The Mahindodaya Technology Laboratories – another farcical veneer to fool the masses! and gas the students!

If you live in Sri Lanka you won’t fail to notice the number of new buildings that are being constructed at many schools, as close to the road as possible and often completely at ODDS with the architectural conformity of the school. It is the same design and color used at every school and I will attempt to add a photo of it if I can find one on the net to include in this blog.

I have already blogged on this before, but felt it needed another entry because of a new perspective that my tailor gave to me yesterday. 

http://www.kalpanakaranna.blogspot.com/2014/07/education-spending-govt-and-world-bank.html

The tailor shop is bang next door to the Panagoda Army Camp, and he was listening to Bana on the radio when I walked in.  In addition to tailoring a new pair of black trousers, and white shirt, I also asked him to darn a well worn (20yr+) shirt that is a pattern that I particularly like and is now not available anywhere!  

He appears to be a pious Buddhist with simple tastes and a very unruffled and calm personality. So when I was talking with him about education and the pathetic state of it in Sri Lanka today, he came out with the fact (completely unsolicited) that these Labs are constructed as near as possible to the main roads, so that people can see when they are being driven in a bus, and he noted one instance where a whole embankment was cut in order to construct this in front of the school, when the school had so much property in the back where this could be constructed, taking into account a well balanced quiet location with trees and shade. He was was also concerned that the embankment thus cut into could collapse in heavy rain damaging the building and/or injuring the students. 

He further pointed out the fact that, being so close to the main road, the noise of the traffic and the pollution from fumes would be disturbing, and a health hazard   to the students trying to study in them[u1] . He said obviously that they have been put there for show, to give a veneer to the unthinking public that this Govt. is doing something for the schools! This comment coming from a man, who I would consider the present Government’s poster boys of average pious citizens of Sri Lanka, is telling, as he has really thought how ridiculous it is.

Therefore using the word Mahindodaya will come to haunt the Mahinda Rajapakse legacy after his demise, as it will be known as Mahinda’s Gas Chambers where innocent children were killed, when they had NO option but to breathe poisonous fumes emitted by the belching buses of the state institutions which he has not regulated, along with other state vehicles which don’t even appear to be regulated.

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