Dilrook Kannangara There is a silly trend of glorifying and romanticizing the pre-Independence era. Those who do so have no idea how things were then. Although Sri Lanka is in a dire economic and political situation today, some matters are better than then. Yes; there are things that are worse today. Sri Lankans are utterly […]

Dilrook Kannangara In 1971 there were more than 20,000 ethnic Sinhalas were living in the Jaffna District alone. None of them lived on rent. They had their own properties as with everyone else in Jaffna. However, after the TULF election win in July 1977, Tamils attacked Sinhala people in the north during Black August 1977, […]

Dilrook Kannangara If functioning well, the gem industry has the highest local value addition of all exports. Unlike garments, EPZs and tea, the gem industry does not have imported raw materials. There is no requirement for foreign investments as locals are capable of investing with required machinery and expertise. In other words, the net export […]

Dilrook Kannangara Replacing provincial councils with District councils worsens the problems of separatism, corruption and waste. It must never be attempted. If provincial councils are bad, the system must be retracted. Replacing it with a worse system is unwise (Mahadenamutta could not have done it better in the case of palm sugar cubes). There are […]

Dilrook Kannangara A social media activist has lost his bearings and ventured into the territory of hate speech. Calling politically active Buddhist monks by insulting names is fair game as they have entered the political fray. However, religious symbols are beyond political insults. Associating a religious symbol with a sexual object is an offence and […]

Dilrook Kannangara At last the government is doing something about the ice mafia. It is a very lucrative industry and the mafia is fighting back. The mafia cannot fight the police or the STF directly as they know it will be their end. Instead they agitate sections of the people to support them and save […]

Dilrook Kannangara Tamil-only political parties rarely vote in favour of the national budget. When they do it raises many questions. At least one TNA MP has said he supports the 2023 budget to help resolve problems affecting Tamil people and to meet Tamil aspirations. Looks like the 2023 budget has replaced the LTTE which stood […]

Dilrook Kannangara Amidst the economic crisis racist politics has raised its ugly head once again. Instead of addressing the problems of 22 million people, tribal politicians want special treatment for their tribe of 3.5 million people. In order to perform their extortion racket, they are still using the ethnic problem begging bowl. The so-called ethnic […]

Dilrook Kannangara This year’s Olcott Speech at Ananda College by Thilan Wijesinghe was a refreshing presentation of what went wrong with the Sri Lankan economy. It was an apt topic given the fact that the school had produced many winners who decorated the nation with prestige and who saved the nation when under threat. The […]

Dilrook Kannangara Sri Lanka is in a NATO debt trap. Over 50% of Sri Lanka’s external debt was raised in the US and European NATO nations. Another 12% is held by another key US military ally in Asia. Altogether they hold over 62% of Sri Lanka’s external debt. Having trapped Sri Lanka into a perpetual […]

Dilrook Kannangara The nation and the people are in a deep economic crisis. In the midst of the crisis, the government has decided to dish out 15,000 rupees each only to Hindus in the plantations sector. This is highly discriminatory and is a violation of the Constitution which guarantees equal rights to all individuals. If […]

Dilrook Kannangara Many nations including Sri Lanka face a hunger problem. Instead of looking for easy ways out, blaming this and that and finding faults with everything suggested, nothing much happens in Sri Lanka. Various types of beans grow in all parts of the island. Beans can be grown in a small garden. Almost all […]

Dilrook Kannangara The Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) was introduced in 1979 for very good reasons. Acts of terrorism was on the rise including the bombing of the Air Ceylon passenger plane by Tamil terrorists in 1978, attacks on banks and killing of politicians and police officers in the north. As visible around the world, […]

Dilrook Kannangara Sri Lanka’s current taxation system is only focused on taxing income and consumption. How about wealth? Sri Lanka has a horrible disparity between the top 1% and the bottom 50%. The top 1% (about 200,000 people) owns 32% of the wealth while the bottom 50% (over 11 million people) owns just 3.7% of […]

Dilrook Kannangara Sri Lanka’s governance cost doubled since the introduction of provincial councils in 1988. A new layer was introduced to governance which was never needed. A white elephant. Instead of one minister of education, health, etc. now we have 10 of them; 9 from provincial councils. Corruption, waste, etc. also doubled. Tax collection had […]

Dilrook Kannangara Sri Lanka has an estimated 6.3 million individuals suffering hunger. World Food Program (WFP) distributes money to a selected crowd, mostly based on ethnicity. The north, east and Nuwara Eliya districts are the biggest recipients of WFP’s food aid. However, these areas have only a small population of hungry people. Other areas have […]

Dilrook Kannangara Having read an interesting article by Garvin Karunaratne prompted me to write this to bring to attention real issues of today that were disregarded in it. In short, if a separate state or states are declared in the northern and eastern provinces, they will be rich and developed countries in a generation thanks […]

Dilrook Kannangara IMF help is getting delayed and delayed. So many rounds of negotiations have been held but Sri Lanka is yet to see the money. Even if IMF help comes, it will be a loan which will have to be repaid with interest just like other loans. Since all economic powers have to approve […]

Dilrook Kannangara Sri Lanka’s economic crisis in not unique. Other countries have been in it and some are currently in it too. Economics is all about trade-offs. One basic premise of economics is that resources are limited but needs and wants are unlimited. The way to succeed economically is to manage needs and wants (not […]

Dilrook Kannangara අරගලකාරයන්ගේ ප්‍රධාන ආහාරය බුරියානි. ඔවුන්ට බුරියානි සපයන්නන් ඔවුන්ව නටවන සෙයක් පෙනෙන්නට තිබේ. වෙසක් මාසේ නම වෙනිදා සිදුවීම් පිටුපස විශාල බුරියානි කාරයන් ප්‍රතිශතයක් සිටින බව ඒ සම්බන්ධයෙන් අත් අඩංගුවට ගත් 2,400 ඉක්මවූ අයගේ නම් වලින් පෙනේ. වෙනස්ව කිවහොත් මිනී මැරීම, ගෙවල් ගිනි තැබීම, අරගලය වෙනුවෙන් මැර ප්‍රහාර එල්ල කිරීම, කොළඹ පාතාලය ප්‍රතිප්‍රහාර සඳහා කැඳවීම […]

Dilrook Kannangara Complete bunkum! W R is a pro-Indian. He is distracting people from the Indian takeover of SL’s petroleum sector (IOC), Trinco oil tank farm and the land, Colombo Port East terminal, etc. None of these bring dollars but takes out SL’s dollars. There is no foreign loan on Hambantota port. Colombo south port […]

Dilrook Kannangara Sri Lanka is in a foreign exchange crisis. It has short term and long-term reasons. In 1977 when the economy was opened, it was done in a haphazard way. Due to those deficiencies the nation faces many nasty consequences. A powerful, wealthy, criminal and anti-national import mafia has been created. They import anything […]

Dilrook Kannangara There are usual protests and disruption by the disruptive cabal against the progressive Kotelawala Defence University (KDU) Bill. These are the elements that always disrupt Sri Lanka’s progress and hinder equal rights to citizens. They rely on twisted logic that free education” equals only government provided education and no other education”. Free education […]

Dilrook Kannangara Information on the Easter Sunday attack tickles in slowly. Based on available information, the radical group members that carried out the attack had agreed not to attack Sinhalese, especially Buddhists when some of them had suggested otherwise. Going by this decision, they avoided Sinhalese in their attacks except on the occasion of the […]

Dilrook Kannangara UNHRC voting clearly showed Sri Lanka’s friends and enemies (and the in-betweens). Although India abstained from voting, India fully supported the anti-Sri Lanka resolution. Sadly, some enemies are key export destinations (and import origins) of Sri Lankan produce (and Sri Lanka’s imports) which can become a future threat. While it is only the […]

Dilrook Kannangara This was why India abstained from voting. UNHRC will turn to India with the same set of demands very soon and India is keen to avoid an embarrassing situation by being party to it. https://undocs.org/A/HRC/46/L.1/Rev.1 The paragraph about devolution of political authority must have sent a chill down India for sure. India revoked […]

Dilrook Kannangara Reconciliation and accountability. These are the two words the international community imposed on Sri Lanka since it defeated Tamil terrorists in 2009. However, it was a one-way street; or, two one-way streets. Only Sri Lanka had to do reconciliation while Tamils always torpedoed it. Only Sri Lanka was pushed for accountability while Tamils […]

Dilrook Kannangara Sri Lanka’s stand against UNHRC’s intrusive resolution against the island nation on war crimes matters is commendable. The government of President HE Gotabaya Rajapaksa has so far taken a bold stand on the matter forcing the Core Group to revise their resolution again and again trying to appease Sri Lanka. Yet, Sri Lanka […]

Dilrook Kannangara Government revenue as a percentage of GDP has steadily fallen down over the past three decades to close to 11%. The government has to prove all services it provides and repay loans and interest from this revenue. Debt repayment and interest expenses alone equals total government revenue. For the rest of government expenses, […]

Dilrook Kannangara Compared to Sinhala JVP and Tamil LTTE caused death tolls, Muslims have been the most peaceful community. I was both amused and appalled when a powerful Muslim MP said Muslim youth will take up weapons if they are not allowed burial of COVID-19 dead. TNA as expected echoed this very same sentiment which […]