Reward good service or aid beggary?: A Rs.10/- question

Here is a scenario that I think should be food for thought. What is nobler? To reward a waiter for good service with a generous tip or to give alms to a beggar? Here’s what got me thinking…


Somewhere in 1997, I distinctly remember a good friend of mine saying that the standard tip for a waiter at a wayside eatery, the likes of a Dosai ‘kade’ is Rs. 2/-…this was after he myself and another friend of ours who was two years senior to us in College had a soft drink to quench our thirst while going somewhere. I still remember that well. Of the change/balance money we got after putting money into the little plastic bowl like vessel to pay the bill, my friend Janaka Basuriya said that the standard/general tip is two rupees. By my reckoning after nearly 13 years, inflation has not affected the ‘Dosai kade’ tip rate in a dramatic way. Rs. 2/- could still very well be an accepted tip that befits the wayside eatery level staffer who serves its patrons from morning till late night. I have noticed that Rs.5/- is sort of becoming more of a ‘decent tip’ as opposed to Rs.2/-. But a tenner (Rs.10/-) is something of a rather generous tip at a Dosai kade or similar establishment. It is very much above the current ‘standard’ or norm that a waiter may expect.

And yes a tip is a reward by all means. A waiter should ‘earn it’ since patrons are not bound legally to tip, though it may be an ethical one. And what do we do to waiters who simply give patrons the cold shoulder treatment as if though he was just rudely disturbed while on vacation when a customer calls for service? Does a waiter who shows no semblance of good customer service deserve a few coins in return for the workload he performs? If his job description does not stipulate courtesy and ‘service with a smile’, does he deserve that spare change? There are instances where I made decisions at the outset that I shall not leave a tip simply because I felt the appalling service had no right to the reward of a tip.

So then what of alms? Especially when it comes to all those unfortunates who board buses bound to wherever and call on the humanity and generosity of the commuters to help them survive another day? As just about anyone knows mendicancy in Colombo is a profession. It has its regulations and regulations and standardized methodologies. It is a tenaciously controlled operation that generates big bucks to a whole stratum of society. A friend of mine once said that he read somewhere that if a person gives Rs.2/- to every beggar he meets in Colombo city within a day the result would be that the donor would have to join the ranks of those whom was generous to. Mind you its just two rupees we are talking of, what used to be the standard tip for a Dosai kade waiter.

I recall an incident from our childhood days when our family went to Mihintale. There was an old man who was very much the conventional wayside beggar with the outstretched hand form indicating a call for alms. We came across him as we climbed the thousand stone stepped pathway that forms the way to the sacred site. My grandmother dropped some spare change she had with her into the palm of the hapless mendicant and walked on. A couple of minutes later I remember there was a bit of laughter from the family whom I was pacing ahead of. Turns out that as my younger sister (who was trailing behind my grandmother) went past the beggar, he had called her over and handed her back a couple of coins, and told her to give it to back to our grandmother. There were two or three coins that were below Rs.1/- in denomination! The beggar had a standard of his own. And mind you this was when Rs.1/- afforded you two toffees! I remember we all had a bit of a laugh at the cheekiness of the mendicant who could afford to decide what is acceptable and not. What a beggar we thought. But we also felt indignant, there is no denying it.


Is giving alms to a beggar a legal requirement on the part of a citizen? Certainly not. But we do it, and on a daily basis, purely out of some inner compulsion to feel that we have helped a fellow human being who is less fortunate. But many are the times when I wish that there was some law against begging on board buses. With their wounds and woes in full sight and call, the mendicants of Colombo city can be a nuisance to commuters. The plight of beggars is at most times a façade. In the streets of Colombo what you see is rarely what you get. What lies beneath is a whole new thing all together. Beggary is a business.


My mother once reprimanded me when I said a few coins is enough when her intention was to give at least Rs.10/- as she hastily dug though the stuff in her handbag as a mendicant on crutches appealed for generosity as our car was waiting for the light to turn green at the Borella, Senanayake junction traffic lights. She said when you give you have to be generous and give something substantial. I’m very certain that it was the same beggar who on another occasion grimaced and hissed with displeasure muttering a complaint when she only managed to give a few coins.

To give to the less fortunate is meritorious. We ardently believe in giving. It is part of our civic duty one might even say given our lines of societal thought and the values they generate. So giving alms to a beggar is far more nobler than giving to one who already has. That’s only logical one could say.

The waiter serves an establishment that caters to your human need. The beggar serves the cause of charity and is part of a human need. One earns his keep, the other is not ‘positioned’ to earn it per se. but make no mistake both are at their vocation. So here is a question to ponder on in this day and age when we think of giving a jobless man a fishing rod and teaching him how to fish rather than give him a fish…If you had just one ten rupee note to give, who would get it? A waiter who has given you satisfactory service, whose average ‘tip’ would not be more than Rs.5/- or a member of the less fortunate who has taken great pains to put on a story of despair and misery and calling on your generosity?...would you reward good service or encourage beggary? For what its worth- A ten rupee question.

What is a 'Private Citizen'?

The film ‘The Aviator’ by Martin Scorsese depicts how modern Capitalism combined with industrial fortitude can push the limits of ‘probability’ to ‘possibility.’ The ventures that Hughes embarks on to develop aviation as a visionary industrialist is a culmination of wealth sources that work towards building what USA in the 1930s would have envisioned as their tomorrow. The combination of private Wealth and State funds to achieve the industrial innovations of more advanced aviation is a remarkable factor that shows how Citizens and State share stakeholdership in forging ahead. The very way the film ends with a tight close up of Leonardo Di Caprio’s face as he mutters the line “The way of the future” is striking in the manner of a prophesying. The character of Howard Hughes brought to life for the screen by Di Caprio was telling how a Tomorrow would take shape. In this context what I would like to focus specifically on a certain term that comes in the deposition Hughes makes in the congressional hearing he is called to by the US legislature’s appointed committee. In defending himself, Hughes describes the status quo that is in place at the hearing where he as an individual has to answer to a US Senator who has “all sorts of powers”, and it is interesting how Hughes posits himself as a “private Citizen”. What could possibly be meant by that term? What is a “private Citizen”?



The idea of being a Citizen is very clearly understood by anyone who owns a National Identity Card, though it may be from an entirely constitutional technicality ground. What they would make a Citizen ‘private’? What would be the counterpart/counterpoint of a ‘private Citizen’? Is there such a thing as a ‘public Citizen’? If we were to just think that along the lines of occupation/profession there could be some definitional lines be drawn to differentiate the private Citizen from one that is ‘not private’, then can a public servant, a member of the government service be discounted from the lot of ‘private Citizenry’? Would a member of the armed forces (who upon entering the services forfeits certain constitutionally granted Fundamental Rights to Citizens such as Trade union rights) qualify as a ‘private Citizen’? Can we reasonably assume that one’s placement in the sectoring of our country’s economy determines our level of qualifying as a private Citizen? It seems plausible enough, considering how Professor of History in the Colombo varsity Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri once said in a lecture that this era of human history is deemed the age of Homo-Economicus.



While contemplating on this line of thought something that struck me was what I recalled from a conversation with retired Supreme Court Judge Raja Wanasundera (who was also one time acting Chief Justice). Justice Wanasundera being a friend of the family relates many stories from his illustrious career as a legal personality and a member of the judicature, which carry many gems of wisdom. Referring to a private conversation he had had with the eminent legal figure Dr. Colvin R De Silva, when the latter was in the process of formulating the first Republican Constitution of Sri Lanka (1972), Justice Wanasundera said how Dr. De Silva (the architect of the 1972 constitution) had been thinking on the lines of forming a hard-left oriented system for Sri Lanka where there would be no semblance of private ownership. He had said that the constitution will be such that no man will own anything other than his toothbrush! (As related by Justice Wanasundera). Being a founder member of the LSSP that was their line of thinking. Justice Wanasundera who at the time had been Solicitor General of Sri Lanka had expressed his disapproval. He said that he told Colvin (as he refers to the late statesman) that if a peasant owns even a small patch of land he will be willing to fight for his country, but if you take away everything they own and vest it completely with the State they will be nothing more that slaves. That was the case of the former Soviet Union he said. The citizenry were veritable slaves since they had no ownership that could endow them with even a shade of independence. Such a nation does not last he had said.

What exactly was the impact of the perspective Justice Wanasundera imparted to the late Colvin R. De Silva, one cannot say for sure, while there is room for conjecture. We know for a fact that the Citizens governed by the 1972 Republican constitution owned much more than their toothbrushes. And that the nefariousness of International Communism did permeate the walls of Sri Lankan government. If one is not to own more than one’s toothbrush (presumably dental hygiene is of prime importance in a Communist State) and maybe a sarong or loin cloth (hoping that the regime would become a bit more generous) then the status of ‘slave to and of the State’ would aptly fit such a ‘Citizen’ (?)... In the film 300, King Leonidas of Sparta tells his nemesis the Persian Emperor Xerxes “You command many slaves, but few warriors”. Food for thought?



Slaves would populate a fiefdom, but a State which truly pulsates with its sense of Nationhood must be made up of Citizens. And each must at some degree believe that their sense as individuals have not been lost in the course of being in service to the State. In my opinion the allowance of ‘private wealth’ is one means by which a Citizen may realise his sense of individuality in the context of the State. A private Citizen may be broadly defined as one who does not work for the state, or as one who does not come within the hierarchies of the state apparatuses and perform administrative, operational tasks. But does that adequately define what it means to have a sense of being ‘private’ as a Citizen? Every Citizen has some degree of being bound to the State. Being completely divorced of the State would disqualify Citizenship, wouldn’t it? So while being part of the State and being subjected to its laws and regulations what would allow the Citizen to be a private one?

I believe it is not simply one’s occupational placement (sector wise) alone that allows the sense of being a private Citizen (or not) to come about. A non-state sector worker who shares a status of ‘equality’ with the rest of his country’s Citizenry simply by virtue of being allowed to own a toothbrush and nothing more seems unlikely to feel he is a ‘private Citizen’ since apart from the toothbrush his very tartar is likely to be bound to ‘State ownership.’



The sometimes erratic, yet ardently persistent and boldly visionary Howard Hughes in The Aviator speaks of being a ‘private Citizen’ as a disadvantage or even a debility given the situation he is in and the circumstances that impel him to state so. But I believe between the lines lies a subtext that speaks of the power of the private Citizen in a government like that of the USA.

To be a Citizen is to be a stakeholder of State

I remember seeing in an old film of the French revolution how in the post revolution ‘State’ which had emerged as a Republic after the abolition of the monarchy, the people addressing each other as ‘Citizen’ in the manner that was like the communist ‘Comrade’. A term that equalized the populace within an idea of commonality, by virtue of a new ideological landscape being set into the country, that that they inhabited, but wanted transformed in to something newer, and presumably better. Taking to account the ‘developments’ or if one may say the ‘dynamics’ that were seen in the Sri Lankan political landscape I wondered what it is to be ‘a citizen’? My contemplations made me to arrive at a very simple single liner. I made a ‘tweet’ of it on Twitter as my airing of it. But I thought there was more to discuss on that that a micro blogging of 140 characters would permit. In my opinion I believe Citizenship is being a stakeholder of the state that you are a member of, be it through default or design. The state which you too have helped shape through your ballot casting (or boycotting it), through your contributions (or lack of it by slacking off) to the economy, in which you would feel the effects of price hikes, and business booms.


The idea of ‘State’ precedes conceptions of ‘Nationhood’ and in fact can be very rightly argued as the inception of man’s long hard trek towards ‘civilization’. Man has lived in the institution called the State far before seeing himself as part of a Nation. I supposed it would be correct to suggest that the idea of being a Nation would occur to a people when they encountered a group different to their own ways and systems of being governed. If “Man by nature is a political animal” as said by Aristotle, then going by that one may say that Government existed before race or ethnicity. Man has always been a creature who crafted (the) State. Yet today one is made to wonder how many inadvertent members, (compelled to be part of directing the motion of the State they live in) truly understand what it is to be a citizen. Most significantly the question would come in when looking at the constitutional form of our State: Republic.


How many of us truly ever thought about what it means to be a citizen? What does it mean to cast your ballot, to exercise franchise? Is it a ‘right’? Or is it something more, like a ‘duty’? A right would mean the one who holds it has the discretion of whether or not to exercise it, whereas a duty would be more compelling and not that easily escapable. In our country the prerogative a citizen holds to be a stake holder of his State can be easily priced as I once came to learn. 500/- LKR became the standard rate for which one could sell his polling card some time back in a local government election of the Colombo district. And in countries like Australia the result for failure to cast your vote is a fine of $50. Who is the more privileged citizen in this scenario? The Australian who has not the right to chose what he may do with his right of franchise? Or the Lankan who may decide at his personal discretion what may be done with his polling card? After all there’s no small print I’ve ever noticed on a polling card that says “Not transferable”. And isn’t the Lankan exercising his ‘right’ to do what he so wishes with his personal polling card as an individual of a Republic, where the sovereignty is vested in the people?...Unlike in Australia with it’s barely 200++ years of history, being still a Dominion of Britain, and technically not having a sovereign citizenry.


So it’s only constitutional that the Lankan should enjoy more individual liberties in a State that is a Republic, unlike in a Dominion like Australia? I’m sure some semblance of sense can be argued out of it through dexterous wordsmithing if a late night TV debate were to be setup on this topic. But the matter remains in my opinion, not as a matter to do with the individual’s ‘right’ as a citizen, but his ‘duty’ as a stakeholder of State. Sri Lanka has many lessons to learn as a citizenship that is said to get what they deserve. A fundamental is to ask yourself what it means to be a citizen of this constitutional Republic.