The common theme adopted this year in all countries, by all would be “Act Together for Another World”. In Sri Lanka it is suggested that mobilized people use the added theme “ A Better Sri Lanka is Possible”.
In this country, as several people around the world, the people who have the right and the capacity to visualize processes that ensure survival are those whose survival is threatened.
According the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reforms (Monlar) Millions of small and poor farmers are being pushed to sell their land and move out of agriculture and migrate into urban areas, as destitute, as envisaged by the land ownership policies pushed by the IFIs. Over 500,000 small scale beach based fisher people were to be pushed out using Tsunami and the process of expansion of tourism as proposed in the post tsunami rebuilding approaches. Expansion of large scale industrial fishing is another step in this direction.
About 800,000 plantation workers are compelled to continue as semi slave labour for impossibly low wages. Almost half the population of the country is being pushed rapidly and violently into hunger and destitution due to the rapid increase in the prices of essential food and other needs. Women though out the country are pushed to become cheap, insecure and subservient labour. Workers in Industries and in services both in the private and public sector have been deprived of fair living wages and security of employment The low income earning millions of people have lost access to health, education and may lose access even to water, if the present processes of privatization continues, as planned.
Here again the existing powers, of whatever political party, have failed and lost their credibility and legitimacy. Therefore the task today is to take planning into the hands of the victimized people. They have to recognize the right to plan themselves.
Their survival depends on restoration, recovery and regeneration and the right to retain the wealth of their production in their own hands and not through submission to intensified, competitive exploitation and accumulation for “growth and power of a few”.
People’s movements among these sectors of society have long been involved in this struggle and have created many innovative plans in regenerative agriculture, fisheries with sustainable and regenerative approaches, restoration of nature’s resources, protection of labour rights, right to livelihoods. Dignity of the plantation people and their potential to contribute to a process of regeneration should be recognized, if they are given the right to plan and decide about their land and ecology, in areas where they have lived for nearly two centuries . These efforts have to be brought together to develop comprehensive plans with a new vision.
The struggle for the right to plan and decide is also a struggle for “devolution of power”. This struggle to plan and decide is a right of all communities in all geographical areas and of people of all ethnicities, cultures. The war that is being carried out for so long with such human cost should be rejected by all people since it is nothing other than an effort to prevent such devolution of power to people in general. This is the struggle for democracy and good governance that we need. Struggle for the right to expression, media freedom, and democracy are essential components of this struggle for the right to survive. A Better Sri Lanka is possible.
Movement for Land and Agricultural Reforms (MONLAR) Sri Lanka