ‘contributing funds’ (courtesy a state press release of two years ago) to the project that has derailed at least some goodwill and raised more than some concerns in certain quarters. It remains to be seen if the project’s implementation will be interpreted as popular, populist or perhaps inevitable under another sovereign state’s strategy to bring our region under One Belt, One Road. (Image shows a Class M8 Indian locomotive from Diesel Locomotive Works, Varanasi, on the Coastal Line near Wellawatte. 

Pic courtesy: Wijith DeChickera.)

I note with interest the incumbent administration’s determination to develop our country’s rural periphery and the many paths it sees to get there. Then, as I read the related newspaper articles more closely, my active interest changes to anxious irritation. Slowly, more questions than I can possibly answer in a single sitting flash across my fevered brow… 

Is an express train to Polonnaruwa the most pressing need of the hour? (Given the currency crisis, state-to-state shadows over our sovereignty, etc.)

Perhaps the powers that be don’t realise that we already have a railway line that takes the train to this cultural capital? (Except it takes you to old king Parakramabahu’s ancient domain after an annoying detour through the plebeian Maho Junction that may be entirely unnecessary to fly-by-night hidden agenda developers; who want to get their vested interests mainlined now! and get there yesterday! to secure their go-getter better tomorrows!)

Wouldn’t we do better to fast-track a tube to Talangama or metro from Maradana to Malabe or an outer city light rail from Panadura through Pelawatte to Peliyagoda, where the real rush and commuter crush is, rather than be dust under China’s wheels for the favour of a faster more costly trip to a Sirisenapura of the post 2020 future that isn’t guaranteed?

Thank the gods this government at least has its head screwed on right. And that it checked its paunchy ego and petty local electorates in at the door when it opted to serve national – and not narrowly parochial or narcissistically personal – agendas. At least that’s what I thought, not so many moons ago, when they and co barged in through the back door trumpeting Good Governance and carrying placards railing against corruption. To underline their party line as card-carrying members of genuine ‘10% off-the-top #democratic #clean corrupt republicanism’ (as usual) for those of us who swallow, not spit. We never learn, dears. 

So what genius it was to translocate all efforts at Growth, Development and Progress to the North Central Province – from where, quite incidentally of course, our present Caesar (or Marius/Sulla) leftover from a previous regime we’ve never quite been able to flush out of our system, hails. So soon after the immediate past First Family focused state coffers on the Deep South, it was a stroke – of a genus less asinine than the braying of our donkey democracy – to pick Polonnaruwa as our would-be chief megalopolis of the post 2020 future. 

It makes you warm to the chief megalomaniac who signed the gazette on that one – again, probably without reading the fine print; so as to be able to pass the buck lamely or gamely to our lame or game prime minister if the scheme ever backfired in the future (read: run up to the presidential poll). A premier whose chief vice is his chief virtue and most singular modus operandi too – to be content to look like a lame duck while the asses run rings around the circus that’s been in town since we decided to name things after our First Families.

(‘What mate, Band-er-nike? Banana-dike? Oh, ah, yes, okay – BIA!’) 

Sorry to say that the phenomenon is not a new one in Sri Lanka. Nor is it unusual in banana republics where naming capital cities and sundry public utilities after one’s family is par for the fat-headed course. 

Parakrama Samudraya, that liquid asset of our ancient kings, was rebaptised Senanayake Samudraya at the dawn of the Golden Age. Some silver-tongue orator’s family stooped to conquer foreign languages by renaming our then one-and-only international airport with a moniker containing seven syllables – or eleven, depending on how many brandy and sodas our busloads of tourists had quaffed at the, er, BIA arrivals lounge. 

Not even the Olympian JR was above lofty detachment when he attempted to smuggle in an ancient citadel’s escutcheon – Sri Jayawardanapura – to closely parallel his own surname and stroke the ego of The Great Dene, by making it our administrative capital. I don’t want to get started on Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, Magampura Mahinda Rajapaksa Port and Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium – because if not for the false foresight of a faulty astrologer, we might have ended up with a Rajapaksa banner flying from every pennant from Beliatte to the, er, BIA.

Of course, politicians must be permitted some leeway when it comes to leveraging their family names. After all, the poor dears have such a hard time of it with their austerity measures directed at self in selflessly sparing the suffering population of Sri Lanka from further deprivation because of their self-indulgent depravation. 

That Dr Harsha de Silva fellow – the Dosthara Hondahitha of contemporary idiotic (sorry, I meant to type ‘ironic’ but my finger slipped – shaking from laughter, I mean hunger, as I am) politics – has it all wrong. It is not the high net worth folks who must be asked to forego their foreign junkets or the nouveau riche splurging on the grandest luxury vehicles that must be curtailed; but rather that the Treasury must be asked to step in immediately and feed the pot bellies and potshot riddled egos of our megalomaniac megalopolis builders. Oh wait, all 225 MPs have already voted for a raise and arrears to be paid in full, to boot… guess Hypocrisy can still preach Austerity to us idiots, eh? HA, Harsha!

Where was I? Oh, yes. Got sidetracked a tad there then. That new express railway line to Polonnaruwa will probably never be named Maithripala Sirisena Maha Dumriya Sewaya or any such thing. But it might as well be. Because we all know that there’s a crying need to revive the dying popularity of ‘common candidates’ turning in a ‘common’ enough mandate as a one-time president – and still hoping for a second term… like the Mattala Megalomaniacs before him. 

Still, that’s no skin off my back – a self-confessed trainspotter and railway traveller who’d sooner get to our Cultural Triangle on board a shiny sleek Indian locomotive (OK: Indian Alco, no? so grimy, smoky, loco…) than later. However, I draw the line when it comes at the cost of a ginormous loan – yes, another – from our generous friends in the East… Especially when it comes snapping on the heels of the Hambantota Port imbroglio and our Finance Ministry’s shenanigan ridden avowal not to take hard loans from Exim Bank again. Well, at least in the future. Or until the fuss had died down!

However, when it comes to throwing what seems like good money after bad, Sri Lanka may not have much of a choice vis-à-vis Chinese largesse (read Belt and Road Initiative or Maritime Silk Road or Militarisation of String of Pearls Ports or what have you). Those mandarins at the defence ministries of two subcontinental nations and their apologists in the ministries’ propaganda units might talk through their hats about joint Indo-SL ‘training manouevres’ in the Indian Ocean being ‘tactical’ and ‘strategic’; but leave it to fake news to underline what’s obvious. 

Therefore, maybe the likes of me and other ranters on social media would do well to cut Maithri and Mahinda and all the other alleged auto-naming self-aggrandising Megalopolitical Megalomaniacs (MMs) some slack? It’s only China’s burgeoning regional military ambitions that are driving the locomotive of Lankan development off the rails – right? 

Harsha, though, might consider asking his political bedfellows to tighten their belts before thumping rupee-concerned austerity drives. While it may make good financial sense, the only high net worth individuals who really need to cut back are not MMs but MPs and Ministers and other Mandarins – and not the eastern variety, either!

(Journalist | Editor-at-large of LMD | Writer #SpeakingTruthToPower)