The imposition of sanctions by the UK on three retired Sri Lankan military officers—Shavendra Silva, Wasantha Karannagoda, and Jagath Jayasuriya—and a former LTTE commander, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan (Karuna Amman), on March 24, 2025, reflects a significant interplay between UK domestic politics and international human rights policy.
These sanctions, which include travel bans and asset freezes, were enacted under the UK’s Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime and target individuals accused of serious human rights violations during Sri Lanka’s civil war (1983–2009).
While framed as a move to promote accountability and support reconciliation in Sri Lanka, the timing and context suggest that domestic political dynamics, particularly the influence of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in the UK, played a pivotal role.
The Sri Lankan Tamil community in the UK, estimated to number between 110,000 and 300,000, is a well-organized and politically active group concentrated in key electoral constituencies such as London (Harrow, East Ham, Redbridge, Tooting), Leicester, and Surrey. This demographic concentration transforms them into a critical voting bloc in Britain’s highly competitive political landscape, where parliamentary constituencies are small, and tight margins can determine electoral outcomes.
Unlike the smaller, less politically engaged Sinhalese community, the Tamils have leveraged their numbers, organizational strength—through groups like the British Tamils Forum (BTF)—and economic influence (with Tamil-owned businesses generating an estimated £1 billion annually) to amplify their voice.
Historically, the Tamil diaspora has leaned toward the Labour Party, which has consistently championed their calls for justice regarding alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka. This alignment became particularly evident in the lead-up to the July 2024 UK parliamentary elections.
Labour leaders, including Keir Starmer, David Lammy, and Wes Streeting, made explicit promises to the Tamil community, such as imposing Magnitsky-style sanctions on Sri Lankan officials and pushing for a referral of Sri Lanka to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
These pledges were reiterated at events like the Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day” in May 2024, hosted in Parliament, where Labour figures underscored their commitment to accountability as a foreign policy priority. The sanctions announced in March 2025 can thus be seen as a fulfilment of these electoral promises, aimed at consolidating Tamil support in constituencies where their votes could tip the scales.
The Labour Party’s victory in July 2024, ending 14 years of Conservative rule, brought this agenda into government policy. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who had vowed during the campaign to deny impunity to those responsible for human rights abuses, framed the sanctions as a step toward supporting Sri Lanka’s communities.
However, the timing—15 years after the war’s end and amidst a shifting political landscape in Sri Lanka, where Tamils have recently supported the National Peoples’ Power (NPP)—suggests a domestic political calculus. The issue of Sri Lanka’s civil war had largely faded from the international spotlight, resurfacing annually at the UN Human Rights Council with little tangible progress. The UK’s sudden action thus appears less about responding to an immediate crisis in Sri Lanka and more about addressing the expectations of a key domestic constituency.
The Tamil diaspora’s influence extends beyond voting power. Their activism, exemplified by the 2009 Parliament Square protests and sustained lobbying through the BTF and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils (APPG), has kept the issue of accountability alive in British political discourse.
Labour MPs like Siobhain McDonagh, Gareth Thomas, and John McDonnell have been vocal advocates, reflecting the community’s ability to shape policy through grassroots pressure and parliamentary engagement.
The absence of a comparable Sinhalese lobby further tilts the political scales in favour of Tamil narratives, making their demands—such as sanctions and ICC referrals—more likely to gain traction.
Beyond electoral politics, the sanctions enhance Labour’s image as a defender of human rights, appealing to both Tamil voters and broader liberal constituencies. This aligns with the party’s historical stance and differentiates it from the Conservatives, who faced criticism for prioritizing trade over human rights in dealings with Sri Lanka.
The lack of similar action under previous governments, despite the availability of the Magnitsky sanctions regime since 2020, underscores how Labour’s responsiveness to Tamil advocacy marks a shift driven by domestic imperatives.
In summary, UK domestic politics, particularly the electoral influence of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, significantly shaped the decision to sanction Sri Lankan military figures in March 2025. The Labour Party’s need to secure Tamil votes in key constituencies, fulfil campaign promises, and project a human rights-focused image converged to revive an issue that had waned internationally.
While presented as a principled stand, the sanctions reflect a strategic blend of diaspora politics and electoral pragmatism in a competitive British political arena.
P. K. Balachandran is a senior Indian journalist working in Sri Lanka for local and international media and has been writing on South Asian issues for the past 21 years.
Sri Lanka’s macroeconomic turnaround is ‘remarkable’ though many households are yet to feel the impact, according to two IMF experts, who noted that the economy has rebounded strongly and quickly, growing by 5 per cent in 2024.
The country’s tradeable debt instruments are once again attractive to investors, credit rating was upgraded by at least three notches and high inflation has been halted.
Sri Lanka’s macroeconomic turnaround is ‘remarkable’ though many households are yet to feel the impact, according to two experts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
They observed that the economy has rebounded strongly and quickly, growing by 5 per cent in 2024 and in a mere 18 months recovered just under half of the output lost from the peak in 2018 to the nadir in 2023.
This March marks the mid-point of Sri Lanka’s four-year economic reform programme supported by the IMF. In the two years since its inception difficult but much needed reforms were undertaken with significant gains, they wrote.
The debt relief provided by external creditors has reduced the burden the Sri Lankan people need to shoulder, and the country’s tradeable debt instruments are once again attractive to investors as they have been included in international bond indices, an op-ed piece by Peter Breuer, the IMF’s former mission chief for Sri Lanka, and Martha Tesfaye Woldemichael, the IMF’s current resident representative in the country, said on the IMF website.
Sri Lanka’s credit rating was also upgraded by at least three notches, they noted.
Skyrocketing inflation has been halted. Tax revenues as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) are up by more than two-thirds and the government’s balance excluding interest payments (primary balance) has improved by nearly 6 percentage points, they said.
External creditors have forgiven $3 billion in debt and stretched another $25 billion due in the near term or already overdue over a much longer time horizon over the next 20 years with much reduced interest rates.
Markets have rewarded Sri Lanka’s reforms with sharp declines in domestic borrowing cost from a peak of 30 per cent in 2023 to currently 8 per cent and in the sovereign risk ‘spread’ indicator in international markets from a peak of 70 per cent to 5 per cent.
Responsible international market access should be within reach in the next few years, the experts observed.
As about half of IMF programmes in Sri Lanka has had, prior to the current one, ended prematurely, often followed by economic underperformance, it is important to arrest this boom-bust cycle and manage the economy so that the recovery can be sustained even in an uncertain global environment and so that all Sri Lankans benefit from it, the op-ed added.
එම ලියවිල්ලේ Advocata Institute, Verite Research Institute, Institute of Policy Studies, Pathfinder Foundation, Centre for Policy Alternatives සහ Ceylon Chamber of Commerce යන ආයතන සම්බන්ධයෙන් කරුණු ඇතුලත් වේ.
When British MPs who are regular mouthpieces for pro-LTTE demands & regular visitors to pro-LTTE events & regularly read of LTTE prepared speeches, abuse their office to sanction individuals on conjectured crimes, the Govt of Sri Lanka must first of all demand that the UK Govt investigate all British MPs who are voicing one-sided statements completely ignoring facts & evidence. The 4 names on UK sanction list perfectly highlights the bias. The Army Commander who led the military onslaught is excluded but just 3 officers who took orders from him are. The former LTTE leader named left LTTE in 2004 & LTTE committed scores of crimes thereafter. What continues to go unexplained is how the Sri Lanka Armed Forces would save 300,000 people but would kill” 40,000, 70,000, 120,000, 200,000” Tamils who the accusers cannot still name, whose skeletons are not even found & whose families have not even filed habeas corpus. The entire genocide” claim rests on the ability to prove 40,000 or more were killed, which has yet to be proved even after 16 years. Moreover, where in the world have we heard of Tamil genocide” when Tamil population is increasing?
The GoSL must demand that the British Govt investigate all British MPs linked with LTTE Diaspora especially their accounts & their misuse of British taxpayers money for witch hunts to satisfy LTTE Diaspora agenda.
According to a UK Govt press release 24 March 2025, 4 Sri Lankans have been sanctioned for serious human rights violations and abuses during the civil war in Sri Lanka” – exactly what court of law has found them guilty? How is Sri Lanka’s conflict civil” when the National Army was fighting an armed group that was even killing members of its own community? Does that qualify as ‘civil”.
UK has sanctioned a former LTTE commander Karuna Amman who left LTTE in 2004?
What about all of LTTE’s crimes after 2004 which included assassination attempts of Sri Lanka’s Army Commander Sarath Fonseka in April 2006.
The following list of assassinations were committed by LTTE after Karuna left LTTE.
Minister Jeyraj Fernandopulle – April 2008
Minister D M Dissanayake – January 2008
MP T Maheshwaran (Tamil) – January 2008
Herath Abeyweera – Chief Secretary Eastern Province – July 2007
Kethesh Loganathan (Tamil) – Deputy Secretary General of SCOPP – August 2006
Nataraj Raviraj (Tamil) – August 2006
Josepha Parasingham (Tamil) – December 2005
The British Govt may like to explain why the Commander of the Armed Forces who led the defeat of the LTTE is not included while those he gave orders to are.
These all point to a witch hunt especially when the British MPs mooting for these accountability” are frequent visitors to pro-LTTE forums.
Has David Lammy even been to Sri Lanka to be such a vocal critic?
His statements are purely based on his association with pro-LTTE elements & gracing the events held by them in honor of dead LTTE terrorists. That hardly calls for unbiased judgement by a British politician.
Given the largess of the LTTE kitty, the UK Govt & Scotland Yard should do an investigation into the transactions of all UK MPs vocalizing on the Sri Lankan issue taking a one-sided stand and basing their statements on speeches prepared for them by the LTTE lobby.
Other than David Lammy & Catherine West there are a host of other UK MPs who should be investigated.
Sri Lanka’s terrorist conflict ended in 2009.
It’s now 2025 there has been no violence associated with LTTE since 2009.
UK MPs reading prepared scripts & using their office & UK tax payers money to whine about an event that concluded 16 years ago echoes some for of witch hunt by those whose agenda was defeated.
UK Govt seriously needs to explain why the Army Commander who headed the defeat of the LTTE is omitted & why those who took orders from him are included into a sanctions list 16 years after the conflict?
David Lammy claims that the current action is to ensure those response for past human rights violations & abuses are held accountable”.
Then he may like to explain why the British are taking NO ACTION against Adele Balasingham who was the key trainer of LTTE’s child soldiers & she is happily living in the UK.
Does the UK sanction foreigners but give safe haven to the real culprits?
Let us jog everyone’s memories.
Adele Balasingham is the wife of so-called LTTE theoretician possibly British agent Anton B.
She is an Australian nurse and undertook to training kidnapped Tamil children as young as 7 years. These Tamil children were kidnapped from POOR & LOW CASTE Tamil homes. Another noteworthy factor – no high caste/high class Tamil had their children kidnapped & turned into child soldiers.
One third of LTTE comprised children. These children underwent gruesome training from 4a.m. some even perished during the gruesome training. No one is held accountable for these deaths.
They were denied their fundamental rights. The UN appointed a Tamil rapporteur but she did sweet nothing except compile reports & walk away with awards. No child was saved from being turned into a child soldier. During the hay day of LTTE’s rule in North Sri Lanka, scores of NGOs/INGOs, Faith-based organizations had their offices set up virtually next to LTTE offices. None of these tried to prevent poor & low caste Tamil children from being turned into child soldiers.
These children were denied to be with their parents. They were denied the right to education, freedom of movement & the freedom to enjoy their childhood. Where was David Lammy & Catherine West then?
Has Adele not violated the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict (2000)? Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) prosecuted cases involving child soldier recruitment, wouldn’t this apply to LTTE, Adele B & the LTTE Diaspora who has supported LTTE?
Adele Balasingham stands guilty of also training these children to commit suicide by biting the cyanide capsule & killing themselves without surrendering to the Sri Lanka Armed Forces. How many would have died or committed suicide following her orders. Are these not valid reasons to at least arrest & question her?
Books Written by Adele Balasingham:
The Will to Fight: The Tamil Liberation Struggle in Sri Lanka” (2004)
She admits to her involvement in LTTE.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam: A History of the Tamil Liberation Struggle”
She justifies LTTE rights for a separate Homeland.
Documentaries
Sisters in Arms” (2006) – covers Adele’s role in training women & children
I believe the children who have taken up arms and sacrificed their lives in the cause of Tamil Eelam are martyrs.”
In one of her interviews, she said: The training of these young soldiers is not just physical but also ideological.They are not just warriors; they are the future leaders of our struggle.”
On the role of women and children: The women and children in the Tamil Tigers are not victims. They are soldiers fighting for freedom, fighting for their people.”
Jayantha Liyanage has lodged several complaints with Scotland Yard regarding the British silence & inaction against Adele Balasingham. There are scores of videos of her training children & handing the cyanide capsule and she has even written 2 books boasting of her achievements. These are more than enough evidence & far more than the fairy tales the LTTE Diaspora keep churning annually to keep alive their kitty, enable their people to get asylum & refugee status & mix & mingle with foreign Govts and even contest elections & wriggle into their parliament. We have no issue in their bettering their careers, but these lies must stop, these fabrications must end.
Adele B is the White Tiger living off LTTE’s ill-gotten gains in New Maiden, London.
A BBC produced documentary in 1991 shows Adele in LTTE uniform carrying an AK 47 and wearing a cyanide capsule around her neck & tied cyanide capsules around necks of innocent children & young Tamil women.
Tamil children were not only kidnapped but Adele & LTTE went from school to school indoctrinating Tamil children – they all referred to her as Aunty Adele”. One of these schools was Patrima from which 543 students were taken to Skandapuram camp & trained by Adele. At the Abu base camp children as young as 12 were trained & sent to fight. Any children who fled were captured & jailed. No one knows what happened to them. https://mfa.gov.lk/sin/the-white-tiger-in-london/
The UK Govt, David Lammy, Catherine West have no moral right to be demanding accountability if they are ignoring the White Tiger aunty living in UK having taught thousands of kidnapped Tamil children to kill and commit suicide. All the fictitious genocide” war crimes” allegations which are only iced with LTTE propaganda cannot erase what Adele committed on behalf of the LTTE.
If UK Govt continues to provide her safe haven and sanction retired military officers 16 years after the conflict ended excluding the head of the armed forces who led the end of LTTE, it clearly shows bias.
The former LTTE members, especially child soldiers who are now adults must file case with UK authorities & demand action against Adele for denying them their childhood & youth. We do not know how many kidnapped children actually died having fled & being punished by LTTE. Where is the accountability for these deaths?
These former child soldiers should now realize how foreign based LTTE made money riding on the separate homeland song while happily living in foreign shores & educating their children in Ivy League schools/universities with the money made from LTTE propaganda machine, while poor & low caste Tamils suffered in the jungles. Tamils who suffered must seek accountability from their own first!
GoSL must call for the UK authorities to investigate the biased actions of pro-LTTE British MPs.
Mahinda Rajapaksa Leader Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna
The United Kingdom govt. has announced sanctions including travel bans and asset freezes against Sri Lanka’s former Chief of Defence Staff Shavendra Silva, former Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda and former Army Commander Jagath Jayasuriya over unproven allegations of human rights violations during the war with the LTTE. It was I, as the Executive President of Sri Lanka who took the decision to militarily defeat the LTTE and the armed forces implemented that decision on the ground.
Despite the 2002 ceasefire agreement, the LTTE had carried out 363 killings during the ceasefire between February 2002 and the end of September 2005. LTTE attacks intensified in the first few weeks and months after I was elected President in November 2005. Among the most serious such incidents were claymore mine attacks on 4 and 6 December 2005 in Jaffna that killed thirteen soldiers, a suicide attack on a naval craft on 5 January 2006 that killed 15 naval personnel, and the suicide attack on the Army Commander inside Army Headquarters in April 2006.
Despite all that, my government held two rounds of peace talks in January and June 2006 in Geneva and Oslo which were unilaterally halted by the LTTE. The LTTE landmine attack on a civilian bus in Kebithogollawa in June 2006 which killed 64 and seriously injured 86, many of them children – was a pivotal moment for me and my govt. Military operations commenced in July 2006 when the LTTE closed the Mawilaru anicut cutting off irrigation water to cultivators in the Trincomalee district and did not stop until the LTTE was completely defeated on 19 May 2009.
I categorically reject the UK govt.’s allegation of widespread human rights violations during the military operations. Lord Naseby stated in the House of Lords on 12 October 2017 that the then UK Defence Attache in Colombo Lieutenant Colonel Anton Gash had in conversation with him, praised the discipline of the Sri Lanka army and stated that there certainly was no policy to kill civilians. Because Lt. Col Anton Gash’s war time dispatches to London differ so significantly from the narrative promoted by the UK political authorities, only a heavily redacted version of those dispatches have been released. We conducted military operations only against the LTTE and not against the Tamil people.
Just months after the war ended, when my wartime army commander came forward as the opposition candidate at the 2010 presidential elections, the Tamil National Alliance issued a statement on 6 January 2010 appealing to the Tamil people to vote for the former army commander and he won over 60% of the votes cast in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, thus directly contradicting the narrative being promoted by the UK govt. Imposing sanctions on Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan a.k.a Karuna Amman who broke away from the LTTE in 2004 and later entered democratic politics is a clear case of penalizing anti-LTTE Tamils so as to placate the dominant segment of the Tamil diaspora in the UK.
When the UK foreign secretary David Milliband came to Sri Lanka in April 2009 and demanded a halt to military operations, I flatly turned him down. Later, a London based newspaper The Telegraph revealed – quoting secret documents made public by Wikileaks – that Mr. Miliband had tried to intervene in Sri Lanka to win Tamil votes for the Labour Party. Regrettably, to this day vote bank politics determines the UK’s stand on Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE.
Three decades of LTTE terrorism claimed the lives of 27,965 armed forces and police personnel not to mention the lives of many thousands of civilians including politicians. What Sri Lanka defeated in 2009 was the organization that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had officially designated as the deadliest terrorist organization in the world. It is noteworthy that the United Kingdom introduced special legislation in 2021 and 2023 to protect their own armed forces from persecution by interested parties.
Hence I expect the present government to resolutely stand by and defend former armed forces personnel who face persecution by foreign governments and organisations for doing their duty to safeguard Sri Lanka’s national security.
Aruna Laksiri Unawatuna B.Sc(Col), PGDC(Col), AAL, Coordinator, Dr. Thilaka Padma Subasinghe Memorial Legal Education Program.
Some people have forgotten that a President said at the opening of the New Court Complex in Galle that there is an error in the 19th Constitutional Amendment brought in 2015 regarding the presidential and parliamentary terms of office and that it was due to an oversight by a certain legal expert and that he would apologize to the people for it.
Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya, Attorney General Parinda Ranasinghe, other judges and government officials were seated in that audience.
Also, the 22nd Constitution Amendment Bill has been gazetted under Article 78 of the Constitution with the approval of the Attorney General to correct the error in the Constitution.
Accordingly, it is clear that the terms of office of the President Anura Dissanayake and “Malimawa” Parliament is 6 years. Because when a Constitution Amendment Bill was gazetted under Article 78 of the Constitution, it (Bill) was also the opinion of the Attorney General.
Accordingly, the position of the Attorney General is that there is an error in Article 83 of the current Constitution and it should be corrected.
The Attorney General noticed the error in Article 83 of the Constitution after several citizens filed cases in the Supreme Court about this error and paid lakhs of ruppess as court fees for it.
The important legal and social question that arises is whether Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya refrained from studying the error in the Constitution that led to the introducing/gazetteing of the 22nd Constitutional Amendment Bill because he will be entitled to the position of Permanent Representative to the United Nations upon retirement.
The people cannot forget how a certain Chief Justice said “I’m sorry” after his retirement filled with shock and regret for the judgement he gave along with other Supreme Court judges.
In such situations, the people should understand the need to enact laws to enable reviewing the judicial orders given earlier by judges when these judges take up government positions after retirement (except for positions in independent commissions).
After the appointment of retired Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya as the permanent representative of the United Nations, the good image of the judges and judicial independence can be preserved in association with the sovereignty of the people through such a law amendment.
It would be good for democracy if free thinkers deeply studied the appointment of former Chief Justice Jayantha Jayasuriya as Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations after his retirement, the impact on the independence of the judiciary, the solutions, and the 22nd Constitutional Amendment Bill brought to correct an error in the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
Recently many appreciative articles appeared regarding a sperm bank being set up. Superficially looking at it, it sounds like a wonderful idea providing an opportunity for those who cannot have children due to the infertility of the husband and the fact that the sperm is from an anonymous donor is expressed as a great advantage.
But in fact this is a very dangerous matter. While a person may donate sperms he will be having children on his own with his wife. Later on the children born out of artificial insemination might end up marrying these children – i.e. siblings may end up marrying each other -absolute incest. The sad fact is they may never know they are siblings since the donor is unknown to the mother or the child.
Islam totally forbids such procedure. No sperms of a person other than the woman’s husband can be used for artificial insemination according to Islam. However if other religions do not forbid insemination by a person who is not her husband, at least the full details of the donor must be given to the recipient so that she can inform her child who the actual father is, to be aware of his progenies. How the common man looks at this matter is unknown but certainly incest cannot produce a healthy generation.
Will the medical professionals consider this important fact?
Colombo, March 26 (Daily Mirror) – The exposition of the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha will ensure religious harmony in Sri Lanka while it helps safeguard Buddhism which is the backbone of national heritage, Archbishop of Colombo Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith said today.
The steps taken by the government and the Venerable Mahanayaka Theras to initiate an exposition of the Scared Tooth Relic is a welcome move. Everyone should ensure its success. I request Catholics to consider this event as a special one which brings religious harmony,” the Cardinal added.
olombo, March 27 (Daily Mirror) – In response to the UK sanction on the Sri Lankan officials including three former military leaders, former Navy Commander, Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda has accused the UK of hypocrisy, stating that while British colonial atrocities in Sri Lanka and India remain unaddressed, the UK is targeting Sri Lanka with human rights sanctions.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mirror, Karannagoda pointed out that Britain has never apologized for its past actions and questioned why it remains silent on ongoing global conflicts like those in Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya.
Admiral Karannagoda also alleged that LTTE sympathizers remain active in Western countries such as the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, and Europe, working towards their goal of creating a separate state in Sri Lanka. He claimed they are collecting funds to influence politicians in these countries to impose sanctions on Sri Lankan military leaders who played a key role in defeating the LTTE.
He warned that this could be just the beginning, with further sanctions likely as a result of external pressure. The British Prime Minister, a former human rights lawyer, is using this issue to gain majority votes. This is very unfair,” he added.
Meanwhile, Admiral Karannagoda urged the Sri Lankan government to take a firm stance against the sanctions and stand by its military leaders who helped end the war against terrorism.
Sri Lanka’s central bank governor said monetary policy is appropriate” right now, as the South Asian nation’s economy and inflation are moving in line with their goals.
The Central Bank of Sri Lanka held the overnight policy rate at 8% for the second straight meeting this year on Wednesday. The move was in line with the forecast of most of the economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
The monetary policy is transmitting into the economy nicely” and inflation will come back into positive territory” from the second half of the year,” Governor P. Nandalal Weerasinghe told Bloomberg TV’s Haslinda Amin in an interview on Wednesday. So we thought this is the right, appropriate policy stance for the time being.”
Sri Lanka’s economy expanded 5% last year, bouncing from a contraction of 2.3% in 2023, and is expected to sustain the pace in the current year. However, the monetary authority will closely” monitor the risks from the possible impact of volatile commodity prices and US President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the governor said.
A $3 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund has helped in stabilizing Sri Lanka’s cash-strapped economy. Since the historic default in 2022, authorities have raised taxes and unveiled measures to keep up with the conditions of the lender’s loan program. The country needs to increase energy prices and meet fiscal parameters for further aid, the IMF recently said.
The country will have to stay” the course to meet the revenue-based fiscal consolidation targets and deliver on the promised governance reforms, Weerasinghe said.
There’s a lot of confidence and assurance from the administration that they’ll move in the same direction,” he said.
What Bloomberg Economics Says
The policy rate is at an appropriate level, based on our estimates of inflation and the output gap. Any easing beyond this point could cause the economy to overheat — leading to an undesirable jump in imports which would pressure FX reserves and hit the rupee. We doubt the central bank will want to risk those events.
Ankur Shukla, economist
Sri Lanka secured about $334 million in loans from the IMF on Feb 28. The nation is also in the process of signing debt restructuring agreements with bilateral partners in the official creditor committee such as India and members of the Paris club, the governor said.
The Foreign Ministry has condemned the UK government’s decision to impose sanctions on four Sri Lankans, calling it a “unilateral action” that complicates the ongoing national reconciliation process.
The ministry stated that Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath conveyed Sri Lanka’s position to British High Commissioner Andrew Patrick during a meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Employment and Tourism.
The ministry referred to the UK Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office’s (FCDO) press release dated March 24, which announced asset freezes and travel bans on three former military commanders and a former minister.
Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry said it is also noted that the UK FCDO Press Release refers to a commitment made during the election campaign to ensure those responsible are not allowed impunity;.
In this regard, the Ministry said it wishes to underline that this is a unilateral action taken by the UK government which involves an asset freeze and travel ban on the individuals concerned.
Such unilateral actions by countries do not assist but serve to complicate the national reconciliation process underway in Sri Lanka, the ministry said in the statement.
Emphasizing Sri Lanka’s ongoing efforts to strengthen domestic mechanisms for accountability and reconciliation, the ministry asserted that past human rights violations should be addressed through local processes.
When we became independent in 1948, we- the colonies were the market for everything produced in the UK.
With independence, we had to change to enable development, production in industry and agriculture and foremost to alleviate poverty.
We had commenced Land Development, Irrigation, and Agriculture. To enable people to be trained, we started a major Department- Rural Development and Cottage Industry. Rural Development Officers were everywhere. They organized development at grass grassroots level, Handlooms took the stage. A major Department of Small Industry handled cooperatives to weave and sell. Laksala emerged to handle sales. By 1970, with handlooms, powerlooms and a few textile factories, we produced all our textlies. .
In 1955 I started work as Assistant Commissioner in the Department for Development of Agricultural Marketing. It was buying vegetables and fruit at Producer Fairs there by ensuring that the producers got a fair price, moving the produce to the Cities and selling at low prices keeping a mark. up of fifteen percent to cover up transport costs and wastage aimed at making traders sell at low rates. A Cannery was established in 1955. We handled far less than 10% of the produce but were successful in ensuring that the producers got a fair price and also ensured that the traders in the Cities had to sell at low rates. It was a unique system not found anywhere else. In three years- by 1958 we produced all our requirements of jam and juice. Even 8% of our pineapple pieces were exported.
Then came the Paddy Lands Act of Comrade Philip Gunawardena. I did muster the farmers into cultivation committees in Matara, Kegalla and Anuradhapura. . Plans were drawn up for the farmers to plan their cultivation, proper seed paddy was found from seed farms belonging to the Government , fertilizer obtained through multi purpose cooperatives, fed through fertilizer stores of the Government . H4 a high yielding variety of paddy was found by 1954, well before the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute)came into existence. This planning and organization was done by two Departments the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Agrarian Services. I worked in Agrarian Services as an Assistant Commissioner and our Department had a Field Assistant, a one year trained at the viillage level. The Agriculture Department also had an year trained Overseer. This combination of two Departments did wonders. Comrade Philip left us but he had set up the organization for us workers to get going.
In 1965 the Prime Minister Mr Dudley Senanayake decided to direct the paddy production programme personally.
In every District the most senior officer -the Government Agent was instructed to devote his entire time for paddy production. For this purpose the Government Agent was instructed to hand over all his work to an Additional Government Agent and the Government Agent was also gazetted as a Deputy Commissioner of Agrarian Services, Cooperatives and Agriculture. There was meticulous planning and implementation. The harvest was good and Sri Lanka became self sufficient in paddy.
The Prime Minister wanted to be certain of the achievement. Hitherto it was the Department of of Agriculture that did the crop cuttings to arrive at the yield. The Prime Minister was not satisfied. He wanted crop cuttings done on plots found on random sampling and further he wanted the crop cuttings done by staff officers of other Departments, Though costly, This was done to arrive at the actual yield,
Ten years later, when I met the Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, he boasted of the paddy produced and then I asked for the crop cuttings survey results He said that they had found it an expensive process and stopped it. The yields reported by the Department of Agriculture had been accepted as final.
Today decades later we lament of low yields
What did happen.
With the abolition of the Paddy Lands Act in the Eighties, The cultivation committees ceased to exist, The Agrarian Services Department was curtailed in action,.Its cadre of Field Assistants was abolished. Today we have Agrarian Services Centers that sell fertilizers They no longer organize cultivation.
Further, President Premadasa promoted all Agricultural Overseers, some 2300 to the rank of Grama Niladhari and the post of agricultural overseer was abolished. With this move there is no field officer at the grass route level. This has eaten into the ability of the Department of Agriculture as it has no officer at the village level. In fact the Department of Agriculture ceases to exist after the Divisional Level. This Divisional Agricultural Instructor has to attend to the requirements of as much as 13,000 farmers at Yodakandiya and 3500 farmers at Ranorawa. Without a Field Assistant- an Overseer under him the work of the Department of Agriculture is very ineffective. In other words the Department of Agriculture the only Department in charge of agriculture is inactivated.
In addition comes the decision of the IMF that the officers of the Department of Agriculture should not use any peoples organizations like cooperatives in extension. In our Developing countries many are the farmers cultivating small parcels and thus the efficacy of the Department of Agriculture is highly curtailed- in fact it may be correct to conclude that the Department of Agriculture almost ceases to exist.
Luckily MotherNature has provided water through rain at particular times very regularly, which helps cultivation.. The major part of the acreage under paddy cultivation is cultivated rain fed. Mother Nature has provided rain on a very regular pattern and it is necessary to plan cultivation but as stated earlier, in the absence of any organization, there is late cultivation and a portion the crop ends invariably damaged.
In the dry zone our forefathers had developed an intricate system of small tanks to ensure that there is a continued water supply after rains cease. . There are no cultivation committees now to organize the people together to ensure that people cultivate together and this too impedes orderly cultivation. The Yaya Palakas are very ineffective. Cultivators are left to themselves. Paddy cultivation requires cooperation as water flows from field to field and
there is no organization to bring the cultivators together.
Mother Nature has not deserted us humans. The failure is in our hands-
Thus today we have to start from scratch to cultivate the maximum area and also ensure that improved seed and improved techniques are used.
Thus as far as paddy cultivation is concerned, a peoples organization to plan the cultivation is essential and this is a fundamental necessity that has to be addressed.
Then comes marketing the produce. In the Fifties and Sixties SriLanka had a Guaranteed Price scheme for all major food items that were imported. The people could plant any crop in demand and hand over the produce to their own cooperative and get paid. There was a Department for Development of Agricultural Marketing which implemented the Guaranteed Price Scheme and the cooperative would hand over to the Marketing Department and get paid.
The Marketing Department established a Cannery in 1955. This Cannery, offered good prices for many items and processed them to market. Red Pumpkin was turned into Golden Mellow Jam and Ash Pumpkin into Silver Mellow Jam. Within the three years 1955 to 1958 we produced all the jam we required and even sold 8% of our pineapple tins abroad. . All over Sri Lanka there were Public Fairs where anyone could bring in produce and get sold. The Marketing Department also purchased goods at their stores and also at the Fairs. As Assistant Commissioner for Development of Marketing I surveyed what happened at the Fairs and if I found the traders fleecing the producers with low prices I would get the Marketing Department to start purchases to make the traders offer reasonable prices. With the abolition of the Marketing Department this situation does not exist today.
The IMF with one stroke of the pen- its Structural Adjustment Programme insisted that if Sri Lanka is to be provided with finance it has to abolish the Marketing Department and all its activities on he premise that the Government did not deal with any commerce. The Cannery that made Sri Lanka self sufficient in many fruit produce was privatized.
Today we boast of Economic Centers. These are only shop premises offered to traders.
Thus today many current programmes are defective and new programmes have to be initiated, This task falls very squarely on the shoulders of our new saviour President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the NPP. We do wish him well to take our country to a situ where poverty is alleviated.
Perhaps these rambling thoughts of mine could somehow usher in development initiatives.
Colombo, March 25 (Daily Mirror) – In the wake of recent sanctions imposed by the UK government on four individuals, including Shavendra Silva and Wasantha Karannagoda, SLPP MP Namal Rajapaksa questioned whether the new government, led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, will defend the former military commanders when foreign powers target them.
Yesterday, the UK government imposed sanctions on four individuals responsible for serious human rights abuses and violations during the Sri Lankan civil war, including extrajudicial killings, torture and/or the perpetration of sexual violence. The individuals sanctioned by the UK include former senior Sri Lankan military commanders and a former LTTE military commander who later led the paramilitary Karuna Group, which operated on behalf of the Sri Lankan military against the LTTE.
Posting on X, MP Namal Rajapaksa stated: “We will always protect our war veterans—now and forever. Their sacrifices secured our peace, and we will never allow anyone to undermine their legacy.”
The statement as follows:
Sri Lanka was the first nation to fully defeat terrorism, yet the West continues to selectively target our war veterans while ignoring those who funded and justified LTTE brutality. The latest UK sanctions aren’t about human rights—they’re the result of relentless LTTE-backed lobbying, manipulating foreign governments to act against those who brought lasting peace.
This is not justice; some Western politicians are enjoying the perks of lobbying money, putting our nation’s reconciliation at risk. People from both the North and South must understand that the freedom we enjoy today comes from tough decisions. These sanctions will lower the morale of our forces, and if another crisis arises, they may lack the courage to fight if we don’t support them now.
Those behind these sanctions don’t care about the safety of the Tamil community—they are only creating more problems and further jeopardizing reconciliation. Their real goal is to disrupt the progress made, especially as Tamil communities in the North and East now have a clear path to vote for national parties. We will never allow anyone to hamper reconciliation between communities.
I want to reiterate once again—the war was against terrorism, not against any ethnic group. I urge the Tamil community not to fall for the agenda of certain Tamil politicians who receive perks to fuel divisions between communities through certain INGOs.
@anuradisanayake @HMVijithaHerath
—Your government came to power with support from those who have always undermined our military’s sacrifices. Will you defend them now when foreign powers attack those who secured peace for Sri Lanka, or will you stay silent?
We will always protect our war veterans—now and forever. Their sacrifices secured our peace, and we will never allow anyone to undermine their legacy.
The Chief Incumbent of Mihintale Rajamaha Viharaya, Ven. Dr. Walawahengunawewa Dhammarathana Thero, claims that a situation has arisen where the President’s advice and directives are not being carried out due to certain politically-affiliated groups from previous governments that are continuing to haunt” the country’s state institutions.
The Venerable Thero further charged that certain officials are attempting to inconvenience the government without implementing the instructions issued by the President and the Presidential Secretariat.
He made these remarks during a press conference held at the Mihintale Rajamaha Viharaya this morning (25).
Meanwhile, Venerable Dhammarathana Thero also stated that a group of individuals, who had arrived intoxicated at the historic Mihintale Rajamaha Viharaya premises last night (24), verbally abused and assaulted the monks residing at the temple, and had even attempted to run over one of the monks with the van in which they had arrived in.
The Venerable Thero also pointed out that only a small group of six police officers have been assigned to protect the archaeological locations and devotees at the Mihintale sacred site, and those officers were even unable to identify the vehicle license plate number or any other details of the van used by the group involved in yesterday’s incident.
The Chief Incumbent also mentioned that since the historic Mihintale sacred site spans a large area, the antiquities at the site are not adequately secured. He further added that he has requested the government to deploy security forces for the protection of the Mihintale sacred site and expressed his appreciation for the work done by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and the government for this year’s State Poson Festival.
First published Tue Nov 30, 2004; substantive revision Mon May 13, 2024
It is widely accepted that consciousness or, more generally, mental activity is in some way correlated to the behavior of the material brain. Since quantum theory is the most fundamental theory of matter that is currently available, it is a legitimate question to ask whether quantum theory can help us to understand consciousness. Several approaches answering this question affirmatively, proposed in recent decades, will be surveyed. There are three basic types of corresponding approaches: (1) consciousness is a manifestation of quantum processes in the brain, (2) quantum concepts are used to understand conscious mental activity without referring to brain activity, and (3) matter and consciousness are regarded as dual aspects of one underlying reality. Major contemporary variants of these quantum-inspired approaches will be discussed. It will be pointed out that they make different epistemological assumptions and use quantum theory in different ways. For each of the approaches discussed, both problematic and promising features will be highlighted.
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology Gananath Obeyesekere has passed away at the age of 95.
Obeyesekere, a renowned Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, has done much work in his home country of Sri Lanka.
His research focuses on psychoanalysis and anthropology and the ways in which personal symbolism is related to religious experience, in addition to the European exploration of Polynesia in the 18th century and after, and the implications of these voyages for the development of ethnography.
Among his popular books are Land Tenure in Village Ceylon, Medusa’s Hair, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini, Buddhism Transformed (coauthor), The Work of Culture, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific, and Making Karma.
A resolution to appoint a committee of inquiry for the removal of Inspector General of Police Deshabandu Tennakoon was handed over to the Speaker of Parliament, (Dr.) Jagath Wickramaratne, today (25).
This resolution has been signed by 115 Members of Parliament, according to a statement issued by the Communications Department of Parliament.
This motion was submitted to the Speaker under Section 5 of the Removal of Officers (Procedure) Act No. 5 of 2002.
The occasion of handing over this resolution was attended by Deputy Minister of Labour Mahinda Jayasinghe, Deputy Minister of Youth Affairs Eranga Gunasekara and Members of Parliament (Dr.) (Ms.) Kaushalya Ariyarathne, and U.P. Abeywickrama, Attorney at Law.
The Election Commission has informed the government to provide details of ongoing development projects during the election period.
Accordingly, ministries and government departments are required to submit information regarding the relevant projects to the Election Commission for review.
The commission stated that the disclosed development projects will be assessed, and a final decision will be made regarding their continuation during the election period.
Additionally, if any of these projects are found to have a potential impact on the election, the government will be advised to postpone them until after the election, the commission said.
Traditionally, Cabinet decisions made during the election period are communicated to the Election Commission, which reviews them and provides guidance to the government accordingly.
Colombo, March 24 (Daily Mirror) – Cable car projects that operate more than a kilometre between two mountains without any support are rare in the world. The Sri Lankan people will have the chance to experience this rare opportunity before the end of this year.
The first cable car project in the country covering a distance of 1.8 km between Ambuluwawa Religious and Biodiversity Complex to the summit of Ambuluwawa Hill in Gampola and from there to Ambuluwawa Agrarian Tower is a joint venture of Chinese and American investors.
The first phase of this project is to be completed by October this year.
Chinese Ambassador in Sri Lanka Qi Zhenhong on Sunday (24) visited Ambuluwawa for an inspection of the project and met the Chairman of Ambuluwawa Trust and Parliamentarian Anuradha Jayaratne.
The feasibility study of the project had been completed 18 years ago, and it has turned a reality far from being a dream due to the Chinese and American investors. The cable car service would be expanded to the location of Gampola Railway Station so that the foreign tourists travelling to Nuwara Eliya will have the opportunity to break journey at Gampola and enjoy a cable car ride to Ambuluwawa,” the parliamentarian told the Ambassador.
He said he is hopeful that Gampola will turn into a popular tourist destination in the world.
Ready to resume project on initial terms only, open for other investments if SL seeks
Colombo, March 25 (Daily Mirror) – India’s Adani Group is not ready to compromise on the initially agreed tariff rate and other parameters of the 484 MW wind and transmission project in Mannar, despite its agreement to execute the project if Sri Lanka requests, Daily Mirror learns.
Adani Green Energy SL Ltd informed Sri Lanka’s Energy Ministry its position in this regard after the Sri Lankan authorities including President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said that the price of US $0.0826/kWh (8.26 US cents) quoted and agreed upon earlier is too high.
Subsequently, the company withdrew from the proposed wind project earlier. However, Adani Group reaffirms that it would always be available to undertake any development opportunity if the Sri Lankan government ever considers it to participate.
According to an informed source, due process had been followed and Adani was selected to implement the wind and transmission projects. The Cabinet Appointed Managing Committee on Investment (CAMCI) had approved the project under ‘Fast tracking of Investments’ at that time.
After Cabinet approval was given during the time of the last government, the MoUs were entered into between five government entities and Adani Green Energy SL Ltd.
The project also forms part of Sri Lanka’s Long-Term Generation Expansion Plan 2023-2042 approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka.
The tariff quoted has been determined by multiple factors such as the capital cost, cost of raising funds, tenure of the power purchase agreement (PPA), and operational and maintenance costs. The PPA tenure in Sri Lanka is 20 years, whereas in India it is 25 years, allowing for longer asset ownership and operation.
Sri Lanka’s credit rating by Moody’s is Caa1” and S&P is SD”. These credit ratings denote a very high risk associated with any lending or investment in a country. The equity risk premium for Sri Lanka is 22.15 per cent, but Adani is seeking only a 5 per cent risk premium.
According to industry experts, the cost of 8.26 US cents per kWh, Adani’s wind energy, if realised, will significantly undercut the country’s current oil and coal-based generation, which averages over 14 cents. The pricing differential will enable Sri Lanka to reduce its annual power generation costs by approximately US $ 80 million.
Sri Lanka spends around US $ 300 million annually on imported oil and coal for electricity. Incorporating Adani’s wind project will save over $200 million in annual foreign exchange outflows, greatly enhancing energy security and economic stability.
The UK government has imposed sanctions on four individuals which it claims are responsible for serious human rights abuses and violations during the Sri Lanka civil war.
The individuals sanctioned by the UK today include former senior Sri Lankan military commanders, and a former LTTE military commander who later led the paramilitary Karuna Group, operating on behalf of the Sri Lankan military against the LTTE.
The measures, which include UK travel bans and asset freezes, target individuals responsible for a range of violations and abuses, such as extrajudicial killings, during the civil war, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office said in a statement today.
Those sanctioned include:
• former Head of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, General Shavendra Silva;
• former Navy Commander, Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda;
• former Commander of the Sri Lankan Army, General Jagath Jayasuriya;
• former military commander of the terrorist group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan. Also known as Karuna Amman, he subsequently created and led the paramilitary Karuna Group, which worked on behalf of the Sri Lankan Army.
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, David Lammy, said:
The UK government is committed to human rights in Sri Lanka, including seeking accountability for human rights violations and abuses which took place during the civil war, and which continue to have an impact on communities today.”
I made a commitment during the election campaign to ensure those responsible are not allowed impunity. This decision ensures that those responsible for past human rights violations and abuses are held accountable.”
The UK government looks forward to working with the new Sri Lankan government to improve human rights in Sri Lanka, and welcomes their commitments on national unity.”
During her January visit to Sri Lanka, Minister for the Indo-Pacific, Catherine West MP, held constructive discussions on human rights with Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, civil society organisations, as well as political leaders in the north of Sri Lanka.
For communities to move forward together, there must be acknowledgement, and accountability for past wrongdoing, which the sanctions listings introduced today will support. We want all Sri Lanka communities to be able to grow and prosper,” the FCDO statement said.
The UK government said it remains committed to working constructively with the Sri Lankan Government on human rights improvements as well as their broader reform agenda including economic growth and stability. As part of our Plan for Change, the UK recognises that promoting stability overseas is good for our national security.”
The UK said it has long led international efforts to promote accountability in Sri Lanka alongside partners in the Core Group on Sri Lanka at the UN Human Rights Council, which includes Canada, Malawi, Montenegro, and North Macedonia.
The UK also said it has supported Sri Lanka’s economic reform through the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, supporting debt restructuring as a member of Sri Lanka’s Official Creditor Committee and providing technical assistance to Sri Lanka’s Inland Revenue Department.
The UK and Sri Lanka share strong cultural, economic and people to people ties, including through our educational systems. The UK has widened educational access in Sri Lanka through the British Council on English language training and work on transnational education to offer internationally accredited qualifications.”
GDP Is the wrong tool for measuring what matters – It’s time to replace gross domestic product with real metrics of well-being and sustainability– Joseph E. Stiglitz
A country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the standard measure of the total value of all goods and services produced within its borders during a specific period, typically a year. The “services” component of GDP includes the value of all final services produced, such as transportation, communication, finance, healthcare, education, and many others. Sri Lankan GDP was estimated to be USD 84.36 Billion, and it is reported that the country achieved a GDP growth of 5% in 2024. In dollar terms, the growth amounts to USD 4.21 Billion. This is a pure arithmetic calculation and no doubt economists, and the Sri Lanka Central Bank will have their own calculations and interpretations. If the country has grown by USD 4.21 Billion dollars and it has an economy worth USD 84.36 Billion, it is worth examining and discussing what it means and whether it measures, as Stiglitz says, the well-being and sustainability of the economy.
The following statistics presents a range of underlying disparities, inequalities and inequities amongst its people despite developments” visible to the naked eye.
Poverty in Sri Lanka is reported as 24.8% of the population as of July 1, 2024, impacting access to nutritious food. Nearly one-third of children under 5 are malnourished. UNICEF says that 2.3 million children in Sri Lanka don’t have enough to eat. Families wake up every day to increased food prices, struggling to provide for their children in a country where vital services, like healthcare and education, are being pushed to their limits.
As per statistics from the department of census and statistics, the top 10% of Sri Lankans hold 42% of all income and 64% of all personal wealth, the top 1% holds 15% of all income and 31% of all wealth. The bottom 50% of Sri Lankans have only 17% of all income and 4% of all personal wealth. Income Distribution –The highest 10 percent of the population shared 32.9 percent of total income in 2016, while the lowest 10 percent shared 2.9 percent. More than half the total household income is enjoyed by the richest 20%, while the bottom decile (poorest 20%) gets only 5%.
Status of women – The UNDP (https://www.undp.org/srilanka/gender-equality) states that out of the 8.5 million economically active population, 72% are males and only 35% are females, women constitute 52% of Sri Lanka’s population, but female representation in parliament is only 5.3%, the labour force participation of women as of 2021 is 33.6% of the total population, 90% of Sri Lankan women and girls have faced sexual harassment in public buses and trains at least once in their lifetime. Unpaid Care Work. The most recent time-use survey conducted in 2017 showed that 87.3 per cent of women above the age of 10 years were responsible for most of the care work, a percentage that is bound to have increased during the COVID pandemic and the current economic crisis. Women who engage in care work are classified as economically inactive, but mostly unpaid.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, former chief economist of the World Bank (1997-2000), former chair of the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers, former co-chair of the High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices, and lead author of the 1995 IPCC Climate Assessment and Co-Chair of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation and the author, most recently, of The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society (W. W. Norton & Company, Allen Lane, 2024) says in an article published in the Scientific American “GDP measures everything,” as Senator Robert Kennedy once said, “except that which makes life worthwhile.” The number does not measure health, education, equality of opportunity, the state of the environment or many other indicators of the quality of life. It does not even measure crucial aspects of the economy such as its sustainability: whether or not it is headed for a crash”. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gdp-is-the-wrong-tool-for-measuring-what-matters/). This article is well worth reading, especially by policy makers, and more generally by the public.
Interestingly Stiglitz refers to causal connection relating to what is measured, simply put, a cause-and-effect relationship. He refers to an inkling of this causal connection during the Vietnam War, with the military’s emphasis on “body counts”: the weekly tabulation of the number of enemy soldiers killed. Reliance on this morbid metric led U.S. forces to undertake operations that had no purpose except to raise the body count.
Like a drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost (because that is where the light is), the emphasis on body counts kept us from understanding the bigger picture: the slaughter was inducing more Vietnamese people to join the Viet Cong than U.S. forces were killing”
The point Stiglitz is making is perhaps the reliance on what is measured as yardsticks for planning for the future and that if metrics are not accurate and have no direct relationships and do not depict the wellbeing and quality of life of people, the planning process itself would be on unstable grounds.
In 2019, Sri Lanka’s GDP was estimated at 89.02 billion US dollars and economic growth at 4.5% compared to the growth of 7.8% in 2018. Yet, in 2022, the country declared itself bankrupt announcing it was defaulting on its debts. While the COVID pandemic and the global economic downturn had a debilitating effect on the country’s economy. by a GDP measure, years preceding the bankruptcy were healthier than in 2022 and even than what it is now. As stated in the Wikipedia according to commentators, the money was used to fund vanity projects rather than projects of national utility. Sri Lanka’s foreign debt increased substantially, going from US$11.3 billion in 2005 to $56.3 billion in 2020. While foreign debt was about 42% of the GDP in 2019, it rose to 119% of its GDP in 2021”. This is an illustration that economic planning and management using the GDP as a key measure, and not managing its debt had not served the country well and led to its bankruptcy.
The objective of this article is not to go back in history and analyse what happened and where the country got it wrong. Rather, as a matter for the future, consider Stiglitz’s statement that GDP Is the wrong tool for measuring what matters – It’s time to replace gross domestic product with real metrics of well-being and sustainability”.
In terms of the well-being of the people, it is interesting to note some statistics relating to the USA, the richest country in the world which according to the World bank, had a GDP of 27.72 trillion in 2023 and a GDP per capita of 82, 769.
As per the US Census Bureau, the US had an official poverty rate of 11.1%, with 36.8 million living in poverty. Malnutrition is another key factor that has a relevance to the health and well-being of people, but it is a complex issue with both undernutrition and overnutrition concerns, affecting a significant portion of the population, including children and older adults, with disparities in food insecurity rates across different demographics. Child Malnutrition: 2022 Facts and Statistics contained in World Hunger Education Service -Hunger Notes (https://www.worldhunger.org/about-whes-hunger-notes/) reports that about one in seven households (13.5%) experienced food insecurity in 2023, with 47.4 million Americans living in these households, 13.8 million children lived in food-insecure households, 1.6% of U.S. adults aged 20 and over are underweight. Obesity or a non-communicable disease coupled with malnutrition, is prevalent in more than half of all malnourished households that reside in the US. Income disparity according to the Wikipedia, in 2021, the top 10% of Americans held nearly 70% of U.S. wealth, up from about 61% at the end of 1989 and the top 1% earned 13.2% of total income in 2019, nearly doubling from 7.3% in 1979. Besides these statistics, disparities relating to health services where, as mentioned by Stiglitz The U.S. being the richest country in the world, suggesting a highly efficient economy, recorded more than a million deaths from COVID, whereas Vietnam, with a GDP of 409 billion had about 43,000”. All above indicators and a host of other indicators, too many to cite here, questions the well-being situation in the US and how such disparities and inequities occur in a country which has a GDP of 27.72 trillion or 26.1 % of the worlds GDP in 2023 (US 106.2 trillion) –https://www.worldometers.info › gdp › gdp-by-country
Stiglitz argues that seeking to boost GDP in the misplaced expectation that that alone would enhance well-being—led us to this predicament. An economy that uses its resources more efficiently in the short term has higher GDP in that quarter or year. Seeking to maximize that macroeconomic measure translates, at a microeconomic level, to each business cutting costs to achieve the highest possible short-term profits. But such a myopic focus necessarily compromises the performance of the economy and society in the long term”.
This indeed is a good lesson for Sri Lanka. In the past, numerous projects undertaken increased the GDP of the country and raised its GDP growth. However, while the goods and services valuation would have gone up, many such projects were financed with debt, without a proper assessment of returns on the investments, and at the cost of not providing adequate funding for health and education, food security, energy security, environment security and many other social issues.
This would have compromised on the well-being of the people and the long-term sustainability of the economy with the state of bankruptcy, the country experienced in 2022 demonstrating the unsustainability of economic management based purely on GDP and GDP growth measures, without for example, considering the country’s indebtedness.
As mentioned by Stiglitz, in 2007, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy had realized the futility of a single-minded approach of pushing up GDP to the neglect of other indicators of the quality of life. In January 2008, Stiglitz was asked by President Sarkozy to chair an international commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. The initial report issued in 2009, entitled Mismeasuring Our Lives: Why GDP Doesn’t Add Up, was published right after the global financial crisis had demonstrated the necessity of revisiting the core tenets of economic orthodoxy. Stiglitz says that it met with such positive resonance that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), after six years of consultation and deliberation, concluded that in place of GDP, each nation should select a dashboard”—a limited set of metrics that would help steer it toward the future its citizens desired.
The OECD has adopted the approach in its Better Life Initiative, which recommends 11 indicators that measures performance on the things they care about (https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/). The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), traditionally strong advocates of GDP thinking, are now also paying attention to environment, inequality and sustainability of the economy. Based on this experience, these 11 topics reflect what the OECD has identified as essential to well-being and sustainability
Sri Lanka could adopt, with necessary local imperatives, the OECD Better Life Initiative, with its core tool, the Better Life Index, to move beyond GDP as the sole measure of progress by focusing on broader aspects of well-being, and economic management that plays a crucial role in supporting policies that enhance these aspects. It could recognize that economic growth alone doesn’t guarantee a better life, and it should measure well-being across various domains, including material living conditions (housing, income, jobs) and quality of life (community, education, environment, health, life satisfaction, safety, and work-life balance). Policy makers could develop a framework for more effective economic policies such as responsible fiscal and monetary policies, employment programs, and social safety nets, all of which directly impact various dimensions of well-being, including income, employment, and access to essential services. Policies that address climate change, pollution, and resource depletion are essential for ensuring a sustainable environment and protecting the well-being of future generations.
While Sri Lanka maybe collecting data and reporting on some of these indicators, it is unlikely there is a dashboard that provides performance statistics and whether and how these are used in determining economic policy determination and management. A dashboard is essential for the selected indicators, and it should be available via the internet for public access. Such a tool would increase visibility on how the country is performing and it will increase accountability on the part of entities responsible for implementation and management of policies. Sri Lanka is not a member of the OECD, and while using its indicators as guidelines, it could develop its own indicators that should be the cornerstones for economic management. Disparities that exist, whether they are related to health, education, demographics, income, gender equality, living area related disparities, particularly related to housing and neighbourhood amenities, that lead to significant inequalities in access to opportunities, quality of life, and health outcomes, and impacting individuals and communities, should be the areas that economic policy and management should address, when looking at infrastructure and services expenditure. Addressing disability and mental condition related care, infrastructure needs to support affected persons, should also be a key area that should be included, if it really cares for its people.
For worthwhile and sustainable outcomes to occur, planning will have to be decentralised and taken to the grassroots as practically as possible. The top-down planning needs to become bottom-up planning, where resource availability and sharing being understood and appreciated by all based on realistic measures that impacts on the lives of people. Leaving decision making to a set of officials in the Finance ministry or a Minister or members of the Parliament is the ultimate top-down model that Sri Lanka has followed since independence and the country’s bankruptcy in 2022, 74 years after independence, shows the weaknesses in the economic model in operation over 74 years. Compared to some regional economies, Sri Lanka lags, perhaps except in healthcare where its universal healthcare system is the envy of many such regional countries. However, the challenges before it are immense as even now, serious cracks have begun to appear on the system and its sustainability.
‘Before you study the economics, study the economists!’
Economists in Sri Lanka: Bribed in Printed US$s
e-Con e-News 16-22 March 2025
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Minister Sirisena alleged that Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC)
hadofferedhim money ‘sufficient for 14 generations
to live in a first world country’
(see ee Random Notes)
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• Dear Julie: We’re sure, you consider yourself a true-red-blooded yankee – yet you act like one of them East Asian comfort women cruelly forced into servitude by the Japanese imperialists. Even as you appear a most willing source of comfort, blowing them horizontal and genuflective relief midst all their incessant warring. Last week, your latest master massacred Yemeni women & children to engorge his flaccid polls. We imagine that killing women en masse is a form of gender equality. And a turn-on too.
All your latest leaders seem to have a yen for the East in choosing their bedrests. Some of their trophy wives are East Europeans, some are B1 visa Indians (the next wannabe Canadian PM has even gone northeast-South American to marry a blanco gusano Venezuelan). This week your Vice President suggested his migrant Indian wife was ‘cheap labor’. JD Vance claimed: ‘importing cheap labor through our immigration system, cheap labor became the drug of Western economies’ (Though no labour is ‘cheap’ – only ‘cheapened’ perhaps!).
Really! However your leaders are still all woke, in terms of who they wake up next to. But, it’s no more woke talk – it’s all sleep talk. All that woke talk about gender & diversity has gone fast-asleep or been put to sleep – along with all that chatter about multiculturalism & POC (people-of-color). POC em!
You’ve already been replaced and yet still keep exercising your overactive knees, north, south, east & west (well, mostly north & east). It seems your political kanganies are making you work overtime-&-a-half to keep your job – like all those other migrant wannabes have to do. Maybe you’ have’ll get immunity from karma too – but for how long we don’t know. There you were again last week recruiting students in Sri Lanka to pay exorbitant foreign student fees. For whom? Every self-styled US bounty hunter is picking up people off the streets. They used to deport so-called illegals only after they brought in California’s abundant harvests, so that your industrial bosses wouldn’t have to pay their coolie wages. But now it’s a free-for-all!
Maybe that’s why after you are replaced here (by another skirt!), they may hold on to you tighter. Sic em, girl, sic em! Yet you have so far failed to kill our last President and his family. Is that why you got your BBC Qatari camel caravan to go after Ranil, who supposedly protected them? Anyway, it’s not about the Rajapakses per se but about teaching any national leader a lesson! You were seen as something of an expert sicario, sent here so far from that Caribbean crime scene where you helped arrange the eviction and assassination of yet another Haitian leader. After pushing (the once ‘fabulous’ sugar plantation) Haiti into greater turmoil, your current leader now accuses Haitians emigres of eating Minnesotan pets! But surely that diet is better than that of the cannibalistic colonial Europeans who’ve eaten Haitians for 200 years and more! Perhaps you’ll be kicked upstairs just as you were kicked up here or down here or sideways, to retire our last leader, whose pension and security you also wish to downgrade. Anyway, just thinking of your knees has sent us far off topic. So sayonara (or, ‘Anneyong‘ in Korean, but you southerners are still ruled by those Japanese who colonized you, who themselves are also colonized). So, until we meet again, perhaps in some comfortable chamber of commerce… Dear, dear Julie, we’re yours, truly, truly….’
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This ee recalls the now-erased controversies around Ceylon Tobacco’s (CTC)’s bribing of politicians, apparently over labeling. Maithripala Sirisena as Health Minister also highlighted that over 20,000 people were killed in Sri Lanka by cigarette smoking every year (see ee Random Notes), with many more diseased. ee therefore continues snippeting from Maurice Corina’s Trust in Tobacco: the Anglo-American Struggle for Power, about the formation of CTC’s parent the British American Tobacco (BAT) monopoly. This week’s adaptation recalls how the BAT diverted the media, and England & the US’ politicians into label-composing: about how smoking ‘may’ damage your health. The tobacco monopoly pours millions into promotions of the ‘independent’ brands, bankrolling the advertising industry (with lesser but substantial funding of ‘Medical Research’). BAT sought to befog the link between cigarette smoking & ‘cancers of the throat, mouth & respiratory tract’. Their PR firms promoted campaigns to claim that woman could become thin by smoking, thereby promoting anorexic culture, as well as promising boys they would be more manly if they smoked. Corina looks at the power of the tobacco lobby, since tobacco was the top non-food cash crop for farmers. Interestingly, for students of ethereal philosophy, BAT was also one of the funders of the philosophy of ‘libertarianism’, which claimed that government has no right to tell people what they did with their bodies, which would include dangerous drugs & chemicals, and suicide. The US government now is being fronted by such ‘tech bros’ as Paypal’s Peter Thiel & Twitter‘s Elon Musk, who were themselves birthed by the white supremacist settler colonies in Southern Africa. Libertarianism & liberalism we may recall have their origins in justifying the right to own property, including slaves…
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‘We invited the then-chief of US Indo Pacific Command Admiral
[Japanese-American Harry B] Harris as chief guest to Galle Dialogue.
In his speech he pointed out 3 reasons why Sri Lanka is important to the USA.
They are Location, location, location. The place where Sri Lanka is situated
is most important for them. Even India’s one-time National Security advisor
Shiv Shankar Menon’s book noted that Sri Lanka is a permanent aircraft carrier
in the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean can be easily controlled from Sri Lanka.’
– Chief of Defence Staff, Admiral Ravindra Wijegunaratne (2019)
*
With the USA and their English & European killer poodles playing ‘good cop / bad cop’ attempting a quieting on Russia’s Wesrtern Front while opening a more bellicose Eastern front against China, US envoy Chung welcomed this week Indo-Pacific Commander Samuel Paparo & his band to ‘Reaffirm our bilateral defense partnership with Sri Lanka’. Does Sri Lanka have a bilateral defense partnership with the US? As far as we know, President Gotabhaya Rajapakse signed the Acquisition & Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA), with the US, at the height of the LTTE war against the government of Sri Lanka, in 2007. It was ‘only 8 pages including the cover’. In 2017 the Sirisena government renewed ACSA, with ‘voluminous annexes giving the names & addresses of almost all US military establishments that could have a footprint or boots on the ground in Sri Lanka’. With such a crime committed, the next step was to ensure that the economy was to be crippled to prevent any nationalist government from abrogating the ACSA agreement. Sirisena refused to sign the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which directly led to the so-called sacking of Ranil Wickremasinghe and what the poodle-media called a ’Constitutional Coup’ in October 2018.
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• Economists are against money printing. At least those published in the ‘soapy’ media sponsored by Unilever et al. These economists are not against selling themselves to the dollars printed by the US Federal Reserve. A ‘meme’ doing the rounds this week named those economists we hear from every day in the media. Well paid in those green dollars, in particular by USAID, we are sure, it is not just them (see ee Who’s Who). Those Sanderatnes & Abeyratnes & de Mels & Coomarawamys etc. They who sing the praises of the US-controlled IMF & World Bank and incessantly repeat their talking points (see ee Random Notes for another house-economist WA Wijewardena’s listing of the ‘talking points’ of the Washington Consensus that he claims has now been thrown overboard, but are still parroted by the IMF lip services. And as for corruption, the Trump administration just legalized bribery of foreign leaders! See ee Quotes).
Oh yes, Indrajith Coomaraswamy, who is constantly mumbling how post-Independence (now there’s an interesting coinage) leaders have promoted ‘populism’ & ‘protectionism’ etc. As SBD always asked: Was it ‘populism’ to maintain the colonial import-export plantation fraud after 1948?
Indeed, a long line of Coomaraswamys have laid down, horizontal and genuflective, prostrate and prone, before their colonial masters – as interpreters, mudaliyars, knights, unofficial ‘native’ members of non-representative white legislative councils, and in these times, as unelected but chosen UN rapporteurs and economists.
The economist Coomaraswamy (who appears to be increasingly eclipsing the shining star of present CBSL governor G Weerasinghe) confessed this week that putting the country in thrall by buying Wall Street’s ‘international’ sovereign bonds (ISBs, while blaming China for throwing the country into debt) was as inevitable as going to the IMF.
Pushing back against claims that large-scale bond issuances
were primarily responsible for Sri Lanka’s 2022 debt default,
Dr Coomaraswamy argued that these borrowings actually helped
delay an otherwise inevitable default. ‘If we hadn’t continued
to borrow or issue ISBs, we would have defaulted much earlier
because we were literally borrowing to repay the debt,’ he stressed.
(see ee Economists, SL must return to int’l capital markets)
Former Central Bank (CBSL) Governor Coomaraswamy is on the Board of Directors of Tokyo Cement, along with the Gnanam oligarchy. A possible Japan Cement front is ‘Siam City Cement’ which grabbed land and mineral rights for 50 years from the crippled Sri Lanka Cement Corporation (SLCC)’s land to extract mineral sands in the infamous Aruwakkalu area in Puttalam (where the April 2019 terrorists conducted training).
Coomaraswamy is also a Principal Research Fellow & Director of England’s Overseas Development Institute’s International Economic Development Group, ODI Global. One Coomaraswamy ancestor was an interpreter for the English who betrayed the ‘doomed’ King Sri Vickrama Rajasinghe of Sinhale. No wonder he yearns for his ancestor’s earnest patrimony…
As has long been noted of Coomaraswamy:
‘If China followed Coomaraswamy’s advice they’d be still exporting rice, no? Anyway,
I don’t think Indrajith Coomaraswamy, the honourable & well educated gentleman
that he is, can help the NPP government or Sri Lanka; he could be an excellent rugby
coach for SL but has been useless as an economist to find a way out of our debt crisis,
which has been in the making for a long time, from the English colonial conversion
of the country into a plantation and the subsequent failure to industrialise in
post-colonial times, especially in the post-1977 era of neoliberalism – which was all
about banking on the so-called open economy to bring back the old colonial masters
in the guise of investor-saviours to somehow help us produce profitable things for export,
as if these capitalists would have any interest in helping a small economy like SL
to industrialise and compete with them in the world market.
The prevention of industrialisation & economic autonomy for countries such as SL
has been the prime objective of the IMF, which is ultimately and immediately ruled
by the creditors hell bent on sucking everything they can out of our indebted people.
It is a pity that textbook neoliberals like IC – who are more IMF than the IMF and
must bear the responsibility for ruining our economy by peddling the perennial problem
as the solution – are still seen as good for the country. If the NPP is so naive as to think
so too, then not much is to be expected of them either. When people speak of
the IMF ‘bailout’, they should be required to ask: who is bailing out whom?
It is certainly not the people of SL – who voted for AKD because they just
cannot bear the consequences of the IMF/IC ‘bailout’. The real question is:
who can bail us out of one damn ‘bailout’ after another?’
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Meanwhile, economists in the drag of ‘House Marxists’ exported to Sri Lanka, who wax in such colonial lipservices as the Commonwealth Journal for International Affairs – that kneegrow division of England’s Chatham House – are calling for ‘a new alliance of liberal democratic regimes that can confront US, Russian & Chinese authoritarianism.’ We wonder who these ‘liberal democratic regimes’ would be? The US colonies of England, Germany, France, Japan? England imposed plantations on much of the incessantly developing but always ‘undeveloped’ world.
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The plantations had an inherent technological backwardness
which went hand in hand with a low wage structure.
–SBD de Silva
SBD de Silva was no House-Marxist, and no colonial lapdog. This ee reproduces a valuable find, since SBD published so rarely beyond his classic The Political Economy of Underdevelopment. In one of the his last published dissertations, in the volume Capital & Peasant Production: Studies in the Continuity & Discontinuity of Agrarian Structures in Sri Lanka (1985), SB explains clearly, in ‘Plantations & Underdevelopment’,how the plantation system has come to impose a low-waged low-tech economy on Sri Lanka. SB (to whom ee is dedicated, though often reminded how far we have strayed from his sharp analyses of the roots of our discontent) examines this non-settler colonial economy’s gestation in the white settler colonies of the Americas.
In this ee Focus, SBD’s ‘Plantations & Underdevelopment’ recalls how white servants were first ‘indentured’ but then were able to buy their freedom and escape into cultivating their own ‘god’s little acres’ of stolen land. The only way a large ‘labour force’ could be created on land stolen in all its abundance was by state-sponsored slavery – at first the original ‘native’ Americans, who knew the terrain and resisted the swindles of the plantation economy like the Sinhala, and then the Africans. Chattel slavery stagnated the use of technology and promoted backward relations of labour. In fact, SB argues, ‘plantation crops could have been grown on smallholdings as cheaply and effectively as on the plantations’. He also shows how a hierarchy of commissions (ah! the high commissioner!) came to dominate the search for profits rather than investment in modern productivity. How’s that, for the original authoritarian & despotic occidental arts?
ChatGBT මත පදනම්ව, විවිධ සංවිධාන විසින් ශ්රී ලංකාවේ සිදු කළ හැකි පාලන-වෙනස් කිරීමේ” ක්රියාකාරකම් සඳහා USAID විසින් සපයන ලද අරමුදල් සම්බන්ධයෙන් වන ලියවිල්ලක් සමාජ මාධ්ය ඔස්සේ සංසරණය වෙමින් පවතී.
මුළු රටට ම මාස හතක බරපතළ සහල් හිඟයකට මුහුණදීමට සිදුවන බවට ජාතික ගොවිජන එකමුතුවේ සභාපති අනුරාධ තෙන්නකෝන් මහතා අනතුරු අඟවයි. මාස් කන්නයේ වී වගාව අවස්ථා දෙකක දී ගංවතුරට හසුවීමෙන් සිදු වූ විනාශය සහල් හිඟයට බලපාන බව හෙතෙම කියයි.
