The Poverty Discourse and the Poor in Sri Lanka Author(s): Lakshman Yapa Source: Transactions of the Institute

of British Geographers, New Series, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1998), pp. 95-115 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/623159 . Accessed: 21/09/2011 02:20
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95

The
in

poverty
Sri

discourse

and

the

poor

Lanka
Lakshman Yapa
Sri Lanka is cited as an exemplary case of direct poverty alleviation because of a long history of social welfare and high values in quality of life indices. Notwithstanding, anti-poverty measures in Sri Lanka founded on the international discourse of poverty and development do not serve the interests of poor people. This discourse begins by locating poor people in a distinct poverty sector and proceeds to examine its characteristics. Several attributes of that discourse make it intellectually incapable of seeing how poverty is socially constructed in a diffused nexus of production relations that extends far beyond the so-called 'poverty sector'. An alternative 'substantive approach to poverty' is presented. The arguments are illustrated using the theme of food production in Sri Lanka. key words Sri Lanka poverty discourse theory nexus of production relations constructed scarcity substantive approach to poverty food production
Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA e-mail: lxy3@psu.edu revised manuscript received 29 May 1997

Poverty exists when people are unable to satisfy their basic needs for food, clothing, shelter and health. It is widely believed that poverty is caused by economic underdevelopment. Within the discourse of development and underdevelopment, the most common approach to the study of poverty begins by defining a 'poverty sector'. Researchers then try to understand causes of poverty by studying the characteristics of this sector and its people. It is my view that this approach is not a helpful way to address problems of poor people. In this paper I argue for an alternative 'substantive approach' to poverty. My argument is founded on several claims: * the causes of poverty cannot be understood by making poor people the object of our study * the causes of poverty are embedded in a nexus of production relations diffused throughout the larger society that extends far beyond the so-called 'poverty sector' * material deprivations experienced by the poor are socially constructed at every node of the nexus of production relations

* the existing academic discourse on poverty contributes to that scarcity and conceals the social origin of scarcity * the issue of poverty may more helpfully be addressed by moving away from the present reified representation of poverty to a substantive approach - why do particular groups in specific places experience hunger, malnutrition, lack of shelter, etc? These theoretical claims are explained at some length in Yapa (1993, 1996a, 1996b) and in Yapa and Wisner (1995). In this paper I illustrate the argument by focusing on the theme of food in Sri Lanka. Important as it is, my concern is not food per se; I present the empirical narrative on food as an example of an alternative way of speaking about poverty. A preliminary word on what this paper is not. It contains no 'proof' that the substantive approach I propose is superior to competing explanations of poverty. Sri Lanka has a well-established and extensive poverty discourse that includes liberal, conservative, marxist and populist approaches to

TransInst Br Geogr NS 23 95-115 1998 ISSN 0020-2754 ? Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) 1998

96 Table I Sri Lankan GNP per capita and quality of life indices within the world economy, 1990
GNP per capita US$ Sri Lanka High-income economies Middle-income economies Low-income economies Source:World Bank (1992) 470 19 590 2220 320 Life expectancy 71 77 66 55 Infant mortality (/000) 19 8 48 92 Percentage literacy 88 94 78 55

Lakshman Yapa

the problem. Despite profound philosophical and tactical differences in their approaches, they all see economic development - an expansion of production forces and increasing income - as the solution to poverty (Yapa 1996b). It is this axiomatic belief that I contest. In this paper I have neither described the competing discourses on poverty, nor subjected each to critical inquiry. Instead I present my own ideas as an invitation to a conversation and a debate about the axiomatic belief that development will eradicate poverty. Sri Lanka is cited as an exemplary case of direct poverty alleviation because of a long history of social welfare and high values in quality of life indices. The first part of the paper presents a brief review and critique of these measures. The second part engages various aspects of the conventional discourse on poverty before the concept of socially constructed scarcity is presented in part three as a substantive approach to poverty. The fourth part employs the scheme of the nexus of production relations to illustrate the social construction of food scarcity in Sri Lanka.

Poverty alleviation

in Sri Lanka

Despite a very low per capita income, Sri Lanka has achieved remarkably high levels in quality of life indices such as life expectancy, infant mortality and literacy. This record is impressive as these measures are closer to those of countries whose GNP (gross national product) per capita is nearly 50 times as great (Table I). Many scholars believe such statistics reflect the benefits of sustained government intervention in social welfare.1 Indeed, Sri Lanka is often cited as a 'test case' of the efficacy of direct public intervention in poverty alleviation (Anand and Kanbur 1995, 228).

A study of poverty in Sri Lanka is particularly instructive because the country has a sustained history of anti-poverty programmes from colonial times. The state, which has consistently presented itself as the patron of common people, has carried out a series of costly social welfare programmes providing free health care, free education and even subsidized food. And yet, according to the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (Gunaratne 1987), a fifth of all households do not consume the required minimum in caloric food energy. Whilst it is certain that the poor in Sri Lanka would have been worse off without such programmes, providing welfare is not the same as 'solving the poverty problem'. Anti-poverty measures are (in)formed by the way policy-makers understand poverty and that understanding depends in turn on the way academics have represented poverty. My argument is that anti-poverty measures cannot solve the poverty problem in Sri Lanka because they are founded on a discourse that perpetuates the very problem they are designed to solve. Food subsidies and rationing, first introduced in 1942 by the British as part of a wartime relief measure, continued into the postwar period, becoming a cornerstone of Sri Lanka's postcolonial welfare services (De Silva 1981). After independence in 1948, programmes of social welfare expanded in scope with expenditure absorbing over 56 per cent of the annual government budget (ibid.).Expenditure on public health, hospitals, free drugs, free education and subsidies for imported essential foods continued at expanded levels, despite a deteriorating foreign account balance (Fig. 1). In 1977, the food subsidy alone absorbed around 17 per cent of the government budget (Bandaranaike and de Alwis 1987). Despite several changes in political leadership between 1956 and 1977, the broad outline of poverty policy remained

The poverty discourseand the poor in Sri Lanka

14

97 deficit financing (Sahn 1987). Despite the freemarket philosophy, the scope of the government expanded during this time. Unprecedented levels of government expenditure and expanded credit fuelled a very high rate of inflation: the cost of living index (1952=100) rose from 203 in 1977 to 1408 by 1993 (Shastri 1995). Rapid inflation had a deleterious impact on the poor through a decline in real wages and the value of food stamps (Sahn 1987). There were also large outlays of public funds on internal security and the military following the outbreak of ethnic violence in 1983 and insurgency among Sinhalese youth (Warnapala 1993). A principal debate of the poverty discourse in Sri Lanka concerns the efficacy of direct (basic needs) as distinct from indirect (economic growth) measures in promoting social welfare. Measures of poverty alleviation undertaken during the period 1960-77 were direct, while post-1977 policies are seen as indirect. Although Sri Lanka is frequently cited as a country which has successfully implemented the direct approach, Bhalla and Glewwe (1986) have argued that the improvement in living conditions during the years 1960-77 was not particularly remarkable when compared to other countries and that Sri Lanka's achievements in quality of life should not be attributed to the large social expenditures made by the government during these years. Several scholars have questioned this line of argument on the grounds that the high quality of life in Sri Lanka should be seen as a part of a long and sustained history of social investments and not just that of the 1960s.2 Interesting as it is academically, this debate on the relative merits of direct and indirect approaches to social welfare is not very helpful in considering poverty alleviation in Sri Lanka. It seems obvious that if a government spends money on providing cheap food, education and health services, the quality of life will be better than if the money were not spent for that purpose. In 1977, even after 30 years of post-independence welfare programmes, nearly half the population was eligible to receive food stamps. Furthermore, the debate about the superiority of direct or indirect measures is not one that can be resolved in a methodological sense. It is not possible to take a standard of living and apportion changes in values of its various components to this or that cause. For example, suppose that in a given year there was a 1 per cent drop in the rate of infant mortality, we cannot know whether this was caused by increased

1 Social

Expenditure as a Pecentage of GNP

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C 196-1977: Period of closed werst economy economy1

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Figure 1 Social expenditure as a percentage of GNP, 1951-82

intact with social expenditure on education, health care and food subsidies taking up almost 10 per cent of the GNP each year (Anand and Kanbur 1995). But the economy grew so slowly that Sri Lanka was cited in the development literature as a case of 'equity-with-no-growth' (Chenery 1989, 21). The open economy (1977-94) ushered in a new period. It brought to an end a distinct phase of social welfare legislation in a closed economy with state control of exports, imports, plantations, industries, transport and foreign exchange. The new policy dismantled import controls, exchange regulations and price controls, and several stateowned enterprises were privatized. Expenses on social welfare were reduced. The government adopted the World Bank's notion of providing a safety net for the poorest of the poor by 'targeting' food subsidies and social welfare benefits. In 1979, the food subsidy scheme was eliminated and replaced with an American-style food stamp programme. Besides the traditional welfare measures in food, education and health care, there were two new programmes of poverty alleviation: the National Housing Program (Siriwardena 1994) and the Janasaviya(people empowerment) Programme. Janasaviyareceived funds from international development agencies because its logic was compatible with the new development philosophy of free markets, investment in human capital, enterprise development and safety nets for the poor (Stokke 1995). There are several aspects of the open economy that had a direct bearing upon poverty alleviation measures. The economy grew at a very rapid rate (Rajapathirana1988) but the growth was fuelled by a massive influx of foreign capital combined with

98 expenditure on the health budget or by expenses in education which helped parents to become better carers, or by better nutrition purchased with higher incomes, or by some other cause. This brief review of the history of poverty alleviation in Sri Lanka is designed partly to focus on the role of the state. All shades of political leadership believe poverty to be an economic problem which can be eradicated through economic development and social welfare, and the state is central to both tasks. During the period 1956-77 the state came to control the economy and thus became the chief job provider. This, coupled with a slow growth economy and the contraction of the private sector, led to a greater dependence of people on the state for their economic well-being, leading to nepotism and graft. Dependent as they were on government jobs, the Tamil middle class found itself at an increasing disadvantage with the growth in the state power of the Sinhala Buddhists (Nithiyanandan 1987; Piyadasa 1988; Tambiah 1986). After 1977, although there were more private sector jobs available, the state continued to grow in power at the expense of civil society. The long involvement of the state with poverty alleviation channelled imagination, discourse and initiative into the narrow space of its political economy. Simultaneously, this had the effect of concealing the multiple sites at which the problem of poverty could have been addressed creatively. This is the wider argument of the paper: poverty policies in Sri Lanka are grounded in a discourse that is intellectually incapable of seeing how scarcity is socially constructed in a larger nexus of production relations.
Profile | | The Poverty

Lakshman Yapa

I
X2 X3 Xk

Poverty indicators Obs. No. Y1 Y2

Distinguishingcharacteristics of the poor X1

1
2 3 4

Figure 2 The poverty profile as a database has been transformed into a quantifiable poverty problem existing in a distinct and coherent sector with stable inner characteristics, the study of which will reveal the causes of poverty and thus help us to find solutions. As reasonable as it seems, this approach is not helpful. The first step in the poverty sector approach is to construct a poverty profile (Fig. 2); visualize this as a data table with n rows and k columns. The n rows represent individuals, households or places (census tracts, counties, villages, districts and so on). The k columns contain two types of information about the observations: poverty indicators and 'distinguishing characteristics of the poor'. Poverty indicators include such things as income and status on a poverty line. Distinguishing characteristics are variables such as location, urban/ rural, gender, race, ethnicity, family size, marital status, employment, occupation, education, assets and access to markets. In most analyses the distinguishing characteristics of the poor are the independent variables that 'explain' magnitudes of the poverty indicators. There is no implication here that all poverty studies follow a statistical regression format, although many do. Even a simple two by two table - for example one that shows poverty by gender - is constructed with the implication that gender, among other factors, 'explains' poverty. The independent variables in poverty studies are subdivided into two groups - those amenable to change such as education and employment, and those that are not, such as gender and race. The latter may help to pinpoint beneficiary target groups of poverty programmes. According to the World Bank's Povertyreduction handbook(1993, 13-17), 'The poverty profile portrays the extent and nature of poverty and the
distinguishing characteristics of the poor ... [it] is

The poverty sector approach and reification of poverty The primary object of my critique is the official i.e. state - discourse on poverty in Sri Lanka. The official methodology is identical to that advocated by the World Bank. This discourse begins with a description of the poor in the poverty sector - the object of study. The poverty sector is viewed as a distinct entity with stable internal characteristics whose study will reveal the causes of poverty (Yapa 1996a). The point of such a study is to devise operational methods that will help 'solve' the problem. This is what I mean by reification of poverty: the lack of basic needs by large numbers of people

The poverty discourseand the poor in Sri Lanka a snap-shot of the poor'. To solve the problem, we must first find out who the poor are, what the extent of their poverty is, where they live and what causes their poverty. This is based on the belief that a study of the poor will reveal why they are poor. In the words of a Sri Lankan sociologist wellknown for his poverty studies (Ratnapala 1989, 20): 'A pre-condition for understanding poverty in Sri Lanka is the understanding of the target community whose poverty we are attempting to define'. This is why surveys are the most popular instrument of poverty research. The main source of information on Sri Lankan poverty is the islandwide Reporton consumerfinances and socio economic survey (1985) conducted by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Dualistic thinking pervades the entire notion of a poverty sector which is viewed as a distinct, measurable, bounded entity, that part of the economy where the poor reside - the locus of the poverty problem; those who are not poor reside in the realm of the non-problem. The poverty sector has little capital and no resources. Presumably that is why it is poor. Capital, technology and resources must be infused from outside. The sector of the non-poor is the seat of intellect, resources and solutions - the knowing subject reflecting on the problems of the needy object, an idea wellcaptured in the term 'poor as target group'. An interesting example of the subject/object binary is the work of Ratnapala (1985), who lived among a group of beggars after disguising himself as one. He described what he called the 'living-inexperience' methodology in his book The beggarin Sri Lanka.Ratnapala's objective was not to provide an ethnographic description of the life of beggars in Sri Lanka; he wanted to know the reasons why beggars become beggars. Ratnapala's writing is typical of a wider Sri Lankan discourse also heard in the sermons of the clergy and civic leaders. It takes the stance of a knowing, compassionate subject reflecting on the poor as the needy object: the other who needs to be educated, morally uplifted, materially advanced and culturally modernized. Poverty sector thinking is an example of the logic of 'internalism' which assumes that causes of poverty lie 'internally' within the characteristics of the poor. Conceptually, each observation in the poverty table - that is, each row - is treated as an integral unit: the direction of causation runs across the row from the distinguishing characteristics of the poor to the poverty indicator (Fig. 2). The

99

degree to which values of the independent variables 'co-vary' with the poverty indicator will determine how much of total variation has been 'explained', and which variables contribute to that explanation. Although I have used the language of statistical regression to communicate this notion, it is clear that the logic of 'internalism' is present in any contingency table of poverty statistics. In 1987, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka used Rs69 per month per person in 1978/9 prices as the poverty line, this being the income required for a minimum calorie diet. Overall, 23.6 per cent of the total population and 20-1 per cent of households were in poverty (Gunaratne 1987). In an effort to find explanatory causes, the poor were broken down by numerous categories such as socio-economic group, status of employment, education, age, gender, household size and geographic location (ibid.). I argue that the causes of poverty cannot be discovered by studying such tables. Another characteristic of the poverty sector approach is 'operationalism'. I refer to the belief that 'the problem can be solved' through appropriate policy and target group strategies. This thinking provides the very raison d'etre of institutions such as the World Bank. According to the Bank's president (World Bank 1993, Foreword), poverty reductionis the overarching objectiveof the World Bank. It is the bench-markby which our performanceas a development institution will be measured. The Bank's approach is nicely captured in the title of their widely distributed authoritative publication, the Povertyreductionhandbook (ibid.),which 'summarizes the Bank procedures and guidelines for operations in poverty reduction'. The World Bank's concept of the poverty gap - the income transfer needed to lift everybody above the poverty line - is a good example of what I have called operationalism. Using identical logic, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka calculated the poverty gap at 3.14, meaning that poverty can be eliminated by transferring 3.14 per cent of total income from the non-poor to the poor (Gunaratne 1987). Poverty in Sri Lanka (or elsewhere) has no operational solution, at least not in the sense offered by the official discourse of the World Bank and the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. The poverty sector approach is embedded in a wider discourse whose characteristics include what may be called 'economism' and 'political

economism'. 'Economism' is the idea that lack of food, shelter and health care is an economic problem that calls for economic solutions. According to the governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (1987, 4),

LakshmanYapa the second that the economy itself needs development because it is now underdeveloped. Those who emphasize the first seek 'direct' solutions to poverty and others look to development for 'indirect' solutions. The state in Sri Lanka was a key in the poverty discourse. This is because it is Thereis no doubt that success in poverty alleviation agent believed that the poverty problem has a widely largelyhinges on the abilityto maintain programmes systemic deep structure so that only a powerful sustainedeconomicgrowth ... [to] enablethe poor to like the state has the capacity to intervene get more jobs, higherincomes,and higherlaborforce agent and rectify these flaws. The manner in which state participation. power was exercised had at least three unfortunate the term 'political economism', I refer to the consequences. First, anti-poverty initiatives came By dominant role of state power in affairs of the to be seen increasingly as a matter of implementing economy and civil society. In this sense political government programmes of social welfare. Sececonomism is evident throughout the poverty ondly, poverty and development acted as instrudiscourse: since poverty is believed to represent a ments which facilitated the rise of state power at malfunctioning of the economy (or a lack of the expense of civil society. And finally, the belief economic development), the state is expected to that the state possessed 'operational' solutions to play an active role through corrective measures poverty took attention away from numerous other (liberal political economy) or direct intervention sites at which agents outside the state could have (radical political economy). And, as Gramsci functioned. The net result of the discursive ele(1971, 160) has argued, even a policy of non- ments of poverty acting in concert was to produce intervention like laissez-faire is established by a discourse that is intellectually incapable of seeing state regulation and maintained 'through legis- how material deprivation is socially constructed lative and coercive means'. Sri Lanka is an within a larger nexus that extends far beyond the excellent example of political economism in the so-called 'poverty sector'. poverty discourse. Programmes for poverty alleviation, social welfare and creation of employment figure prominently in the electoral politics A substantive approach to poverty of Sri Lanka (Warnapala 1993). Throughout postcolonial history, the official discourse of Instead of viewing poverty in the abstract as an government publications, policy documents and economic problem, I wish to treat it in a concrete, substantive manner. To the question of why subparty manifestos shows that poverty was viewed as an economic problem and the primary re- stantial numbers in Sri Lanka lack adequate basic sponsibility for poverty alleviation lay with the goods such as food and housing, I am not satisfied with the answer that 'they do not make enough state. A summary of the argument so far. In Sri Lanka, money'. By situating each basic good within the poverty is viewed as residing in a concrete sector of nexus of production relations, we can 'uncover' the economy. Those who are not poor and those how scarcity is socially constructed at each site or who study the poor see themselves as distinct and node of a network of relations - technical, social, separate from those in the poverty sector. The cultural, political, ecological and academic difofficial analysis of poverty begins with the con- fused throughout the larger society. Hence each struction of a poverty profile - a description of who site is also a locus of 'opportunity' creatively to the poor are, what the extent of their poverty is and engage the very forces that create scarcity (Fig. 3). a list of characteristics that explains why they are Poverty has no root causes because scarcity is poor. The causes of material deprivation are sought created everywhere. There can be no grand project from within these distinguishing characteristics. of economic development or policy solution to Both academics and the public in Sri Lanka see poverty (Yapa 1996a). The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (1987) defined poverty as an economic problem. There are two aspects to this economism. The first is the notion poverty as the lack of income to buy the basic that poor people have characteristics that prevent minimum in food caloric energy. However, instead them from participating fully in the economy and of dealing with poverty as an abstract economic 100

The poverty discourse and the poor in Sri Lanka

RAL

101

Large areas were sold to developers of plantations, although not all developers were British as is commonly supposed: much land was also sold to Sri Lankan entrepreneurs for planting coconut and rubber (De Silva 1981). The expansion of ECOLOGICAL rubber may have posed the most severe hardship to peasants because these plantations were established in the most densely populated, southwestern part of the island. Typically, a peasant farm in Sri Lanka combines three kinds of holdings: paddy -' CAL SOCIAL P- POLITI( (kumbura);backyard home garden (gewatte); and relations of highland plots (gangoda)which, in some parts of Figure 3 The nexus of production 3 the island, were plots for shifting cultivation poverty (chena). The takeover of forest land in the Central Highlands greatly restricted chena activities, an sk issue of inadequate income, I shall as the more important source of food, fuel and cash crops for ) direct substantive question: why do 2C per cent of the peasant (Bandarage 1983). The second aspect of colonialism is the rise of Sri Lanka's 16 million people not ha,ve the miniswers to this the plantations. The latter half of the nineteenth mum calories they need? In seeking ans ty question, we shall see how food scarcil is socially century saw the firm establishment of tea, rubber constructed at numerous sites, many beyond the and coconut in the island's economy along with reach of normal poverty alleviation p)rogrammes. the rise to power of an influential class of planmding other tation owners. The state expended much energy By looking at the circumstances surrou basic needs, such as housing, transport and health and resources building an excellent infrastructure care, there is a much larger story to te11about the to serve plantations, while paying little attention to anka. In this the food-producing peasant sector.4 Moreover, social construction of scarcity in Sri L< the alternative approach, the questions, 1 answers planters and their powerful 'growers associations' and the actions which may be take are very successfully lobbied the state to import cheap rice en different from those associated with the poverty in order to keep down labour costs on the plantations. The island economy was transformed into sector approach. It is what I call a 'substantive view an archetypal export colony with a dominant of poverty'. The present food shortage in Sri ILanka is the export sector, excessive dependence on a few priresult of agricultural policies implemeanted by the mary commodities and an economic infrastructure state since colonial times but particularly import- built to serve the plantations. The third aspect is the evolution of colonial ant are government policies enacted siince political independence in 1948. Formulation o f these poli- science. Plantations benefited immensely from the cies must be seen in the context of the colonial agricultural research and experimentation carried discourse on agriculture whose main fieatures were out at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya, inherited by the university - and E government- established in 1822 as a part of a larger colonial based research establishments of pos tcolonial Sri network of such gardens centred on Kew Gardens in London (Brockway 1979). These institutions Lanka. At least four aspects of British co]lonial policy enlisted the science of economic botany in the had a lasting impact on the productiori relations of service of the empire successfully to transfer plant agriculture in Sri Lanka. First are laind relations. materials over a wide geographic territory. An During the second half of the nineteernth century, influential journal - TropicalAgriculturalist- was large areas of cultivable land were taken over by established in 1871; the articles of the early decades colonial authorities and rendered unlavailable to reflected a clear bias towards economic crops such the food-producing sector. It is estimcAtedthat the as cinchona, tea, rubber and coffee. In the 1920s, the Crown Land Encroachment Ordinance; of 1840 and powerful planters' trade associations in Sri Lanka d its subsequent amendments 'convertez at a stroke persuaded the government to set up special instinearly 90% of the land in Sri Lank'a to Crown tutes for crop research on tea, rubber and coconut property by law' (Land Commissio n 1990, 6).3 (Pain 1986). No comparable crop science was

102 initiated to serve the paddy and subsistence needs of the peasantry. Moreover, colonial science viewed peasant agriculture as primitive, unproductive and backward. While many colonial officers admired the industriousness of the neatly laid-out paddy monocultures, they were not convinced of the value of home gardens and chenaswhich appeared higgledy-piggledy, jungle-like and uncultivated. These impressions formed the basis of formal theorizing in the dual economy model that conceptualized the plantations as modern, dynamic and productive, and peasant agriculture as traditional, static and unproductive. The backwardness of the peasants' economy was attributed to their culture of primitive values and traditions. The fourth aspect is the influence of the colonial discourse on local elites. In 1912, the Department of Agriculture was established in response to demands for institutional support for 'peasant agriculture'. However, as Pain (1981, 4) has pointed out, 'the early activities and focus of the Department reflected the economic crop bias of the Botanical Gardens'. Colonial assessment of peasant agriculture was accepted, adopted and elaborated by educated Sri Lankan elites who administered the Ministries of Agriculture, Land Development and Irrigation and taught at the Peradeniya University Faculty of Agriculture (Brohier 1975; Goonatilake 1984). The educated Sri Lankan elites were closer in outlook, values and philosophy to their British counterparts than they were to Sri Lankan peasant farmers. These attitudes were to play a major role in the formulation of agricultural policy in post-1948 Sri Lanka. Nexus of food relations in Sri Lanka Despite the heavy emphasis on agriculture during the last three decades, the poor in Sri Lanka face persistent shortage of food. The average intake of food per day is about 2200 calories and it has grown at a modest 0-2 per cent per year (FAO 1993). The modest average annual growth in calorie intake has not been steady; there was a serious fall in the national average during the years 1970-5 and another decline between the years 1985-90. It must be remembered that the poorest groups consume well below this modest national average (Census and Statistics 1993; Central Bank of Sri Lanka 1987). Throughout the 1960s and 1970s the cost of living index increased at a modest rate but between 1980 and 1991 it increased dramatically

Lakshman Yapa

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Figure 4 Index of food prices, 1961-91

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Figure 5 Index of total and per capita food production, 1961-91

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from a value of 100 to 375, much of this increase being fuelled by the price of food (Fig. 4). Such price increases are highly regressive because the average household spends about 71 per cent of its income on food items while the poorest groups spend nearly 95 per cent (Census and Statistics 1993; Central Bank of Sri Lanka 1987). According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO 1993), food production in Sri Lanka increased by 2-1 per cent per year between 1961 and 1991 but per capita food production increased by only 0.4 per cent. Total food production stagnated throughout the 1980s while per capita food production declined dramatically (Fig. 5). The shortfall in food production was rectified by importing wheat. Over the last 30 years the wheat tonnage has grown at a rate of 3.4 per cent per year and the dollar outlay on the imports has grown by 6-2 per cent per year (ibid.).

The poverty discourse and the poor in Sri Lanka

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103 tied to the elite's interpretation of Sinhalese history:5 the leading actors see themselves as fulfilling an historic mission which involves the recreation of and an authentic,traditionalvillage, family-farming Sinhalesesociety. rice-based The three main symbols of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism are the temple (pansala),the irrigation tank (wewa) and the paddy field (kumbura).Rice production in Sri Lanka is not about food alone; it is also a powerful symbol of culture, restoration and history. According to Moore (ibid., 206), public policy has been unusually- and, most people would argue, ineffectively- focussed on rice, the crop,at the expenseof otheragrisymbolically-potent culturalproducts.The whole focus of the work of the has of Department Agriculture been on rice, and the 'rice bias' can be seen in the spheres of extension, research, credit, irrigated land development and subsidy. The postcolonial emphasis on irrigation and food crops was a definite break with the colonial past. However, as Moore pointed out, the focus on rice came at the expense of other agricultural products. The Department of Agriculture was preoccupied with rice as a commodity and paid less attention to the sociology and polycultures of peasant farming systems. Improved rice was a symbol of economic development and modernization of agriculture: monocultural rice farming, large-scale irrigation, material inputs, extension and banking. But it was accompanied by a parallel logic of social construction of scarcity: expensive rice, loss of rural livelihood, reduced variety in foods and a growing dependence on imported wheat. The following sections of the paper describe in some detail what these sites are. The logic here is not one that lends itself to a neat cost-benefit analysis in an econometric framework. By necessity I have chosen a narrative style to make this argument. Visiting each site of the nexus begins to make it possible to understand the mechanisms that are at work and to reveal how the mechanisms at one site are constituted by those at other sites of the nexus. The remainder of the paper elaborates this claim.

Index RiceProduction of
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Figure 6 Index of rice production, 1961-91

(1961 =100)

The rice economy in Sri Lanka has flourished over the last 30 years, despite the stagnation in overall food production. Between 1961 and 1991 total rice production increased by over two and a half times (Fig. 6) with much of this increase coming from the widespread adoption of highyielding varieties. Surprising as it may seem, the successful diffusion of high-yielding rice narrowed the range of options for production and reduced diversity in diet. I shall illustrate this by placing this rice within a nexus of production relations and show how scarcity has been constructed at each node of this nexus. Successive governments in postcolonial Sri Lanka have made rice a centrepiece of state policy. But why the emphasis on rice? First, it is the staple diet of Sri Lankans. Secondly, importsubstitution of rice was seen as a way of saving valuable foreign exchange spent on rice imports. Thirdly, food subsidies have existed in Sri Lanka since the Second World War and their costs became excessive. In 1977, the rice subsidy cost around 17 per cent of government expenditure. However, the reasons for the 'rice bias' are more complex. The ruling classes in post-independence Sri Lanka have gone to great lengths to preserve the peasant economy. Despite party philosophy, successive administrations channelled revenue from the export sector into large-scale irrigation to serve peasant paddy cultivators (Stokke 1992). The reasons for the state interest in the peasantry are many and, as Moore (1989, 188) has argued, it is strongly

rice The contemporary economy

Technical relations in high-yielding rice Despite the common belief in the backwardness of traditional farmers, the Sri Lankan elites

104

LakshmanYapa
900

implemented a series of irrigation and land development policies in the Dry Zone designed to preserve and strengthen the peasantry.6 The agricultural sciences responded to the political initiative by working on a programme to improve rice yields. Yet, despite impressive gains in rice production, the new discourse/practice of agriculture focused on expensive commercial inputs and marginalized less expensive 'low-tech' ways of raising food. Technology became a site at which scarcity was socially constructed: it created new demands for expensive inputs and reduced existing supplies by marginalizing a range of alternative techniques.7 By the end of the 1960s Sri Lankan agricultural scientists had produced an agro-ecological map of the island that showed the intense place-to-place variation of optimal growing conditions of different crops; in particular, the map provided an appreciation of the range of paddy ecologies that were present in the island. Sri Lankan crop scientists had developed a line of locally adapted improved rice called the H varieties (and later BG) independently of the plant breeding efforts at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baios, Philippines. This experience enabled them successfully to resist the efforts of IRRIscientists to promote IR8 in Sri Lanka, a genetically uniform highly vulnerable variety (Anderson et al. 1991). Despite the more enlightened efforts at agroecologically sensitive plant breeding, the Sri Lankan scientists continued to work within the IRRI paradigm which placed the central focus on biological manipulation of plant characteristics to provide high yields in response to intensive application of technical inputs - improved seeds, chemical fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation. Before the spread of improved seeds, farmers kept healthy seed from each harvest as 'seed paddy' for the next planting season. Now farmers purchase seed from 'seed stores' because harvests do not provide seeds that are stable enough for planting. It is true that the cost of seed paddy in Sri Lanka is modest compared to costs of other inputs. However, 'store-bought seeds' make farmers more vulnerable because they have lost control over seed quality. The reproduction of seeds has moved from farmers' fields into the realm of formal science, experimental plots of research institutes, commercial seed suppliers and bureaucratic processes of seed certification (Kloppenburg 1988; Mooney 1979).

800
700 600

| Index of FertilizerImports |

. ,

400 300

--Quant Value

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75 77 Year

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Figure 7 Index of chemical fertilizer quantity and value, 1961-91

(961=100)

imports by

That these new seeds require large quantities of

chemical fertilizer and pesticides is an excellent example of my argument about constructed scarcity. Most commercial fertilizers consist of some combination of the chemicals nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K). Since the 1960s the Ministry of Agriculture, on the advice of the Faculty of Agriculture at Peradeniya University, undertook a massive campaign to promote the use of chemical fertilizers. Between 1961 and 1991 the quantity of chemical fertilizer imported to Sri Lanka grew at a steady rate of 2.2 per cent per year while the cost of those imports grew at 5-9 per cent. The total outlay on fertilizer imports during that period was US$947 million (Fig. 7). The use of chemical fertilizer was actively promoted using state subsidies. The average subsidy per year was about Rs1000 million - 1/60 of total government expenditure in 1985. In previous years the proportion was 1/32 (FADINAP 1987; Palm and Sandell 1989). Between 1989 and 1990 the price of a metric ton of fertilizer rose from Rs3500 to about Rs9700 when the government discontinued the subsidy, causing great hardship among small-scale paddy farmers (National Fertilizer Secretariat 1992).8 There are several alternative sources of plant nutrients, including agricultural waste; green manure; the cultivation of leguminous crops and leguminous permanent trees; animal manure; human waste; compost; intercropping; companion planting and crop rotation; biological nitrogen fixation, as in blue-green algae living in paddy fields; and slurry from the anaerobic decomposition of organic waste in methane digesters.9 For example, the anaerobic decomposition of animal and human

The poverty discourse and the poor in Sri Lanka

1 1100 1o000
900 '. 800 700 600 E
x

105 get groups and increasing income but should begin with a systematic understanding of why their costs of production are high and why the new methods are not sustainable. But consider the following objection to that argument: improved seeds, chemical fertilizer and chemical pesticides are a part of a rational system of agriculture that increased rice production in Sri Lanka. Surely 'alternative techniques' would carry higher opportunity costs in terms of lower production and continued hunger. My claim about constructed scarcity is not about 'rice production' itself. Constructed scarcity has to do with high costs of production, the marginalization of alternative and less expensive techniques, and the neglect of a range of other food strategies. Moreover, the productivist logic of the agricultural strategy in Sri Lanka does not permit us to see the diverse number of sites at which scarcity is socially constructed. Ecological relations At the ecological node of the nexus, the new rice technology contributed to scarcity in two primary ways. First, the cluster of genetically uniform seeds, chemical fertilizer, pesticides and irrigation led to the degradation of the very conditions of production which demanded higher levels of input to maintain existing levels of output, inviting comparison to a treadmill.12 Secondly, very heavy opportunity costs were incurred by ignoring a range of alternative technologies related to use-values created in nature and to people's knowledge of local ecology, thus replacing the 'reproductive capacity' of nature with the 'productive capacity' of industrial inputs. Among the estimated 12 000 rice cultivars in the world, Sri Lanka alone has recorded 2800 varieties, a product of thousands of years of selection, traditional farming methods and the island's ecological diversity. The varieties are adapted to a range of ecological conditions. Some upland varieties are adapted to drought and low temperatures, and some coastal varieties are adapted to submergence, flash floods and saline soils; some varieties have medicinal properties and others are used for religious rituals. But modern rice farming relies on a few imported seed types with a narrow genetic base of about five to ten varieties, displacing the diversity of traditional rice. Less than 5 per cent of the total area under paddy grows the traditional indigenous cultivars (NARESA 1991).

Indexof Pesticide Importsby Value i

1

^ , / ,
X

P-.'

500 400

c)

I
\s

V,

300'
200 100 o 61 I I I I I 63 67 65 I 69 / ,^ _^ . .p .

|--.-

Dollarvalue | 0I0I

..
i 71 I 73 i i I I ii ii 77 75 79 81 Year I 83 85 87 89 91

Figure 8 Index of pesticide imports by value, 1961-91

(1961=100)

waste produces a clean combustible fuel (methane) in which the residual sludge forms an excellent source of fertilizer. The technology is widely known in India and China (Lichtman 1983; McGarry and Stainforth 1979). Despite the wealth of information available, there has been very little support for biogas technology in Sri Lanka. During the mid-1980s there were only a few hundred functioning units in the country (Wijesinghe and Chandrasiri 1986).10 The use of pesticides in Sri Lanka for combating crop disease is another example of constructed scarcity. Again, there are several effective alternative methods of pest control: cultural, genetic and biological.11 Integrated pest management includes the combined use of all or some of these methods, including chemical pesticides. Of these methods of pest control, chemical pesticides receive the most support both from the government and the private sector in Sri Lanka. Originally confined to the plantation sector, since the 1960s pesticides have come increasingly to be used in the food crop sector. The change is primarily a result of the wide diffusion of improved rice varieties during this period (Abeysekera 1988). Over the period 1961-91 pesticide imports have grown at the rate of 8.3 per year and cost nearly US$150 million (Fig. 8). In such ways, scarcity has been socially constructed at the technical site of the nexus of agricultural relations by creating new demands for expensive inputs while simultaneously marginalizing alternative, less expensive techniques. Thus the alleviation of poverty among farmers is not a matter of measuring their poverty, identifying tar-

106 Genetically uniform varieties of rice, wheat and corn grown in monocultural stands are more vulnerable to pests and pathogens than older varieties - which have coevolved with the local environment - thereby necessitating the use of pesticides and so, as suggested above, contributing to the social construction of scarcity (Bull 1982). The heavy consumption of nitrogen by high-yielding varieties produces succulent plants that favour insects and disease-causing pathogens. The increasing resistance to pesticides of such insects as the paddy bug variconis)has become a serious prob(Leptocorrhiza lem (Abeysekera 1988). Insecticides also destroy delicate prey-predator relationships, leading to greater and secondary outbreaks of the target pest (Van den Bosch 1978). In the 1970s, the brown plant hopper (Nilaparvata lugens) became a major rice pest throughout Asia. It is endemic to Sri Lanka but had never been a serious problem before the introduction of diazanon. This pesticide was commonly used for combating the brown plant hopper despite evidence available to IRRI scientists at Los Banios that rice fields treated with diazanon had higher hopper infestation than untreated ones (Anderson et al. 1991). The problem was that diazanon also killed the natural enemies of the plant hopper, the most important being spiders. When outbreaks of plant disease occur, pesticide salesmen respond by recommending the use of larger doses, putting farmers on a pesticide treadmill.13 A survey of vegetable farmers in Sri Lanka revealed that the most important source of information regarding pesticides was private traders (Abeysekera 1988). It must be stressed that pesticide traders in rural Sri Lanka have received only a few years of formal education and they lack specialized technical information concerning the health hazards of the pesticides they sell. Thus improved rice in Sri Lanka is not simply a technique of increasing food production but represents the emergence of a mode of production that is destroying the productive base of subsistence. We have seen how scarcity is socially constructed at the ecological node of the nexus of the modern rice technology by not only degrading the productive base of subsistence but also by marginalizing lowcost techniques which allow the poor to harness 'value' created by nature. To return to my basic argument, alleviating poverty is not merely an economic matter of increasing income but, among other things, one of engaged ecological relations of the agricultural discourse/practices of Sri Lanka.

LakshmanYapa Social relations The primary social relations of agriculture in Sri Lanka involve questions of landownership. Contemporary land-use patterns of Sri Lanka show little change from the framework established in colonial times. According to the 1982 Sri Lanka agricultural census, agricultural land covers just over 31 per cent of the total land area, only slightly higher than the figure for 1962 (Survey Department of Sri Lanka 1988). Of the total area under agricultural holdings, about 40 per cent is devoted to tea, rubber and coconut, the major plantation crops. Paddy is grown on about 28 per cent of the area but the actual area cultivated in any one year is higher because of double-cropping. About 9 per cent of the land is under permanent crops, a category which includes land under home gardens, and around 10 per cent of the agricultural land is under temporary crops other than paddy, a category that includes the cultivation of cereals, legumes, yams, potatoes and vegetables (Department of Census and Statistics 1988). Numerically, Sri Lanka is a nation of small farmers (Department of Census and Statistics 1986). Over 73 per cent of the total agricultural area is in small holdings and the rest are in large holdings called estates. The total number of agricultural holdings in 1982 was 1 800 238, of which 99-5 per cent was under small holdings and 0.5 per cent was in estates (TableII). Holdings under 1 acre in extent made up 5-8 per cent of the land and 42 per cent of the total number of holdings; holdings under 2 acres comprised 14.8 per cent of the land and 63-5 per cent of the holdings. Over 10 per cent of the agricultural operators held no land at all while 38-4 per cent owned only home gardens. Thus nearly half of the agricultural operators belonged to a class that either owned a single plot (under 1/8 acre) or no land at all (Table III). The first major land reform in independent Sri Lanka was the Paddy Lands Act of 1958, which was designed to give security of tenure, particularly to share-croppers of paddy. Sponsored by the then marxist minister of agriculture in a coalition government with strong conservative landowning interests, the Act received little support during implementation. The next round of land reforms took place in the 1970s, under the left-ofcentre government of Sirima Bandaranaike, as a response to the insurrection of leftish youth in 1971 (Samaraweera 1982). The reforms took place in two stages: in the first stage, holdings of over 25 acres

The poverty discourse and the poor in Sri Lanka

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Table II Distribution of land holdings by size in Sri Lanka

Size class (acres) Under 1/2 1/2-<1 1-<2 2-<5 5-<10 10-<20 20-<50 50-<100 Over 100 Total Extent (acres) 91 091 186 432 484 328 1384 896 811 054 369 036 381 719 127 847 1040925 4877 358 Percentage area 2.0 3-8 9.0 28-4 16.6 7.6 7.8 2.6 21.3 100-0 No. of holdings 445 641 309 247 386 351 482 951 130 054 28 782 13 233 2033 1946 1800 236 Percentage holdings 24.8 17.2 21.5 26.8 7.2 1.6 0.7 0.1 0.1 100-0

Source:Department of Census and Statistics (1986)

Table III Ownership of land in Sri Lanka

Ownership class Not owning any land Owning home garden only Owning home garden and other land Owning other land only Total Source:Department of Census and Statistics (1986) Number of operators 197 591 690 271 556 605 349 772 1794 603 Percentage 11-0 38.4 31.0 19-4 100-0 Area owned Percentage

407 782 1662 218 909 885 2940 204

13-8 56.5 30.9 100-0

of paddy or 50 acres of other privately owned land were taken over by the state and vested under the authority of the Land Reform Commission. At the ceiling level of 25 acres only a little over 1 per cent of paddy lands was appropriated for distribution (see Table II). In 1975, plantations belonging to public companies were taken over and vested in the State Plantations Corporation and the Janatha Estate Development Board (Janavasama). Though some land was vested in collectives and cooperatives, this aspect of land reform was dispensed with after 1977 (Swan 1987). In sum, very few rural poor and plantation workers benefited from these measures. Less than 12 per cent of the area of appropriated plantations, in land of very marginal quality, was distributed to them. According to the 1982 census of agriculture, about 41 per cent of the 1 790 940 small holdings cultivated paddy in an area equal to 34 per cent of the land under small holdings (Department of Census and Statistics 1986). Soon, the plantations taken over by the state were running at a loss. Land relations in Sri Lanka are such that the rural poor have not been able to take advantage of

the new rice technology. As shown in the survey data from 1982, over 42 per cent of the holdings was less than 1 acre in extent (Table II), 34 per cent of agricultural operators had only a home garden and 11 per cent had no land at all (Table III). The land reform legislation of the early 1970s did not lead to a noticeable redistribution of land (Samaraweera 1982), nor did it lead to increased employment or production (NARESA 1991). The state still controls 80 per cent of land in Sri Lanka (Land Commission 1990) and the responsibility for land management is divided among 36 agencies within seven or more ministries (NARESA 1991). The diffusion of new rice technology was not accompanied by a programme to give the rural poor greater access to paddy land. In any event, it is clear that the needs of resource-poor farmers were not taken into account in the kind of rice technology developed.14

Cultural relationsand discoursesof modernization

Scarcity of food in Sri Lanka is also constructed through cultural relations. In the production

108 sphere, the continued belief in the backwardness of traditional agriculture prevented society from fully utilizing the food production potential of home gardens, highland plots, multiple cropping, indigenous knowledge and regenerative agriculture. In the consumption sphere, a strong preference for rice, and now an increasing reliance on imported wheat flour, are accompanied by neglect of a range of readily cultivable traditional foods. The unacknowledged history of constructed scarcity paralleling the celebrated 'success story' of the modernization of paddy rice cultivation in Sri Lanka has a subplot - a sort of 'non-history' of the benign neglect of traditional farming technology. As mentioned earlier, the traditional peasant farm in Sri Lanka consisted of three production units: the paddy field, the home garden of permanent tree crops and vegetables, and a highland plot with food crops such as finger millet and manioc (Manihot esculentus). Several varieties of paddy were grown, usually twice a year (Yala and Maha seasons). After the paddy harvest, fields were left fallow or cash crops such as betel leaves or vegetables were grown. Animals (buffaloes) were used in ploughing and threshing, and their dung was returned to the fields. The small plots of the home gardens were micro-simulations of the ecological principles of the tropical forest. A large number of food, medicinal and ornamental plants were grown. The gardens also yielded fodder for the animals, fuel for cooking and materials for building. Additional food was provided by backyard chickens, a cow and an occasional pig or goat. The animals gave valuable manure that was returned to the soil (Everett 1987). The highland plots which grew temporary crops also had a high crop mix (though not as high as in the home garden). In the less densely populated part of the island, the highland plot was part of a cycle of shifting cultivation. As elsewhere in the third world, the official agricultural discourse did not hold traditional farming technology in high regard, an attitude consistent with the representation of peasants in the dominant academic model of the dual economy. The peasant economy in Sri Lanka suffered at the hands of academics in at least two ways. First, beginning with colonial science, the plantation crops received a great deal of attention and resources; peasant crops received little patronage. Contemporary perceptions of these two systems - one as modern and the other as backward -

LakshmanYapa how resources and research were allocated ignore to them in the past. Secondly, the presumed backwardness of peasant farming methods was not based on evidence; it was an expression of a value system that judged the worth of agriculture by the size of the marketable surplus produced. The governing principle of traditional peasant farming is the use of 'internal resources' provided by the regenerative power of nature and culture at a place (Harwood 1983; Rodale 1983; Shiva 1991). Multiple cropping allows an optimal use of space, time, sunlight, water, soil nutrients, family labour and management of risk. Francis (1986) has described the following advantages of interplanting: genetic diversity; diversity in insects associated with complex prey-predator relationships; internal supply of plant nutrients; protection of the organic content of the soil by continuous vegetation cover which reduces soil erosion and conserves rainwater whilst plant root systems tap into different layers of the soil profile for nutrients and water; good use of light and water throughout the year; and low risk of complete crop loss in a given year. These characteristics of multiple-cropping are enhanced by the incorporation of farm animals such as chickens, ducks, cattle, goats and pigs. Agricultural waste is an important source of nutrients and fodder in multiple cropping which also reduces the incidence of pests and weeds (Altieri and Liebman 1986). Total yields per hectare of multiple cropping systems are often higher than monocrop yields (Bray 1994). This attribute, called 'overyielding', is measured by the land equivalent ratio (LER)which expresses the monoculture land area required to produce the same amount as 1 ha of multiple crops using the same plant population. If the LER is greater than one, the polyculture overyields (Altieri 1987). Traditional farming systems are also more energy efficient than fossil fuel based modern systems, having energy output/input ratios in the range of 10 to 15, whereas modern systems typically exhibit ratios of 1 to 3 (Pimentel and Pimentel 1979). The energy efficiencies of a rice growing system in the village of Wangala, south India, before and after the green revolution were 7.14 and 4-7, respectively (Bayliss-Smith 1984). The food balance sheets of Sri Lanka contain statistics on the amount of calories derived from different commodities consumed. Between 1961 and 1991 the average calorie consumption increased at a modest rate of 0-2 per cent. In

The poverty discourse and the poor in Sri Lanka

109

general, over three-quarters of the total calories come from four commodities: rice, wheat flour, sugar and coconut (FAO 1993). Rice occupies a dominant place in the Sri Lankan diet: a little under 40 per cent of all daily calories is obtained from this source. It is not uncommon for those who can afford it to eat three meals of rice every day. The heavy emphasis on, and investment in, growing new varieties of rice were driven by a desire for the country to become self-sufficient in rice. But the lack of self-sufficiency is not simply a matter of insufficient supply; it is also related to demand. The matter of self-sufficiency in rice can be posed as a question of why the demand is what it is. Brohier (1975, 163) has argued that Surelythen,to put firstthingsfirst,it does seem certain
that a campaign fostering the slogan Eat Less Rice,

Table IV Sources of calorie intake of the average diet in Sri Lanka, 1987
Commodity Rice Wheat flour Other cereals Roots/tubers Sugar Coconuts Pulses Fruits and vegetables Meat, fish and eggs Milk Oils and fats Total Caloriesper day 903 279 13 99 272 315 53 101 69 62 91 2267 Percentage 39-8 12.3 0.5 4.3 11-9 13.9 2.3 4.4 3.0 2.7 4.0 100.0

Source:Department of Census and Statistics (1988)

should find a place concurrently with a campaignto

GrowMore Food, and that as a preliminary step in that

direction something should be done to adjust that in which has promotedimbalance the present-day diet of the people. Only about 0-5 per cent of total calories come from cereals other than rice. The production of maize in 1990 was double that in 1970 but the total quantity is small. The production of finger millet in (kurakkan) 1990 was less than half that of 1970. A nutritious crop such as kurakkan, which is droughtresistant and widely grown in chena plots, is considered by middle and upper class Sri Lankans to be an inferior food. A little over 4 per cent of the calories comes from the consumption of roots and tubers, primarily potatoes, manioc (cassava) and sweet potatoes (Table IV). As income grows, families increase their consumption of potatoes while that of manioc and sweet potatoes is reduced (Central Bank of Sri Lanka 1985). This is consistent with the cultural perception of manioc and sweet potato as poor people's food. In the period 196191, calories derived from the consumption of roots and yams declined at the rate of 0-5 per cent (FAO and breadfruit 1993). Jak (Artocarpusheterophyllus) altilis), important sources of carbo(Artocarpus hydrates, are commonly grown in home gardens but the annual food balance sheets compiled by the Department of Census and Statistics do not even mention these items. The leaves of the jak tree are also excellent sources of fodder for animals. Perceived as lower class, the consumption of these foods declines with increasing income (Central Bank of Sri Lanka 1985). There is no organized

61

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Figure 9 Wheat imports by quantity and value, 1961-91 effort to encourage the production or consumption of jak fruit, jak seed and breadfruit. Only a little over 2 per cent of the total food calories is derived from pulses (Table IV). This is quite unfortunate because pulses can be an important source of inexpensive protein. Pulses are quite popular among all classes of Sri Lankan society but the total quantity consumed is small and the calories derived from pulses has been declining at the rate 1-1 per cent per year. On the other hand, over 12 per cent of calories is obtained from imported wheat flour consumed in the form of bakery bread. The calorie intake from this source has been increasing at 2 per cent per year, the fastest rate of growth for any item in the Sri Lankan diet (Figs 9 and 10). According to FAO (1993) statistics between 1961 and 1991, Sri Lanka spent over US$2-7 billion on imported wheat. Unfortunately, the largest

110
450 l 400 - A 350300 1

Index of Per Capita Kilocalorie ConsumptionI

----Total ---From wheat ?....... From Rice . F.aL./ r r-/ \

e
E 0 s

250 200 150 100 / '' n ].-.......... .l.--.*t . . !..."--E .. ..... ,..?..!.

n~'

.R?

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Figure 10 Index of kilocalories from wheat and rice in the average diet, 1961-91
(1961 =100)

consumers of imported wheat flour and bread were among the poorest in Sri Lanka, many living in rural areas (Central Bank of Sri Lanka 1985). In summary, the alleviation of poverty is not a matter of increasing income alone. The deprivation that people experience in food has been culturally constructed by modern attitudes towards 'traditional agriculture' and class-bias in the patterns of food preferences. Thus the cultural node in the nexus provides a site for the creative engagement of the social forces that create such scarcity. Political relations By 'political relations of production', I refer primarily to interactions between the state and society in the organization of economic activity. In Sri Lanka, the postcolonial state has come to play an allpervasive role in civil society through its command over the development project, resource allocation, jobs and patronage. We have already seen the major role of the state in the discourse/practice of modern agriculture. There are several ways in which the state and political relations of modern agriculture are implicated in the creation of scarcity. First, the research, technological and commercial relations of modern rice farming in Sri Lanka that we have examined are primarily a product of state policy. Secondly, the state has assumed the role of, and encouraged the public to perceive it as, the principal agent in the solution of the poverty problem. Thirdly, by essentializing poverty as an economic problem that can be solved through policy prescriptions, the state has helped to conceal the numerous sites at which scarcity is created and thus disabled the agency of members of civil

LakshmanYapa from exercising their substantive power at society these sites. If it is true that development is deeply implicated in the social construction of scarcity, it follows that the state as an agent of development is, by virtue of that role, at the same time a causative agent in the creation of scarcity. So it is ironic that the poor have come to look to the state as a way out of their poverty. Drawing on Foucault's (1980, 1990) critique, conventional notions of power - which focus on the state, repressive institutions, class and powerful individuals - are not helpful to the resolution of the poverty problem. Agents of change act not through a general exercise of power but by exerting their will in substantive networks related to issues of food, nutrition, housing, education, transport, culture, geographical location and so on. I have identified several sites at which power can be creatively exercised in the discourse/practice of food and agriculture in Sri Lanka. There are many points of engagement and it is not helpful to reduce that plurality to a single abstract struggle against the state. Moreover, each substantive theme in society is informed by powerful discourses such as 'good nutrition' and 'scientific agriculture'. Power that will serve the resolution of the poverty problem must have the ability to counter the power of scarcity-constructing discourses that circulate throughout society; a sovereign notion of power could not serve that end.15 How academic relations construct scarcity The task of understanding the links between academic relations and scarcity is somewhat difficult because the poverty discourse conceals its own role in the social construction of scarcity. I shall make this argument by recognizing two kinds of academic relations: internal and external. Internal relations arise from the self-image science has of itself; an image that has been passed on to the discourse on poverty and development. Science views itself as value-free, neutral and nonpolitical (Proctor 1991). Science has the power to name and define a problem. It gathers data, tests hypotheses and helps to frame policy to solve the problem. Scientists believe that science is located outside the problem; it is an observer, a facilitator and a problem-solver. The concept of the poverty sector is a classic example of this subject/object dualism of social science. Social science speaks of a poverty problem - a problem that exists among

The poverty discourseand the poor in Sri Lanka poor people. Criteria for measuring poverty are given, data are collected, the nature of poverty is analysed and, finally, development proposes policy to solve the problem (Central Bank of Sri Lanka 1987; World Bank 1990). According to this logic, the problem resides in the external material world and poverty policy can frame the solution. From that perspective, the notion that the subject is part of the problem becomes puzzling and inconsistent with science's self-image. External academic relations refer to discourses that are produced at substantive sites - technology, political economy, culture, politics and nature. These give rise to what I have called the technical, social, cultural, political and ecological relations of production. For example, plant breeders at IRRI in Sri Lanka chose to develop a technological trajectory that included hybrid seeds, inorganic fertilizer, chemical pesticides and irrigation. They chose not to focus on organic fertilizer, nonchemical methods of pest control, strengthening rain-fed crops, multiple cropping systems and home gardens. How did the plant breeders make these decisions and why? Here is a part of the answer: the plant breeder's science functions in a series of enabling texts that formulates social theory of the economy, culture and nature - the external academic relations. For example, plant breeders responded to a given set task - that of increasing yields. The plant breeder has been academically socialized by the economist to believe that labour-intensive is backward and capitalintensive is modern; that progress is measured by the size of market transactions; and large scale is more efficient (Levins 1986). Enabling texts in economics also helped to exclude questions of access to land or the development of technology that considered land relations. Cultural texts provided the view of peasants as traditional society; consequently, multiple cropping and folk knowledge were seen as backward. Theories of nature provided additional authority; since the yield of plants was the primary objective, all other aspects of nature - water, soil, plants and insects - must be manipulated, dominated and controlled to gain the desired objective (Merchant 1983). There is a third aspect to academic relations involving both internal and external relations that have helped in the social construction of scarcity. By reifying poverty as an economic problem amenable to policy solution, and by equating power with conventional politics, social science robbed

111 members of civil society of their power of agency to overcome scarcity by acting at numerous substantive sites diffused throughout society.

Conclusions First, a brief comment on looking for root causes. Poverty does have multiple causes but is it not the very point of social science to separate the important from the less important? The nexus of relations offers no means by which 'causes' can be arranged in some logical order of importance. In my view the social science preoccupation with finding root causes is part of the problem. If some causes are more important than others, we need to ask 'important to whom?' For example, consider the case where scholars privilege social relations of production in their analysis. Accordingly, they may argue that in a poor agricultural country like Sri Lanka, land reform is more important than other factors. If that is so, then the state, as the sole source of power to carry out land reform, automatically becomes the most important agent in the poverty problem. Next, consider a nutritionist who wishes to make a contribution to alleviating hunger in Sri Lanka by promoting the consumption of inexpensive, indigenous foods. By what logic do we judge land reform to be more important than changes in habits of food consumption? Is there a logic of 'causation' that is more important than the logic of 'agency'? I think not. Assume for a moment that the nutritionist in our example has no power of agency over land reform but does have knowledge, interest and power in the area of food consumption. The nutritionist does not need to wait until land reform is completed to carry out his or her work. This is because there is no logical basis to say that land reform is more important than changes in habits of food consumption. These two examples come from incommensurable processes. There is no standard or metanarrative logic of poverty that can help us arbitrate on the relative importance of this or that cause, or help us find root causes. The general discourse on poverty, particularly those of the Central Bank in Sri Lanka and the World Bank in Washington, posit the existence of a poverty sector in the economy. The economistic approach defines this sector using an income criterion and proposes economic growth, jobs and higher income as a solution to the problem.

112 Following that approach, the Central Bank in Sri Lanka defined absolute poverty as not having enough income to buy the minimum required in intake of food calories. However, instead of seeing the problem as one of inadequate income, I asked a substantive question in this paper: why are the poor in Sri Lanka unable to obtain the minimum level of required food? What we found was that the scarcity of food was socially constructed at each node of a nexus of production relations diffused through the larger society. Such a view has several advantages: it helps us see the connection between development and constructed scarcity; it shows how dissocially course has served to conceal the history of this scarcity; going beyond income, it reveals myriad ways - technical, social, cultural, ecological, political and academic - of addressing issues of scarcity; numerous sites of action takes us identifying beyond poverty experts to marshall different kinds of agents; and, by moving away from a single great locus of action, we strengthen civil society at numerous substantive sites and de-emphasize the role of sovereign power. These arguments are not just unique to food; a resolution of the poverty question in Sri Lanka requires sustained critical engagement 'on the ground' in other areas such as energy, housing, transport and health care, but that takes us back to discourse. The task of building social theory to aid the poor must necessarily begin with a critical engagement of the existing discourse that is part of the problem. 7

10

Notes
1 2 3 See Anand and Kanbur (1995); Gunatilleke et al. (1992); Isenman (1980); Sahn (1987); and Sen (1981). See Anand and Kanbur (1995); Isenman (1986); Pyatt (1986); and Sen (1995). Even today over 80 per cent of the land in Sri Lanka is under some form of state control (Land Commission 1990). Though both governors Ward and Gregory paid attention to the restoration of ancient irrigation works to serve the paddy economy, colonial policy as a whole had little interest in continuing such efforts (Bandarage 1983; De Silva 1981). A discussion of the reasons for these policies would take us beyond the scope of this paper. A good explanation appears in Moore (1989). While these policies served the ideological interests of upper class Sinhalese and the material interests of some Sinhalese peasant families, they did much to alienate large segments of the Tamil population.

11

12 13

Lakshman Yapa Between 1961 and 1991 the value of agricultural inputs (fertilizer, pesticides and machinery) grew at a rate of 6 per cent; total agricultural output grew at a modest 1-5 per cent and agricultural output per capita declined at a rate of -0-3 per cent. The corresponding statistics for total food output was 2.1 per cent and food output per capita was 0-4 per cent (FAO 1993). A related story is the cost of the state-owned fertilizer factory at Sapugaskanda about 5 miles from Colombo designed to use naphtha (a byproduct of the Petroleum Corporation's oil refinery) as feedstock for the manufacture of urea. The plant was commissioned in the late 1980s at an estimated initial capital cost of Rs2800 million. Plagued with cost overruns and mechanical breakdowns, the plant was commonly referred to as 'Sri Lanka's biggest white elephant'. With the high price of naphtha and falling prices of urea on the international market, the plant was closed in 1985 after recurrent annual losses and finally sold for scrap. See FAO (1977); National Research Council (1989); Palm and Sandell (1989); Ulluwishewa (1991); and Wolf (1977). The National Engineering Research and Development Centre in Sri Lanka is a small underfunded research institute located a few miles north of Colombo. Among other projects, the engineers at the centre have developed a biogas technology called the DryBatch system which overcomes some of the disadvantages of the Chinese and Indian versions of biogas systems. According to their literature, a single acre of paddy produces enough straw which, when digested by the DryBatch system, is sufficient to fertilize an acre of paddy. In addition, the straw will produce biogas that can be used as a fuel for heating and lighting. Lack of interest in such alternatives is so pervasive that I was unable to obtain any information about the system from the National Fertilizer Secretariat in Colombo, a state agency which was established in 1979 with FAO and German aid to coordinate fertilizer policy in Sri Lanka. A perusal of the annual reports and databases maintained by the Secretariat makes it clear that their primary mission is the promotion of chemical fertilizer in Sri Lanka. See Bull (1982); Dover (1985); Miller (1992); National Research Council (1989); Ulluwishewa (1992); Van den Bosch (1978); and Wolf (1977). See Abeysekera (1988); Cochrane (1993); Merrill (1976); and Shiva (1991). Despite a ten-fold increase in the use of insecticides in the US, since the 1940s crop losses to insects have nearly doubled from 7-1 to 13 per cent. The estimated environmental and health costs range from

The poverty discourse and the poor in Sri Lanka US$4 to 10 billion a year (Miller 1992; Pimentel and Levitan 1986). I have not found similar calculations made for Sri Lanka. 14 For a similar history of green revolution research in Mexico, see Hewitt de Alcantara (1976) and Jennings (1988). For a discussion of the institutional history of IRRI in the context of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation, see Anderson et al. (1991). 15 A much longer version of this argument appears in Yapa (1996a).

113

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