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Integrated rural development in Sri Lanka: the macro level
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During the first phase of the programme a significant macro policy change
was observed. The socialist government, which pursued closed economic
policies, was replaced at a general election bringing to power a regime
which introduced open market policies that promoted foreign investments.
The previous regime nationalised businesses in critical sectors, even without
compensation in some cases, for example, foreign owned plantations,
petroleum, shipping and insurance. There was no dialogue. It was a oneway
street with the government making decisions based on centrally
planned socialist policies. Overall, very little donor support came in, and
what there was came mainly from socialist countries to build publicly owned
industrial plants such as a steelworks (USSR), a textile factory (East Germany),
and a plywood factory (Romania). Apart from a few linkages and
exchange of ideas through Commonwealth connections the dialogue and
the discussion on development were dogmatic rather than open discourse.
The dialogue with the western countries was very limited. A centrally
prepared Ten Year Development Plan gave only limited opportunity for
dialogue. The donors’ only link was with the External Resource Department
of the then powerful Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs
whose primary motive was to balance the external budget in a controlled
economy.
The change of government and thereby policies in 1977 suddenly altered
the character of the development dialogue, with a large number of donor
agencies, both bilateral and multilateral visiting the country, establishing
their offices, and involving themselves with an increasing intensity in funding
development programmes. The revived interest from the international
community was considered by the new regime as a positive sign and they
renewed their efforts to widen the coverage of the exchange of ideas into
the policy area as well. An important lesson is to be learned from this phase
of intensified and sustained interaction. In building a development partnership
between donor and recipient there is a need for sequencing and putting
methods, techniques, guidelines, priorities in place first, and then building
structures and institutions to enable the dialogue.
The programme identification stage
Moving on from macro level to programme level introduces a different but
livelier scenario with direct people to people contact which is what dialogue
is all about. The openness and willingness to speak out at this level
have to be accompanied by knowledge and the ability to do so. There were
definite pitfalls in language and technical matters related to the area of support
as well as details of the project contents. Starting from scratch the
IRDP was built into one of the lead programme of the country in about
five years, involving ten donors (World Bank, Asian Development Bank,