Pri's blog

I have worked in rural transport for a decade and have been out of the sector for even longer. but as a colleague once observed, you can take the woman out of transport, but you can’t take transport out of the woman, which is why, probably, I have been thinking about the implications the current COVID 19 crisis on transport provision, especially for marginalised women (and men) and children in rural areas. Where I live right now, in Malaysia, containment measures for the COVID 19 virus goes under the apt name of ‘movement control’ which though it still is about control sounds less carceral than the term ‘lockdown’. At different stages of this MCO (as Malaysians call it) we have been allowed limited access to different spaces. Right now, the RMCO (recovery movement control order) is relatively relaxed and for the most part it would seem that in Malaysia at least we can move about freely, while wearing masks in public spaces and adhering to social distancing protocols.   Of course th

Wrote this for a webinar organised by  Duryog Nivaran  and the Institute for Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies at the Dhaka University on    Women and Work in Pandemics: resilience and recovery.   It was good to be back on a Duryog Nivaran   platform after several years , and as a founder member of the network, I was proud that it continued to be p ersistent in making sure that the need for gender equality is not forgotten in the discourse and practice of disaster risk management, resilience and recovery.  Talking about  the rights of women in the informal sector provided provided the opportunity to highlight the situation of women workers who  have are more often than not forgotten, and more often than not are invisible.  photo by me: women cleaners at Galle Face, Colombo   Who are these women? The informal sector includes a  wide range of jobs and economic activities - street vendors, home-based workers in global and domestic value chains, waste pickers, domestic work

Just followed an APWLD   webinar on the WTO and COVID19.   I had also followed a Groundviews podcast where Sanjana H interviewed Anush Wijesinha, a young Sri Lankan trade economist .   Anush’s core argument seemed to be that Sri Lanka lacked the fiscal space to respond to the pandemic and its aftermath because we were too late to implement the reforms that we should have had in place.   I am not clear what exactly those reforms were, but listening to the webinar just now it struck me that it is not so simple.   The webinar reminded me that WTO regulations on, for example agriculture goods and services, has systematically decimated domestic agriculture in developing countries and challenged food sovereignty and hurt the livelihoods of small farmers. WTO led liberalization and promotion of FDI in agriculture and natural resources has led to land grabs, seed grabs, water grabs, and natural resource grabs.   It would be interested to know from Anush Wijesinha and others what h

So, working from home here in Kuala Lumpur, we took our first public holiday – May Day, or International Workers’ Day – celebrated as such in many parts of the world. In Sri Lanka, the country where I grew up, May Day rallies brought workers’ unions on to the streets.  Sri Lankan unions have political affiliations – so the rallies and processions provide the opportunity for different political parties to show their strength, for politicians and union leaders to make grandiose speeches and to show solidarity with labourers and working classes and in the process collect more votes.  I am not sure how many of the men and women who participate in these celebrations and enjoy the camaraderie of their fellow workers, are aware of the origins of the event. History tells us that May Day celebrations began in 1889, initiated by the Marxist International Socialist Congress, the Second International, as a day on which to engage in  a "great international demonstration" in su

" Bill Gates: “The Corona Virus… is sent to remind us of the important lessons that we seem to have forgotten and it is up to us if we will learn them or not.” The above quote and much more has been attributed to Bill Gates.  It has been sent to me several times, and honestly, I am tired of it.  Some people have pointed out that it has been falsely attributed, that he did not say it at all.  That does not make it less problematic - why would people attribute such   thinking to a man who is actually a part of the problem.  This is not a conspiracy theory.  I am not saying that Microsoft or the Gates Foundation manufactured the new corona virus, but if you can stomach reading the rest of the message  - you will understand my rant. So just assuming he did say all of this, here is how I would respond! Bill : [the COvid-19]Virus is   is reminding us that we are all equal, regardless of our culture, religion, occupation, financial situation or how famous we are. This disease tr