There is a fine line between order and chaos. Its tenuous separation lies at the heart of the grand cycle of oppositional linkages in myth and history, in which fate, humans and nature seek a way out of the turbulence to which they may well have themselves contributed.

Journalist and activist Beena Sarwar’s jewel-like documentary Democracy in Debt: Sri Lanka Beyond the Headlines examines the economic collapse of 2022 in Sri Lanka. In the film’s 25-minute run, she presents a range of voices that reflects the cultural and philosophical attitudes weaving through the analysis of political catastrophe.

Her journalistic methodology is quintessentially an anthropological one, and specifically one that anthropologists would identify as an “emic” approach. Emic methods (as distinguished from “etic” methods) give preference to the point of view of the interlocutor. This approach becomes a major strength of the film as it engages the stakeholder as well as the viewer in a non-judgmental partnership towards comprehending key problems besetting Sri Lankan society.

The film opens with a panoramic image of a sunrise over a calm lake or wewa. Wewas are reservoirs of water that are strewn across Sri Lanka and date back to antiquity. Sri Lanka is intrinsically bound with the element of water in the form of rainfall, rivers, the surround of the sea and — not least — the country’s teardrop shape.

The documentary film Democracy in Debt is a sociological and philosophical inquiry into the 2022 economic collapse of Sri Lanka

This particular wewa is located in the village of Dutuwewa where Beena Sarwar has spent time with her film crew, doing interviews with the farmers. Their keen awareness of the impersonal forces that embroiled the country in debt comes through sharply, as does their connection with the ancient history of their land. They cite the wisdom and benevolence of the ancient king who had built the wewa to ensure self-sustenance for humans and animals.

The serenity of the sunrise-tinted wewa becomes the foil against which the turbulence of economic collapse is contrasted. Sri Lanka was the first Asian country to achieve universal suffrage as early as 1931. It has almost a 100 percent literacy rate.

And yet, these conditions have proven insufficient to override the turmoil precipitated by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on a small nation that has been beset with internal conflict and external debt. The mechanics of democracy, more often than not, produce a hypothetical consensus that masks systemic faults in the politico-economic framework.

The highly educated urban voices, in contrast to the subaltern ones, are represented in the film by professionals and academics such as Dr Dushni Weerakoon. They explain the unsustainability of international capital — so different to the holistic inclusivity of the wewa — that complicates the mesh of indigenous power politics.

The many axes that the film brings to the fore are like the metaphorical spokes of the Buddhist wheel of Dharma; all contradictions connect at the central hub of the wheel that spins the urban and the rural, the ancient and contemporary, the sacred and the profane, and greed and renunciation, in a grand mélange. Secular authority and spiritual authority hang in the balance as to which is the better guarantor of peaceful co-existence.

Democracy in Debt is a sociological and philosophical inquiry into the post-colonial, post-apocalyptic, modern reality of a formerly colonised nation state. It begs the question whether independence is synonymous with autonomy.

The documentary distils complicated truths from the filmmaker’s many visits to Sri Lanka. Beena Sarwar, along with the voices shared in the film, alert us to the peril of quick fixes and shortsighted policies induced by greed.

The message is clear. A calm sunrise does not guarantee an equally calm sunset.

Democracy in Debt: Sri Lanka Beyond the Headlines was screened at Canvas Gallery in Karachi on August 13, 2024

Published in Dawn, ICON, October 13th, 2024