By
Gamini Seneviratne
People would have known him for his advocacy of simple farming and his work on Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD, thanks mostly to his work no longer regarded as of ‘Unknown’ origin). He passed away without ceremony in his home town, Kandy, and his remains cremated yesterday.
Royal in our time had a farm at Narahenpita to which we were taken once a week for hands on experience of farming. There was no paddy there but bananas and vegetables. Ranjith wasthe only boy who actually did what we were expected to do – work on the land.
I had sunk, knee-deep, waist-deep, into our haelkumburu in Muturajawela to help prepare them for sowing. They could be cultivated only after an extended period of dry weather and then only in dewaraeddiri and pokkali, water and saline-resistant varieties of paddy, but had never attempted to grow anything on common soil.
I had been reminded of that when I carried home alarge bunch of nivithi (purchased for -/02 cents at the College farm) and proudly presented it to mother only to receive the come uppance, ‘How nice! Now you can grow these things in the garden’.
Some years later Ranjith joined the School of Agriculture and with his Diploma became an Agriculture Instructor (AI). Under his own steam he went to the University in Los Banos, Philippines obtained his B Sc and Masters and returned home to be barred from not only a Research Officer’s position but even from one of Experimental Officer. I was then in the Ministry of Agriculture but could do nothing to help him in the face of the departmental bureaucracy which did not want him even as an AI.
Dudley Senanayake’s ‘food war’ was on and Ranjith joined an agency house, Carson’s, off Mahiyangana. In that jungle he developed a 17 acrefarm that he used also as a model for paddy cultivation in those dry conditions for the traditional goviyas in that area. Carson’s weren’t interested: they sent a District Land Officer who gave them what they wanted: ‘before’ and ‘after’ aerial photos of thick jungle followed by a large expanse of land covered in dust.
He then set up his own farm in that area and toiled like other goviyas for many years going through the same privations with his family. Later he worked with NGOs in the Girandurukotte – Hennanigala region where he continued his work on CKD as well. Despite his ill-heath he had been preparing to go back there when he passed away.
Courtesy: The Island