Pri's blog

Last week the world’s governments adopted a new sustainable development agenda , and moved towards new ways of ‘doing development’ that if implemented,  will result in new partnerships between the global north and the global south, between private corporations, national governments and  international institutions, and between citizens and the state.   In Sri Lanka, the year 2015 saw us embark on a new phase of governance that aims to combat political patronage and corruption, emphasise accountability, and safeguard the rights of the people and respect their right to information and to equal treatment by the state.   The new regime that Sri Lankan citizens have elected into the legislature (supported also by a newly elected President) inherits a post-war society that has an average GDP growth of around 6-7%, a lower middle income status, dramatic reductions in poverty head count ratios, and a record of most MDGs achieved.  But it is also a socie...

While one group of Colombo’s bold and beautiful gathered at the Lakshman Kadirigamar Institute for International  Relations and Strategic Studies to listen to a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair,  protected by riot squads of Police who looked like they would welcome some excitement after almost an year of inaction, another section of Colombo’s bold and beautiful met at the Balmoral Room of the Kingsbury Hotel to celebrate the life of an important Sri Lankan, Deshamanya Vidyajothi  Ray Wijewardene , and to present The Ray  Award for Innovation 2015.  Just before both those events, yet another group, this time a group of Colombo’s intellectuals were at the Institute of Ethnic Studies (ICES) listening to Kumari Jayawardene, Farzana Haniffa, Ahilan Kadirgamar and Vijay Nagaraj  with Harini Amarasuriya moderating,  reflect on the past ethnic and religious riots, the impact it had on the individual and the collective, and speak abo...

There was an animated discussion via my facebook on the underrepresentation of women in the new parliament, following the General Election of August 17.  The debate was stimulated by the fact that probably the one woman from the winning UNFGG who has come to Parliament off her own bat (not because of male spouses, siblings or parents), Rosy Senanayake , lost her seat in the preferential voting.  The number of women in this Parliament has decreased to eleven, from thirteen in the previous one.    The national lists of all contending parties are also devoid of significant numbers of women, and what caused the FB furore was the fact that some of us were advocating that  the Prime Minister (and other leaders, though that was not quite so explicit) uses the national list to increase women’s representation, and perhaps bring people like Rosy back into Parliament. There are some people who think Rosy is arrogant – but by and large most people think she did a...

Almost four years ago, in a pub in Amsterdam, I had a chat with Udan Fernando and asked him what his plans were for coming back to Sri Lanka.   I had picked him as the next Executive Director of the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), a position I had held for 10 years when I resigned in March 2015.   Time will vindicate both my choice of a successor and the process of ensuring continuity in leadership, but my thoughts in this blog are about the concept of planning succession, and the difficulty that people have in understanding the idea. I am 62 years old, and please note that I have not retired.   Many of my friends   who are around the same age have, but I have never really had any intention of retiring.   As I told a young man who was trying to sell me a private pension scheme when I was working in London, I intend to drop dead, not drop working.   My decision to resign my position at CEPA was not caused by personal factors – I was not ‘tired of ...

Was at the first half of a talk by Godfrey Gunatilleke on A Vision for Sri Lanka – 2025& 2035 – pre-requisites of  Very High Human Development, organized by the Marga Institute and the Gamani Corea Foundation a couple of weeks ago.  These events are amazing for bringing together all the old guard who played such a strong role in Sri Lanka’s development: Chandi Chanmugam, Lloyd Fernando, Nimal Sanderatne and many others.  Unfortunately, representation of  the future generations of Sri Lankans, and of  women of all age groups (there were not more than 10 women in the audience, and of course none on the panel) was woefully inadequate.  Which really is a pity. There should be a space where the young can learn at the feet of the gurus  and maybe even challenge them! The agenda began with Godfrey Gunatilleke presenting his paper, followed by Saman Kelegama, Indrajit Coomaraswamy and Nishan de Mel responding.  I was only there for the presenta...

I knew two women who died in the Park Palace Guest House in Kabul last week , gunned down by the Taliban.  Paula Kantor had been working with AREU, one of the organizations in the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium , and even after she left, we had an exchange of emails regarding Gayathri’s work on women and fisheries.  Martha Farell was the wife of Rajesh Tandon, and a leading figure in PRIA.  I had never met her, but Rajesh facilitated CEPA’s Strategic Planning last year and helped put us (and definitely me) on the right track.  Both were brave, committed women.  Let us celebrate their contribution to making the world a better place and grieve for their loved ones and colleagues.  Rest in Peace,Paula. Rest in Peace Martha.    Paula and Martha’s deaths are a stark reminder, as someone on the SLRC email list observed, that fragility is more than just a concept. it  is a matter of life and death.  There has been the devastati...

My first session at the World Economic Forum East Asia, was on the Role of Think Tanks in Policy Making in East Asia.   The session was Chaired by Simon Tay, the Chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs. Two short presentations were made by William H Overholt, President of the Fung Global Institute, and Chandran Nair, Founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow (GIFT) (don’t you just hate these clever acronyms, especially when you struggle so unsuccessfully to come up with them?!!) Overholt’s was a pretty orthodox, somewhat western-centric view.  He talked about TTs needing to think about the future, and to develop deep analyses of issues – because governments are beleaguered by electoral politics with no space to scout for new ideas or do some corrective thinking. TTs are also faced with challenges – challenges of maintaining independence while receiving government funds, or from ‘clients’ who typically want you to support/refute strateg...

  I have just seen RED.   Not because it is the auspicious colour for the New Year, but because I have just read in the Island of 11 th April the seventieth Pathfinder Economic Flash entitled Colombo Port City: Monster or transformative opportunity.   There has been a lot written about how transformative the project promises to be – not just of the Sri Lankan economy, but also of the environment in which we Sri Lankans live.   Some consider the transformation monstrous, others an opportunity! I had gone to the Pathfinder article with a view to finding some evidence for the latter view; for learning about the ‘potential benefits of a massive integrated development project of this nature’, especially the benefits of the marina and yacht club, the seaview apartments, the five star hotel, the mini golf course, the shopping and entertainment centre and the ‘many other modern facilities’.   IMHO, the benefit from projects such as the Colombo Port City Projec...

Shared responsibility - inland waters, Trincomalee Here’s a brief, somewhat  academic blog – inspired by listening to Frances Stewart at a webinar organised by ODI, in the context of doing a Gender Synthesis  of the first round of panel data for the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium.   Most of my readers  may want to escape from this rather unexpected theoretical musing on my part! My problem is that I am not sure that gender falls into how Frances Stewart conceptualises  Horizontal Inequality , even though in some of her writing she thinks it does (1);  and even though, from an external analytical perspective there are visible structural inequalities between women and men.  So as  Stewart et al point out, gender as a group affiliation matters, because it is tightly bounded and members can’t move from one gender to another and because being a member of the group, results in levels of discrimination (ibid).  What I am not...