Posted on April 8th, 2021
KAMALIKA PIERIS
Philip
Gunawardene accomplished much in food and agriculture during his short stay of
three years in the MEP government. These are described at length in other
essays in this series. This essay looks at certain aspects of Philip’s vision.
Philip studied the rural sector carefully. Philip said that
the peasantry had many problems,
poverty, indebtedness, need for credit, lack of scientific techniques of
production, and marketing facilities. Two main obstacles to agricultural
progress were the backwardness of the agricultural techniques used which result
in poor yields and the fact that villagers were landless or had insufficient