Poverty, Health And Education
Colombo, ‘slums’ and all, view from Sri Lanka Insurance
Sri Lanka is finally beginning to experience normal issues. The Daily Mirror is stuck on breaking news, but if you put it all together there are bigger issue at play. These little headlines all come from bigger issues – the beggars involve poverty, dengue involves health, and the strikes involve education. These are broader issues that have been buried under years of bombs but now they’re starting to make page one. The media is covering most of these wrong, breaking news rather than putting it together, but you can’t blame them. For a Sri Lanka used to life and death headlines, it’s unusual to have ordinary concerns.
Unusual, but truly a blessing. I enjoy talking about the news now because you don’t get the same heavy, sin feeling. Whenever people complain I honestly grin because it’s nice to argue about something that doesn’t involve dead bodies. Mervyn Silva tying a government official to a tree? Great, honestly, I remember when people that crossed him were getting stabbed in the bus.
Poverty
There are a few stories which have broken about poverty, namely that there are 65,000 homeless in Colombo and then the spate of beggar killings. The police solved the latter by deporting many beggars to Hambantota, but the issue is at least bubbling. This poverty (and corruption, in the case of what’s actually a beggar mafia) has been there for years but we haven’t seen it because of the poverty of Prabhakaran’s political imagination.
Health
The rash of recent dengue deaths (quite scary really, affects everyone) is a broader issue of health and environment. We simply don’t keep our country clean and this breeds mosquitoes, sickness and death. We don’t dispose of garbage properly, we don’t keep our own neighborhoods clean and thousands of slum dwellers live on top of drains and near filthy canals. Dengue has killed more people that the LTTE this year and it deserves this much attention.
Education
Students and teachers are on strike, the former against police brutality but also for more money and against privatization. The latter are on strike for more money, which means the non-academic staff will probably strike. Neither side is particularly right, but they are generally right in that the system is criminally broken. We waste, more than money, our young people’s time and it’s tragic that University grads have a higher unemployment rate than A/Level grads. The system is broken and people should be protesting. Now that we can be sure of kids getting to school safe, we should ensure that they learn something there.
Among other things. I follow the news semi-professionally, and all the little breaking bits have only now come together into a bit of whole. It’s not life and death and it’s not us vs. the government or the government vs. terrorists, it’s something more complicated, drawn out, and more difficult to resolve or understand. Which is truly a blessing. It sells less newspapers, but I’m thankfully that things are no longer black, white and red.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
This is highly dubious. Miss Travel is a travel/social networking site that connects ‘Generous’ and ‘Attractive’ travelers. To, like, travel together, I guess. It all seems a bit like arranged prostitution and trafficking. This is part of a broader online trend to connect rich men to younger, attractive women. Sites like 
Sri Lankan domestics never say anything, they just stop coming. My maid just stopped coming and when I finally pressed her she said I needed to get a washing machine. I was hoping to ride this one out, but I’ve run out of underwear and I have no choice. I finally caved and bought a washing machine, from 
Somehow the tying to the tree incident seems worse than the stabbing in the bus. People just stood around watching the former. Disgraceful! No wonder these stunts go on and on.
It’s called the “bystander effect”
Is that something like temporary acute epilepsy in reverse? :)
Not really… but it is something that has been studied…
“The bystander effect or Genovese syndrome is a social psychological phenomenon that refers to cases where individuals do not offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help has in the past been thought to be inversely proportional to the number of bystanders
The bystander effect was first demonstrated in the laboratory by John Darley and Bibb Latane in 1968. These researchers launched a series of experiments that resulted in one of the strongest and most replicable effects in social psychology. In a typical experiment, the participant is either alone or among a group of other participants or confederates. An emergency situation is then staged — examples include smoke pouring from a vent in the room, a person falling and becoming injured, a student having an epileptic seizure, etc. The researchers then measure how long it takes the participants to act, and whether or not they intervene at all. These experiments virtually always find that the presence of others inhibits helping, often by a large margin”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
Ruki, thanks. With this goon still on the loose, the bystander effect needs to get some publicity so that people remember to act next time. I would’ve thought the press were immune to this bully by now though. The cops are a complete write-off of course.
My problem is why the Samurdi guys are only asking for a public apology. I guess it is too much to expect the authorities to ensure he is arrested and charged with the criminal offence? May be they really are convinced that the victim trotted up meekly with rope at the ready and offered himself up to be humiliated.
I like this article….specially the starting bit….”Sri Lanka is finally beginning to experience normal issues”.
Yes, with emergency law in effect, with thousands of IDP’s in camps and thousands of Tamils unable to return to their habitats that are being occupied by military, with random abductions and people being held (and tortured) without being taken to court….and worst of all these things don’t hit the headlines…..yes Sri Lanka is heading for norm!
yawn