Part 2 of ‘How to groom intellectuals for the

future’ Chapa factor and USJ’s move to groom

its stude

Weliwitiye Sri Soratha Thero

Monday, 5 February 2018

In the previous part of this series (available at: http://www.ft.lk/w-a-

wijewardena-columns/How-to-groom-intellectuals-for-the-future--Two-
contrasting-views-from-Thailand-and-Sri-Lanka--Part-1/885-648278), we
presented the wisdom of the President of Thailand based Asian Institute of
Technology or AIT, Professor Worsak Kanok-Nukulchai, how the intellectuals in
Thailand should be groomed for an unknown future marked by an exponential
growth in technology. Worsak made his thoughts known in a lecture delivered
to the fellow members of the Royal Society of Thailand or RST, the think-tank
that advises Thai Government on policy matters.

The world view presented by Worsak was that the students in the present
generation are savvy in digital technology and therefore could be branded as
‘digital natives’. They have started questioning the modus operandi of delivering
knowledge in traditional classrooms in which they have to listen to a teacher,
take down notes, memorise them and show their understanding of the subjects
concerned at tests administered to them at the end.

The current advancements in technology have unified people and what we

observe today is the emergence of global citizens, an evolution from the present
state of being digital natives. Since knowledge is out there for anyone with
technology to access freely, the monopoly power held by traditional teachers is
fast eroding. Hence, educators today have to use new techniques of teaching,
like the flipped classroom in which learning is a joint exercise by teachers who
are just facilitators and students, the recipients of knowledge. What he has
implied was that universities will have to give a wider world outlook to their
students to prepare them for the unknown future. He has warned that any
university that does not recognise this change will become extinct in the future.

USJ’s guest lecture series to give practical knowledge to students

The Faculty of Management Studies and Commerce of the University of Sri
Jayewardenepura, known as USJ, in an attempt to expand the world outlook of
its students had arranged two guest lectures by journalist and human resource
consultant Chapa Bandara, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon,
to its first year students following macroeconomics. The morning lecture could
be accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9cDEbt3WY&t=2047s,
and the afternoon lecture at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS9CSft8qxI&t=274s.

When introducing the guest lecturer, the Head of Business Economics

pronounced that the objective of the lecture series was to help students to gain
practical knowledge on current economic issues. It is learned that they had been
addressed by economists from the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance
previously under the same series. Calling Chapa who was not a mainstream
economist or an economic practitioner would have been to give a different taste
to these students. Hence, he was expected to review the present state of the
economy and future economic strategies from a different angle.

Chapa: An unconventional intellect

Chapa’s fame as a popular public speaker would have travelled to USJ before
him, for the auditorium at the Soratha Building had been full to its capacity with
teeming students. This is certainly an exception since the rule at the university
has been for students to shun lectures, especially the additional lectures that do
not help them to pass examinations. Chapa had brought his technical team from
Channel 4 to record the proceedings; unlike the previous lectures in the series,
the videos are now available on YouTube for anyone to learn of his wisdom.

Both lectures were long, running into more than one hour. When the camera
was directed to students from time to time, their faces showed that they were
attentive and fully connected to the speaker at the podium for the whole
duration. This is contrary to what Salman Khan of Khan Academy fame has
observed in his 2012 book ‘The One World School House’. He says that if a
lecture runs longer than 15 minutes, the lecturer loses the attention of the
audience.

There were two other distinguishing features of Chapa’s presentation. One was
that though he was introduced in English, he chose to speak in Sinhala,
presumably to convey his message more cogently to students who were not that
competent in the language. The other was that he did not use a PowerPoint
presentation to elaborate on what he said. This is in line with the thinking of the
man behind the Apple products, Steve Jobs, who, according to his biographer
Isaac Waterston, had believed that those who hid behind PowerPoint
presentations did not know their subject or could not explain themselves. Chapa
did not fall into these disabilities.

Wisdom of the founder of the university

The lecture had been held at Soratha

Building, named after the founding Vice Chancellor of the predecessor to USJ,
the Vidyodaya University, Rev. Weliwitiye Sri Soratha Thero. A visual of the
statue of Rev Soratha Thero erected in front of the Faculty building had been
captured by the Channel 4 team. It is not known whether the Faculty had
advised the students listening to Chapa that they should take what he said in
the frame of an intellectual as defined by that erudite educator. Soratha Thero
had advised that university students who would one day become intellectuals
should challenge what is told to them, probe into evidence in support or against
and take a critical stand of their own. This is the foundation of scientific learning
and it requires students not to take everything they are told at their face value.

Chapa’s political economy

Chapa has started his presentation by asking two questions: what is an economy
and what is development. He answered them for the students by identifying the
link between the two and the global politics that rules them. This is looking at
economics from the old political economy perspective that had helped the
subject matter of economics to evolve into what it is today.

Even at the time of Kautilya, the 4th century BCE Indian Guru of economics of
the Arthashastra fame, economics, politics, warfare, laws, diplomacy, trade,
social issues and public administration had been combined in a single discipline
called Arthashastra or economics. What Chapa had tried to drive into students
has been that the global economy is ruled by USA, an evil empire in today’s
context. What USA has done since the World War II in its relations with the rest
of the world and its pronounced schemes for the future support of Chapa’s
position. However, his implication that USA has always been the winner and the
rest of the world the loser is not accurate.

‘We’ and ‘They’ distinction

Chapa’s classification of the world into ‘We’ and ‘They’ is not a new
phenomenon. As Yuval Noah Harari has documented in his 2014 book ‘Sapiens:
A Brief History of Humankind’, even the hunter gatherers some 10 to 60
thousand years ago had looked at those who do not belong to their hunting clan
as enemies. They are not ‘We’ and, therefore, they should be destroyed was
their sacred belief.

This classification has been practised religiously by Homo sapiens even as

agriculturists since 10000 years ago, as industrialists since some 200 years ago
and as digital natives today, a term coined by Worsak to describe the tech savvy
youngsters of the day. One has to look at the postings made on social media by
various individuals to find evidence for this ‘We’ and ‘They’ classification. Such
classification is anti-human and tribal in nature; it is unfortunate that even the
followers of the Buddha who had viewed humans as humans are not free from
such tribalistic view points.

Is USA an enemy?

Now back to Chapa’s allegation that the relations which USA has had with the
rest of the world has been a one-way pipe benefiting only Americans. Since USA
is ‘They’ and a powerful ‘They’ in a position to dictate terms to others for that
matter, it is not unusual for a critique to form that opinion. The hegemonic
statements made by successive US leadership have also reinforced this view.
This is specifically true with Donald Trump administration which practices ‘We’
and ‘They’ classification to an extreme degree. Apart from these obvious
negative scores earned by USA, its relations with the rest of the world since
World War II have not necessarily imposed costs on others.

USA, the supplier of reserve currency

By the time the World War II ended, the world was without a foreign reserve
currency to do transactions with each other. The currencies of individual
countries were not acceptable since they had not been backed by any valuable
asset like gold. In this background, USA agreed to allow the US dollar as the
reserve currency on the promise that it would exchange dollars for gold at a
fixed price of $35 per fine ounce of gold, known as the Gold Exchange Standard.

This promise gave confidence for other nations to accept and use US dollar as a
reserve currency. Even after the unilateral withdrawal of USA from the Gold
Exchange Standard in August 1971, the world continued to accept US dollar as
the reserve currency because it was still backed by an 18 trillion dollar economy
with gold holdings to cover about 70% of the dollars issued.

Today, the dollar has unified the world including those who are opposed to USA.
For instance, North Korea is dead against USA. But it still loves US dollars. The
availability of dollars has supported the world trade and transactions without
any hindrance and it will continue to do so until a new reserve currency is
discovered by the world.

USA, the largest buyer in the globe

USA has also helped the rest of the world to grow by buying their products
continuously. This it has done by running a deficit in its trade account.
Accordingly, a deficit in US trade account means a trade surplus for the rest of
the world. The countries which had been able to jump this bandwagon,
especially the post-war Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and China in this
region, have been able to grow faster and deliver prosperity to their citizens.
Even Sri Lanka runs a trade surplus with USA. Imagine what will happen to Sri
Lanka’s income, employment, and prosperity if USA does not buy its apparel
products.

USA, the industrial power house

USA is also the world’s industrial, technological and innovative powerhouse

which has helped the rest of the world to enjoy a better living standard. Its
universities come up with thousands of new inventions annually and those
inventions are transformed into viable commercial products by its services
sector. This has also helped the rest of the world to revolutionise their education
systems. South Korea, Singapore and Thailand are some examples.

Win-win situations in global relations

The world relationships are not simply black and white as Chapa has informed
the USJ students. They are two way relationships in which both parties gain.
Chapa’s position has been that it is ‘win’ for USA and ‘lose’ for the rest of the
world. This is how it appears if one looks at only the surface. However, if one
goes deep into them, one would find that it is ‘win-win’ for everyone. Until
another military, economic and political power takes over the world, USA will be
the ‘master of the universe’.
Critiquing globalisation

Chapa is a critique of globalisation, green revolution, and any attempt at pricing

water. With respect to critiquing globalisation, he is not alone. Even the Nobel
Laureate Joseph E Stiglitz, one time Chief Economist of the World Bank, has been
a fierce critic of the current wave of globalisation.

What the critics have forgotten is that globalisation is not a new development.
It has been there at least for 4,000 years as documented by the Oxford Historian
Peter Frankopan in his 2015 book, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World.
The move to connect the world together through trade, religion and empire
building had been there since the Babylonian civilisations. These attempts which
Frankopan has called silk roads have spread trade, commerce, ideas, literature,
religions and technology.

When new ideas come, the casualties are always the old ideas. The clash
between the two results in conflicts, resistance and violence which sometimes
lead to live or die wars. Out of the conflicts, new cultures emerge and those new
cultures are a part and parcel of human evolution. What is being objected today
is the new wave of globalisation which with its technological marvels has turned
old cultures upside down. The old is unable to absorb it but cannot prevent it
from happening either.

To resolve this conflict, Worsak, as presented in the previous article, has advised
the educators to train the students to seamlessly enter the emerging unknown
world. What does Chapa offer in this regard? Nothing, except lamenting over
the past.

Green revolution

Chapa’s critique of the green revolution and attempt at economising the use of
water through pricing is ill-conceived. He has ignored the natural phenomenon
that every good thing is associated with bad things as well. To highlight the bad
things and reject the good things is not the way an economist should look at this
issue. Economists should try to maximise good things and minimise the bad
things and that is the knowledge which the USJ academics should impart to their
students. At the time, the green revolution was initiated, billions of people
throughout the world, especially in India and China, were facing death through
starvation.

As a solution, the traditional agriculture was revolutionised by improving the

seeds, fertilizer application and pest controls. It enabled the world to produce
more per hectare of land cultivated. How India did this has been documented by
Gurcharan Das in his 2002 book, India Unbound, even going to the extent of
stealing the high yielding wheat seeds, Lerna Rojo, from Mexico and USA and
high yielding seed paddy, Taichung Native No 1, from Taiwan. Today, India is a
grain surplus country with food security. China is on its way to self-sufficiency.

Pricing of water

Chapa is against the pricing of water and misled the students that American
Premier Brand is an American company. Perhaps, he would have been misled by
the word ‘American’ in the Brand name. Similarly, he had castigated the
International Water Management Institute or IWMA located in Sri Lanka for
engaging in a conspiracy to sell water. IWMA is the research arm of the
international group called Consultative Group for International Agricultural
Research. Its mission is to develop agriculture, alleviate poverty and produce
more foods through technological advancements.

Chapa as well as USJ students would have benefitted had they consulted the USJ
Professor Kennedy Gunawardana and a team of researchers who have just
completed a study of water accounting for using water efficiently.

If proper knowledge is to be delivered to students, they should be taught that Sri

Lanka throughout its ancient history had priced and taxed water. The details of
such taxation have been documented by Sirimal Ranawella in his Economic
History of Ancient Sri Lanka (in Sinhala). According to Ranawella, people in
ancient Sri Lanka had to pay taxes on water used for agriculture as well as for
personal consumption (p 135). Anything that is scarce has an economic price is
the practical knowledge which students of economics should gain. If attempting
to price water is sinful, then, all Sri Lankan kings who are revered as heroes
today are guilty of that sin. Then, the British who abolished the water taxation
in favour of income and other commodity taxes were Sri Lankans’ saviour.

Chapa appears to be echoing the ‘third wordlist ideology’ which is no more

vogue. USJ should be credited for inviting such an ideologist to offer a diverse
view to its students. However, it will fail in its endeavour to groom intellectuals
if it does not get students to challenge, probe and criticise them as advised by its
founder, Soratha Thero, some 60 years ago.

(W.A. Wijewardena, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka,
can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com.)
Posted by Thavam