The Ministry of Defence today (May 16) convened a press conference to announce the preparations for the 16th National War Heroes Commemoration Ceremony, which will take place on 19 May 2025 at the National War Hero Cenotaph in Sri Jayawardenepura, Kotte.
The ceremony will be held on the 19th from 4.00 pm to 6.00 pm with the gracious presence of the Deputy Minister of Defence Major General Aruna Jayasekara (Retd) representing the honorable President. A series of island wide community welfare programs will also be carried out by armed forces, Police and Civil Security Department in view of the War Hero Commemorations. The Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda and Marshal of the Air Force are also scheduled to attend the ceremony.
Defence Secretary Air Vice Marshal Sampath Thuyakontha (Retd) presided over the press briefing. The Defence Secretary underscored the national significance of this annual commemoration, paying tribute to the brave men and women of the armed forces, Sri Lanka Police and Civil Security Department who laid down their lives in the defence of the nation. He reiterated the Ministry’s and the Tri forces steadfast commitment to preserving the memory of fallen heroes, ensuring that their legacy of patriotism, sacrifice, and unwavering commitment to duty continues to inspire future generations.
During the briefing, officials of Ranaviru Seva Authority and Armed forces provided an overview of the ceremonial proceedings, which will include wreath-laying, special tributes, and military honours, with the participation of distinguished guests, military personnel, and the families of war heroes. The event seeks to serve as a solemn occasion for the nation to express its deepest gratitude and unwavering respect for those who selflessly served in country’s sovereignty and national security.
The Ministry of Defence calls upon all citizens to stand in solidarity in remembering the nation’s war heroes, reaffirming collective appreciation for their unparalleled dedication to protecting the country and its people.
Commanders of the Navy and Air Force, Army Chief of Staff, senior military officials, Ministry representatives, and a large number of electronic and print media personnel were present at the occasion.
The newly appointed Ambassador of Israel to India accredited to Sri Lanka Reuven Azar visited the Pathfinder Foundation Headquarters at Riverpoint recently and met with the Founder Milinda Moragoda and Chairman Bernard Goonetilleke. At the Meeting discussion centered on identifying ways and means of expanding cooperation between the two countries in tourism, agriculture, digital technology and logistics. Over the years the Pathfinder Foundation has established a dialogue with think tanks in Israel. He was accompanied by the Hon Consul for Israel in Sri Lanka Dinesh Rodrigo
Colombo, May 16 (Daily Mirror) – Sri Lanka is currently experiencing a significant increase in mosquito borne diseases, notably dengue and chikungunya, alongside a rise in influenza cases among children.
Consultant Pediatrician, Lady Ridgeway Hospital Dr. Deepal Perera speaking to the Daily Mirror raveled that the spread of dengue and chikungunya, both transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes and flies, poses a significant public health challenge.
Health officials warn the importance of eliminating mosquito breeding sites and seeking immediate medical attention if symptoms such as such as high fever, joint pain or body aches appear.
Dr. Perera noted a noticeable increase in influenza cases, particularly among children.
He advised parents to be alert for symptoms like fever, cough, vomiting and diarrhea, and to consult a doctor if these symptoms are observed.
Authorities urge the public to follow preventive measures, including maintaining hygiene, using mosquito repellents and wearing long-sleeved clothing.
Furthermore, the government has initiated awareness campaigns and vectors control programmes to mitigate the spread of these diseases.
Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe says that the submissions made with reference to him in court today by the Counsel for the Bribery Commission is a wilful misleading of the Court and that he is consulting his lawyers regarding the action to be taken.
Issuing a statement today (16), the former President stated that the media reports highlighting submissions alleged to have been made in Court today by the Counsel for the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABIC) with reference to him, does not mention that the application to cancel bail already granted to MP Chamara Sampath Dassanayake has been rejected by Court nor is any mention made of the fact that the Counsel for the accused objected to these submissions made by the Counsel for the Commission.
Wickremesinghe stated that in his statement to the Commission on April 28, he stated that the spouse of Chamara Sampath consulted him as to whether his privileges had been violated by a statement made by Minister Samantha Vaidyaratne.
I stated that since I had given advice as a lawyer, I am not in a position to make any disclosures,” the former President said.
Wickremesinghe said he referred the Commission to Articles 148, 149 and 150 of the Constitution, whereby the Parliament has full control over public finance and the funds of the Republic not allocated by law for specific purposes shall form one Consolidated Fund.
He stated that monies cannot be withdrawn from the Fund except under the authority of a warrant under the hand of the Minister of Finance, and that therefore, monies held in the Fixed Deposit is a violation of the Constitution.
The said Circular is only a restatement of the law. A Circular by itself is not law. According to the law the proper course of action is to withdraw the Fixed Deposit and apply for such purposes authorised in the Provincial Budget.”
These submissions made in respect of me is a wilful misleading of the Court. I am consulting my lawyers as to action to be taken,” the ex-president revealed.
Furthermore, Wickremesinghe said he has written to the Commission as to the manner in which the investigation was carried out by the CIABOC.
The complaint filed by the Bribery Commission against MP Chamara Sampath Dassanayake was taken up before Colombo Chief Magistrate today (May 16).
Dassanayake, who is currently in remand custody, was produced in court as proceedings resumed over allegations that he caused a loss of more than Rs. 1.76 billion to the government during his tenure as Chief Minister of the Uva Provincial Council.
Representing the Bribery Commission, an officer informed the court that Dassanayake had withdrawn funds from a fixed deposit account belonging to the Uva Provincial Council before its maturity, which allegedly resulted in a significant financial loss to the state.
Earlier, former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, in a statement made to the media, had claimed that a Treasury circular issued in 2015, during his term as Prime Minister, allowed Provincial Councils to withdraw such fixed deposits prematurely. He had argued that Dassanayake’s actions were therefore not unlawful.
However, the Bribery Commission officials countered this claim in court today, noting that the said circular was issued on November 22, 2016, while the fund withdrawal in question took place on February 29, 2016 — several months before the circular came into effect.
The court was further informed that the Bribery Commission had summoned Wickremesinghe to record a statement, during which it was revealed that the former President had made his public remarks without knowledge of the actual date the circular was issued.
The officer conducting the investigation also said Wickremesinghe’s statement, made during a media conference, had adversely impacted the ongoing investigation.
It was also revealed in court that Wickremesinghe had made the statement in question at the request of MP Dassanayake’s wife. The investigating officer therefore requested the court to revoke Dassanayake’s bail and remand him on the grounds of attempting to interfere with the investigation.
However, the Colombo Magistrate’s Court rejected the request made by the Bribery Commission to revoke the bail granted to MP Chamara Sampath Dassanayake.
For centuries, the heart of Sri Lanka has pulsed with the spirit of dana, of selfless giving. During sacred times like Vesak, our streets transform into vibrant avenues of generosity, where overflowing stalls offer everything from steaming rice and crispy roti to sweet ice cream and refreshing drinks, freely shared with all. This isn’t about charity for the poor alone; it’s a profound act of liberation, a shedding of attachment that enriches both giver and receiver.
Anyone who has ever offered a simple biscuit to a stray dog or a comforting yoghurt to a lonely cat understands the subtle joy, the unclutching that comes with giving. Imagine, then, the immense blessing felt by those who orchestrate these grand acts of community giving during our Buddhist festivals. For days, the spirit of merit and compassion permeates the air, a testament to a deeply ingrained cultural and religious value.
Yet, a troubling discord is emerging. From the shadowy corners of social media, a chorus of cynical catcalls and ridicule is aimed at this time-honoured tradition. Who are these naysayers, these self-proclaimed critics of our collective generosity? I call them the “Hopper Club”, a fleeting band of influencers seemingly intent on undermining the very fabric of our societal values. What is their hidden agenda? What motivates their attempts to belittle acts of pure kindness?
Make no mistake, there’s something sinister lurking beneath their superficial criticism. These “Hopper Club” worriers are not concerned with genuine issues; they are peddling negativity, attempting to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the majority. They seek to dismantle a practice that has brought joy, fostered unity, and embodied the essence of our spiritual heritage for millennia.
To the countless individuals, families, and communities who pour their hearts and resources into these donation stalls, I say this: do not be swayed by the venomous whispers of these transient social media figures. Your acts of selflessness are deeply valued and intrinsically good. This century-old tradition of generosity is etched into our national identity. These “Hopper Club” initiatives, fueled by fleeting online trends, will fade into obscurity, just as countless others have before them. Their moment in the sun will be brief.
Continue your good deeds. Continue to experience the profound liberating feeling that comes with giving. Continue to uphold the beautiful rituals that define us. Do not let the cynical catcalls of a few with a likely sinister and hidden agenda dim the radiant light of our collective generosity. The heart of Sri Lanka knows the true value of giving, and it will not be silenced by the fleeting noise of the “Hopper Club.”
Dahlia Abdelilah Baasher (Sudan), Untitled, n.d. Dear friends, Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Over the past weeks, international focus has no doubt been on the escalation between India and Pakistan, which we will write more about once the dust settles. Though none of the armies crossed the border or the Line of Control, concern is nonetheless understandable: both countries wield nuclear weapons in their arsenal. Now, there has effectively been a return to the ceasefire of 1948, which has lingered in the decades since without a proper and full peace treaty. International attention has also rightly remained on the genocide in Palestine, with Israelis tightening the total siege on Gaza, perhaps as vengeance for Palestinians’ return to northern Gaza on 27 January 2025 in total defiance of the genocidal war. Meanwhile, some conflicts, like the ongoing war in Sudan, have been almost utterly forgotten. That is the focus of this newsletter, built through conversations with humanitarian workers and Sudanese political figures. The argument that this war is bewildering and that there are no easy explanations for it is a reflection of the racism of our reportage that sees conflicts in Africa as inexplicable and interminable. There are, of course, causes for the war, which means that there are ways for it to end. One must set aside the language of blood that has gripped our world and find instead the political details within which reside the possibility of peace. Rashid Diab (Sudan), Untitled, 2016. Two years ago, the fragile but hopeful peace in Sudan was broken when the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) – both arms of the Sudanese state – went to war with each other. The second anniversary of this war was commemorated on 11 April 2025 with a ghastly RSF attack on the Zamzam refugee camp in North Darfur. As Hawa, a mother of three who survived the attack, recounted, ‘bombs were falling on the hospital. … Those of us who survived left with only our children on our backs’. By 16 April, the camp – which had once housed half a million refugees – was destroyed, leaving hundreds dead and the rest to flee to nearby El Fasher and Tawila. In two years of fighting, at least 150,000 people have been killed and nearly 13 million – over one fifth of Sudan’s population of 51 million – displaced. This ongoing catastrophe appears utterly senseless to most Sudanese people. Everything appeared differently on 11 April 2019, six years before the Zamzam massacre, when longtime President Omar al-Bashir was deposed by a mass movement and, eventually, the military. The protests against al-Bashir’s government first began in December 2018 over inflation and an escalating social crisis. Unable to answer to the people, al-Bashir could not sustain his rule – even by force – particularly when the Sudanese military turned against him (as the Egyptian military had turned against their country’s president, Hosni Mubarak, in 2011). Al-Bashir was overthrown by what later became known as the Transitional Military Council, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan with the assistance of Lieutenant General Mohamed ‘Hemedti’ Hamdan Dagalo. Galal Yousif (Sudan), A Peaceful Revolution, 2021. The groups that led the protests on the ground formed a coalition called Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC). The FFC included the Sudanese Communist Party, National Consensus Forces, Sudanese Professional Association, Sudan Revolutionary Front, Women of Sudanese Civic and Political Groups, and many Sudanese resistance or neighbourhood committees. Pressured by FFC-led protests, the military signed an agreement in mid-2019 to oversee a transition to a civilian government. With the assistance of the African Union, the Transitional Sovereignty Council was set up, composed of five military and six civilian members. The council appointed Abdalla Hamdok (born in 1956) as the new prime minister and Nemat Abdullah Khair (born in 1957) as the chief justice. Hamdok, a quiet diplomat who had done very important work at the Economic Commission for Africa, seemed well suited for his role as a transitional prime minister. Khair, a lifelong judge who joined the protest movements against al-Bashir, struck the right tone as a competent head of the judiciary. The door to a new future seemed to open for Sudan. Abu’Obayda Mohamed (Sudan), March of Millions, 2021. But, before long, Sudan fell prey to the pressures of its own history. In 2021, after several failed coups, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan took power, ostensibly to defend the transition but in reality to bring in al-Bashir’s people back from isolation and into government. Revolutions are frequently interrupted by returns of the old regime, whose grip on the armed forces and on society is never so easily shrugged off. The two military men – al-Burhan and Hemedti – knew that any pursuit of justice against the government of al-Bashir would strike them hard, since they had been the hammer of his regime (Hemedti’s forces, known colloquially as the Janja’wid – or ‘devils on horseback’ – were implicated in human rights violations during al-Bashir’s campaign in Darfur). Equally importantly, the two men and their coterie had material interests at stake, including control over the Sudanese gold mines in Darfur and Kordofan. With men such as these, fear of the gibbet and hunger for greater bounty are paramount. A genuine transfer of power requires a complete break with the old society, which is difficult to achieve unless the military collapses or is thoroughly reconstructed in the image of the new society rather than with the elements of the old. Both al-Burhan and Hemedti pushed against this transition and – with swift repression against the mass movements, especially trade unions and communists – secured power in Khartoum. Reem Aljeally (Sudan), Entwined, 2022. When a gaggle of ruffians forms a group for any country, it should worry all its people. In 2021, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States formed the ‘QUAD for Sudan’ with the alleged purpose – they announced – of returning the country to democracy. Sudan sat on the knife’s edge of geopolitical intrigue as accusations began to fly about how the counter-revolutionary military in Sudan had begun to develop close relations with Russia. In 2019, al-Bashir discussed a deal that would have allowed Russia to build a naval base on the Red Sea, which would have given the country a foothold on the African continent. The fall of al-Bashir jeopardised the base’s existence, which was again reopened when his old team returned to power. This brought Sudan into the crosshairs of the growing conflict between the West and Russia, as well as among the Gulf Arab monarchies. When a country gets caught up in other countries’ entanglements, its own problems become hard to discern. Within the ruling clique of the military and the al-Bashir remnants, a disagreement began to swell over the integration of the armed forces and the division of the spoils. On the surface, they seemed to be arguing about the timeline for a return to civilian government, but in fact the dispute was about military power and control over resources. Salah Elmur (Sudan), The Road to the Fish Market, 2024. These internal power struggles eventually boiled over into the 2023 civil war, an inevitable struggle that has all the hallmarks of a proxy war, with the SAF backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the RSF backed by the United Arab Emirates, and other outside actors pulling strings behind the scenes. Talks continue here and there, but they are not moving forward at all. The war seems to have its own logic, with the SAF’s 300,000 troops unable to make major gains against 100,000 highly motivated RSF soldiers. Endless resources from gold sales and outside support could keep this war going on forever, or at least until most of the world forgets that it is taking place (like the forgotten wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and along Myanmar’s frontiers). The United Nations keeps making statements as various human rights groups plead for further pressure on both the SAF and RSF. But nothing has been forthcoming. Even the peace talks are divided: the Emiratis and the Egyptians are brokering some in Cairo while the Saudis held others in Jeddah and the British decided to create yet others in London. It is not clear who is talking to whom and about what. Amna Elhassan (Sudan), Hair and Love, 2019. The most active attempt to broker a peace deal came from the African Union (AU) in January 2024 with the creation of the High-Level Panel for Sudan (HLP-Sudan). The panel is chaired by Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, a Ghanian diplomat who was the African Union-United Nations special representative for Darfur and head of the AU-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) from 2012 to 2014. He knows both generals and is aware of the complexity of the situation in Sudan. The other two panel members are Dr. Specioza Wandira-Kazibwe, a former vice president of Uganda, and Ambassador Francisco Madeira of Mozambique, a former AU special representative to Somalia and head of the AU mission in that country. The HLP-Sudan is working with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) – East Africa’s regional body – to get the two sides to the table for a ceasefire agreement and then ultimately a deal. Importantly, the HLP-Sudan met with a range of people from across the country’s political spectrum, including members of political parties, the military, and civil society groups. Many of them were signatories of the 2020 Juba Peace Agreement, which also included warring factions from Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile. But the negotiators face a problem amongst the civilian sections. In October 2023, deposed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok formed the Taqaddum (Progress) coalition, which brought civilian voices to the negotiating table. However, over the course of the past two years, dissention broke out over allegiances to one side or the other, and so in February 2025 it dissolved. Hamdok then formed a new group, Sumoud (Resilience), which wants to remain equidistant from both sides. In March, al-Hadi Idris, a former member of the Transitional Sovereignty Council, formed the Ta’sis (Founding Sudan) coalition, which then nominated Hemedti of the RSF as its leader. Even the civilian groups effectively broke along the lines of the civil war. Ibrahim El-Salahi (Sudan), The Mosque, 1964. Last year, I spoke with Hamdok, who seemed exhausted by the long war and the futility of the negotiations. Ever the impassive diplomat, Hamdok felt that wars can exhaust armies and force them to negotiate. He knows his history: Sudan won its independence from Britain and Egypt in 1956 but then entered its first civil war between the north and the south until it ended with the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement; the decade of peace that followed (helped along by oil revenues from the south) is now a distant memory; a second civil war between north and south ran from 1983 to 2005, which resulted in the 2011 referendum that partitioned the country into Sudan and South Sudan; finally, a terrible conflict in Darfur began in 2003 and slowly came to a conclusion in 2010, eventually leading to the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir in 2019. At the time, the chant against al-Bashir was tisqut bas: ‘Just fall’. He fell. But the ground continues to shake. Sudan’s people have not seen peace in generations. Hamdok’s hope is a hope against history, but for a future. Warmly, Vijay
President Anura Dissanayake’s NPP wins the local elections, but witnesses a huge dip in vote shares
Updated: May 14, 2025 20:48 IST
Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake | AP
Sri Lanka’s local civic polls, held on May 6, have thrown up several surprises, indicating a shift in ground reality. President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka’s ruling National People’s Power (NPP) – Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) coalition witnessed a major dip in vote percentage.
Although the NPP emerged as the largest party, winning 265 out of the 339 local municipal councils across Sri Lanka, former president Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) seems to be gaining traction.
The NPP’s vote share has dropped drastically from 61 per cent in the November 2024 Parliament general elections to 43 per cent in the civic polls. The 18% dip is attributed to the new government’s performance in the past six months. NPP’s loss in the prestigious Colombo Municipal Council comes as a deterrent for the ruling party.
The NPP, which suffered a loss of over two million votes in elections across the country—as compared to the Parliament general elections—is actually fighting hard to form an administration at the Colombo Municipal Council. However Anura’s NPP could win only 48 out of the 117 seats, which is far behind the majority numbers.
The opposition parties—Sajith Premadasa’s Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) and Mahinda Rajapaksa’s SLPP—have secured 69 out of 117 seats, and are trying to unite and elect the Colombo mayor. The SJB has won 13 local governments.
There were 75,000 candidates in the fray from 49 parties and 257 independent groups. As elections to the local council were long due from 2022, voters did not want to choose mayors and their local leaders based on foreign policy or economic recovery, but rather based on who would deliver and attend to their local issues.
The NPP had considerable leads in the presidential and parliamentary elections. Even now they have won the election. But the numbers have come down. When the opposition becomes a coalition their voting numbers are higher than the government polled. There are genuine concerns among the people about the new government delivering on grassroots needs, as they promised,” Omar Rajarathinam, founder of Factum (a foreign policy and tech think tank in Colombo), told THE WEEK.
As Omar indicates, several factors contributed to the NPP’s dip in vote percentage. Unlike once believed, the NPP is facing a huge challenge in taking the country towards an economic recovery, due to price rise and inflation. Apart from this are the council level political networks, which are purely candidate-based.
Also, a dip in vote share indicates the ground shift to the SLPP. Having lost its political legitimacy due to mass protests in 2022, the SLPP is making a comeback under Namal Rajapaksa. Its resurgence is particularly pronounced in the rural South, which is dominated by Sinhala-Buddhist voters.
On the other hand, the performance of SJB continues to remain the second-largest, by scoring 32.8 per cent in the 2024 presidential election, 17.7 per cent in the 2024 parliamentary election, and 21.7 per cent in local civic polls.
A major contributor towards the shift in the political landscape in Sri Lanka’s civic polls is strong performances put forth by regional parties in the North and the East.
Tamil nationalist parties like the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK) and the All Ceylon Tamil Congress have made a comeback, after losing ground to the NPP in the general elections. The ITAK has won 43 out of the 58 council seats it had contested.
Traditional parties such as the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, the All Ceylon Muslim Congress and the Ceylon Workers’ Congress continue to remain unpopular among Muslim voters as well as hill country Tamils in Sri Lanka, which has also significantly influenced the voting pattern.
While the results do not indicate a wholesale rejection of the NPP, the key takeaway is that Anura’s popularity alone will eventually not be enough to save them.
Starlink is great for developing countries, offering connectivity without costly infrastructure. But it’s a challenge for their national security, since authorities can’t monitor the traffic it carries.
This policy conflict arose in Sri Lanka in early May, when the government paused rollout of the satellite communications service, blocking one of the few ways to ensure affordable connectivity to remote and vulnerable areas.
Satellite internet can help close significant connectivity gaps across Sri Lanka, especially in remote, underserved and disaster-prone regions where fibre and mobile networks are limited. For a country recovering from conflict and economic crises, affordable and resilient connectivity is essential. But the government’s inability to monitor or intercept traffic through Starlink’s infrastructure has triggered alarm bells. Authorities say the service can’t proceed until security and regulatory frameworks are in place.
While regulatory hurdles for Starlink are increasing, Sri Lanka’s case is distinct. Some countries, including Lesotho and Cambodia, have approved Starlink as part of broader trade negotiations with the United States. In contrast, Sri Lanka independently initiated licensing reforms and has since paused rollout to address legal and security concerns. It’s one of the few small states asserting regulatory sovereignty, rather than accommodating external pressure.
The licencing delay reflects broader shifts in Sri Lanka’s approach to digital governance. The current administration has placed greater emphasis on regulatory control, particularly when it comes to foreign-operated digital infrastructure. The Online Safety Act, passed in early 2024, created the Online Safety Commission with powers to regulate content and digital platforms. Online service providers, including foreign platforms, must comply with requirements on matters such as disinformation, incitement and national security.
While Starlink isn’t a social media platform, its architecture enables encrypted, high-speed internet access that bypasses local routing and oversight. That conflicts with Sri Lanka’s digital governance agenda, which emphasises legal accountability, interoperability with domestic regulation and alignment with security priorities.
In that sense, the Starlink pause reflects a bigger reckoning over who controls Sri Lanka’s digital infrastructure, and under what rules.
Starlink’s technical promise is clear: with over 6,000 satellites in low Earth orbit, the network can deliver fast, reliable internet to areas often left behind. That makes it attractive to countries such as Sri Lanka, where coverage gaps persist. The satellite internet market is also expanding rapidly with competitors including Amazon’s Project Kuiper and OneWeb preparing to enter the satellite broadband space.
Recognising the potential of satellite networks, former president Ranil Wickremesinghe’s administration met Elon Musk and fast-tracked approvals in 2024. This followed the passage of an updated Telecommunications Bill—the first amendment to the law in 28 years—which introduced new licence categories and explicitly enabled Starlink Lanka to operate as a licensed service provider, pending regulatory approval.
That momentum has stalled under the new government. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s administration has raised concerns about Starlink’s limited integration with national infrastructure, restricting lawful government and regulatory oversight.
That lack of oversight is a dealbreaker under current policy settings. As with many countries, Sri Lanka’s regulatory posture is still evolving, but with heightened concerns about extraterritorial digital services, it’s unlikely to make exceptions.
This echoes Sri Lanka’s caution with Huawei’s 5G rollout. Although not banned, Huawei was sidelined after key partners raised espionage concerns. Starlink presents a different risk, as it’s less about foreign surveillance and more about domestic blind spots. But the underlying issue is similar: what happens when critical digital infrastructure lies beyond the reach of the state?
Sri Lanka’s hardline stance comes at a cost. Blocking Starlink might slow digital inclusion, especially in hard-to-reach areas. And while the government has signalled interest in developing its own telecommunications capabilities, infrastructure rollouts take time, and the country is still navigating the tail end of an economic crisis that makes this more aspirational than practical.
A more strategic approach might involve conditional approvals. That could include mandating Starlink to partner with a licensed domestic telecommunications provider, such as Dialog or SLT-Mobitel, to establish in-country gateways or route traffic through national internet exchanges. These measures would comply with Sri Lanka’s regulatory requirements and enable oversight.
The Starlink case should prompt Sri Lanka to clarify its digital infrastructure policy. It will face similar questions over foreign cloud services, cross-border data flows and AI platforms. Setting clear, predictable rules now would help manage future risks and reinforce the country’s ability to safeguard its digital sovereignty.
That may be difficult, but it’s not impossible. Sri Lanka’s Starlink pause is a reminder that political will can ensure foreign digital services—from satellites in orbit or platforms online—adhere to local rules.
Says companies operating in Sri Lanka are against Sinopec entering the market
Sri Lanka signed MoU with Sinopec for US $ 3.7 billion refinery in Hambantota
If a Chinese oil company comes here, they have higher technologies. So the local companies will face severe competition
Colombo, May 16 (Daily Mirror) – Sinopec, the leading Chinese petroleum company that has sought to invest in Sri Lanka, is facing obstacles in pressing ahead with implementation, a leading Chinese scholar who is presently in Sri Lanka told Daily Mirror yesterday.
In an interview with Senior Fellow and Director of Centre for South Asian Studies at the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, Prof. Liu Zongyi said that companies currently operating locally had gotten in the way of Sinopec, fearing competition.
He is a scholar with his research focus on Indian economy and foreign policy, China’s foreign policy, South Asia issues, the Belt and Road Initiative and global governance. He is in Sri Lanka at the moment at the invitation of Pathfinder Foundation.
For example, Chinese oil company Sinopec. They would like to build a refinery here. Now, we are facing obstacles because local companies don’t want Chinese oil companies to come here. It is a problem of competition. If a Chinese oil company comes here, they have higher technologies. So the local companies will face severe competition. They don’t want to accept such pressure because now the market is theirs,” he said.
Responding to a query about allegations of unviability of Chinese investments, he said, In the past, China invested a lot in Sri Lanka and built a lot of infrastructure projects such as the Hambantota Port. It’s a mega infrastructure project. It needs time to become effective. It cannot fall into effect in just one or two years. But the local people think why the Chinese want to invest so much and why they want to put in so much money here while the Chinese cannot create jobs for the locals. Now you can find that the Hambantota Port has created profits for the local people,” he said.
During the visit of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to Beijing early this year, a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) was signed with Chinese state-owned oil and gas giant China Petrochemical Corporation which is commonly known as Sinopec for US $ 3.7 billion oil refinery in Hambantota.
Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Energy and Sinopec signed the agreement for US $3.7 billion investment to construct an oil refinery with a capacity of 200,000 barrels in the Hambantota region, according to the PMD. Sinopec Energy Lanka, a subsidiary of Sinopec, is currently involved in fuel distribution in Sri Lanka.
Sinopec and Sri Lanka will have to work to resolve land, tax and water issues. Sinopec’s refinery in Sri Lanka places it in direct competition with India’s interests in expanding its role as an energy supplier.
During the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently, a MoU was signed among Sri Lanka, India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to establish a multi-product petroleum pipeline as part of India-Sri Lanka connectivity.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake stated that if fragmented opposition groups band together to seize control of local government bodies, he will use constitutional, legal, and political power to thwart their efforts.
The President made these remarks while addressing the JVP’s 60th anniversary celebration held in Colombo on May 14.
This is against the backdrop of the ruling National People’s Power failing to get a majority vote in many local government bodies, despite winning in those areas.
Meanwhile, the opposition parties have decided to band together to form a united front and establish control of the disputed Local Government bodies.
As the Friedrich Naumann Foundation says strategic planning is a key competence for political parties and their leadership personnel while in government or in Opposition. Strategy development cannot be delegated or outsourced. Nor can single strategy elements be copied from other successful political players. Own competences in strategic planning are needed, and political leaders will have to come up with the processes, tools and concepts to develop their own unique strategies.When in government, political parties are often forced to focus on short-term crises to the disadvantage of the medium- and long-term development of their strategies. However, good governance will not sacrifice long term objectives for short term gain”.
The absence of strategic plans contributes to this situation as specific medium to longer term plans lose their focus within the government and within the public domain.It is felt by many that the current government in Sri Lanka could do with more clear and precise strategy development and incorporating them in strategic plans, as what appears to be happening are ad hoc activities directed towards short term crises.
Elections are hopefully over for the rest of 2025. The 6-month-old NPP government can and should now present a comprehensive strategic plan for the rest of their term and give the public a clear pathway as to what they will strive to achieve in the next five years. Ideally, it should be based on their political vision contained in the election manifesto presented for the Presidential election and any subsequently identified priorities. Such a plan would help to avoid feeding a gathering public momentum about unkept promises and help the government to work and deliver according to its own strategic plan. It needs to be noted that presenting a well-crafted and delivered long-term vision in a speech alone is insufficient and such a vision has to be reflected in a strategic plan incorporating all its components as noted later in this document.
The seeming absence of a strategy to deal with the vexed issue of accidents due to reckless bus and lorry driving that very likely led to the very recent incident in Gerandiella that killed 22 people, and the latest news on bus accidents reported today with 20 persons injured and hospitalised after a bus crash at Aladeniya after a bus veered off the road and crashed at Yatiyanagala, Aladeniya. These arecases in point where much has been said but not much has been done so far. Stricter enforcement of existing traffic laws, along with efforts to improve drivers’ attitudes and awareness, can significantly reduce the frequency of these tragedies is stating the obvious. In this regard, the links to two articles written by this writer in the past are noted here.
The inaction or mediocrity of the action taken is indicative of talk over action. There will be more Gerandiella and Aladeniya fiascos unless the recklessness of bus drivers is arrested. The public will eagerly await the dedicated programme being planned under the ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ initiative by the government as announced by the President after the Gerandiella accident, although such a program should have been done and implementation begun long ago. The lack of action so far to address this situation does appear that the seriousness of the unsafe situation on roads both for passengers and the public at large has not been regarded as a priority.
What is Strategic Planning?
Today, governments, including the current government, face numerous challenges in decision-making processes and some of the common challenges include the difficulties faced regarding transparency and openness of governments to accept and appreciate the plurality of voices of the people.
Besides political reasons, the required expertise and the openness to listen to other views unfortunately has become a contributory stumbling block to the much talked about system change. The second challenge relates to the lack of institutional strength, meaning expertise required for decision-making. While the political establishment is responsible for policy development, at least on paper, the bureaucracy has the responsibility to implement policy decisions. If both institutions do not have the expertise and the capacity to carry out their responsibilities, the result naturally would be a focus on short term measures where improvised and reactive actions based on various political imperatives are taken for short term gain. It is perhaps time that the government developed their own strategic plan and a guideline on methodologies needed for strategic action plan development at different levels and to be more inclusive in decision-making so that they strengthen and display their effectiveness and efficiency to all citizens.
As the National Democratic Institute (https://www.ndi.org/about) says, In the broadest sense, planning means intentionally tracing a path from the present to the future to reach a goal. Planning implies defining options for the future and identifying the necessary means to achieve them and strategic planning has the exact nature of planning.”However, its strategic” nature involves an increased demand in terms of analytical work to view different options and allocate sufficient means so that the achievement of said scenarios is as optimal and rational as possible. In practice, strategic planning is defined as a management tool for the decision-making of organizations based on their current activity and the path they must follow in the future to adapt to the environment changes and demands and achieve the best efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of all goods and services provided”. (https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/ Strategic%20Planning%20in% 20Political%20Parties% 20%28c%29%20%286%29%20%281%29.pdf)
Strategic plans are comprehensive documents that outline key long-term goals, key priorities, and the specific actions needed to achieve them, by entities including governments. They act as a roadmap, guiding an entity toward its desired future state and ensuring its resources are effectively allocated. The current government, which has continuously stated their intention to affect a system” change, could make a start by developing and introducing strategic plans for the government itself and its ministries and making them available for online viewing by the public. The progress being made could then be tracked by the public and this would better facilitate accountability to the people. Through such an effort, it is possible that the short-term mindset that seems to be the factor that influences governance, will change, and planning, incorporating both short-, medium- and long-term measures and working towards a long-term goal with specific deliverables will become the norm rather than the exception. A SWOT analysis, an analysis of the governments or the relevant entity’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is critical in order to develop a strategic plan as planning should happen based on the status quo identified through a SWOT analysis.
Key elements of a strategic plan include:
Vision: A clear picture of where the government or a government entity wants to be say in five years.
Mission: A concise statement of the purpose and how it will achieve its vision.
Goals: Broad, measurable objectives that are aimed to be achieved.
Objectives: Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound targets that support the overall goals.
Strategies: The overarching approaches or plans of action used to achieve the objectives.
Action plans: Detailed, step-by-step procedures for implementing the strategies.
Allocating estimated budgets for items in the strategic action plan.
Identifying the key person or entity responsible for implementing each strategy and identifying who is responsible for each activity identified in the plan
Existing strategic plans
Some Sri Lankan government agencies do have strategic plans, but most appear to have reached their end dates and not current any longer. A few plans that are up to date and well-constructed are the DIGITAL SRI LANKA 2030 NATIONAL DIGITAL ECONOMY STRATEGY 2030 Ministry of Technology and the SRI LANKA CUSTOMS STRATEGIC PLAN 2024-2028. The Strategic Plan 2018-2022 of the URBAN DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY OF SRI LANKA has been well constructed but needs updating now.
The department of agriculture does have a Strategic Plan for 2022-2030, but it appears incomplete. Sri Lanka Export Development Board (EDB) has a strategic plan, and it is currently developing a 5-year strategic plan for 2023-2027, aiming to increase Sri Lanka’s exports to US$31.3 billion by 2027. The Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA) strategic plan is due to end in 2025 and unless steps have already been taken to develop a fresh plan, one of the most critical economic pillars of the country and the government, will function without appropriate strategies to achieve the stated goal of having 5 million tourists by 2029.
Besides tourism, the country needs to increase exports, reduce imports of food items and industrial goods through an import substitution strategy, and consider other out of the box thinking like health tourism, tourism linked to golf, and more information technology industry expansion. All these are medium to long term projects, and they need to be in the relevant ministry’s strategic plans.
While many of the existing strategic plans appear to have been developed prior to the formation of the current government, it does not indicate that there had been a consistent and compulsory requirement for ministries and key entities within ministries to undertake such planning and develop strategic plans at least of 5-year duration. One of the key strategies that could be included in the government’s own strategic plan is for each ministry to develop their own plans say within a period of 3 months from now, as 6 months have already passed since the government was formed. Another strategy would be for all existing but dated and incomplete plans to be updated and completed and fresh plans developed for the period 2025 -2030 again within a period of 3 months.
Governance utilizing strategic plans is a professional and accountable process and it will assist in changing the political culture of the country through a mindset change amongst all stakeholders including the public. Consequently, political promises made from political platforms will be made more carefully and in a more responsible manner. The country is still financially very unstable and enjoying a honeymoon period till 2028 when debt repayments commence. It has a relatively short period of 3 years to earn more and/or spend less if it’s to meet its debt repayments. Specific strategies to achieve this objective are needed although strategies alone do not amount to much unless they are included in strategic action plans with measurable outcomes.
Changing the management culture and management methodology is an important element of system change. Business as usual will not produce a system change. Besides the government, even other political parties will have to fall in line with more planned alternate governance models as the government’s methods begin to show results and acceptance of them by the public.
The quotation attributed to Albert Einstein, viz, Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” may also be presented as repeating unsuccessful strategies without modification is a form of unproductive behaviour”. The quote highlights the importance of adapting and trying new approaches when the current ones have not yielded the desired outcomes.
Sri Lanka’s bankruptcy is an indication that it had been repeating unsuccessful strategies without suitable modifications. Unless the country recognises the need for true system change and modifies its governance methodology, it’s bound to continue its insanity.
W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.
In South Asia, a Regional Cold War is ramping up with India’s Beggar thy Neighborhood First” policies, including war on Pakistan
Image by Getty and Unsplash+.
Movement toward war with China accelerates. Trump has raised America’s military budget to a Trillion dollars although claiming to be a peace maker. The public, focused on troubles currently upending U.S. politics, does not pay much attention to a war on the way for decades. The watershed moment came in 1949 with the victory of China’s socialist revolution. Amid resurgent anticommunism in the United States, accusations flourished of Who lost” China.”
Loss in U.S. eyes was in China the dawning of national independence and promise of social change. In 1946, a year after the Japanese war ended, U.S. Marines, allied with Chinese Nationalist forces, the Kuomintang, were fighting the People’s Liberation Army in Northeast China.
The U.S. government that year was delaying the return home of troops who fought against Japan. Soldier Erwin Marquit, participant in mutinies” opposing the delay, explained that the U.S. wanted to keep open the option of intervention by U.S. troops … [to support] the determination of imperialist powers to hold on to their colonies and neocolonies,” China being one of these.
These modest intrusions previewed a long era of not-always muted hostility and, eventually, trade relations based on mutual advantage. The defeated Kuomintang and their leader, the opportunistic General Chiang Kai-shek, had decamped to Taiwan, an island China’s government views as a breakaway province.”
Armed conflict in 1954 and 1958 over small Nationalist-held islands in the Taiwan Strait prompted U.S. military backing for the Nationalist government that in 1958 included the threat of nuclear weapons.
Preparations
U.S. allies in the Western Pacific – Japan and South Korea in the North, Australia and Indonesia in the South, and The Philippines and various islands in between – have long hosted U.S. military installations and/or troop deployments. Nuclear-capable planes and vessels are at the ready. U.S. naval and air force units regularly carry out joint training exercises with the militaries of other nations.
The late journalist and documentarian John Pilger in 2016 commented on evolving U.S. strategies:
When the United States, the world’s biggest military power, decided that China, the second largest economic power, was a threat to its imperial dominance, two-thirds of US naval forces were transferred to Asia and the Pacific. This was the ‘pivot to Asia’, announced by President Barack Obama in 2011. China, which in the space of a generation had risen from the chaos of Mao Zedong’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ to an economic prosperity that has seen more than 500 million people lifted out of poverty, was suddenly the United States’s new enemy…. [Presently] 400 American bases surround China with ships, missiles and troops.”
Analyst Ben Norton pointed out recently that, the U.S. military is setting the stage for war on China. … The Pentagon is concentrating its resources in the Asia-Pacific region as it anticipates fighting China in an attempt to exert U.S. control over Taiwan.” Norton was reacting to a leaked Pentagon memo indicating, according to Washington Post, that potential invasion of Taiwan” would be the exclusive animating scenario” taking precedence over other potential threats elsewhere, including in Europe.
New reality
Norton suggests that the aggressive trade war launched against China by the two Trump administrations, and backed by President Biden during his tenure in office, represents a major U.S. provocation. According to Jake Werner, director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute, Trump’s top military and economic advisers are almost without exception committed to confrontation with China.”
He adds that, In a context of mounting economic pain on both sides, with surging nationalism in both countries becoming a binding force on leaders, both governments are likely to choose more destructive responses to what they regard as provocations from the other side. A single misstep around Taiwan or in the South China Sea could end in catastrophe.
Economic confrontation is only one sign of drift to a war situation. Spending on weapons accelerates. U.S. attitudes shift toward normalization of war. Ideological wanderings produce old and new takes on anticommunism.
Money for weapons
The annual report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, released in April, says that in 2024 the world’s military spending increased by 9.4% in one year to a $2718 billion; it increased 37% between 2015 and 2024.
U.S. military spending in 2024 was $997 billion, up 5.9% in a year and 19% since 2015. For China, the comparable figures are $314 billion, 7.0%, and 59%, respectively; for Russia, $149 billion, 38%, and 100%; for Germany, $88.5 billion, 29% and 89%. The U.S. accounts for 37% of the world’s total military spending; China,12 %; Russia, 5.5%; and Germany, 3.3%. They are the world’s top spenders on arms.
In the United States, competition from new weapons manufacturers threatens the monopoly long enjoyed by five major defense contractors. These receive most of the $311 billion provided in the last U.S. defense budget for research, development, and production of weapons. That amount exceeds all the defense spending of all other countries in the world.
A new species of weapons manufacturer appears with origins in the high-tech industry. Important products are unmanned aircraft and surveillance equipment, each enabled by artificial intelligence.
Professor Michael Klare highlights one of them, California’s Anduril Industries, as providing the advanced technologies … needed to overpower China and Russia in some future conflict.” Venture capital firms are investing massively. The valuation of Anduril, formed in 2017, now approaches $4.5 billion.
Palmer Luckey, the Anduril head, claims the older defense contractors lack the software expertise or business model to build the technology we need.” Multi-billionaire Peter Thiel, investor in Anduril and other companies, funded the political campaigns of Vice President J.D. Vance and other MAGA politicians. Klare implies that Theil and his kind exert sufficient influence over government decision-making as to ensure happy times for the new breed of weapon-producers.
Giving up
Waging war looks like a fixture within U.S. politics. Support for war and the military comes easily. Criticism that wars do harm is turned aside. Broadening tolerance of war is now a blight on prospects for meaningful resistance to war against China.
Recent history is not encouraging. After the trauma of the Vietnam War subsided, anti-war resistance in the United States has been unsuccessful in curtailing wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya – and proxy wars in Ukraine and Gaza –despite massive destruction in all of them and more dead and wounded than can be accounted for.
Official language testifies to routinization of U.S. military aggression. Defense Secretary Hegseth, visiting at the Army War College in Pennsylvania, started with, Well, good morning warriors. …We’re doing the work of the American people and the American warfighter. [And] the president said to me, I want you to restore the warrior ethos of our military.”
Hegseth traveled recently in the Pacific region, presumably with war against China on his mind. In the Philippines, he remarked, I defer to Admiral Paparo and his war plans. Real war plans.” In Guam, he insists, We are not here to debate or talk about climate change, we are here to prepare for war.” In Tokyo, he spoke of reorganizing U.S. Forces Japan into a war-fighting headquarters.”
Ben Norton writes that, In his 2020 book American Crusade: Our Fight to Stay Free, Hegseth vowed that, if Trump could return to the White House and Republicans could take power, Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years.”
Ideas as weapons
Proponents and publicists of off-beat ideas have long disturbed U.S. politics. Brandishing fantasies and myths, the Trump administrations have fashioned a new brand of resentment-inspired politics. Even so, familiar ideas continue as motivators, notably anticommunism.
Writing in Monthly Review, John Bellamy Foster recently explored ideology contributing to Donald Trump’s hold on to power. Much of it, he reports, derives from California’s Claremont Institute, its office in Washington, and Hillsdale College in Michigan. A leading feature is a kind of anticommunism that targets so-called cultural Marxism. But China and its Communist Party are not immune from condemnation.
Michael Anton is a senior researcher” at the Claremont Institute and director of policy planning at the State Department. According to Foster, Anton suggested that China was the primary enemy, while peace should be made with Russia [which] belonged to the same ‘civilizational sect’ as the United States and Europe, ‘in ways that China would never be.’”
Former Claremont Institute president Brian Kennedy, quoted by Foster, notes that, We are at risk of losing a war today because too few of us know that we are engaged with an enemy, the Chinese Communist Party … that means to destroy us.”
The matter of no ideas comes to the fore. Recognized international law authority Richard Falk, writing on May 6, states that, I am appalled that the Democratic establishment continues to adopt a posture of total silence with regard to US foreign policy.” Viewing the Democrats as crudely reducing electoral politics to matters of raising money for electoral campaigns,” he adds that, I find this turn from ideas to money deeply distressing.”
The Democrats’ posture recalls a 1948 message from Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenburg, a Republican. During congressional debate on President Truman’s Marshall Plan, Vandenburg stated that, Politics stops at the water’s edge.” This U.S. tradition lapses only occasionally.
Will resistance to war against China end up stronger and more effective than earlier anti-war mobilizations in the post-Vietnam War era? A first step toward resisting would be to build awareness of the reality that war with China may come soon. General knowledge of relevant history would be broadened, with emphasis on how U.S. imperialism works and on its capitalist origins. Anyone standing up for peace and no war ought to be reaching out in solidarity with socialist China.
John Pilger, moralist and exemplary documentarian and reporter, died on December 23, 2023. His 60th documentary film, The Coming War on China, first appeared in 2016. Pilger’s website states that, the film investigates the manufacture of a ‘threat’ and the beckoning of a nuclear confrontation.” Please view the film on his website.
W.T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.
Colombo, May 2025 — The Sri Lankan land market is gaining renewed strength, with Colombo and the broader Western Province leading the way in price growth, according to the latest Land Price Index (LPI) published by LankaPropertyWeb (LPW).
The 2025 index reveals that land prices in Colombo city (Colombo 1-15) have risen by 7% year-on-year, while the overall Western Province recorded an 12% increase — a notable jump from the 8% rise observed the previous year. The report highlights a sustained upward trend in land values, particularly in Colombo’s suburbs and key districts like Gampaha and Kalutara.
Within the Colombo district (excluding the Colombo 1-15 area), average land prices surged by 20%, underscoring a shift in investor focus toward suburban locales offering better affordability and development potential. Gampaha district saw an impressive 14% rise, while Kalutara posted a more modest but steady 6% increase over the past year.
According to LPW, demand has been especially robust for lands priced below Rs. 500,000 per perch. This segment saw a remarkable 107% price increase between the first quarter of 2020 and 2025. In contrast, high-end plots priced above Rs. 9.5 million per perch experienced limited growth, suggesting a tilt in buyer preference toward more affordable and mid-range properties.
Per Perch Price Increase as a % (2024 Q1 – 2025 Q1)
(Main Cities of Colombo District excluding Colombo 1-15)
Colombo’s real estate landscape continues to evolve. The central Colombo 1-15 area registered a 7% uptick in land values this year, building on consistent gains over the last five years. However, it is the emerging suburbs that are showing the most dynamism. Kolonnawa led the district with a 21% price increase, driven by its proximity to the city, improved transport links, and ongoing urban development projects. Piliyandala, Athurugiriya, and Homagama also recorded healthy gains, reflecting sustained investor interest.
In Gampaha district, Yakkala emerged as a standout performer, with land prices soaring by 55%, while the Gampaha city area itself recorded a 42% hike. The district’s enhanced connectivity, expanding infrastructure, and growing appeal as a suburban hub have fueled this surge.
Kalutara district showed moderate but consistent growth, with Ingiriya was the city with the highest land price 20% increase in Kalutara district and Horana posting a significant 16% increase. Panadura reflecting a positive 7% rise, signaling renewed confidence among investors and developers.
Per Perch Price Increase as a Percentage (2020 Q1 – 2025Q1)
(Main Cities of Colombo District Excluding Colombo 1-15)
LPW’s index data suggests that price appreciation has been strongest in areas tied to infrastructure upgrades and suburban development agendas. “It is evident that demand has steadily shifted from district capitals to well-connected suburbs with promising growth prospects,” the report noted.
The market’s recovery follows a challenging period marked by economic headwinds, including high interest rates and constrained lending from commercial banks. However, with the Central Bank’s recent easing of monetary policy and stabilization of interest rates, LPW expects the land market’s resurgence to continue through the remainder of 2025.
This index captures annual changes in land prices in the most populated province in Sri Lanka; Western Province. Publicly available asking prices for bare lands published in LPW, and in other online media were used in the analysis. The Land Price Index considers the base prices of 2018 equal to 100 when determining the price fluctuation in the years after. The Q1 2025 update reflects a comparison with the average of Q1 2024.
Prices within the area will have their own variances, such as land close to main roads or junctions being expensive and above average. If you wish to obtain more accurate prices for your land or neighborhood prices, then you should view ‘land for sale’ listings for that area, and check with an estate agent or a registered valuer in your area.
Beyond the index, LankaPropertyWeb offers a suite of tools and resources for investors and homebuyers, including property listings, valuation reports, price meters, and market insights, reinforcing its position as Sri Lanka’s leading online real estate platform.
A great country, with a history going back into Before Christ, a country with unparalleled industrial engineering strength, and after years of Self-Rule, the only credit to Sri Lanka is a growing debt!
Corruption, Greed of the Ruling Class, has stepped on and used the working class and the poor to achieve their own wealth!.
What has a group of tiny sinking islands Maldives got better or more than the Pearl of Asia?
Maldives has unveiled a $9 billion plan to become a global finance hub!
What lacks in Sri Lanka is the Spirit of Einstein!
And professional leadership who are able to “Think-Out-of-the-Box”!
Hopefully the President AKD might be able to see the light at End-of-the-Tunnel!
-ENDS-
Express Your Opinion – Read What Others Say! The Independent Interactive Voice of Sri Lanka on the Internet.
Pope Leo XIV making his first public appearance from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica | Screenshot from NBC News
The Conclave acted quite swiftly ending the weeks-long speculations about the next pope – only on the second day of the cardinals’ meeting.
The announcement of Robert Prevost being the new Pope sent waves of excitement in not only the crowds gathered in and around St Peter’s Square in the Vatican, and also not only in the Catholic population in all parts of the world, but to the general global population of the world too. Why the general population? Because the world stands at the brink of disaster and world religions can play a major role in saving it from the catastrophe that looms the global horizon.
Also of general interest and intrigue is always the country of origin of the Pope, which this time happens to be the USA – Chicago to be precise. So far known as a city of skyscrapers, deep-pan pizzas, and as Carl Sandburg called it, city of the big shoulders, Chicago will now be known for being the birth place of Pope Leo XIV – the name that Bishop Robert Prevost has chosen for himself.
Quite interestingly, Chicago is also known as the birthplace of modern Islam in the USA. Hazrat Mufti Muhammad Sadiqra, the pioneer of Muslim missionary activity in America landed on the US shores in 1921, and settled in Chicago in the same year, laying foundations of the headquarters of Islam Ahmadiyya.
Hazrat Mufti Muhammad Sadiq (ra)
A missionary sent by the Ahmadiyya Caliph, Hazrat Mirza Bashir-ud-Din Mahmud Ahmadra, Mufti Sadiq is credited, by esteemed historians to be the dawn of Islamic identity for America. (The Cambridge to American Islam, pp. 141 & 208)
Mufti Sadiq had taken the Ahmadiyya message of Islam to a land that was in pursuit of a fulfilling faith, and managed to attract huge numbers from the American population to the message of Prophet Muhammad, and as revived by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmadas of Qadian – the founder of the Ahmadiyya Islam. Mufti Sadiq and the Americans that rallied around him to accept Ahmadiyya were, as Yvonne Haddad and Jane Smith declare, unquestionably the most influential group in African American Islam.” (The Oxford Handbook of American Islam, p. 146)
An expert on Islam in America, Richard Turner sees the Ahmadiyya community as the most significant movements in the history of Islam in the United States in the twentieth century, providing as it did the first multi-racial model for American Islam”. (Islam in the African-American Experience, pp. 109-110)
Nabil Echchaibi applauded Mufti Sadiq for emphasising a Muslim identity in America by initiating the publication of The Moslem Sunrise (later, and to date, spelt The Muslim Sunrise) – the first English-language Muslim newspaper to be published in America and still in publication. (The Cambridge Companion to American Islam, p. 125)
Sylviane A Diouf credits the Ahmadiyya community for providing, for the first time, Qurans and other Islamic literature in English.” (The Oxford Handbook of American Islam, p. 23)
The Ahmadiyya community was the first to establish the first, and in some cases, the only, centres for Islamic gatherings.” (The Cambridge Companion to American Islam, p. 52)
The American Mission
What was it that worked so well in favour of the Ahmadiyya mission? Haddad and Smith give a thoroughly researched answer: The approach that attracted the Americans, especially the African Americans, was the Ahmadiyya openness to people of all ethnic origins.
So here we have a new Pope, born and raised in the birthplace of Islam in the US. In his first public address from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, Pope Leo XIV emphasised on building bridges and that humanity was the strongest bridge that connected the entire humanity.
These words resonate the teachings of the Ahmadiyya community that, a hundred years since establishing its mission in Chicago, continues to promote interfaith harmony. Peace, building bridges and respecting humanity has been the core message of the Ahmadiyya leadership all along, and is today being upheld by Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, the current head of the Ahmadiyya community.
Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, addressing the American people during one of his visits to the USA (when gifted with a key to Los Angeles), said:
The key to peace is to stop cruelty and oppression wherever it occurs with justice and equality. Only when this principle is followed will global peace develop. This will only happen when the people of the world come to recognise their Creator. It is my ardent hope and prayer that the entire world urgently comes to understand the needs of the time before it is too late.” (Head of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat delivers Historic Address in Southern California”, www.pressahmadiyya.com, 12 May 2013)
These words are a clear testimony to the fact that the Ahmadiyya Muslim community strives for global peace building and believes in religion to be the only way forward.
Every religion has come from God and every religion should stand for building bridges and strive in the way of establishing global peace. We all live in the hope of walls coming down and bridges built to unite humanity under the banner the one and true God.
Natalie Ecanow Senior Research Analyst Courtesy Foundation for Defense of Democracies
White House Correspondents’ season just wrapped in Washington. Last weekend, celebrities, journalists, and politicians descended on Washington to celebrate the free press. Traditionally, the weekend is also an occasion to take jabs at the administration. Among this year’s events was a soiree hosted by the Embassy of Qatar.
Wining and dining the press has become somewhat of an annual ritual for Qatar. Doha hosted parties at the Four Seasons in 2023 and 2024 and co-sponsored another swanky event in 2019.
How Qatar became a regular headliner during a weekend celebrating First Amendment freedoms is baffling. Qatar is an autocratic petrostate that prohibits criticism of the emir” and limits freedom of expression, including for members of the press.” Qatar is no champion of the values espoused by the White House Correspondents Association. Yet Doha is charming pundits and politicians into believing otherwise. This is a textbook example of Qatar buying prestige in the West. It’s not just happening in America. And it’s not inconsequential. Right now, a similar story is making waves in Israel that should serve as a cautionary tale for American policymakers.
In February, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency opened an investigation into alleged ties between Qatar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. An Israeli court placed a gag order on the case, but then overturned the order — one day after Israeli authorities arrested two of Netanyahu’s aides.
We’ve since learned that the aides — Yonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein — allegedly worked to polish Qatar’s image in the Israeli press. Court documents allege that an American lobbying firm on Qatar’s payroll directed the operation, which involved promoting Qatar’s role in Gaza ceasefire talks at Egypt’s expense. The lobbying firm is headed by former aide to President Bill Clinton, Jay Footlik.
An Israeli police investigator told the court that Urich relayed messages to the media” that he received from an entity that maintains ties to and is funded by the state of Qatar.” Except Urich presented” the messages as if they came from a political or security source,” the investigator said.
Things got messier when authorities summoned the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, Zvika Klein, for questioning and placed him under house arrest. Klein travelled to Qatar last year to interview Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani. Klein said Footlik was his babysitter” during the trip and that Feldstein helped arrange interviews for him on Israel’s Channel 12 and Channel 13 when he returned.
Israeli authorities released Klein from house arrest on April 3. But Israel’s Qatargate” affair is far from over. Urich and Feldstein’s remain under house arrest. Another former advisor to Netanyahu is abroad in Serbia and wanted for questioning. And a majority of Israelis now believe that Netanyahu knew about his aides’ connections to Qatar. Israelis are losing faith in the integrity of their government.
Unfortunately, this tale isn’t uniquely Israeli. Qatargate hit Europe and made a pitstop in Washington before heading to the Middle East.
In 2022, European authorities uncovered a Qatari cash-for-influence scheme at the European Parliament involving over 1.5 million euros and a half-dozen suspects, including European Parliament Vice President Eva Kaili and her partner, parliamentary aide Francesco Giorgi. Authorities reportedly even caught Kaili’s father leaving a hotel with a suitcase full of cash.
Kaili and her colleagues allegedly accepted the money as bribes to sway the European Parliament in Qatar’s favor. Police found a cache of documents on Giorgi’s laptop describing hundreds of influence activities conducted on Doha’s behalf, such as neutralizing” resolutions condemning Qatar’s human rights record and ensuring that all copies of a book critical of Qatar that could be found inside Parliament were destroyed.”
Qatar is operating by the same playbook in the United States. Last summer, former Senator Robert Menendez resigned after a jury found him guilty of accepting bribes from a real estate developer who expected Menendez to induce” a Qatari investment firm to finance a multimillion-dollar project, including by taking action favorable to the Government of Qatar.” The Qataris allegedly offered Menendez Formula One Grand Prix racing tickets after the deal was closed.
Menendez received an 11-year prison sentence in January. But as one Qatari corruption scandal closes, another one opens. Local news recently reported that the mayor of Washington, D.C. and four staff members travelled to the Gulf on Qatar’s dime. The mayor’s office failed to disclose the source of the funds, if not outright lied about it.
The Qatari influence machine is in high gear. The question is, how deep is Qatar’s reach in the United States? American policymakers need to start asking questions or risk the fallout that’s shaking Israel.
Natalie Ecanow is a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Follow Natalie on X @NatalieEcanow and FDD @FDD.
President Trump is looking after the interests of the USA and mind you within months many industries will open up making what the USA did import. Once I owned a Roadtrek-Chevrolet campervan in the USA and clocked over 50,000 miles travel over hill and dale. It was a marvel, far better that the Benz 200 I drive today. Earlier, When I was a doctoral student at Michigan State I ran in a Delta 99 Oldsmobile, a great car and I am certain that the car giants in the USA will soon make better cars than the Benz.
Our new President Anura Kumara Dissanayake is kindly requested to get going with opening up new ventures to make everything we import.
In the Fifth Century we built the Yodha Ela at a gradient of six inches in a mile- so miniscule a gradient that defies the irrigation engineers of today. In 1963, as the Assistant Commissioner of Agrarian Services in Anuradhapura I presided over the Irrigation water allocation meeting for over a hundred tanks from Kalaweva and to satisfy the farmers who never got water in time I suggested to put a concrete base for the seventy mile long Yodha Ela. The District Irrigation Engineer admitted that they cannot lay such a base as the gradient was so miniscule- six inches in a mile, a gradient that the most sophisticated equipment today cannot lay.
That was the achievements of out ancient forefathers.
Get to today. We administrators were once charged with the task of creating production, alleviating poverty and we have real stories of what we did to tell-not fiction.
In the late Fifties the Department of Rural Development provided for small construction work everywhere. Every village had a Rural Development Society. These were manned by Rural Development Officers who know not what to do now.
Under the Paddy Lands Act we organized farmers into Cultivation Committees and did wonders in organizing paddy cultivation with certified seed, and fertlizer use.Farmers were organized into cultivation committees and paddy cultivation was done in an organized manner cooperatives providing fertlizer etc. We never gave farmers money to buy fertlizer as we now do. Instead the cooperatives were active and provided fertiliser.
Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake took charge of paddy production in 1965 and got the Government Agents in the Districts to be in charge and Sri Lanka produced all the rice it needed. He was not satisfied with the Department of Agriculture reporting the yield of paddy. He ordered plots to be decided by random sampling and crop cuttings done by staff officers of other departments to be certain of the yield. I organized this in the Kegalla District in 1967 and 1968. Then, As the Additional Government Agent of the Kegalla District it was my task every Saturday and Sunday to to greet him at nine in the morning every Saturday and Sunday and accommpany him to a host of meetings and inspections in his electorate. There was no poverty and no one who had to live on two meals a day. On the other five days in the week I toured the other electorates and Yatiyantota was Dr NM’s electorate. All development programmes were concentrated on even in the electorates of the opposition- Yatiyantota and Dehiovita. We had definitely avoided poverty and deprivation then. Otherwise Dr NM would have raised the matter in Parliament and I would not know where to run.
Unfortunately things changed. With the abolition of the Pady Lands Act the Department of Agrarian Services was completely slashed. Cultivation committees ceased to exist. In 1980 the Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture boasted about paddy production and I asked for the crop cuttings done by staff officers of other departments. Out came the answer that it was costly and done away with. In about 1992 President Premadasa promoted all Agricultural Overseers- 2300 of them as Grama Niladharis and till today there are no agricultural overseers. Cultivators plough and cultivate as they like and the Governments have to import rice every year. All tanks in NuwaraKalaviya are ruined almost beyond repair.
Then, till 1978, Sri Lanka was not a country in debt to anyone. Our forte was to fund what we can. We had development programmes that effectively alleviated poverty. But in 1978 at the instance of the IMF President Jayawardena abolished all those development programmes, confined the administrators to the barracks and today we are begging for dollars in the streets of the World. As a member of the Administrative Service, I was privy to play a role with Premier Dudley and also in the DDCP of Sirimavo, thus I speak of what we actually did, not learned surmises and projections on a chalk board.
In the days of Sirimavo we had the Divisional Development Councils Programme, directed by professor HAdeS Gunasekera, the most qualified economist of the day. It was really Dr NM Perera’s Programme. As he said in his 1970 Budget Speech it was to fullfill the aspirations of young men and women for whom life will loose all meaning unless they can find a useful place in our society”. Passing by his statue in Borella last year, I was sad that my driver did not know Dr N,M,I was myself neck deep involved with Dr N.M.implementing his great programme as the Government Agent at Matara
The Divisional Secretary at Kotmale, charged with creating employment and also making something useful , collected all the waste paper he could find, rolled up his sleeves and worked with the youth to wet and churn the waste paper, spread it out to dry and out came saleable paper and cardboard. President Jayawardena in 1978 put a stop to Kotmale Paper to please the IMF.
In the Youth Self Employment Programme I established in Bangladesh in the two years I worked there-1983-1984 we had to address hundreds of youths on training workshops and we provided the youths with lunch packets. The lunch came in cardboard packs and there were some youth entrepreneurs collecting the discarded cardboard covers and packing them– back at home their sustenance came from churning it to cardboard. Our Divisional Secretary at Kotmale was a great man to make paper out of waste paper. Let us find him and get going instead of wasting money for the imports of paper. I hope he is kicking and alive. I am sorry I do not know his name.
In the DDCP of the Sirimavo days as the GA at Matara I established the Matara Mechanized Boatyard that made seagoing fishery boats- some forty a year. That was a great industry fixed by me in some two months. My giants, the DivSec Ran Ariyadasa and his Development Assistant did that task within two months and our youths made 40 seaworthy boats a year, a feather in the DDCP cap. The boats were sold to fishery cooperatives and ran on the high seas bringing a catch of fish. Ran is no more but his work stands out as something that can be done fast. However President Jayawardena to please the IMF closed that Boatyard in 1978. Imagine what the trained youths thought when they were thrown into the heap of the unemployed. Mind you they were fully trained entrepreneurs.
I got sick of the Ministry of Plan Implementation that ran the DDCP as they failed to allow more industries for me to establish-and I took charge without their knowledge. I had a Planning Officer , Vetus Fernando a raw chemistry grad from the University of Colombo. One day I persuaded him to find the method of making crayons. Once I had worked as Deputy Director of Small Industries and had a background in running powerlooms, handlooms, ceramic and all sorts of industries. Then I authorized the purchase of a few items that were required and started experiments in the night at my Residency at Matara. We never got anywhere due to the lack of equipment. A science lab was needed and we sought the assistance of the Principal of Rahula College the leading secondary school. Mr Ariyawamsa readily agreed for our use of the science lab after school hours. Vetus aided by me- the GA, the AGA and Development Assistant Paliakkara, and the science teachers at Rahula were at it experimenting every night from six to midnight. It went on for two months and the crayons made were really useless. Then Vetus sought the help of his professors at the University of Colombo, beseeching help on three days on bended knees and was chased away. We were not going to take that lying down and again undertook the daily experiments every night with vehement force. I was there every night. In around a month we did make a real crayon and I sat with Vitus experimenting again and again till the quality of our crayon was as good as Reeves, the best of the day.
We had won but how could we start an industry without money. Though I had money at the katcheri they were all tied up with rules that I could not vary. I was gazetted a Deputy Director of Cooperatives for the purpose of agriculture development. The Coops had money and it so happened that Sumanapala Dahanayake, the member of parliament was the President of the Morawaka Cooperatives. I summoned Sumane and showed him the crayon and he was ready to make it using cooperative funds if only I approved it. I was certain of his sincerity and ability. Though I had no authority I did approve it and Sumane got cracking. He and the Divisional Secretary at Morawaka found twenty unemployed youths, Sumane purchased the utensils and equipment and cleared two rooms at the Morawaka Cooperatives and Vetus and five or six of us moved in to train the youths to make crayons. It had to be a dare devil job endless working 24 hours a day non stop as we had to be successful and all of us broke rest for two weeks making crayons. It was hand made and thus every crayon had to be handcrafted. In the second week labels were printed and packets of crayons filled two large rooms. All this was done with unauthorized cooperative funds and I had no business to set up an industry without Ministry approval.
We got over that in a smart manner by tying in other Ministers. Sumane and I took the crayons we made and showed them to Mr Subasinghe the Minister for Industries. He was taken aback at the quality and agreed to open sales and with that we came into legitimacy. We faced the problem of having to purchase dyes in the open market at high cost and the Ministry of Industries said that their funds were not for cooperatives. We got to know when the Ministry for Imports was about to authorize the import of crayons and both of us moved in. We showed the crayons we made to the Controller of Imports Harry Guneratne and he was satisfied with the quality but he wanted us to obtain the approval of his master the Minister for Imports, Mr Illangaratne as such a cross allocation had never been done earlier. . Sumane and I met the Minister and the moment we showed him the crayons he started scribbling them on paper and testing the quality and shouted for the Controller of Imports to stop all imports and gave us a fat allocation of foreign exchange to import dyes. He had a hard look at me and said, I want you to set up a branch in Kolonnawa my electorate.” I gave him that assurance.
Coop Crayon, made crayons equal to the Crayola crayons of today. Sumane developed the sales to become islandwide. Coop crayon was very successful. It was easily the best industry that the DDCP ever made. Sumanapala excelled and developed the venture to have islandwide sales. But not for long- the Government changed and President Jayawardena won the elections. Coop Crayon was the best industry established in the DDCP and it had to get discredited. Sumane had to be sent to the gallows to discredit the industry so President Jayawardena hatched a masterplan . He summoned the Deputy Director of Cooperatives, N.T.Ariyaratne and entrusted to him the task of taking a posse of auditors to do a forensic audit of Coop Crayon. Ariyaratne when I met him in 1982 told me of this and that he had subjected all the books to an audit for four full days and found everything in order. Ariyaratne was not an officer to fabricate facts to put Sumane in the soup. Sumane was saved a stint in the gallows. But the IMF stepped in 1978 and decided that if Sri Lanka was to be given loans the government has to accept that the private sector was the engine of growth and all development work had to be stopped and the administrators who had manned all development departments had to be sent to the barracks. The IMF effectively ensured that all development activities were closed down
Since 1978, not a single industry was approved and all development activities were stopped and this stoppage continues to today- that is the barrier we have to surmount to create production and alleviate poverty within us.
I got sick of doing little work and decided to proceed to the UK to do further studies and sent in papers for retirement. I was entitled to retire but Minister Felix Dias decided that circular 28 should have retrospective effect. I lost my pension and resigned.
That ended my development tasks in Sri Lanka. I bagged the M Ed in Community Development from the University of Manchester and the Ph.D. from Michigan State in Non Formal Education & Agricultural Economics. I moved to the UK and the Bahamas and to Edinburgh, when Bangladesh somehow wanted me for Youth Development and the Military Government that took over the country when I was there was determined to close youth development altogether. Identifying me as a foreigner, Minister Aminul Islam, the Air Vice Marshal ordered me: What can you do for Bangladesh.”
I replied: ‘You should approve a new programme to create employment for the youth, the unemployed who have to scrape the barrel for life.”
The Secretary to the Treasury, the highest officer in the land, objected: The ILO tried hard to create employment on a special programme for three long years at Tangail, Bangladesh, bringing experts from all over the World, but miserably failed. The Treasury had to face a huge loss. We cannot face a loss again.”
I do not need funds. All I need is the approval to start and approval to divert approved funds for training workshops”
“The ILO are the experts and they did fail. You are talking nonsense. ”
The battle between me and the Secretary to the Treasury took over two long hours and the Minister Aminul Islam who was patiently listening got sick of our arguments and stopped our battle. He ordered: I approve a new Self Employment Programme for the Youth”.
We got cracking the very next day-training officers in economics and guiding youths in a manner where they became self reliant. That was economics and non formal education in action . I worked pell mell for seventeen months- over fifteen hours everyday including Saturdays, Sundays and holidays and trained the staff including members of the elite BCS-( Bangladesh Civil Service). In 2023 the Ministry of Youth Development reported that total self employment created since inception was 2,782,000 youths.(Activities of the Department of Youth Development, 2023)
It is an ongoing programme that can be seen by anyone interested.
Even our High Commissioner Milinda Moragoda when he came forward as a candidate for the mayorship of Colombo in 2011 in his Manifesto stated that if elected he would seek to implement the Youth Self Employment Programme of Bangladesh which incidentally was an amazingly successful scheme introduced to that country by a distinguished son of Sri Lanka, Dr Garvin Karunaratne who served in Bangladesh as an international consultant.”(The Nation 11/9/2011)
Since 1978, the biggest industry one can find in Colombo is the collection of waste cardboard- we ship some 8000 tonnes to India every month and collect a few coppers and buy the cardboard that India makes out of it paying fat dollars. Mind you we have been doing it for the past four decades. We do deserve to be called lunatics for doing this for forty five long years from 1978 to today. I saw a lorry being loaded with used cardboard in February 2025. That is the prosperity that President Jayawardena brought to us and mind you we should call it a day even now.
It is sad that today, we do not have even a Central Bank of our own- the IMF hijacked our Central Bank and now we are on bended knees begging for dollars. Till 1977 we managed with our finances. Since 1978 we closed all development tasks and allowed the rich to spend foreign currency travelling to the galore and educating their children abroad and borrowed dollars- which we do even till today. Now our foreign debt is well over $ 100 billion.
It is upto us to change, develop employment creation programmes once again to make everything we import. We did it once and it can be done again.
Garvin Karunaratne, Ph.D. Michigan State University
This article is dedicated to the memory of Sri Lankan patriot, humanitarian, and friend of fellow global Buddhists, Hon. Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was instrumental in winning official recognition for Vesak as an international holiday at the United Nations in September 1999, on the eve of the 3rd Millennium
Jairam Ramesh quotes the following short quatrain from Sir Edwin Arnold, the author of The Light of Asia, writing in 1893:
Praise me or asperse,
Deck me or deride,
In my veil of verse,
Safe from you I hide.
Edwin Arnold addressed these words to his hypothetical biographer. His denial of his overt presence in the poem amounts to more than stating an obvious fact, which is that he is assuming a persona for the purpose of his artistic expression of his central theme. It is also a gentle invitation to the reader to catch, if possible, a whiff of his own authentic spiritual discovery, as reflected in the quality of his absorption in his subject: presenting the life and teachings of Buddha Gautama in the form of fictionalised fact for easy understanding at a time when little or nothing was known in the West about the great Indian sage. In his book about Edwin Arnold’s poem Jairam Ramesh offers a brief description of the life and times of the poet, and narrates the story of how the poem came to be composed and how it was received at home and abroad, and how it later evolved to be a global phenomenon in the last quarter of the 19th century and beyond.
Before proceeding, I would like to introduce Jairam Ramesh to the reader. Seventy-one year old Jairam Ramesh (b. 1954) is an Indian economist and politician with a diverse academic background. He can also be described as a dabbler in literary matters who adopts a maverick approach. At present, he is a Member of Parliament elected from the Indian National Congress Party (INCP), representing the Karnataka State in the Rajya Sabha, the Indian parliament. Jairam obtained a B.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1975, and a Master of Science degree in Public Policy and Public Management from the Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Although he enrolled for a doctoral program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA in 1977, he quit it after some initial preparation.
Jairam served as the Union Minister of Rural Development under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh from July 2011 to May 2014, and has been active in various official capacities in the public sphere during INCP governments, sometimes receiving controversial attention. He has been dispensing his varied expertise as university lecturer, international scholar, economic consultant, and journalist, among other things. He has authored a number of books dealing with subjects related to economics and policy management. ‘THE LIGHT OF ASIA: the poem that defined the Buddha’ reveals an exception to his normal secular academic interests. But it doesn’t surprise us, considering the fact that he shows a deep commitment to spiritual values. According to the Wikipedia that quotes from a 2012 feature in Hindustan Times, Jairam Ramesh considers himself a practising Hindu ‘ingrained with Buddhism’, and calls himself ‘Hind-Budh’.
(This article is based on an Amazon Kindle version of Jairam’s work (as a Penguin book), which I acquired in 2021, in which year it was first published in India. Though I wanted to find the printed edition, I failed to get a copy here in Australia at that time. The Kindle form has the look of an uncorrected manuscript, but I was able to grasp its main points. It being the Covid-19 lockdown time then, I found this Kindle edition of Jairam’s thesis a helpful companion for me to revisit the print version of Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia that I already had with me.)
His Holiness the Dalai Lama in his Foreword (dated 3 October 2020) to Jairam’s book writes:
‘I believe what Sir Edwin’s poems showed was that the message of the Buddha is timeless, eternal and relevant. I am sure the readers will find this reflected in Mr Ramesh’s book, too’.
Jairam divides the text into four Sections. Section I is devoted to an account of ‘the man (Arnold the poet), the milieu and the moment (that) would come together in 1879 and The Light of Asia would blaze forth….’, as he writes at the end of that part of the book.
But to begin at the beginning, in his introduction to the book (‘A First Word’), Jairam remarks how The Light of Asia led to ‘an epidemic of exuberance’ as he calls it, when it was originally published in London in July 1879. The book created great enthusiasm in England, which soon spread to America and Europe and to other parts of the world, and the trend would continue for a few decades.
Jairam goes on to mention the names of five persons in subcontinental India, and Sri Lanka who were fascinated and inspired by Arnold’s epic poem. They later reached iconic stature through their contributions to the multifaceted (political, social, cultural, and economic) upliftment of their peoples: The young Indian Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda (b. 1863), and the Buddhist renunciate and missionary Anagarika Dharmapala (b. 1864) from Colombo, Sri Lanka, were deeply motivated by the poem. The aspiring lawyer of Indian origin in London who was later to become Mahatma Gandhi (b. 1869), and his teenage followers Jawaharlal Nehru (b,1889) who would become India’s first prime minister in 1947, and Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (b. 1891), later to become the chief architect of the Indian Constitution and the first Minister of Law and Justice of Independent India, similarly found Edwin Arnold’s epic to be a source of profound inspiration and succumbed to its strong positive impact.
Apart from this, The Light of Asia had a marked influence on at least eleven famous literary figures from across the world according to Jairam. Five of them were to become Nobel Laureates, namely, Rudyard Kipling (1907), Rabindranath Tagore (1913), W.B. Yeats (1923), Ivan Bunin (1933), and T.S. Eliot (1948). The other six were to become equally famous in the world of literature: Herman Melville, Leo Tolstoy, Lafcadio Hearn, D.H. Lawrence, John Masefield, and Jorge Luis Borges.
The Arnold classic’s influence spread into other fields of human intellectual engagement, including the world of science and industry. Around the beginning of the 20th century, it exercised its charm on the life of C.V. Raman, the young student of science in Madras, who would be honoured in 1930 with the Nobel Prize for Physics, becoming the first Indian Nobel Laureate in that subject area. The Russian chemist and the formulator of the periodic law and the creator of one version of the periodic table of elements Dmitri Mendeleyeev, and the Scottish-American industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie felt a special attraction towards Edwin Arnold’s poem about the Buddha. Despite his extremely controversial reputation in the military, colonial administrator Field Marshal Herbert KItchener (1850-1916) was regarded as a hero of his time. He used to carry a copy of The Light of Asia in his pocket wherever he went.
Jairam shows how, in the decades that followed its publication, the Arnoldian magnum opus was translated into many foreign languages including thirteen European, eight North and South-East Asian, and fourteen South Asian, languages; it was adapted in a number of plays, dance dramas, and operas. In the last half a century, it has continued to engage academic interest. It has formed the subject of scholarly publications and even doctoral dissertations in the UK, Canada, USA and Germany. Jairam found that the latest example of this trend was a February 2020 study of the influence of The Light of Asia on James Joyce (b.1882), a pioneer of the modernist avant garde movement in literature and the famed author of such monumental ‘stream of consciousness’ novels as Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
The first of two events that revived his interest in the Arnold classic that he had read in his mid teens, Jairam says, was his discovery of a letter that the late Jawaharlal Nehru had received from his British counterpart Winston Churchill bearing the date February 21, 1955. Churchill wrote:
I hope you will think of the phrase ‘The Light of Asia’. It seems to me that you might be able to do what no other human being could in giving India the lead, at least in the realm of thought, throughout Asia, with the freedom and dignity of the individual as the ideal rather than the Communist Party drill book.’
Another letter from Churchill to Nehru ended thus: ‘….Yours is indeed a heavy burden and responsibility, shaping the destiny of your many millions of countrymen and playing your outstanding part in world affairs. I wish you well in your task. Remember The Light of Asia.’
(Jairam’s italics)
Nehru was going through his first, and Churchill his second, term as prime minister. They were facing life and sharing individual burdens as kindred spirits, while giving leadership to two nations which were opposed to each other as the coloniser and the colonised. Between 1921 and 1945 Nehru had spent a total of ten years in prison during the oppressive British colonial rule, three of which (1942-45) were when Churchill was prime minister for the first time, during which he led his country to victory over the NAZI (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) forces under Adolf Hitler. The friendship that Nehru and Churchill mutually sustained between them defied external circumstances. Both shared morale boosting memories associated with their having been engaged with the meaning of The Light of Asia in their youth. Churchill’s friendly admonition to Nehru to provide leadership to India with ‘the freedom and dignity of the individual as the ideal’ at heart was prompted by the British leader’s memory of the particular Buddhist insight he had gained by reading The Light of Asia in the formative years of his youth.
I must confess that I am only a professionally qualified Civil & Structural Engineer with some computer programming experience plus some knowledge about Structured Computer Organization, I have no training on teaching methods. However, throughout my carrier I have been associated with teaching at primary and secondary education in several parts of the world. This is because I am married to a teacher from a teacher family that has also done a significant amount of community work in that field. By trying to help her in photocopying the question papers on mathematics for distribution to her students and at times trying to help solve questions at higher level like GCSE- A-Levels, I have come to appreciate the type of hard work our teachers put in. In this connection I thought of giving a new insight on teaching methods by a scientist, the creator of veritasium, whose valuable videos I previously presented in this forum:
It is quite clear that most of the time the students only use the top-level portion of the brain and use the same in answering the questions. If the teacher had managed to put similar questions to the deeper section, then the students become successful in answering the question on which his or her mind has been ‘trained’ (as in AI). So, the success of the tutor depends on how the student selects the questions that will come at the exam and train them on method to be used. To be able to do that the teacher should have the ability to ‘connect’ with each student. Perhaps this is why some teachers become successful and become very popular while others fail. I have seen that tutors try various strategies by coming out with stories related to current affairs and get their confidence and attention first. I my view, giving the confidence to the students take time unless of course he is well known already as an achiever. I remember when my wife was teaching in a secondary school overseas, the tendency was to take students in one particular school as very weak as good grades for maths had been very rare. But her first batch of students when they reached the O-level had developed confidence and became serious. So, every weekend the whole class of 26 or so students would be at our house getting drilled on the questions that would come. When the results came the whole class had scored credit passes or above (the A* at GCSE). From there onward our residence became a favourite tuition centre for A* results in both O-Levels and A-Levels. In her assessment Sri Lankan students are a lot better than all others she had taught. Perhaps this is due to special place our country is situated as given in the following report. This report has been published by an Indian research organisation very recently:
We all knew that according to a NASA observation our country is situated at a low point on the earth’s geoid. It was said to be about 80m below the average level. But now it turns out that it is about 120m below and that the closest point in our land to the actual gravity hole is in the deep south of the country. I now give a picture of that area in Bundala National Bird Park taken six years ago when a group of us went there (after spending a night in a hotel close to the place):
This was our get together 55 years after graduation from University of Peradeniya. All except one guy (wearing the hat) were working in different parts of the world and are citizens of those countries (except one dear friend who has passed away about a year ago) . Apparently one brilliant guy in this picture had earned their president’s (United States of America) award for his invention of an alloy used in aircraft industry. I am sure the emeritus professor will be recognised by his colleagues and PhD students of his Uni. Yours truly is in the extreme right (sporting a British product by the name Tensar).
This is a historic area. Somewhere close to this place excavations had been carried out by a prominent archaeologist of the country recently. He had done excavations on an area of 10X10km and found an ancient settlement belonging to 1100 BCE with a population of about 35000. It had been an ancient port. Also, nearby he had found a burial ground of a settlement of ‘Hulavali’ or gypsy people carbon dated to be 12000 years old. It seems the artifacts found suggests that they practiced ‘linga vandana’ (or veneration of genitals). In another nearby site he had found a rock inscription dating back to first century BC, based on Buddha era, with the date written in decimal format at the top of the inscription. This seem to suggest that decimal maths had been in existence in Sri Lanka. The notion that decimal math system and written form in Proto Indo European (or PIE) originated in India may not be correct. Perhaps same language was used in some parts of India as well as in Sri Lanka (or Taprobana according to Ptolemy).
Knowledge Passing down from one generation to the next:
In my view, each generation sits on the shoulders of the previous one, gets a better view and figure out the situation before moving forward. History is like a weaved cloth, each bringing a new colour or an abrupt end of a nice picture. We have seen how Elon Musk’s favourite child, X, trying to sit on the shoulders of his father to see the proceedings clearly for himself and even the US president Trump didn’t want to stop it. This is the same way my father who was an engine driver of a mill would show me how he would tackle a problem of his huge Ruston & Hornsby engine when the bearings would cease. And also, how to make ‘biththtara wee’ (or selecting rice seed paddy). Perhaps even the present day Rajarata farmers would not know the real meaning of ‘biththara wee’ as the agricultural officers would like to promote seeds from multinationals. The seeds he selected by using and egg and a salt solution would withstand the onset of saline water from a nearby tidal river to give a reasonable yield. This was my father’s hobby while working at the mill, and I could not understand why he got me involved. At times he would ask me to skip school, I didn’t mind though. I was about ten years old, but this distraction did not affect me as I was first in the class throughout.
We know Einstein is the greatest scientist so far. What does Einstein name means: it is stone worker or quarry worker which perhaps was a traditional work in a feudal society. He was considered a dull person and was sent to school only at the age of 14 or so, according to the book I read on him. During his childhood he used to go to the field, sit under a tree and watch reeds swaying in the wind with the backdrop of moving trains. His education in the school had been just enough to earn him a job as a clerk in a patent office. Those patents of other people had been a treasure trove for him. He had found how others would carry out inventions and register them under their name. May be the time he spent as a boy watching nature must have given ‘energy’ to the deeper section his brain and it remained active. The inspiration he got may have helped him to move forward with confidence. During the world- war two, they had to run away and escape the persecution. I remember my grandmother saying that a lot of Jewish people came to our village and lived under tents. The people of the area gave them food and treated them well. When the war ended, they all went back. It seems Einstein also visited Negombo area after he became famous and retired. People of that area are known for generosity.
Elon Musk named his electric cars as Tesla as he may have considered him as a genius. At his time the use of electrical power was just getting started. The understanding at the time was that electrons travel from one end of line or the source to the device its being used and then return like a stream. Even the famous IT persons (like the Anastasi lady whose videos on new chip design I have presented in this forum) thinks electrons flow along wires). However, there is a video from Derek Muller, whose video on Teaching Methods, I have presented above explains clearly that it isn’t the case. He thinks it is an electro-magnetic wave that travels along the wires. But new inventions on quantum field seem to suggest that it isn’t case either. So, Tesla’s incredible solution for the transmission of electricity using cables over long distances worked even though there was no clear understanding on the principles. It appears to be a much more simple thing, and had been figured out by our easterners. Perhaps main part may be the quanta of energy from electrons moving from one level in the atom to next one above and then releasing it plus the other part of energies due to spin being transmitted. The latter may be the part that travels as photons connecting living objects and register in their brains as memory. This may even be a thing that can be represented by a polynomial that can be broken to an infinite series similar to Fourier series. The people of our country believes that there are things called ‘as waha’ and ‘kata waha’ (or powers of certain people have to cast spell using light from their eyes and sound from mouth). It is well known that rats can generate light from their brain with which they see in the dark. Similarly, there can be so-called dark photons that people cannot see, but connect people.
We know that the ancient people who built huge structures with bricks and mortar to securely place relicts of religious leaders like Buddha had a good knowledge how lightening strike on them and to safely let it pass to the ground. When some one explained how it was achieved in a stupa in the ancient city of Anuradhapura a guy in Iran came to the place, got additional info and used them to register a patent. Also, when Sri Lankans explained the use of a local yam type called ‘Kothala Himbutu’ for treatment of diabetics, a guy in Japan where this plant is never seen patented it and now we cannot even talk about it. So, let us be careful in revealing our ideas that are gaining grounds in the ‘High Tech’ sector.
As usual, let me wind up with some lovely songs that our readers would like to enjoy.
The first is from the duo in the group ‘Fantasy’ (Martin and Freddy) singing with a backdrop of an area similar to the scene in the picture given above (paradise):
I give a song by Olaf der Flipper on ‘Stern von Jamaika’ (the Star of Jamaika)
The scenario is very much like the beach font of Negombo, the most economically active part of the country:
Next one from a French lady singing in their beautiful language (like Sinhalese without rough edges) a popular song about her gold fish which has a smooth skin etc. (a sort of ‘jarre marre’ or stress of the gold fish, as we call it).
And finally, one from the attractive guy Hemanta Kumar singing in sync to the voice of Dev Anand ‘Hai Apna dil To aawara’:
Doesn’t this give an idea how people connect via photons and sound?. I tend to believe that at one time in history, people in the region spoke the same language like the English of today.
The National People’s Power (NPP) has released a series of Tamil-language campaign songs for the upcoming local government elections, embracing rhetoric and imagery closely associated with Tamil nationalism and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
The campaign, aimed at boosting electoral performance in the Tamil North-East, has raised questions over the sincerity of the party’s political stance.
One of the songs, circulated by NPP’s Jaffna Member of Parliament Ilankumaran on Facebook, pledges the construction of a bronze statue in Valvettithurai to honour LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran.
The lyrics the song are as below:
O land that yearned for valour, O soil where Tamil pride has flourished, The land where History was born And gave the nation its noble leader (Prabhakaran)— In the name of Veluppillai Parvathy Ammal, A new harbour shall rise, And it shall echo our history for a hundred years. The principles of the national peoples power and those of the Tamil national leader are one and the same. A bronze statue of the Tamil national leader Shall stand in the land of his birth. We shall build a memorial hall, And install the bronze effigy, And move the first resolution in the city’s urban council. Across all regions, The Maveerar thuyilumillam shall be rebuilt and preserved— A duty to be borne by the councils.
No matter how many years may pass, The identity of the Tamil people shall endure; And the national party shall uphold it.
The song also promises to rename Nallur’s Sankiliyan Park as ‘Kittu Park’ – a reference to senior LTTE commander Sathasivam Krishnakumar – and to build a memorial hall and landing pad dedicated to Prabhakaran’s parents, Velupillai and Parvathyamma.
Another song, reportedly created for the Karaithuraipattu Pradeshiya Sabha in Mullaitivu, compares the left-wing ideology of the NPP with that of Prabhakaran, vowing that each Pradeshiya Sabha will support the reconstruction and upkeep of LTTE cemeteries.
The song’s lyrics state:
The ideology of the Tamil national leader is communism. The ideology of the National People’s Party is also communism. Let us unite under one shared vision.
A total of 28 such songs have been produced and shared across NPP-affiliated social media platforms, including official district-level pages.
Critics have lambasted the NPP, traditionally a southern-based leftist party with no historical alignment to Tamil nationalism, for what they describe as opportunistic mimicry.
These songs reveal the extent to which Tamil nationalist sentiments have taken root,” noted one activist in Jaffna. Southern parties cannot remain electorally relevant in the North-East without adopting this language.”
Indeed, despite its vocal opposition in the past to Tamil self-determination and its alignment with Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian narratives, the NPP now appears to be leveraging the imagery of LTTE leaders and invoking the memory of the Tamil armed struggle to win support. Photographs of Prabhakaran’s former residence, footage of Maaveerar Naal commemorations, and emotionally charged references to the LTTE’s martyrs” feature prominently in the music videos.
The strategy has drawn criticism from Tamils who accuse the NPP of hypocrisy. This is a party that has remained silent on the continued occupation of Tamil lands and the denial of justice for genocide,” said one campaigner. Now they’re trying to use our martyrs and our history as campaign material?”
Observers have noted that the NPP’s sudden turn to Tamil nationalist rhetoric is not isolated, but part of a broader political pattern in which southern parties attempt to rebrand themselves during elections in the North-East. However, critics warn that such performative gestures, have been made without concrete commitments to accountability, demilitarisation, or self-determination.
Sri Lankan president Anura Kumara Dissanayake | AP
