NGOs in Sri Lanka

Mutuvalla And Sinhapura: Sri Lankan Villages On The Edge
By Roshan Kissoon
26 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org
We arrived at the village of Mutavalla in the late morning of the 5th of February, and we were shown to a clay hut. There were many people, mainly women, waiting for us; they thought we were an NGO coming to dole out money or give out rations. They had desperate eyes and wanted to talk about their problems. One of their biggest problems is that they are on the border with Tamil Elam: on the border of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam) controlled north. Fifteen years ago, the villagers received plots under the Mahaveli government scheme. However, the ongoing conflict between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government has seriously damaged their livelihood. There is no fixed income, there is no basic education, and there are few health and transport facilities. There are, however, many soldiers and many checkpoints. Due to the lack of much prospect for the future, many of the local youth join the Home Guard…
The farmers have a big problem – they do not make money by farming. There are many reasons why it is so; the lack of a fixed price for their produce; the lack of a market for their products; and the many difficulties of protecting their crops from natural hazards. Whenever there is any fighting between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government - shelling, bombing etc - the elephants that live in the jungle will flee and make for the villages. They destroy crops, buildings, and the hard work of the villagers.
The Forestry Department used to give the farmers firecrackers to scare the elephants from their villages – this has ceased. The farmers have to bear the cost of the destruction of their farms by themselves. Therefore, the farmers only cultivate land near the village, they cannot cultivate near the jungle. These problems have lead farmers to seek other sources of income, as farming cannot provide enough to feed their families. Many farmers now work in the quarry or move to cities to find employment, leaving the womenfolk to do the farming. The farmers are often forced to borrow money, and many farmers are thus in debt. Furthermore, after the harvest the farmers have problems selling their produce at a fair price. The government used to guarantee a fixed price to farmers, based on the grade of the produce. The farmers now have to sell their produce to ‘middlemen’. These middlemen – who produce nothing - buy the produce at a low price, from the farmers, and sell it at a higher price… When the farmers tried to sell their produce without the middlemen, they found that their produce was mysteriously downgraded – they received less for their produce than with the parasitic middlemen. The middlemen have the political connections in Colombo; some would say the middlemen work for the politicians and big families in Colombo to further impoverish the poor farmers and peasants.
Owing to the poverty, many NGOs and Aid organisations work in this area. They turn up and dole out cash to people. The local people neither respect nor trust the NGOs. Who wants to be a beggar? The patronising NGOs make people dependent on their ‘aid’, and believe they are ‘helping’. The NGOs offer no solution whatsoever to the problems of the poor farmers – it is a political problem and there needs to be a political solution. The NGOs are part of the problem. It is not surprising that people refer to the Non Governmental Organisations or NGOs as FGOs or Foreign Governmental Organisations; that is exactly what they are. The recent visit of British Minister Kim Howells to Sri Lanka to see the work of British NGOs really confirms this.
There are, however, local initiatives to try to deal with some of these problems. The Vilisara Women’s Organisation makes clay flowerpots, bricks, and cultivates mushrooms. They have, through their own efforts, saved up 100,000 Rupees. They would like to expand their small business, and would like to develop more, but they need some technical support. Another man has built, by himself, a rice mill. He used to work in a rice mill; he saw how they worked, he collected old machine parts – he now has a rice mill.
The Sri Lankan government and the Mahavali authority do not do anything to help the villagers. When the villagers take their own initiative, by selling their own produce etc, the politicians hinder them and try to exploit them further. There is no trust whatsoever in any of the political parties. The government and the local authority have forsaken them; they are desperately struggling against nature and crushing poverty.
The problems of villages like this are not only a Sri Lankan problem; many villages all around the world in Asia, in Africa, and in Latin America face similar and related problems. It is also clear that NGOs are an effect of Neo Liberalism, an attempt to stop any political solution from arising. With their money, FGOs/NGOs have bought out many old and young Left wing activists, thus derailing any political opposition to this bankrupt neoliberalism; thus prolonging the problems of the poor farmers by their corrupting acts of ‘charity’. It is also clear that mainstream politics - with its rich and powerful family oligarchies, its neoliberal economics and its neo liberal politicians - is really the enemy of the poor peasants and farmers of the world.