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...

If we leave some of the rhetorical utterances such as the Small Wonder of Asia, aside, there are two frequently used descriptors of the Sri Lankan context.  One,   that Sri Lanka is a Middle Income Country, and two, that Sri Lanka is a post-conflict country.   I would like to examine these descriptions in slightly more depth.  Let’s take the  Middle Income Country idea.  It has significant impact in terms of Sri Lanka’s relations with the international donor community, and we have ostensibly lost some of our bilateral development partners and international NGO presence because of that.   But being a Middle Income Country merely means we fall into a particular GNI per capita category , and most of us should  realize by now that this is not a good enough measure to judge peoples’ well being. It is insufficient on a number of counts.  It does not take into account intra-country inequalities nor does it take into account the ...