{"id":155803,"date":"2026-04-21T15:58:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T22:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=155803"},"modified":"2026-04-21T15:58:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T22:58:26","slug":"colossus-philip-gunawardena-shows-us-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2026\/04\/21\/colossus-philip-gunawardena-shows-us-the-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Colossus Philip Gunawardena shows us the way"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">By Garvin Karunaratne<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Half a century ago I was privileged to be one of the youngest lieutenants handpicked to implement the Paddy Lands Act, the magnificent piece of legislation devised by the visionary leader Hon Philip Gunawardena to allay all the ills of peasant agriculture in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;It was a time when our country, basking in the early glory of independence, was seeking new roots to serve the people. Hon Philip Gunawardena was a man of the people, loved by the people and admired by all who worked under him. With a background of academic expertise gained at famous seats of learning at the Universities of Illinois and&nbsp; Wisconsin, he joined the band of patriotic statesmen- Dr N.M.Perera, Dr S.A.Wickremasinghe, Dr Colvin R de Silva and spearheaded the movement for the common man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For Full Story<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-lankaweb-com wp-block-embed-lankaweb-com\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"C8VUfboSne\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/04\/09\/colossus-philip-gunawardena-shows-us-the-way-2\/\">Colossus Philip Gunawardena shows us the way<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;Colossus Philip Gunawardena shows us the way&#8221; &#8212; LankaWeb.com\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2023\/04\/09\/colossus-philip-gunawardena-shows-us-the-way-2\/embed\/#?secret=nmmnzYbFGf#?secret=C8VUfboSne\" data-secret=\"C8VUfboSne\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Garvin Karunaratne Half a century ago I was privileged to be one of the youngest lieutenants handpicked to implement the Paddy Lands Act, the magnificent piece of legislation devised by the visionary leader Hon Philip Gunawardena to allay all the ills of peasant agriculture in Sri Lanka. &nbsp;It was a time when our country, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-garvin-karunaratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155803"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":155804,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155803\/revisions\/155804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}