Ranjith Senaratne, courtesy of The Island, 10 June 2015, http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=126212
“All reasonable men adapt themselves to the world. Only a few unreasonable ones persist in trying to adapt the world to themselves. All progress in the world depends on these unreasonable men and their innovative and often non-conformist action”. George Bernard Shaw.
During the last presidential election, among the political parties and pressure groups, professionals and intellectuals made an impact in changing and moulding public thinking and swaying public opinion, which resulted in a regime change. An important feature in this scenario was that the public accorded hearing and recognition to what the intellectuals said. This healthy, emerging trend has to be managed properly for the benefit of the country and its people, without allowing it be exploited for narrow political and personal ends. In the current political context, the public has only scant regard for the most of politicians because of their misdeeds, misconduct and/or poor educational./professional background. In my previous article titled “Civic Responsibilities and Moral Obligation of Intellectuals and Professionals in National Development” in the Island on the 21st / 22nd April, 2015, it was clearly shown that the proportion of ministers in our cabinet with a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent qualification is much less than that even in Pakistan, India and Uganda. The situation could be still worse when it comes to our parliament. This is in spite of the fact that Sri Lanka possesses a much higher literacy rate than those countries, which is truly ironic.
