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Sri Lanka Living Conditions
In the late 1980s, vast differences remained in the wealth
and life-styles of citizens in Sri Lanka. In urban areas, such as
Colombo, entire neighborhoods consisted of beautiful houses owned
by well-off administrators and businessmen. This elite enjoyed
facilities and opportunities on a par with those of middle- and
upper-middle-class residents of Europe or North America. In the
countryside, families that controlled more extensive farms lived
a rustic but healthy life, with excellent access to food,
shelter, clothing, and opportunities for education and
employment. In contrast, at lower levels in the class pyramid,
the vast majority of the population experienced a much lower
standard of living and range of opportunities. A sizable minority
in both the cities and rural villages led a marginal existence,
with inadequate food and facilities and poor chances for upward
mobility.
Intervention by successive governments has had marginal
success in decreasing the differences between income groups. In
the rural sector, legislation has mandated a ceiling on private
landownership and has nationalized plantations, but these
programs have provided extra land to relatively few people
(see Sri Lanka - Agriculture
, ch. 3). Although resettlement programs have
benefitted hundreds of thousands of people, they have not kept
pace with population growth. In rural environments, most people
remained peasants with small holdings, agricultural laborers
working for small wages on the lands of others, or landless
plantation workers. Migration to the cities often did not lead to
a great improvement in people's life-styles because most
immigrants had little education and few skills. As a result,
urban slums have proliferated; by the 1980s almost half the
people in greater Colombo were living in slums and shanties.
Because economic growth has not kept pace with these population
changes, double-digit unemployment continued with the poorest
sections of the urban and rural population suffering the most. A
hard-core mass of poor and underemployed people, totalling
between 20 and 25 percent of the population, remained the biggest
challenge for the government.
Cramped and insufficient housing detracted from the quality
of life in Sri Lanka. In the 1980s, most housing units in Sri
Lanka were small: 33 percent had only one room, 33 percent two
rooms, and 20 percent three rooms. More than five persons lived
in the average housing unit, with an overcrowding rate (three or
more persons per room) of 40 percent. In urban areas, permanent
structures with brick walls, tiled roofs, and cement floors
constituted 70 percent of houses, but in the countryside
permanent houses made up only 24 percent of the units. The rural
figures included a large number of village dwellings built of
such materials as thatch, mud, and timber, designed according to
traditional styles with inner courtyards, or verandas, and
providing ample room for living and sleeping in the generally
warm climate. The rates of overcrowding were declining in the
1980s, as the government sponsored intensive programs for
increasing access to permanent housing.
Many of the infectious diseases that caused high mortality in
Sri Lanka were water-borne, and improvements in water facilities
occupied a high priority in government welfare programs of the
1980s and planning for the 1990s. In urban areas, about half the
drinking water was piped and half came from wells, while in the
countryside 85 percent of the water came from wells and 10
percent from unprotected, open sources. Almost one-third of the
well water was also unprotected against backflows that could
cause leakage of sewage. Only about one out of three houses had
toilets. With help from United Nations Childrens' Fund (UNICEF),
United States Agency for International Development (AID),
Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), and the
Netherlands, the government of Sri Lanka set a goal of clean,
piped water and sewage facilities for the entire urban population
and for at least half the rural population by 1990. Observers
doubted, however, that this goal could be reached in the northern
and eastern districts torn by ethnic conflict.
Food was another major issue. Beginning in the 1940s, the
government ran a food subsidy program that paid farmers a minimum
price for their crops and also operated a rationing system that
allowed people to obtain rice at a guaranteed low price. The
importance of this program to the people was dramatically
demonstrated in 1953, when the state's attempt to reduce
subsidies led to food riots and the fall of the government
(see Sri Lanka - United National Party "Majority" Rule, 1948-56
, ch. 1). Since
1979 when the subsidy program was abolished, the government has
operated a food stamp scheme that allows people in lower-income
brackets to obtain free rice, wheat flour, sugar, milk powder,
condensed milk, dried fish, and kerosene for cooking. This
program has reached almost half the population, accounting for
approximately 7 percent of the state budget. The government also
operated supplementary feeding programmes, including a School
Biscuit Programme designed to reach malnourished children and a
Thriposha Programme to provide for 600,000 needy infants,
preschool children, and pregnant mothers. (Thriposha is a
precooked, protein-fortified cereal food supplement.)
Despite government intervention in the food market,
malnutrition continued to be a problem among the poor, the bottom
60 percent of the population who earned less than 30 percent of
the national income. As in so many other sectors, the problem
remained worse in rural areas, although urban slums possessed
their own share of misery. In Colombo city and district, 1 or 2
percent of preschool children experienced severe symptoms of
malnutrition, while the rate was 3 or 4 percent in Puttalam
District. Mild forms of malnourishment, resulting in some stunted
growth, affected around 33 percent of the young children in
Colombo but up to 50 percent in rural Vavuniya or Puttalam
districts. Malnutrition also affected adults: one out of three
agricultural laborers consumed less than 80 percent of
recommended calories daily. This problem became worse after the
inflation of the early 1980s that reduced the real value of food
stamps by up to 50 percent
(see Sri Lanka - Finance
, ch. 3). Observers
doubted that poverty and malnutrition would be alleviated during
the 1980s or early 1990s, while the country experienced economic
uncertainty and the government was forced to spend more on
security matters
(see Sri Lanka - The Defense Budget
, ch. 5).
* * *
An excellent short survey of Sri Lanka's geology, topography,
and climate is found in Sri Lanka: A Survey, edited by
K.M. de Silva. A more detailed study is J.W. Herath's Mineral
Resources of Sri Lanka.
The authoritative source for population statistics is
Population and Housing, 1981 the Census, published by the
Sri Lanka Ministry of Plan Implementation. Beginning with basic
population data, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka's Economic and
Social Statistics of Sri Lanka also includes useful data on
health, education, and welfare. Basic texts for ethnic, caste,
and family topics are Caste in Modern Ceylon by Bruce Ryan
and Under the Bo Tree by Nur Yalman. Michael Robert's more
recent Cast Conflict and Elite Formation concentrates on
the dominant low-country castes. Muslims of Sri Lanka,
edited by M.A.M. Shukri, is a collection of essays dealing with
the history and culture of the different groups within the Muslim
community.
Heinz Bechert, Hans Dieter-Evers, Richard Gombrich, and
Gananath Obeyesekere are major figures in the study of Sinhalese
religion. Bechert and Gombrich have edited The World of
Buddhism, with contributors discussing all world areas; the
sections on Indian and Sinhalese Buddhism are excellent
introductions. Gombrich's Precept and Practice is a
scholarly investigation of popular Sinhalese religion and its
relationship to Buddhist doctrines. For the basic ideas of
Hinduism, Thomas J. Hopkins's The Hindu Religious
Tradition is useful. Kamil Zvelebil's The Smile of
Murugan and Hymns of the Tamil Saivite Saints by F.
Kingsbury and G.E. Phillips provide more detailed information on
Tamil Hindu traditions. Expositions of the basic doctrines of
Islam are found in H.A.R. Gibb's Mohammedanism and Fazlur
Rahman's Islam.
Education in Colonial Ceylon by Ranjit Ruberu
describes the precolonial and colonial education systems. Chandra
Richard de Silva and Daya de Silva give a detailed description of
the postindependence education system in Education in Sri
Lanka. The relationship between education and ethnic conflict
are discussed in chapters by K.M. de Silva and Chandra Richard de
Silva in From Independence to Statehood: Managing Ethnic
Conflict in Five African and Asian States. Health and welfare
conditions, and government programs addressing them, are
summarized in Piyasiri Wickramasekara's long article in
Strategies for Alleviating Poverty in Rural Asia. A more
detailed study of rural conditions is Rachel Kurian, Women
Workers in the Sri Lanka Plantation Sector. (For further
information and complete citations,
see Sri Lanka -
Bibliography.)
Data as of October 1988
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