Building a Future: the Young People who Chose to Stay
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…
Development
Tracing Roots and Winning Rights: the March of the Malaiyaha Tamil Community
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…
Debt Restructuring, Austerity and the IMF: a Panacea or an Exacerbation? Part 2
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…
Saving the Leopard from Slipping into Extinction
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…
Address Unknown: The Plight of the Malaiyaga Thamilar Community
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…
Debt Crisis, Corporate Culpability and the Apparel Sector: Labour Reforms in Perspective
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…
Sri Lanka’s Economic Crisis: Causes, Consequences and Cure
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…
Don’t Blame the Monkeys
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…
Wind Farms : The Death of Mannar
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…
Short Sighted Policies Destroying Sri Lanka’s Wildlife
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…
Trade with Asia is a Pathway for Crisis-Hit Sri Lanka
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 at 75: Whose Motherland, What Freedoms?
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…
The Demands of the Adivasi Community at Sri Lanka’s 75th Independence Day
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…
Conservation: Reaching a Point of No Return
Last year, Covid dominated all conversations and contributed to the further exacerbation of a multitude of existing man-made environmental and conservation disasters. “Sadly, conservation management decisions seem now to be made at…
Villagers Fight to Regain Their Land in Panama
Panama is a remote village at the southern end of the eastern province in the Ampara district. The slogan often used in land struggles, land is life, is true for most people…
