“Many of us bought into society’s social contract of success. Which states – go to school. Get good grades, get a job, and live happily ever after. But this doesn’t work anymore. At the most basic level, disrupting yourself will demand that you breach this contract of social conditioning and conformity.” – Nicky Verd
There has not been a better time for Sri Lankans to learn, think about and evaluate deeply the ‘Social Contract’ under which they have been living their lives. Judging by the economic and political crises the Sri Lankans are facing today, it is not difficult to see that something has gone wrong somewhere.
Citizens have been living in their own comfort zones for the most part of their lives until one or more outcomes of the crises hit home. A rural farmer in Sri Lanka may not be aware of and therefore not usually worried about things such as: trade laws, taxes the businesses have to pay, devaluation of rupee, excessive printing of local currency or the treasury being drained to the last cent until he finds out that there is no fertiliser or pesticide for his crop.
Small shop
When he finds out that the difficulties, he is facing are due to some policies the Government has implemented then his first thoughts would be to blame the Government. The Person who runs the small shop in the village is only concerned about his business and his family’s welfare and doesn’t think that he should learn about economic and political issues of the country and how his business is affected by other political and economic activities or natural disasters around the world.
As Nicky Verd has said, Sri Lankans too have been living with the social contract accepting that if one goes to school, gets good grades, gets a job that pays well then one can live happily ever after. We have created hundreds of thousands of world-class engineers, medical doctors, accountants, lawyers, scientists, artists, and all types of other professionals most of whom bought into the same social contract of success and therefore were not interested in learning or thinking about those social, political, and economic factors the rural farmers were ignoring too.
Each of these professional groups would talk about any such issues or Government policies, usually through their trade unions, only if those policies have a direct impact on their earnings or career opportunities.
Not many of them would be worried about the policies that may have destroyed the small farmer, or even the agricultural sector of the whole country for that matter, even if the food prices are higher, as long as they can afford to feed their families.
Daily life
Similarly, the rural farmer is not aware and/or even interested in any of the policies affecting the engineers or the accountants since they cannot see the connection between that and their daily life.
People are usually aware or at least are forced to learn about issues regarding education or the healthcare system since the moment any of those systems stops functioning, they will be directly affected.
Every generation has admired the technological and materialistic advancements they have achieved while worrying about the spiritual deterioration of the society compared to the previous generation.
What we are experiencing today in the country is an outcome of living under such a social contract, especially since 1948.
Within such a social contract we have accepted an education system that only caters to this narrow definition of success without even making an attempt to educate children and young adults about the economic, political and social frameworks they are living in and about their civic responsibilities.
As Ward Churchill has said, “It is the collective responsibility of the citizens in a modern state, to ensure by all means necessary, that its Government adheres to the rule of law, not just domestically, but internationally.
Liability
There are no bystanders. No one is entitled to an ‘apolitical’ exemption from such obligation. Where default occurs, either by citizens endorsement of official criminality or by the failure of citizens to effectively oppose it, liability is incurred by all.”
Though the liability is incurred by all, as we have seen, the degree of discomfort people experience usually is inversely proportional to the level of income or the level of their financial and political strength.
When the hopper seller on the street cannot buy the cooking gas then his whole family goes hungry and his children will not be able to go to school or recover from an illness since they cannot afford the necessities, while people with financial and/or political strength could go to restaurants, buy food from outside, cook with electricity or even pay a higher price and/or use the political influence to buy cooking gas and continue their life without much of an interruption.
But this time we see that the impact of fuel shortage, power outages and dollar shortages are felt by most of the people irrespective of their social status and therefore one can see people from all walks of life involved in the protest campaigns.
It is very important for the protesters to have a clear understanding about what they are disagreeing with and about the possible outcomes they are willing to accept as the result of their protest.
Just as electing a governing body, disagreeing with that elected body is also a right of the citizens within a democratic system. Democracy is more than just an electoral system or a set of Government institutions. It is an ideology based upon a well-understood set of values, attitudes, and practices.
Societies
These values, attitudes and practices may take different forms and expressions among different cultures societies around the world. Citizens in a democracy have not only rights, but also the responsibility to participate in the political system that protects their rights and freedoms.
We, in Sri Lanka, have been practising representative democracy as basically dictated to us by our colonial masters, where the representatives elected by the citizens will represent all the citizens in that electorate, within the Parliament.
Unfortunately, either the voters didn’t know how to choose a suitable candidate or most of the representatives the voters have been electing, either did not show their true nature prior to the election. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be where we are today as a country.
As Winston Churchill said, we should not let this crisis go to waste. While we should do everything, we can to come out of the trouble we are in, which includes non-violent protests, we should certainly use this opportunity to examine when and where we went wrong and what we have to do to avoid falling into similar pits in the future.
There is also no better time than this to remind all the politicians in the country that it was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who once said: “Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”
The writer has served in the higher education sector as an academic over twenty years in the USA and fifteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected]