Education as the leading edge in rebuilding

An engineering faculty for Jaffna

Singapore and Jaffna, starved of oil, minerals and natural resources, are societies that survived, nay prospered, by exploiting their wits. For many reasons, not the least of which was incomparably superior opportunities, Singapore’s development was more rounded and went on to become iconic. Be that as it may, Jaffna prided itself on educational achievements, the Jaffna man supplement his reputation as a skinflint and murunga muncher by the best attainments of any local community in passing examinations, high literacy and populating the learned professions. In this scenario what did national unity consist of? In large measure it was those material factors that bind far flung portions of a country together. Nation states emerged in Europe when a unified national market was created for circulation of the commodities created by revolutionary new capitalist production processes. The American Civil War was less about abolishing slavery and more about saving the Union - Lincoln was perfectly frank about it. In modern Sri Lankan parlance he would have said: ‘Preserving national unity from Confederate Eelamists.’
The material basis of Ceylonese national unity in British colonial times and in the immediate post British independence period in so far as the Jaffna Tamils were concerned was twofold; first employment opportunities in the South in the professions and government and to a lesser extent the chance to set up businesses, and secondly, and much later, the opening of a market for Northern agricultural products in the prosperous South. If you abstract from the political and language issues and focus on the material ones, national unity for the Tamils was hollow, empty, once these two links were snapped. Enter Prabhakaran!

Engineering in Jaffna University

It is not this political line of thinking that I will pursue today; rather I wish to advance the proposition that strong, modernised educational opportunities must be the centrepiece for reconstruction and rebuilding Jaffna (by Jaffna, throughout this article except where otherwise obvious, I mean the Tamil homelands in the North and East). In the next section I will explain the rationale for education as the leading edge, but first I will press on with engineering.
The foundation stone for an engineering faculty at the Jaffna University (JU) was laid in 1995 but nothing happened thereafter, nothing could in the circumstances. (The University did undertake some internal planning). Much earlier - in the mid-1970s - a committee was appointed under the chairmanship of Alagiah Thurairajah, then at Peradeniya, to examine the feasibility of an engineering faculty by the JU. It made a positive recommendation, selected Kilinochchi as the location, identified the disciplines and outlined the structure. Our (Prathab Sivapragasapillai and I were the other members) recommendations were accepted by the University Senate; I am not sure of the date.
A new Feasibility and Planning study has to be undertaken now. In a sense it is a continuation of the Thurairajah Committee’s efforts and existing internal JU plans, but in a more important way it has to be a fresh beginning. Our 1970s findings have little relevance any longer for a whole slew of reasons, the most important of which is that technology has undergone revolutionary transformations in the intervening 30 years. I need only to mention a few terms like information technology, knowledge based industry and society, medical robotics and alternative energy, to give you a flavour of the sorts of things a spanking new engineering school must bear in mind right from its start date. [Make no mistake, I swear by a sound pedagogic foundation in fundamental science and mathematics in the early stages of an engineering degree; but that’s a matter of curriculum design].
There are two other reasons why a fresh study must be undertaken; globalisation and location. At the time of our study 30 years ago globalisation was as little on the horizon as the personal computer or the Internet. Now the world is so closely networked in economic and technical ways that the departments and courses recommended at that time have only limited relevance. And as for location; Kilinochchi and the North has seen so much history and tragedy that location, transport facilities, industrial liaison and student recruitment have to the reconsidered from square one.

From the grassroots

An engineering school is the topping on the cake, technical education as a whole must be expanded and modernised. The foundation for everything is renewing the excellence of schools. The pressure must come from the grassroots - young people, school teachers, JU itself, that is, the broad community. Tamil parliamentarians should voice their support but must keep their fingers out of politicking the issue. Politicking will be certain death because no scholar worth his/her salt will touch it if Sampie or Dougie hijack the issue. Revitalising education in Tamil areas is an undertaking for which support can be found in the Lankan diaspora (observe I do not say only Tamil diaspora) and among scholars of Lankan origin in many countries. If the movement starts at home, and if it is apolitical, support will flood in.
I have heard many Tamils say after the war “Give us the opportunity and a few resources and we will do the rest ourselves”. This reflective and introspective turn of mind is natural; the wounds of war are still fresh; hence also my emphasis on grassroots involvement. Muthukrishna Sarvananthan, according to B.K. Balachandran in the Indian Express of 22 April, has accused the government for adopting a diametrically opposite approach to what I have advocated. Sarvi says the government is trying to hog all the economic action and cut the Tamil community out. From running a boutique to transport services the military is acquiring a monopoly of business he says.
Education, especially at the tertiary level in universities and advanced institutes is an area which bureaucrats and politicians can meddle with least nor abuse with unchallenged impunity. Apart from being an opening into the future and a window into a globalised world, this is another reason for emphasising education and higher technical education in the Tamil heartlands.