Aithiya

What was the alternative? Mr Sabry has more or less criticised Ajith Nivard Cabral and former Treasury Secretary S. R. Attygalle for resisting calls to go to the IMF. EconomyNext depicts the latter two as proponents of what it calls Modern Monetary Theory, which it defines as “an extreme form of Keynesian stimulus.” Given how much it’s associated with Mr Cabral’s personality, MMT has become a byword for money printing, which in turn is associated with increasing inflation. The consensus of the neoliberal right, in other words, is that Sri Lankamoney supply was growing unsustainably and now needs to brake a little.

The neoliberal right considers going to the IMF as a foregone contingency that we should neither question nor reject. It’s no small irony that commentators who, barely a year ago, were criticising the government’s economic policies, have backtracked, praising Ministers and officials for toeing their line. It’s also no small irony that economists and pundits who once urged the country to seek IMF support, arguing that it would bring much needed relief to people, are now adding the caveat that it will come at a price: austerity for the masses, ostensibly for the upper classes, but also for the middle-classes.

As Dayan Jayatilleka noted in his Daily FT column last week, these are all highly convenient narratives. But myths need demystifying. The conventional view that IMF reforms will shield the poor and gnaw at the very rich breaks down when you consider that most Sri Lankans can’t be classifiable as very poor or very rich: they belong to an insecure middle-class that has come to define Sri Lanka’s economic situation well. As Dr Jayatillake rightly asks, at what point does the bitter medicine administered to this class by the IMF turn into poison? At what point will this class rebel and refuse to take the medicine?

Sri Lanka’s middle-class is unique, a sui generis category that cannot be defined in relation to middle-classes elsewhere. Its problems need to be dissected and analysed, properly. All one can say, looking at it, is that it is upward-aspiring and dependent on State patronage. This is a curious enough dichotomy, but it has come to define perhaps the most intriguing social group to emerge from post-independence Sri Lanka. What it means, simply put, is that while clamouring for more agency, access, and freedom, the middle-class is also restricted by State patronage, whether in the form of subsidies or public services, specifically services like health, education, public utilities, and local government.

The irony of the middle-class is that the country’s economic situation has not enabled them to resolve this contradiction, which is essentially between their aspirations and their needs. They have always aspired upward and have tried to free themselves of State overreach, but they have also become heavily dependent on State support, particularly through our public services and welfare state. Moreover, we are a country that runs on imports, a country that has yet not transformed into a production economy. Against such a backdrop, the middle-class has had no choice but to entrench themselves in import-dependent industries: even the IT sector, a mainstay for our educated youth, suffers from this anomaly. In other words, lacking a sustainable base, the middle-class operates on rather shaky ground.

In terms of their social composition, the protests that sprang a little over a week ago at Galle Face are unprecedented. While middle-class protests have unfolded and taken place here, even under British rule, middle-class agitation has been something of an oddity in the post-independence period. What agitation that sprang up among them essentially focused on privations imposed by the State, as in the outpouring of anti-government sentiment in the last few years of the 1970-1977 regime. As Dayan Jayatilleka has observed in Long War, Cold Peace, Sri Lankans will not tolerate a regime that imposes such privations. This is a fact that the Sirimavo Bandaranaike administration only belatedly learnt to its cost.

On the other hand, radical agitation, of the sort that the J. R. Jayewardene government encountered in its first few years, did not involve the middle-classes. That sort of agitation was left to the lower classes, particularly workers and peasants, to take up. While the UNP government followed a Thatcherite line in suppressing working class agitation in the early 1980s, its authoritarian tendencies sparked off a peasant uprising in the latter part of the decade, an insurrection helped in no small part by the government’s proscription of the JVP. Middle-class agitation at this juncture, if it figured in at all, was limited to civil society outfits brave enough to take on the Jayewardene administration.

never really suffered in this period, because the policies enacted by the UNP government, such as public sector divestment and privatisation, did not, if at all, affect them adversely. As Steven Kemper suggests in his study of advertising in Sri Lanka, the middle-classes actually benefited from the culture of neoliberal globalisation that the UNP unleashed. Though following an IMF and World Bank line, the Jayewardene and Premadasa governments ensured enough support for these groups. The situation was more or less the same under the Chandrika Kumaratunga administration.

Under the Rajapaksas the dynamics changed, significantly. Hailing from a rather different political order, the Rajapaksas peddled populist welfare measures and dynastic politics, both of which ensured continuity for themselves. They were able to mobilise rural and working class support, but it was by tapping into middle-class support that they were able to propel themselves into power. This was especially true of Gotabaya Rajapaksa: from the southern heartland to Colombo suburbs, the lower and upper middle classes voted en masse for him. Yet the Rajapaksas’ brand of dynastic politics could not cohere with middle-class ambitions. This is the dialectic that governs their opposition to the First Family today.

Unfortunately for them, however, whether they are aware of it or not, Sri Lanka’s political culture is a pale reflection of its economic system. This is a country where corruption has swept into every other sphere and area, a country where what you want to do is all too often determined by who you know. In the absence of an industrial production base, it is likely that the few at the top will continue to forage for everything they can get a hold of, leaving the scraps for everyone below them. That is why, until we address the elephant in the room that is Sri Lanka’s economic system, we can’t hope for proper reforms. Yet this is precisely what IMF discourses of neoliberal restructuring sideline.

I will not get into whether the protests have suffered or progressed because of these developments, except to say that leaderless as they are, they remain invigorated by an educated and professional middle-class. Contrary to what media outlets are saying, this is not a youth-dominated movement. Yet it is very much led by a youth, particularly a middle-class youth that finds its hopes for the future clashing with the political set-up. They have been hemmed in by import restrictions on the one hand and inflation on the other, while the economic model that sustained them for so long has collapsed. They now feel they have nothing to lose by standing up until the Rajapaksas stand down.

It is this, more or less, that has fuelled their agitation today. Incensed by the excesses of the Rajapaksas, they have come out to the streets and called for a new political order. Along the way, not a few of them peddle the IMF line, convinced that the country’s ills can be solved by neoliberal restructuring. What is ironic, if not tragic, if not farcical, is that such solutions may give them breathing space in the short run, but will almost certainly administer a bitter medicine in the long term. Whether this medicine will turn into poison is anyone’s guess: it all depends on what Mr Sabry’s delegation negotiates. For the sake of the country, one can only hope that they will negotiate a better deal, not a bitter one.