Is an amalgamated North-East region a viable entity?

V. K. Nanayakkara

MERGER: When India forced an invitation to Sri Lanka to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord on July 29, 1987, the Government of Sri Lanka had to come up with an entity larger than the district for devolution of powers.

In the absence of competent advice, J R Jayewardene seized the quick fix solution of going back to the archaic and discarded provincial boundary which the British had introduced solely for the purpose of collecting revenue and not for development of the regions.

The Accord provided for a temporary merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, with provision for a referendum in the Eastern Province to decide on the continuance of the merger.

The timidity and the lack of vision in accepting the revenue “province” as the unit of devolution in 1987 prevented the country from adopting a rational and appropriate sub national developmental regime.

How did we arrive at the present arrangement of Provincial units? Were the boundaries drawn after careful thought and design? They were first carved out in 1833, when the Colebrooke Commission established the five provinces, a simplistic exercise of drawing lines on a map.

It displayed stark ignorance of the territory governed. When confronted with a complete lack of understanding of the administered territory, a person resorts to naming space by compass directions.

Accordingly, the northern, southern, eastern, western, and central Provinces came into being. With passage of time, these five provincial boundaries were recast for a final toll of nine provinces by 1889.

What was the rationale for creating these entities by drawing lines on compass directions? Basically, it was driven by the interests of the British Empire and of the white rulers whose principal concern was the domination of the colony and warding off competing imperial rivals.

In fact, as stated by Governor Torrington, the colonial demarcation of provinces was motivated by a desire to disintegrate the territorial integrity of the Kandyan Kingdom to prevent rebellions such as the 1818 uprising and to curtail the influence of the Kandyan Chieftains who posed a threat to British rule.

This five to nine fold division eminently suited the purposes of colonial administration in the 19th century which was the collection of revenue and maintenance of law and order. In fact, a part of the western boundary of the eastern province is an arbitrarily drawn straight line along a line of longitude.

Regrettably, while the colonial government used the provinces to maintain and enforce political control, the post independent governments of Sri Lanka never attempted a demarcation of new boundaries to introduce a system of rational politico-administrative units.

Capitulating to Indian pressure, JRJ mismanaged the pro-autonomy demand. Introduced stealthily by way of an act of appeasement in the face of an impending invasion, the Province was imposed with unreasonable haste, without a clear plan. These are all signs of the chaos that was the aftermath of 1983.

Disregarding the economic and social functionality of the sub national units, what was proposed in 1987 was in fact this colonial legacy - the province - a reversion to an archaic, obsolete and outdated revenue unit discarded in 1955.

What is so sacrosanct about such a simplistic exercise of demarcation to adopt it as the unit in 1987? What was worse was the merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces, an entity “gerrymandered” to appease parochial interests.

What are the main criteria for defining the regions of governance that constitute a country’s internal space? There are no inherent guidelines or universally agreed rules for such divisions of national territory. However, we can recognise the following four guiding principles for demarcating the unit of governance in a small state such as Sri Lanka.

(1) Administrative convenience,

(2) Recognition of distinct communities and identities,

(3) Devolution or decentralisation of certain powers and functions “closer to the people” as a form of democratization and

(4) Considerations of development planning and natural resource management

How does the amalgamated North Eastern Province fare with respect to each of the above criteria?

Administrative convenience

One reason for carving out sub national regions is the administrative convenience as the whole country cannot be run entirely from one central point. There will always be a need for decentralised administrative units for regional planning and below that tier, local authorities with experience and intimate knowledge of local conditions for local services.

Factors such as the remoteness of a territory, the sparseness of population and “geographic accessibility” are criteria to consider when drawing provincial lines.

How is the NE entity placed with respect to means of transportation and communication? The configuration of the combined Northern and Eastern provinces is shown in Figure I. At what common point can the people of Mannar, Jaffna, Mullativu, Batticaloa, Ampara, Akkaraipattu, and Pottuvil meet?

Geographically and administratively, it is an out-of-the-way region where the extremities of the merged province are cut off from any central location such as Jaffna, Vavuniya, Trincomalee or Batticaloa.

This non-compact, elongated, crescent-shaped region baffles any transport network connecting the extremities to a single central point. It is inconceivable that Mannar and Ampara can function within a single province.

What could be the administrative capital of such a region? Ideally, in a provincial entity, a citizen must be in a position to travel by public transport to the urban capital and return home the same day?

What could be such a nodal point? The road layout within the Northern and Eastern Provinces is not conducive for movement of people from point to point within the region.

Clearly, the combined North East province creates a bizarrely shaped entity where the network of roads is such that one has to pass through other provinces to reach places within the merged province. Its odd configuration in a rather peculiar elongated crescent shaped entity militates against functional integration.

What about the administrative operability of the combined provinces with regard to the provision of public services? What is the single location in the Northern and Eastern provinces, which can be considered proximate to the people inhabiting the two provinces?

Where can the provincial land office be located for better coordination of different departments, sub departments and units involved in land administration? In terms of its configuration, the combined area is not a viable region.

Community of interest

Recognition of a common identity shared by the people who inhabit a particular region can be a characteristic feature of a sub national spatial unit. A sense of common identity may be associated with a number of factors such as a shared ethnic background, a common language, history or culture.

Such a group must be sufficiently large and geographically compact and deemed by the political system to merit special treatment in constitutional and administrative terms.

Such a vernacular region should be an area perceived to exist as a region by its inhabitants where a reasonable community of interest exists.

It may arise from a common experience in a functional region. Is the whole of the Eastern Province one such area? Apart from a thin coastal strip in the Eastern Province, a distinct ethnic habitation was never manifest in the interior of this Province.

Moreover, the boundary of the Eastern Province in 1833 was not drawn on ethnic lines. In actual fact, the western boundary of the Eastern Province was indeterminate and ran through no man’s land of sparsely populated Dry Zone jungle, an area under the writ of the Kandyan Kingdom.

Does a merger of the two provinces promote multiculturalism and ethnic pluralism by providing a framework for self-expression for the ethnic minorities? For this purpose, let us look at the ethnic predominance in this region. While the Northern Province shows the predominance of a homogeneous ethnic group, the situation in the Eastern Province is different.

Of the three districts comprising the Eastern Province, only the Batticaloa district has a clear ethnic predominance, with 71 per cent of the population being Tamil. The two districts, Trincomalee and Ampara are non majority districts for any single ethnic group.

Trincomalee District has an almost equal distribution of Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese around 33 percent each while Ampara district has a predominance of Moors at 42 percent of the total population followed by the Sinhalese at 38 percent. Thus, the Eastern Province has an ethnic mix in approximately equal proportions.

Can the carving out of a region mainly on linguistic considerations establish a socio-culturally cohesive, homogeneous entity? A careful examination of the facts reveals that such a proposal is inopportune and infeasible.

The geographical dispersion of the ethnic groups in the Eastern Province prevents the creation of regions based on ethnic homogeneity. In the Eastern Province 32 per cent of the population are Moors as against 41 percent Tamils.

Moors are culturally a group with a distinct identity, lacking a sense of commonality with the Tamils. Lacking cohesive group assertiveness, a linguistic demarcation is foredoomed to failure with possible accentuation of existing ethnic cleavages.

While basically the Northern Province has the character of a vernacular region on the basis of common cultural traits, the Eastern Province lacks such homogeneity.

It may be appropriate to raise the question: does the Tamil speaking population in the Eastern Province (both Tamils and Muslims) display a sense of oneness with the common cause of the Tamils of the Northern Province? The answer will lie in the verdict at a referendum.

The advantages of a referendum are that it can elicit the response of the affected people, offer maximum participation by all affected parties, making it a democratic exercise in decision-making. Also, its widely perceived legitimacy can raise citizen confidence.

Referenda have always been unpopular with politicians as they seek to refute the assertion that the word of the politician represents the popular will. Politicians who declare that “the provisional merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces is not subject to any negotiation” are opposed to building a culture of grassroots democracy in Sri Lanka.

Decentralisation of functions

A characteristic feature of the contemporary world is the proliferation of a variety of systems of multi level government with simultaneous pressures for larger and smaller sub national entities.

The thrust for larger units is driven by the desire to foster economic planning and growth. Conversely, the pressure for smaller units is evident in the desire to have entities that are more sensitive and accountable to their electorates, capable of expressing local distinctiveness. A functional region is a coherent unit that synchronizes spatial planning within it.

Regulatory administration and law enforcement are facilitated in watershed based regions. The following subject areas derive a distinct advantage in decision making and execution within a river basin boundary:

Land, land use planning; Agriculture; Soil conservation; Forestry; Irrigation; Water supply; Power generation; Inland fisheries and Pollution control.

Provincial boundaries render it extremely difficult to manage natural hazards. Very often, riparian areas belong to different Provinces, where the provision of relief and mitigation measures is hampered by separate administrative authorities. For effective control of floods, the entire river basin is best administered as one unit.

What is the single location in the Northern and Eastern provinces, which can be considered proximate to the people inhabiting the two provinces? Where can the provincial land office be located for better coordination of different departments, and sub departments and units involved in land administration?

The Land Commission, 1987 observed that “the best strategy to develop and conserve land and related natural resources is to plan their use within a watershed management framework.”

Its recommendations to establish a Boundaries Commission to undertake a redefinition of boundaries in relation to natural resource management has been ignored by successive governments.

Any spatial policy which overlooks production relations will not only fail, but also add to uneven development, resulting in a continued spiral of confrontation, conflict and political violence.

Economic and social viability: functionality

Wars have been fought over natural resources. Countries rely on natural resources to sustain their economies. Since natural resources are in short supply, where cooperation is not possible, violent conflicts result.

A dilemma facing countries is how to fulfill the citizen’s needs with as little conflict as possible. The resolution of the dilemma often depends on how natural resources are managed.

Water is one of the most fundamental natural resources that we must harness in our quest for development and prosperity. Conflict becomes more likely if the resource is critical to survival such as water in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka.

People get killed fighting for water. Mavil Aru is just one recent example. Water rights are often embedded in physical infrastructure that crosses administrative boundaries.

The inhabitants of the Dry Zone depend almost entirely on river systems for their water needs. The problem in the East is that none of the rivers exist solely within the provincial borders.

The Eastern province has been carved out by drawing a line across the river systems, thus separating the upstream and downstream waters in a number of rivers. The western boundary of the Eastern Province at its southern extremity forms a straight line, drawn with a foot ruler and cuts across Wila Oya and Heda Oya regardless of stream flow.

Similarly, the upper reaches of Yan Oya fall within the NCP, while the lower reaches fall within the Eastern Province. Of course, only the lower reaches of Mahaweli Ganga fall within the Eastern Province. Clearly, the hydrologic regions extend beyond the provincial boundaries complicating water resources planning.

There is a need to establish connections between upstream and downstream development activities. When different ethnic groups inhabit the higher and lower reaches of rivers controlling the respective Provincial Councils, the conflicts are likely to be further aggravated. The possible solution to the problem of reduced downstream flows owing to upstream diversions can be optimally accommodated within a watershed region.

Land, water and environmental resources can best be developed and coordinated in the context of catchments areas. Apportioning water between irrigation systems, their operation and maintenance down to the tertiary canals, management of farmer organisations created for canal commands are activities facilitated within a watershed boundary.

If a Provincial Council has the right to make all the decisions about a resource that lies within its territory, with no obligation to respect the equitable user rights of another Provincial Council, then the issue will remain for ever with the Centre, negating meaningful devolution.

Why adopting a watershed approach makes sense?

Our suggestion to create a physical unit that will remove such impediments points to the ‘watershed’ as the best criterion to delineate sub-national territorial entities. It is the most optimum natural region which permits decision makers to focus on land use, crops, soil conservation, forests, flood control, management of natural hazards etc.

A watershed boundary always passes through sparsely populated areas unlike the existing Provincial boundaries which separate human activities at their most dense points. It is an approach that addresses the need to bring together those who use water and those who impact on it to work together to solve their water challenges.

A number of conclusions emerge from the foregoing analysis. It reveals that as a development region, the amalgamated Northern and Eastern Provinces fail on all the possible criteria for defining regions. Its wide physical dispersal, poor communications, inadequate transportation network, local and regional conflicts of identity or interest all pose serious problems to administer this scattered region.

Any plan to merge the Northern and Eastern provinces can be devastating as it contains too much conflict potential. Boundaries drawn on a watershed basis to reflect cultural and geographical divides would provide a pragmatic framework to reduce conflicts within spatial units promote regional and local cooperation and increase administrative efficiency and facilitate power sharing.

The need for effective devolution, outside the centrist, unitary model can be justified for reasons of practical governance. As things stand today, the final lines on the provincial map of Sri Lanka were neither drawn by experts, nor by the people but by William Macbean George Colebrooke in the early 19th century.

The territorial units within the nation state will be a sham if meaningful alternative spatial arrangements for delineating existing boundaries are not introduced in order to make devolution workable. Partisan politics and gerrymandering are best excluded from such an exercise of demarcation which is best left to independent commissioners.

There is nothing sanctimonious or scientific about the boundaries of the present nine provinces. If the unit of devolution is to endure, it must have a solidly developed foundation from the viewpoint of resource endowments, development potential and overall national benefit.

We can never attain peace and development until our society is reconstructed upon a new foundation that is rid of ethnic and linguistic bounds. Power sharing can be productive if effected within an appropriate spatial unit, it can be counter productive and dysfunctional if implemented within outdated and archaic sub national units.