A Final Educational Fling – 12. Two trips to Orissa

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Bhubaneswar, books, buddhist monasteries, careers skills, Chandbali, Chilika Lake, English, India, Jaganath Temple, Khandagiri, Konarak, NVQ, profiteering, Ratnagiri, rent seeking, Sikkim, soft skills, Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission, TVEC, Udayagiri, vocational training

but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done

By October 2015, having come back from Sikkim, I had broken the back of the task I had set myself, and a couple of books were ready to go to press. I therefore had some time on my hands when I was approached about helping Mahinda Samarasinghe at his Ministry. I agreed to do so on condition that it would be part time work, and he thereupon had me appointed Chairman of the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission. I had told him that that might make him unpopular with the Prime Minister, but he said the appointment was in the hands of the President, who had been positive about the idea.

I started work in November and set the ball rolling with regard to what had been his principal priority, the introduction of compulsory English and Soft Skills modules on all Vocational Training Courses conducted under the aegis of the TVEC. In addition we developed an NVQ Level 1 Building Career Skills Course, which was an extended version of the Career Skills module for NVQ Level 3 courses.

Before we started training for this however I went abroad again, for I was still determined that part time meant part time, and I should not be tied down by the position or the work. This trip was also to India, where Aide et Action was having its South Asia Advisory Board meeting in Bhubaneswar.

A Final Educational Fling – 10. A Plethora of Publications

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books, Darjeeling, Education, Gangtok, Jaldhapara, Kalimpong, Maithripala Sirisena, Pelling, Sikkim, State Minister

but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done

I had lots of work after deciding to support Maithripala Sirisena’s candidacy, and then after he won and I was made a State Minister. And even after I resigned there was much to do, culminating in working for a UPFA victory at the August 2015 election, as I thought the President wanted. But both the UPFA and I – and in the end the President too – fell victim to the infighting within the SLFP. Extreme elements on both sides destroyed the compromise between him and the former President that I believe he had wanted when he gave the latter UPFA nomination for the election.

So he found himself with a government in which the UNP had a majority, and used its power for more sophisticated corruption than he had originally objected to under the Rajapaksa regime. And he also found it with no clue as to how to run the economy, plunging into greater debt than had been objected to previously, and at higher interest rates.

What went wrong in 2015 is however the substance of the last section of the Endgame series I am also writing. Here I am concerned only with what I might term the personal fulfillment I turned to when I found myself no longer in Parliament. A man must after all have an occupation, and since I do not smoke, and since I did not think I wanted to resume regular work, I decided to take up writing in a serious way.

I was helped to this decision by Ariyawansa Ranaweera, one of the poets I had published in ‘Mirrored Images’, the anthology of English and Sinhala and Tamil poetry from Sri Lanka that I had put together for the National Book Trust of India. I had arranged readings of the poetry at the launch in Colombo, and then at the various other launches that were arranged in cultural centres round the country, including at several universities.