Thursday, July 24, 2014

Is it time to move to Moneragala? Hambantota no chance!


It appears that life expectancy is highest in Hambantota, and then the next best is the Moneragala district for the citizen’s longevity.


No automatic answer comes to mind, except to say that people who live in those areas, though they have the lowest GNP with the Moneragala District being the poorest District in the land, somehow have stress free, pollution free and an element of healthy living lives. I know the Moneragala District has now also received the CKDU, Kidney Disease curse that afflicts the North Central Province and therefore this number may take a slide.

It is interesting that the Colombo District with the highest GNP is also the lowest in life expectancy.

It is time to take stock of our development strategy and ask ourselves, what it is we are supposedly chasing? In an era when you only need Broadband Internet to get an education and not an access to Royal College, we must go back and prioritize life, to obtain maximum satisfaction from our lives, rather than the fatalistic attitude that much of the belief systems in Sri Lanka inculcate.

It is time to start a movement called, “fun times ahead” and encourage people to join it. The primary goal is to get people to think about what it is that is important to them, over and above showing off to their neighbors! Secondly it is to encourage people to take life decisions in pursuit of that goal, and do it in a way that does NOT destroy another person’s pursuit of that same goal. That is minimizing friction between people in the pursuit of one’s own selfish motives!

Sounds very greedy? Or altruistic? Surely cannot be both. I admit that life expectancy is but one marker of the success of a culture, community or Country and that may hide a whole host of other determinants of the quality of life index and the UNs Human Development Objectives, of better access to quality health care, nutrition, clean air, and water. I presume however, one must have a good mix of that for people to live longer.


That apart, I have recently travelled extensively in the Moneragala District, and it is the hidden gem of Sri Lanka, still unspoilt, with little local and foreign tourism, but a landscape of infinite beauty, and a land of unfathomable ancient sites, that are only partially discovered and documented. For how long can this secret be kept?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"fun" has many connotations in the sri lankan mind, which i will not elaborate upon. better to say "happy times ahead"

maybe once the highway to moneragala is completed the masses will start checking the place out