The Art of Decision Making - Sri Lanka's economic Emergency

The Art of Decision Making 

"One wise decision can prevent a hundred disasters." - Me

By Original: Sri LankaVectorization: Zscout370 - SLS 693 - National flag of Sri LankaConstruction sheet:Vexilla Mundi - Sri LankaFlags of the World - Sri Lanka (see >>From "Specifications for the National Flag of Sri Lanka"<<)See also:, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=433212

The recent headline, "Sri Lanka declares economic emergency" has popped up in my feed several times. After reading it, it struck me that the decisions we make are very important and significantly shape our life. Some say it's the food hoarders, others the organic farming decision. I'm not going to take sides but take a lesson from it instead.

Let's start from the beginning. It was an island nation, I was on vacation. The fresh wind blowing from the open window of the train, trees on one side and the sea on the other. There was heaven in my mind and aromatic tea in my hands. I wish. (:P)

Analysis of the situation

Let's start from a relevant place. So what destroyed all of our vacation dreams this year? That's right, it's covid. The tourism industry in Sri Lanka has taken a huge hit because of the pandemic, the income from it decreased. This has also impacted the forex assets* and decreased the value of Sri Lankan currency.

* If you're an educated illiterate like me, a forex asset (foreign exchange asset) is just currency and deposits in a foreign currency. Governments stock these as backup in case the currency of that country drops to a low value suddenly.

Sri Lanka imports majority of the food from other countries, if the value of your currency decreases then you'll have to pay more for getting the same amount of things. The prices of essentials thus increased and this lead to a food crisis.

(Lemme confuse you with the math, today one Indian Rupee is equal to 0.015 New Zealand dollars. If you wanted to buy an apple imported from New Zealand, say it's sold at 4 NZD, you would have to pay  around 210 rupees. If the price of rupee dropped such that 1 rupee is now 0.010 NZD then you'd have to pay 400 rupees for that same apple. That's twice the previous amount.)

Clearly, the situation doesn't look too good right? It's manageable? But the President of Sri Lanka followed the Murphy's law (Am I actually roasting a President in public?), and decided to implement the plan of making Sri Lanka the first country with 100% organic agriculture overnight. He banned the import of chemical fertilizers.

This decision has lead to further increase in the prices of essentials, because of the lack of methods and equipment for organic farming. Apparently some traders are hoarding food, to make the scarcity worse and profit off of it. The government is blaming the traders for everything, but if you take better look you realize the problem has deeper roots. And now there's food and economic crisis, and people are queuing up to buy said overpriced, scarce essentials.

And now Sri Lanka has declared the state of economic emergency, which again, some say is a bad decision... I won't go into the specifics and reasons now because this is where I wanted to pause.

(For further reference: 

https://www.thehindu.com/business/explained-what-caused-the-sri-lankan-economic-crisis/article36314148.ece)

The decision of making a transition to organic farming was not a bad one, but was the timing correct? So when I do make a decision what would I need to consider?

My learning

It's clear of course, that I would need to first evaluate my own decision and understand what exactly it entails. I would need to understand the changes that would happen in my life as well as others as a consequence of my decision. I would need to evaluate whether I have the necessary time and resources to follow up on the decision. And whether the time to make the decision is right or not. Understanding the consequences and impact of my decision would help me to decide to go with it or not. Making rash decisions would not only affect me, but also my family and friends.

Analyzing the consequences and timing, having alternatives to ambiguous plans are two key things to keep in mind while making a decision. If you want a big transition in your life, don't overdo it on the first day, stress yourself, stop it in the middle and regret it later. Make it gradual and planned, then you will see the results for sure. Maybe it's not instantly gratifying, but with time you can see the results you originally wanted.

So in conclusion, I just copied my English assignment and made a blog out of it.

Hence, I wanted us all to introspect everyday, evaluate the decisions we make and understand their consequences clearly. Again, one wise decision can prevent a hundred disasters.

Author:

-Soumya Oruganti

Be up to date about the world with me (Kidding, I rarely post, just watch news or something)

I hope this offered you some insight, if not I at least hope it was entertaining.

Here's the song I was vibing to while writing this blogpost