Elite Democracies: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka

Abstract

The Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, is a ‘security-conscious’ city. In the space of one year Navy Commander Clancy Fernando, former Defence Minister and opposition leader Lalith Athulathmudali and President Ranasinghe Premadasa were all blown up or shot in the city centre. As elsewhere in South Asia the response of the military has been to station more soldiers with obsolete,weapons on street corners, institute checkpoints and supplement the dress uniform guards at the president’s palace with commandos in jungle fatigue lurking in the shrubbery. Yet, amid this ineffective officiousness, personal information about public figures is readily available: taxi drivers know where the leading politicians live and the way to speak to them is to find their residential number in the Colombo telephone directory and phone them up. The home of Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike is as much a landmark as the Bhutto compound in Karachi. The reason lies in the small size of the Anglophone and Anglophile ruling class, within which family squabbles and personality clashes are widely known and discussed and knowledge of one another’s education, interlocking business interests and marriage ties is taken for granted.