Godfrey Gunatilleke, being the final chapter entitled “Hindsight and Retrospect – A Brief Commentary” in a new book Towards a Sri Lankan Model of Development, 2017 Marga Institute, ISBN 978-955-582-134-6 ….publications@margasrilanka.org
Introduction
“History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors” This line from Eliot’s Gerontion is a good starting point to begin reflecting on Sri Lanka’s development after independence . Retracing the development path that Sri Lanka took and pausing at every twist and turn to ask “What if we took another turn?” is always a fascinating exercise . How useful it is in guiding us in our future actions is another matter. There are always lessons to be drawn from the successes and failures of the past. But when this is done we need to recognize the inherent limitations of an effort to learn from the past and project past trends to the future. Eliot as a poet and Schumpeter as an economist found knowledge derived from past experience to be of limited worth in predicting how the future would unfold and enabling us to take control of it. Eliot pointed out that the past imposes a pattern and can falsify one’s vision of the emerging future as “the pattern is new in every moment and every moment is a shocking valuation of all that we have been” Schumpeter perceived how innovations and discoveries which were not foreseen led to historic and fundamental changes and based his model of growth on the “creative destruction”of the past . Their insights about the “unpredictability” of the future has important implications and challenges for development policy and planning. Continue reading
