By Rajasinghe   With the coming into the market of the Yala paddy crop, Dudley Sirisena is back in the news – no matter that this crop is the worst in living memory thanks to the imbecilic decisions of the former President and his Minister of Agriculture Mahindananda Aluthgamage.  The Gotabaya Rajapaksa (GR) Cabinet, at least in respect of agricultural policy, behaved like the proverbial ‘Mahadenamutta’ and his moronic ‘golayas’. At first they broke the pot, which caused the goat’s suffering, and then cut off its head. Our current diminished Yala crop is the result of a comparable blunder by our Mahadenamuttas. Official estimates suggest that only 40% of the paddy produced in the previous year will be harvested this season. Now that this crop is coming into the market, reality is dawning among all concerned.  Paddy purchases have always been a bone of contention between the farmers and consumers. The GR-Mahindananda fiasco has added to the conundrum while the new Agriculture Minister and his officials are, as usual, playing politics and seeking cheap publicity which will boomerang on the Ranil Wickremesinghe (RW) administration come the festive season at the end of this year.  As usual they are giving optimistic reports about the amount of paddy produced and their capabilities by way of boosting the Paddy Marketing Board (PMB). But – surprise, surprise – the PMB is neck-deep in corruption and is heavily in debt. It can only make purchases to establish a floor price, not to solve all the problems of the agricultural sector.   The farmers’ ‘Aragalaya’   The paddy farmers – who were subjected to untold miseries without chemical fertilisers, weedicides, agricultural machinery, and fuel during the GR regime – were the first to start an all-island ‘Aragalaya’ when they stopped cultivating large tracts and began demonstrating in an innovative way by making effigies of GR and Mahindananda and beating them with sticks before setting them on fire.  The media highlighted these demonstrations and brought the administration to its knees as did their Indian counterparts to the powerful Modi regime. Both Modi and GR were forced to withdraw their controversial decisions regarding agricultural policy and make a public apology. But it was too late.  The farmers’ ‘Aragalaya’ was the precursor to the confrontation which was symbolised by the activities on the Galle Face Green with the slogan ‘Gota go home’. Without the farmers, the ‘Aragalaya’ would not have had its all-island support. On 9 July protesters stormed Colombo from all over the country. From the farming areas like Anuradhapura, they commandeered the railway. Farmers were promised compensation by Aluthgamage. None of it has materialised. They are now agitating for an increased floor price for their diminished stocks of paddy which the Government through its PMB has pegged at Rs. 120 a kilo. However, millers are buying at much higher prices and challenging the PMB to increase its offer.   Dudley Sirisena, a born leader   At the centre of these controversies are the big rice millers of Polonnaruwa. The most famous among them is Dudley Sirisena, an outstanding entrepreneur, brother of former President Maithripala Sirisena, and – this is unknown to many – an influential supporter and financier of Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR) in his first bid to be president after Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. Indeed, Dudley throwing his considerable weight behind his brother was another reason for MR’s shock defeat in 2015 and the ascent to the gadi by Maithripala Sirisena. Though frequently referred to by politicians and media as a profiteer, Dudley Sirisena is a textbook example of an outstanding local entrepreneur who battled superhuman odds to establish one of the biggest and most modern rice mills in Asia and run it efficiently in order to maximise benefits to himself and the country.  He is a born leader who will stop at nothing to run an efficient operation not only in milling but also in other fields like hoteliering, where his Araliya hotels brand is expanding its footprint. In any other country he would be lionised not vilified by politicians, as he was the other day by the Minister of Agriculture.   The Sirisena family   Though they were the unofficial kings of Polonnaruwa, the Sirisenas hailed from Yagoda, a village in the Gampaha District. Their father was a sturdy soldier who was recruited by D.S. Senanayake for his ‘land army’ and relocated to Polonnaruwa to develop rice cultivation in the newly-opened Raja Rata. He was one of those heroic pioneers who converted the malaria-infested and abandoned ancient kingdom into the country’s rice bowl.  The Sirisena family was given large tracts of irrigated paddy land as well as highland close by to an irrigation canal. They built a house there, where a large family of sturdy girls and boys were brought up together with all the other migrants from Kegalle, Kandy, and Kotmale. Since Sirisena was a strong personality, he was recognised as the natural leader of his locality. President Sirisena frequently fantasised that he would return to this home in Polonnaruwa after retirement.  He and his brothers were natural born leaders and soon were recognised, some as role models and others as ‘chandiyas,’ in the emerging colonisation schemes. The father obviously was a political admirer since he named his children after heroes of Raja Rata people. Maithripala [after Maithripala Senanayake] and Dudley [after Dudley Senanayake] were the easy choices. The former joined Government service as a Grama Sevaka and the latter joined the Air Force as an airman, thus replicating their father’s duality as a village leader and soldier. C.P. de Silva was the uncrowned king of Polonnaruwa at that time, having done yeoman service as the Government Agent and Cabinet Minister to reclaim that malarial district and make it a beacon of future prosperity for the country. He built the Polonnaruwa Royal College, which catered to the children of the colonies and provided an educational ladder for them. However, the students from that college had other ideas. Many of them joined Rohana Wijeweera’s JVP because the Land Development trade unionists who were strong in Polonnaruwa were the early financiers and propagandists of the new party. Maithripala was unjustly betrayed by a teacher in his school as a JVPer and had to spend six months in Batticaloa as a detainee.   Dudley’s journey   Dudley was the more adventurous of the Sirisena brothers. He gave up his position in the Air Force and became a small-time businessman in Polonnaruwa. In an interview he has stated that he began to bring consumer items from Singapore and Thailand and sell them to locals. His familiarity with the airport staff as an airman would have given him that vital edge that successful businessmen call their luck. But it was the Mahaweli waters that led to bumper paddy crops, which made Dudley and his fellow small millers from Polonnaruwa become bigtime paddy traders.  It is to his credit that while many others remained small-time millers, he was able to see his future in this new line of business. He expanded his Araliya rice operation step by step into one of the biggest agricultural enterprises in the country. The Araliya name he took from the lakeside hotel that he bought from the Maliban Group at giveaway prices. Now he has branched off into tourism and hotels with properties in Unawatuna and Nuwara Eliya.   A tough balancing act   Dudley and two other businessmen from his hometown, including Siripala Gamlath who was inducted into politics by the Sirisena brothers, have invested heavily in modern rice mills which have made Polonnaruwa the milling capital of the country. This has led to the decimation of small rice millers who had earlier depended on the State banks to underwrite their business. Today they are in the doldrums, left behind not by the big millers but by the laws of economics which favour the inevitable economics of scale. They call for relief and politicians like Mahinda Amaraweera, the Minister who too was a small mill owner in the Walawe region in the deep south, are afraid to tell them the truth for fear of losing votes.  But the reality is that these big mills are leveraged with large bank loans. One may allege political pressures, but it is equally true that the function of State banks is to encourage such pioneer national business ventures which have changed the rural landscape. This type of bigtime business requires big minds to nurture and expand its operations. However, small-minded politicians who are assigned this portfolio do not appreciate the magnitude of the challenges of the big-timers who have to pay the banks, buy the paddy at reasonable prices, and also give the consumer a break.  It is a tough balancing act and one can understand Dudley’s frustration at their gerrymandering. It is high time that the President looks into this — no, not another useless committee – to solve this explosive problem before the end of the year when the demand for rice increases in the festive season. The answer must begin with a dialogue with Dudley and his fellow millers. If the State thinks that it can go at it alone, it is heading for a rude awakening.