The IMF programme needs to be used to negotiate debt restructuring with commercial and multilateral creditors. It would create space to spend on priorities such as food and fuel. However, the country…
Long term survival of an entity depends on developing a culture of innovation. This needs to be an organizational priority. Fostering such a culture consultatively and inclusively needs a free flow of…
Last year saw a record number of passports issued – nearly 875,000; they were not for people going on holiday but for workers escaping an economic meltdown and an unstable future. According…
Two hundred years ago, the first groups of women and men were brought from southern India by the British colonial rulers to Sri Lanka to work in the hill country plantations. They…
Neo-liberalism is not a solution, but the principal cause of the problem. I would like to offer some personal insights here from my working life with regard to the manner a non…
In 2021, the Wildlife & Nature Protection Society (WNPS), Sri Lanka’s oldest such organisation (the third in the world), with the aid of the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), persuaded the government…
The irony is not lost on the Malaiyaga Thamilar community. A stamp was issued in commemoration of former minister and leader of the Ceylon Workers Congress, the late Arumugan Thondaman, but most…
industriall-union My exchange with friend and colleague Ben Selwyn came out of sharing union statements on illicit transfer of capital out of Sri Lanka’s corporate world. These numerous statements have a bearing…
The principal problem faced by people due to the economic crisis is of rising prices while incomes for many remain unchanged. As a result, the poverty rate has doubled from 2021 from…
Animal rights activists and conservationists are up in arms about a plan to send 100,000 toque macaque monkeys to China on the request of a private Chinese firm. The government says the…
How can the most ambitious renewable power project in Sri Lanka have this many detrimental impacts on the environment and the local communities of Mannar? Thambapawani, a derivation of the name after…
In February 2023, the prestigious Forbes magazine proclaimed Sri Lanka as having the Top Wildlife Safaris Outside of Africa for the year 2023. “The nation has one of the planet’s densest populations…
South Asia and East Asia trade is growing amid global uncertainty. Alongside an IMF program, Sri Lanka should adopt pro-trade reforms to tap into this source of dynamism to tackle its terrible…
Sri Lanka’s national anthem presents a vision of the country as a motherland to many, life giving and filled with nature’s abundance and beauty, a place of truth seeking and wisdom. It…
Despite the unprecedented socio-economic and political setbacks Sri Lanka is currently facing, the Government is making preparations to celebrate the country’s 75th Independence Day in grand style. Within this climate, however, there…
