Archive for the ‘Development’

Climate Change, Food Security & Virtual Water an Asymmetric Threat to Sri Lanka

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Image courtesy Mercy Corps Today, in an integrated and inter-dependent world, Sri Lanka does not have the leverage to reverse climate change but mitigate and adapt. Climate change is caused mostly by human actions which began with the industrialised West and followed suit by emerging economies exacerbating this. Some consider climate change to be a negative result of human efforts for development whilst others consider it as irresponsible efforts for profit making at the cost of the planet. Wherever the argument lies, Climate Change is real and an effective response is very urgent. Human development is a necessity irrespective of one’s bearing towards the West or East.  The economic & development planners and the political leadership should seriously consider the sustainability of the society, region, country and then the world to achieve development that satisfies human needs without tipping the ecological balance that supports us. Overriding market capitalism that drives on the seats of global power today is an obstacle…

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Accountability and Universal Values in Development

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Photo courtesy World Bank “If a tree falls in a forest and lands on a politician, even if you can’t hear the tree or the screams, I’ll bet you’d at least hear the applause.” Paul Tindale Something is of universal value if it has the same value or worth for all, or almost all, people. This claim could mean two importantly different things. First, it could be that something has a universal value when everybody finds it valuable. This was Isaiah Berlin‘s understanding of the term. According to Berlin, “…universal values are values that a great many human beings in the vast majority of places and situations, at almost all times, do in fact hold in common, whether consciously and explicitly or as expressed in their behavior…”. If such were the case, it would seem logical that ‘a benign quality of life’ would constitute a most fundamental universal value.  From there arises the various issues of fertility, pleasure, or democracy…

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Longing and belonging series: Diaspora shorts

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Editors note: Groundviews is very pleased to host the web premiere of Longing and belonging series: Diaspora shorts by Kannan Arunasalam. We’ve featured Kannan’s visually stunning and compelling work before in Koothu, kerosene and paper: portraits of resilience, part of the Moving Images series commissioned by Groundviews. Over the coming week we’ll progressively upload Kannan’s short videos, so check back often. Finally, if you have a good broadband connection, we highly recommend that in the trailer below, you turn on HD and view it full screen. Please see From London to Jaffna for the first time, The science of planning in Jaffna and Returning lives, rebuilding limbs. ### August in Sri Lanka is a month of religious festivals in the north and also a chance for the diaspora to return and reconnect with their homeland. What better time I thought than to try and meet members of the diaspora returning to visit Sri Lanka. My own journey started six years…

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Killing us slowly

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When we ask the question, who uses pesticides?  Followed by the question who promotes pesticides? It is relatively simple to see who gains and who looses by the promotion and use of these poisons. In Sri Lanka the farmers are asked to indulge in prophylactic spraying i.e. spraying in advance of any pest appearance. Such practices have to be held responsible for a sinister malaise that affects almost everyone; the malaise of Pesticide Accumulation. Pesticide Accumulation refers to the tendency of some biocides and heavy metals used in these biocides to concentrate along the food chain. The biocide residues that are diluted as they are washed by rainfall are slowly taken up by simple plants, which are eaten by small animals, which are in turn eaten by larger animals. The toxin concentrating more and more as it rises in the food chain.  This is particularly evident in aquatic systems, so producing or consuming fish from areas that have a large…

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Review of ‘Right of Way: A journey of resettlement’

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I was delighted when asked to review Right of Way: A journey of resettlement by Sharni Jayawardena and published by the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA). Sharni’s skill in photography is enviable, and was the co-creator of Walkabout: Slave Island, supported by Groundviews. At the time of review, the publication was not in the public domain, and given what I had seen of Sharni’s previous work, I expected it to be a largely photographic record, in a coffee table book format, of the human displacement that occurred as a result of the E01, Sri Lanka’s first highway. And yet the book features few photos. 72 pages long, the book has just 8 photos included in it. I’ll come back to why I think this makes for a less compelling way of grappling with what the book sets out to do. Thousands, since E01 opened late last year, have taken the highway to Galle from Kottawa. The focus when on the…

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Can Rationalists Awaken the Sleep-walking Lankan Nation?

Keepers of Rationalist Flame L to R - Abraham Kovoor, Carlo Fonseka, Dharmapala Senaratne

Assorted charlatans and religious zealots across the island of Sri Lanka must have heaved a collective sigh of relief when they heard that Dharmapala Senaratne was no more. He had made it his business to make life difficult for those preying on the gullible public. Rationalist and myth-buster Dharmapala made his final exist a few days before 2012 dawned. At 67, he still had a few more years of the good struggle left in him. He would surely have enjoyed countering the false prophets of doom — and their credulous followers — who predict the end of the world on 21 December 2012. Although Dharmapala was also a teacher and lawyer with decades of experience, he was best known for his public activism as a rationalist. His was a determined and sceptical voice questioning fanatical peddlers of all kinds of dogmas, faiths and (mutually exclusive) brands of ‘salvation’. Even more importantly, he fearlessly took on confidence tricksters hoodwinking superstitious people…

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Agricultural Madness

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(Photo credit: Claude Dupuis, IDRC-CRDI) The current  ‘development’ madness that affects agriculture also prevails over agricultural research and does not bode well for this nation.  It begins with the fact that, young agricultural scientists have to find support for the projects that will ensure their career from the only available source, the ‘chemical agriculture’ companies. Thus they are forced to carve out their futures supporting the only system that they have been trained in. In this way agricultural science in Sri Lanka has largely ignored the knowledge and wisdom that had guided our agricultural traditions for the last three thousand years or more.  Although politicians and bureaucrats, in search of money or foreign jobs, have been insensitive to this destructive process, farmers have regularly questioned this approach to agriculture: For instance, in 1998 a meeting of farmers convened by the CGIAR (Consultative Group in Agricultural Research) to ascertain the farmers viewpoint of agricultural development, submitted the following statement. “We, the farmers…

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Quo Vadis, the Conga Line?

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When Sri Lanka vied for the 2018 Commonwealth Games, there was a telling photograph taken at one of the bashes the regime threw in the Caribbean, the culminating event of a labour intensive, extravagant self-indulgent exercise. The photograph has Hon Namal Rajapaksha MP leading a conga line followed by the Governor of the Central Bank. They both seem…well, happy. However, though a good time was had by all no doubt, that conga line led nowhere. We did not win the bid to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games; agnostics and atheists alike were put on notice about the existence of the divine. The country was saved. Yet the conga line as both a metaphor and description of the structure of power and the ruling regime remains. Into 2012, where will it head? The old year 2011 like all others before was interesting in the sense of the Chinese curse. It saw the steady decline of governance and the Rule of Law,…

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Packets of White Powder

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Photo courtesy Arsenic and toxins found in baby rice food – what you need to know Suddenly, scores of packets of white powder began appearing in the homes of many farmers we were working with. They were organic farmers, who respected their field and soil. They would never poison their farm knowingly.  When questioned, they made a wry face and declared that ‘the stuff was forced upon them’ as a part of some government program.  Some resorted to putting it onto their home gardens to get rid of it.  This means that, the poisoning of our soils is extending from the agricultural field to the very home garden and the farmer’s enslavement to the chemical salesmen becomes further confirmed. Addiction is an easy ploy for enslavement. In a port city in France, goes a story; there used to live some of the most unscrupulous criminals. They were the drug traffickers who deal in the cruel drug heroin.  Heroin is addictive, it…

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  • 2 Jan, 2012
  • 1 Comment
  • Development,
    Economy,
    International,
    Poverty

In conversation with Prof. Anil K Gupta: Grassroots innovation and development

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Prof. Gupta teaches at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and was in Sri Lanka recently to deliver the first Ray Wijewardene Memorial lecture. Prof. Gupta is one of the world’s leading voices on social innovation, and the development of social capital. We began our conversation with Prof. Gupta defining what he sees as social entrepreneurship, and why it is important to recognise and nurture it. He then talks about the difference between big science and small science, and how the support of the former through national budgetary allocations does not necessarily address or strengthen the latter. Prof. Gupta also shares some insights into how grassroots innovation can be supported and through the blending of what he calls formal and informal sciences, development made more sustainable and equitable. Prof. Gupta’s multi-disclipinary background holds him in good stead when he talks about the double-helix of language and culture, and how the preservation of one is to support the development of the…

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Extravagance veiled as National Pride: Brief analysis of Corrupt Public Expenditure in Sri Lanka

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Lessons from China or Tunisia? Just few months ago, in response to a public outcry for more accountability and transparency in the use of public funds, the State Council, which is the Cabinet in the Chinese government, directed 98 public institutions including ministries to make public their budgets and expenditure on  official receptions, official overseas visits  and public vehicles. Why these three items? China has recognized these as the most abused items of public expenditure, which have long been viewed as major sources of squandering and corruption. Though the nature of lavish and wasteful expenditure varies from country to country, one can see similarities of the operation of such expenditure. I begin this article on extravagance on public expenditure, with this Chinese example to demonstrate that criticism on extravagance is not a Western concept, as probably our coteries of political advisors and self-serving propaganda experts would always say.  Those great people who have found solutions for their own countries have…

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Reconciliation – What is the Big Deal?

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It looks like the Lessons Learned and Reconciliation Committee (LLRC) took their job far more seriously than expected. Some stake holders in the Government who insisted that it is fully worth spending time to bring about reconciliation through the LLRC came out on TV to say that LLRC has over-stepped the bounds of its mandate. For the first time, they articulated to the citizens that the mandate of LLRC was mainly limited to study why the 2001 ceasefire failed, and to find out the parties responsible for the damage caused thereafter. The report also triggered a shower of letters from local patriotic organizations to the president urging him to neglect the recommendations. Facebook and email forums were in full swing exchanging views that ranged from the argument that there is no need for reconciliation at all because the war was with a terrorist organization, to those ridiculing the LLRC report as an eye-wash. However, it is interesting to observe that…

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  • 19 Dec, 2011
  • 2 Comments
  • Colombo,
    Development,
    Post-War,
    Youth

Colombo night races: Racy development in post-war Sri Lanka

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Sri Lankan photographer Devaka Seneviratne has some of the best photos on the web on the recently concluded night races held in Colombo for the first time. While Facades of Development: Of Commonwealth Games and Drag Racing at Green Path by Darini Rajasingham Senanayake is a critical take on events like this, it appears that going by the numbers present and the media coverage of it, this was a rather popular and well-attended event. As one blogger recently put it “Both events [referring to the Electric Peacock Festival] are young people getting permits and stuff through the President’s sons, which is actually fine by me”. Such a wonderful, uncritical and simple model for post-war Sri Lanka’s democratic governance and equitable development. While we think this can and must be contested, the photos of the night races by Devaka give a sense of what to expect on the streets of Sri Lanka’s capital city in the years to come, and indeed, the…

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Old Dutch Hospital in Colombo: Now open to the public

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Image from The Seventeenth Century Dutch Hospital in Colombo by C.G. Uragoda and K.D. Paranavitana Being Poya with nothing much else to do, we strolled over to the newly restored and opened Old Dutch Hospital, which Colombo’s oldest building and now a shopping and dining ‘precinct’. A plaque at the entrance notes that restoration work was done by the Army and that the project was basically the brainchild of the Secretary of Defense Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who as head of the Ministry of Defence also directly oversees the Urban Development Authority (UDA), responsible for a lot of the beautification of Colombo. This at times involves the bizarre and wanton destruction of the environment. The Dutch Hospital restoration, however, is just beautiful. We don’t know when the Hospital premises were last open to and seen by the public, but it was only when restoration work began a few months ago (the area the Old Dutch Hospital is located in was heavily fortified…

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The Prime Minister’s call will exacerbate Horizontal Inequality in Sri Lanka

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The statement by the Prime Minister that wheat flour imports should be banned is an irresponsible statement and must be retracted.  While it may be his choice to consume only rice, or he wishes more people in this country ate rice, he must be made aware that some people in Sri Lanka are totally dependent on wheat flour. The Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) for 2006 found that an average Tamil family in the estate sector consumed 17.4 Kg of wheat flour per month when the cost per Kg was less than Rs 40.  At the time the national monthly average was 2.4 Kg per household.  Even though price of wheat flour more than doubled since then to close to Rs 85 a Kg currently (the increase was much higher relative to rice), the HIES for the year 2010 found that estate Tamil households consumption fell only marginally to 15.4 Kg per month indicating how price inelastic these household…

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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