Abstract:
The tsunami that hit the coasts of Sri Lanka on 26th December 2004 made a massive
devastation to human, physical and natural resources in thirteen out of the twenty-five
districts of the island. The percentage of the coastal population affected range from less
than 20 per cent in the southern coast, up to 78 to 80 per cent in the east coast. Apart
from loss of life of about 40,000 people, nearly half a million of persons were displaced.
The estimated damage to private properties and infrastructure was about US$ 480
million. As the state alone was unable to respond to a disaster of this magnitude, it
sought assistance of NGOs, international donors and private-sector to assist the
rehabilitation and, reconstruction process.
In this scenario, the role of civil society organizations became vital as the donors
believe that their ability to reach the real victims is much more higher than the
government machinery and delivery of aid can be done in an effective manner. Thus,
many international donors channelled their aids through national and local NGOs by
creating a barrier to work patron –client relations in aid delivery. This mechanism
adopted in the aid delivery was seen by some, particularly local politicians, as a corrupt
method of practice. In fact, some of the politicians thus began to ally with NGOs in the
delivery of emergency relief aid and post-tsunami rehabilitation work. This novel
tendency that could be observed in the south coast is the point of argument of this study.
It attempts to investigate what socio-economic factors or processors have been
influenced in shifting the conventional role of the politicians to a different role played by
civil society organizations. The present study argues that the Sri Lankan civil society
organizations do not engage in a project of empowerment of people, but they too are
sharing the same role of politicians. Such a situation had arisen because those
politicians lost a space to engage in patron-client politics due to various pressures from
structural adjustment policies adopted that limited or made a constraint to their role in
economic management.
