Tag Archives: Sri Lanka

A ten-month long acute dry spell has sent Sri Lankan government scrambling to ease the impact of record harvest losses. The country’s rice harvest is likely to be down about 17 percent from the 4 million tons recorded in 2013, which would make it the lowest in six years.

Controversial school books present an extremely contentious view of Indian history rooted in the ideology of Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist political movement — and sometimes propagate pure fantasy

In 2013 the Sri Lankan economy continued to recover slowly from its economic slump last year, which saw growth fall from several years of 8 per cent plus to 6.4 per cent. The IMF is now predicting growth of 6.5 per cent for 2013 and 2014. However, it was the island’s politics that was the main story this year.   While construction …

Notwithstanding all the glib assurances by Sri Lankan politicians, including President Mahinda Rajapaksa, on the cohesiveness of its people in this island nation, ground realities tell another story. The Tamil nation, whose struggle for a separate homeland began in 1983, were long targeted by government forces until the massive military maneuvres by the Sri Lankan armed forces came to a …

Policy changes that encourage and provide incentives to create jobs in Sri Lanka’s northern former war zone are necessary to ease the impact of dwindling aid there, experts say. Since 2010 three successive appeals for reconstruction work under the Joint Plan of Assistance to the Northern Province issued by the UN and Sri Lanka government have been underfunded by US$430 million. In the last …

The end of three decades of armed conflict in 2009 had many Sri Lankans believing that sustained economic development would now be possible. This groundswell of optimism catapulted the incumbent government to an electoral victory in early 2010, and while a large share of its support stemmed from military successes, the ruling party’s economic message was also a decisive factor. From …

I feel we are living in a vertical democracy. As the President of the country stated, we do have elections on a regular basis. We are governed by a Constitution, which establishes democratic institutions of governance. One can check the boxes: Sri Lanka has an Executive, Parliament, a Judiciary, and universal franchise is an age-old tradition in the country. This …

As President Barack Obama weighs his options on Syria, media in South Asian countries is advising caution, fearing despite all good intentions, an attack on Syria could spiral out of control.