Producing entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka's post-tsunami economy: re-thinking the relationships between aid, knowledge and power

Abstract

This article analyzes the construction and operation of the discourse and accompanying practices of entrepreneur development after the Asian tsunami of 26 December 2004 in Sri Lanka. Entrepreneur development formed the core of aid agencies' strategies to rehabilitate livelihoods after the tsunami. Based on a year-long research project in 2005 that included ethnographic and survey components, I analyze the process through which aid agencies converged on entrepreneur development as the answer to livelihoods rehabilitation, an approach that failed to produce a corresponding reduction in poverty and economic insecurity. I also study the reasons why poor people and the rural social movement Sarvodaya embraced this discourse. I argue that while entrepreneurship was perceived by aid groups to be a way out of poverty, poor people and Sarvodaya embraced it because they perceived self-employment as a path out of relations of patronage, and as an opportunity for building self-reliance. These differing rationales generated considerable challenges for Sarvodaya, as they attempted to work with larger aid groups. I conclude that aid agencies do exercise considerable power in the context of disasters, yet their discourses have staying power only in so far as they articulate with other processes shaping people's lives, livelihoods and ambitions.

Keywords:

• tsunami
• disasters
• Sri Lanka

Notes

While I spoke and understood some conversational Sinhala, I relied heavily on my field assistant for precise translations of conversations and discussions.

In my analysis, I sometimes compare income data with the poverty line, even though the poverty line is measured in terms of per capita consumption expenditure, as opposed to income (which is what my data is based on). Still, I refer to households who live below a per capita monthly income of Rs. 1800 in 2004 (2004 US$18) – the poverty line for Sri Lanka at the time of the tsunami – as ‘poor’ because it provides a nationally established reference point. According to the Department of Census and Statistics (2005), the estimated poverty line for the year 2002 (the year of the most recent National Census) was Rs. 1423/capita/month. However, in a presentation at a tsunami aid coordination meeting organized by the Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies on 21 November 2005, Dr. Nanayakara, Director General of the Department of Census and Statistics reported the poverty line for 2005, adjusted for inflation and other factors, to be Rs. 1800/capita/month; this is the figure that I work with. In 2004, 23% of the Sri Lankan population lived below the poverty line (Department of Census and Statistics 2004, 95).>

When pressed for more details, people did acknowledge that ‘connections’ were less important for jobs in some sectors like the garments industry, as compared with others, but wages in the garments sector were perceived by my informants to be very low, even lower than what one would make as a housemaid in a wealthy household. Men especially would not dream of working in this occupation that was universally seen as ‘women's work.’