In less than 12 months, our island nation had to confront two devastating phenomena – both of which came through cross-border transmission, invisible to the eye in any material form, yet causing devastation in incredible dimensions.

Whether the source of the problems came in the form of ideology, capacity, or a medical virus, their impact had been severe. The origins of both the Easter Sunday bombings and the coronavirus pandemic have been outside our borders; yet their impact on our political and social fabric has been hard to manage and contain.

The roots of both problems, the ISIS ideology and the coronavirus, are consequences of globalisation. Sri Lanka’s integration to the global world as a necessary concomitant of globalisation was a process that commenced and evolved rapidly since the 1980s. This has generated many benefits by enabling access to several global markets such as finance, trade, labour, knowledge, or other spheres. With the rapid modernisation that we as a nation have experienced, endured, and advanced in the last few decades, accessing such global spaces has become a necessity.

Whilst acknowledging such privileges, we have to also be mindful of the negative consequences of such integration and/or over reliance which has not been so immediate, pronounced, or visible. The less spoken of is the increasing levels of dependency either in the form of revenue, lifestyles, or ideology. In recent times, these have become more deeply felt and more visible within our borders and their impact has been harder to conceal and contain.

Since the Easter Sunday attack and the Covid-19 outbreak, there is much discussion on looking inwards, on greater control of frontiers, of revitalisation of domestic production, self-sufficiency in production and consumption, etc. A series of new initiatives has been taken to counter terrorism, control imports, boost export-oriented industries, zealously safeguard the limited foreign reserve bases, etc. The Government recently gazetted as non-essential items, a wide range of consumable items and others in a bid to control imports and has taken new measures to incentivise domestic production. There is also much hype about a return to a “Sirima” era and a life of simplicity rooted on what is essentially local.

Whilst conceding that these initiatives are indeed laudable and refreshing, imagining beyond such simplistic solutions is required in responding to our contemporary challenges. A deeper and more pragmatic assessment of what is plausible in terms of such localisation, given our contemporary challenges, must be undertaken both in relation to our very existence and progress.

Is total self-reliance an easy task to be pursued? If one takes trade and manufacturing as an example, we are, as a nation, dependent on the global markets for the supply of some essential raw materials for production. We are also dependent on the world for accessing credit/financial markets and assistance. It is no secret that recovery from the Covid-19 catastrophe has pushed us to borrow more, be it through soft loan facilities or otherwise. Sri Lanka has recently borrowed from China, the World Bank, and further applied for an extended facility from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with post-pandemic recovery. Foreign remittances constitute a significant component of our foreign exchange earnings, and dependency on foreign labour markets, whether in the skilled sector or unskilled sector, has come to stay.

To me, the arena where our reliance on the globe is most pronounced is in the field of technology and knowledge transfer. With a weakly invested research and development sector, local innovation is still at an early stage. We need to constantly look to the world to borrow new research, technology, and even higher education at postgraduate levels.

Hence, a simple and blanket denial offers no solution to the problem. Our strategy of engagement and integration into the world should be one that is carefully crafted based on an understanding of the ground realities and the envisioning of potential threats so that preventive measures against such future catastrophes are put in place. For example, hypothetically, the next global threat could be in cyber space or in the labour markets which may require preventive measures such as cyber intelligence measures and better regulated labour migration processes put in place. Certainly, a greater deal of envisioning is required.

(The Morning)