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Let’s make the New Year auspicious

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4 January 2012 02:29 am - 0     - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

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 A New Year has dawned! We are all aware that a day wears out and a new day begins due to the revolving of the Earth on its axis and a year is created when the Earth revolves around the Sun. This happens with no recognition of the calendar, invented by us. However, within modern human society many values have been added to the calendar phenomenon. Despite no change in the issues and challenges we are faced with; we are accustomed to wishing each other a “Happy New Year” and assuming that a new shift has taken place.
People become the victims of schemes carried out with seemingly innocent, but deceitful commercial propagandas of ‘We wish our customers a Happy New Year.’ In a world that has been highly commercialized by capitalism, companies coming forward to teach us ethics are a mockery that we must comprehend. These companies remind us of Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, Valentine’s Day and many other ‘days.’ In a social system that proposes us to dive into the icy waters of selfishness, ethics too has become a commodity. 
Besides companies the capitalist rulers fall over one another to wish us in the New Year. People are important for companies as consumers, in the same vein that voters are important to capitalist politicians. Hence, they fraudulently wish their voters a Happy New Year; however they would not wish their luxurious lives to befall their less fortunate voters. President Mahinda Rajapaksa also wished all mobile phone owning citizens a ‘Happy New Year’ via SMS. The people would have been pleased that the President remembered his citizens at least when the New Year dawned.
However, we need to consider what the President has achieved by sending his citizens this SMS. TV viewers in our country spend their money to send SMS to bring make the dreams of ‘Super Stars’ come true. However, it is doubtful that those who received SMS wishes from the President received the same gratification. A government employee who received the message has not received a salary increase, to make his New Year auspicious. The employee in the private sector who received the wish could not be either happy or angry as there was not even a mention about a salary increase for them in the budget 2012.
There were no proposals in the budget of 2012 for farmers, women, students and the self-employed to be happy. Hence, their hopes for happiness are uncertain. Farmers and businessmen cannot be happy as the ‘Crate’ law is to be implemented. Consumers are uneasy because bus fares are to be increased and the electricity tariff is expected to go up. Students and their parents live in fear as a bill that would bury free education is to be presented. Students who sat the A/L are in distress as the ‘distorted marks’ that were sent are not going to be reviewed. Hence, all those who received the SMS wishes know that it a happy new year is not in store for them in 2012. All this indicates there are many things a leader of a country could do to make people happy, but sending them an SMS wish on New Year is not one of them. 
On the other hand the government and the Rajapaksas who are holding high the neo-liberalist socio-economic system that has inherited injustice, dishonesty and illegality could only market dreams, hopes and wishes to the people so that they could merely ‘spend the day.’
Under these circumstances we do not expect anyone to be indifferent regarding the New Year. It is necessary to direct the potentiality that exists in the human mind at the moment when new hopes for a New Year are bundled up towards a productive direction. Instead of allowing time or destiny to fulfill hopes and wishes they should be made realities by acting with awareness and a struggle to achieve them. Only then can the New Year be made auspicious.

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