The Vision Splendid of D S Senanayake
On 05 October, 2022, The Island carried an article by Dr C. S. Weeraratna with the title “Deteriorating rural economy, and food Security”. On reading this, I was motivated to send a chapter from the biography of D. S. Senanayake by H. A. J. Hulugalle titled ‘The Vision Splendid.’ The book has much more information on Senanayake’s plan for Sri Lanka’s Agricultural development. It deals with Senanayake’s passion for the subject, as well as his in-depth knowledge, acquired over half a century. Even today, one could be inspired by how he approached Food and Agriculture.
D.S.Senanayake’s
birthday falls on the 20th of October
– A.H.
In the book D. S. Senanayake published in 1935, he said: “It is a remarkable fact that we in Ceylon, while repeating in season and out, that ours is an agricultural country and that her prosperity is inextricably bound up with her agricultural progress, should yet be apparently content to pay a bill in a year of depression (1933) of nearly 87 million rupees for the imports of our food and drink”. Twenty years after his death, the cost of imports of ‘food exceed the figure of a thousand million.
Senanayake felt that the decline of food production in Ceylon in modern times was due to the fact that this form of agriculture was despised by the educated and well-to-do. The main burden of food production was borne by the land-starved and debt-ridden peasantry. “It is almost as if”, he wrote, “that some sense of inferiority that is sometimes seen to overwhelm a Ceylonese in the presence of his European brother has also attached itself to the native products. Rice and other grains, eggs, onions, chillies and ginger are humble, though useful, commodities. Fruit has a status only a trifle higher than these. To be engaged in their production is something to be ashamed of”.
The commercial and plantation crops were not only more respectable: they were more profitable in good times, and commanded credit from bankers and brokers. Senanayake had no illusions about the inevitable result of neglecting food production. He said that “the great attraction of the commercial crops, the dignity that seemed to attach to them, the comparative ease with large returns for outlay came in, blinded the wealthier Ceylonese to the dangers lying hidden beneath their glamour and drew them away from the essentially safer and sounder, though less splendid, cultivation of products to provide a direct means of sustenance to the home population. The middle classes emulated their wealthier brethren, and the peasant, left to his own devices, was content to scratch the soil and receive just whatever Nature provided”.
Today, the gravest problem in Ceylon as in some other developing countries is the rapid increase of population outstripping economic development. The Nobel Prize winner and Oxford Professor of Economics, Sir John Hicks, after making a study of the Ceylon problem, said that “with birth and death rates as they are at present, the population will go on increasing rapidly, and there is no possible development which could enable an unlimited population to support itself on the Island”.
Senanayake published his book before malaria was controlled during the second world war, causing a ‘population explosion’. But he foresaw the problem to which Sir John Hicks and other writers on the subject have drawn attention. He wrote: “By all laws relating to the growth of population formulated by competent statisticians, the rate of increase of the population of this Island will continue to be maintained. It is obvious, then, that the problem of how to sustain these increasing numbers cannot much longer be ignored: it has perforce to be fairly and squarely faced, and a solution urgently sought”.
For him, the development of agriculture was the highest form of patriotism in the conditions in which Ceylon found herself. He quoted with approval the following passage from the Businessmen’s Commission in the United States:
“Agriculture is not merely a way of making money by raising crops; it is not merely an industry or a business; it is essentially a public function or service performed by private individuals for the care and use of the land in the national interest: and the farmers in the course of securing a living and a private profit are the custodians of the basis of the national life. Agriculture is therefore affected with a clear and unquestionable public interest, and its status is a matter of national concern calling for deliberate and far-sighted policies, not only to conserve the national and human resources involved in it but to provide the national security, promote a well-rounded prosperity and secure social and political stability”.
The Land Bill, which Senanayake introduced in the State Council in 1933 was the direct result of a Report made by the Executive Committee of Agriculture of which he was the Chairman.
The Report said: “When one considers the economic condition of the Ceylonese people, no amount of optimism can conceal the gradual downward trend which has set in, or the signs of grave alarm for the future. The avenues of lucrative employment are rapidly getting filled up, and unless fresh avenues are explored we will soon be placed in a grave situation.
“The university and colleges and schools are turning out large numbers of young men with high educational qualifications, but one must be blind not to see that a large proportion of these young men can never hope to obtain lucrative employment of the kind which they expect. The future generation of middle class Ceylonese cannot all hope to find employment in the professions and clerical services. There is only one direction to which they can turn for their economic salvation: and that is the land. From ancient times the fruits of the soil have been almost the only source of the wealth of this country, and this will be true for many years to come. One remedy for the ills, which a continuance of the present state of affairs is bound to intensify, is to provide middleclass Ceylonese with land and the facilities for developing land, and thus foster the establishment of a class of rural gentry which did exist at one time but is now fast disappearing”.
In these days of socialist planning, it may be a heresy to talk of a landed gentry but the object of the land reforms now being implemented is not very different from those of the Executive Committee. Its Report was endorsed by the State Council, ratified by the Governor and approved by the Secretary of State. But we are as far as ever from the goal of a well-educated and resident farming class. Senanayake’s book was a blue-print for agricultural development. Had it been acted upon vigorously after his death, the Island’s economy would undoubtedly be in a better shape than it is today.
He did not expect the private agricultural sector to solve the country’s food problem without a massive contribution by the State. In the following passage from Agriculture and Patriotism he indicated how the State could help:
“As our present Governor, Sir Edward Stubbs, remarked on one occasion, it is not enough to recognise the fact that Ceylon is not self-sufficient, we must act upon it. The new land policy which Sir Hugh Clifford may be said to have inaugurated has settled the question as regards the proper functions of Government when dealing with what is known in Ceylon as ‘Crown Land’. It will always be one of the most primary and imperative duties to guard the land – this great asset of the people, of the taxpayers – from encroachment by individuals or groups of individuals; and further, to the, best of its ability, to see that it is alienated in the manner most nicely calculated to promote the prosperity of the Island and the highest interests of its inhabitants”.
An idea of the ground covered by Senanayake’s book can be gained by a glance at its chapter headings: Population and Food Supply, The New Land Policy, The New-Tenure and Colonization, The Tradition of Irrigation, Irrigation Policy, The State and Agricultural Credit, Debt Conciliation and Normal Financing, Intensive Cultivation, Dietetics and Husbandry, The Faith of Co-operation, The Practice of Co-operation, Marketing, Agricultural Labour.
The Co-operative Movement was very close to Senanayake’s heart. It was introduced to Ceylon by the Colonial Government but it was taken up by him arid expanded. A fuller account of the Co-operative movement in Ceylon will be found in a later chapter.
Senanayake recognized the need for giving financial assistance to the new colonists under irrigation schemes. He stressed the importance of intensive cultivation, especially in areas near towns, and drew attention to the ingenious system of agriculture practiced by the French small ‘maraicher’, with the knowledge and experience which only decades of careful thought, attention and experiment could have engendered. He also encouraged men like Dr. Lucius Nicholls, who was then in the Ceylon medical service, to carry out investigations on the food values of the diets of various classes of the population and suggest how they could be improved. Agricultural education was another subject which claimed his attention. “Few unofficials”, he wrote, “have done so much to advance the cause of agriculture in this country as Father LeGoc O.M.1. Quite apart from the work he is doing in promoting in the students of St. Joseph’s College a liking for agricultural activity, his researches in the field of biology have been of very great use to the officers of the Government Departments. It is perhaps little known, for instance, that a long step was made possible in the cultivation of suitable fodder grasses by the results achieved by the Rev. Father’s experimentation. Could we but have a few more in the Island who would, for the love of agriculture and in recognition of its importance in the scheme of our well- being, be prepared to assist us to build our prosperity on the firm basis of tilling and grazing, we should have reason to account ourselves a most fortunate people”.
It may be mentioned in this connection that Sir Geoffrey Butler’s reference, quoted in an earlier chapter of this book, to the Cambridge men he met in Ceylon, one of whom had worked in the Cavendish Laboratory, was to Father Le Goc who was a con- temporary there of Lord Rutherford.
Sir Arthur Ranasinha has disclosed in his memoirs the genesis of the book Agriculture and Patriotism. “As his agricultural policy became crystallized”, writes Ranasinha, “I suggested to him that it would be desirable to outline his ideas in a series of Press articles. The suggestion came to my mind when I saw in the Press some articles on the development of arid Palestine by men and money of the Zionist Movement. ‘D.S.’ accepted my suggestion with enthusiasm, and we began thinking out, discussing and writing a series of articles to be published in a newspaper. These articles were later collected and published as a booklet entitled “Agriculture and Patriotism”.
A series of articles was written by the present writer in the Ceylon Daily News after a visit of several weeks to Palestine at the beginning of 1935. I lived in the Jewish settlements such as Rehovath, Givat Brenner and Emek. During this trip I was sent to Golda Meir, who was then in charge of a labour office and she invited me to her home in Tel Aviv on the sand dunes. Later she was Prime Minister of Israel which was previously a part of the British Mandate of Palestine. I brought back to Ceylon a book in English called The Fellah’s Farm, by a Mr. Villeani, of the agicultural experts. He had taken an Arab farmer and put him to work on an allotment of land. A neighbouring land under the same conditions was cultivated by methods used in modern farming. The Arab’s Land was worked under the supervision of the Superintendent and all his work was indexed in detail. Villeani had gathered interesting material enabling him to compare both methods of agiculture. I gave this book to Senanayake who was attracted by this kind of research and I have been told by Sir Arthur Ranasinha, who helped Senanayake with the book entitled Agriculture and Patriotism, that the idea of writing it came from The Fellah’s Farm.
