The Boring Apocalypse

In 1789, revolutionaries stormed the Bastille in France; even though it had only a handful of inmates at the time, it was a symbol of power and corruption. That iconic moment changed the course of France, and, one would argue, much of civilisation.

On 9 July, something very similar happened in Sri Lanka. The scene is GotaGoGama; a tent-village of permanent protest, complete with its own library and solar power, manned by hard-bitten protestors who had expected to remain there until then-President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa resigned. After more than 600 instances of protests across the country, a massive crowd gathered around GotaGoGama once more. I myself cycled for miles alongside protestors, some of whom walked, some of whom cycled, hooting at military checkpoints, and others who literally drove their families in tractors; thousands converged in both frustration and immense anger under the baking sun.

And on that day, the dam broke. Protestors stormed the Presidential Secretariat, took over the official residence of the President, and broke into Temple Trees, the slightly-more-famous residence of the Prime Minister. As with the flashpoint of the French Revolution, these halls had become symbols of a corrupt and incompetent dynasty. I found myself in what can only be described as a Bastille moment.

The only thing warring with glee was astonishment that the military had not opened fire on the entire crowd. There was a price paid – in tear gas at Colombo Fort, in batons and bruises at Temple Trees – but little else. The next day, the three sites were thrown open to the public; Temple Trees became a community kitchen. Both the Prime Minister and the President resigned, the latter fleeing the country to Maldives, then Singapore.

To many in Sri Lanka, this was justice. To many, it was the end of the protest movement. Many that I spoke to expected that things would return to normal. Sri Lanka’s problems had literally been chased away; there would be fuel in petrol sheds; there would be electricity at all times; there would be elections.

But this is just wishful thinking. There is a phrase in some policy circles called “the boring apocalypse”. This is the situation that Sri Lanka finds itself in. Politically, the country is moving faster than a speeding bullet; one week a revolution, next week a new President, and this week the revolutionaries are being hauled off and put in jail.

Practically, life for most and has become an endless, ad hoc game of patience and suffering with no real reward. Is there fuel? Sometimes. Every day, fuel queues stretch for kilometres along roads, with many waiting night and day. Can people get to work? Sometimes, if they’re lucky enough to get fuel. Rows of shuttered shops and small businesses are the background furniture of our cities. Is there bread? Are there vegetables? Are there medicines for the more complicated maladies? Again, sometimes. Depends on fuel, depends on how lucky you are in your supply chain, and your choice of black market dealers.

This is a boring apocalypse. We are in the middle of systemic collapse, and unlike politicians, systems don’t just run away.

How did it get here? Let’s start with the politics.

It starts with the end of the Sri Lankan civil war. Mahinda Rajapaksa, President since 2005, reigned triumphant; it would not be too far out to accord him a status closer to a god-king than a president. His brother, Gotabaya, is the Secretary of Defence, positioned as both war hero and terrifying war criminal; another brother, Basil, is the Minister for Economic Development; various sons, in-laws, nephews, nieces and sycophants appointed to practically every ministry of note. The Rajapaksa family controls some 70 per cent of government expenditure; the government is often called the “sahodara samaagama” – literally, an enterprise of brothers.

The Rajapaksa family begins an ambitious plan of infrastructure development. Allegations of corruption abound, but to no avail – highways, theatres, urban refits, an airport in a jungle, even a tower shaped like the Rajapaksa party’s symbol: money comes into the country in the form of debt, and money goes out to these grand monuments. Money is printed; supposedly for war and reconciliation, but in reality, to keep a bloated government running. The rupee falls against the dollar. When Rajapaksa leaves the Presidential post, he leaves behind an economy fuelled by debt; supposedly self-sufficient in agriculture, but far from it, in reality.

Unfortunately, the government that succeeds him proves incompetent. Wallowing in debt, it fronts a bungling President, botches the national response to the horrific Easter Sunday bombings, and ultimately collapses.

And this is how we get Gotabaya Rajapaksa. He rises to power on four things: firstly, the political platform and dynasty built by Mahinda; secondly, his appeal to the Sinhala Buddhist majority of Sri Lanka, who see in him the shadow of the mythical Buddhist warrior-king. And third, his promises of technocracy and a fanbase of “professionals” – various captains of industry who see themselves leading the charge to make Sri Lanka better along various ambiguous axes. Last, but not least, the complete lack of an opposition.

Gotabaya does two things. First, he begins slashing taxes left and right. After all, he has promises to keep and a voter base to pacify. Meanwhile, he lies about debt, complaining about having to pay off what the previous government borrowed. The reality is that creditors have come calling; Sri Lanka owes a little over a billion dollars a year in payments, all the way until 2030. Gotabaya is borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

Not only that, he manages to completely bungle the Covid-19 disaster response, imposing futile lockdowns without setting the necessary processes in place for vaccine procurement and throwing the Army – his favourite tool – into the task of handling healthcare. Soldiers with T-56s begin to haunt the streets again, as if one could shoot a virus. Money donated by the public to aid the needy – two billion rupees of it – lies untouched at the Presidential Secretariat while the Ministry of Health desperately tries to handle a pandemic.

At the same time, he brings into power Ajith Nirvard Cabraal as the Governor of the Central Bank. Cabraal is a worthy contender for the title of the Most Hated Man in Sri Lanka. With both incredible arrogance and what appears to be a kindergarten understanding of economics, Cabraal kicks the money printers into full swing. He borrows from Modern Monetary Theory terminology to claim that such printing does not cause inflation, and publicly dismisses anyone concerned about the falling value of the rupee. He pegs the rupee to a specific USD value, forcing the Treasury to lose foreign reserves just to support his rhetoric; and he sits back and starts cutting down expenses. But not expenses like the military, which at this point is the size of Ukraine’s and consumes close to half of all government spending. No, what he cuts is fuel and fertiliser imports.

There’s a piece of misinformation making the rounds about how Sri Lanka’s sudden push for organic fertiliser was the work of some “green elites” or the type of liberal policymakers who want fresh kale from their garden. Not at all: this was economic mismanagement. The arguments that were spread to soften the blow spoke of Sri Lanka’s heritage of being agriculturally self-sufficient – which itself is a lie; this country has been importing wheat, milled rice and other critical products since Independence. Arguments that the country can sustain its current population on organic agriculture alone were less rooted in civil society thinking and more in impossible numbers from ancient texts such as the Pujaveliya and Nikaya Sangrahaya: these mytho-histories, which described eleventh century Sri Lanka fielding an impossible army of 1.2 million, were a false heritage to lie on.

The truth is we needed money and Gotabaya decided that this was the easiest way to cut $400 million in import spending. The accountant subtracts, carries over.

This is the moment where you realise the train wreck that is about to happen. In a few strokes of the pen, Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s government has set the various interlocking systems within the country spiralling. Transport, electricity, agriculture; the crash is coming. At every point where a course correction could be made, he refuses. Proposals to delay payment and renegotiate with creditors are turned down, as are proposals to call for IMF assistance.

And in March 2022, ships containing fuel for the national electricity grid begin to anchor off the coast, sceptical that the government has enough money to pay. Heavily indebted state-run bodies begin to crumble. We begin losing electricity for six, seven, eight, twelve hours at a time. Businesses begin to collapse. Bereft of fertiliser, harvests begin to fail.

Imagine Captain Ahab deliberately steering for a pile of rocks, convinced they are a whale. This is essentially Sri Lanka since the end of the war. Gotabaya’s hand on the tiller locked the course, sending this ship firmly aground. And of course, the captain fled.

Of course, this is painting with the broadest of brushes. We have ignored the history of racism and exclusion that led us here. We have ignored the relentless use of the military to intimidate and harass dissent against the government. We have ignored the idiotic mytho-history that policymakers all too readily embraced when it came to fertilise an agriculture. We have ignored the scatterbrained thinking from the opposition and what’s left of the communist movements in Sri Lanka, both of which failed to present viable solutions, and still seem to think an economy can be run on slogans alone. The country has ignored the math – until now.

So here we are. Sri Lanka is a beached ship. We are a nation reduced to living from fuel shipment to fuel shipment, aid package to aid package, revolution to revolution. And unless we are very careful, famine is on the horizon. We may have had our Bastille moment, but even revolutionaries need to eat.

Welcome to the boring apocalypse.

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne is a Sri Lankan science fiction author, activist and researcher. His latest novel is “The Salvage Crew” (Aethon Books). He was selected by Forbes as one of 2021’s 30 Under 30