Pri's blog

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...

Yesterday, Ragi Kadirgamar ‘did a session’ at our work place, which unfortunately I was too late to attend.  What he  offers is Satsang, or spiritual talks based on Advaita teachings.  See below an excerpt from his flyer Talks & Meetings. “What are you seeking?”  If you don’t clearly know what you are seeking, HOW can you find it , or know it ? And what specifically are the causes of suffering that ‘ apparently ’ prevent people from getting what they want in life ? “How can you live your daily life, in peace and harmony?” Like his Guru, Ragi guides spiritual seekers away from simply accepting the profound conceptual truth, ‘ Consciousness is I  -  I am Consciousness’,                                        ...

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 ...

Here as promised a gist of what I said at the 6th South Asian Economic Summit's Managing Urbanisation Inclusively   session... The background to the session seemed to suggest that being ‘inclusive’  is about the rural-urban gap, looking at ways in which the rural labourers, left out of the growth that is being generated by the cities, are able to benefit from that growth.   The result of this is a labour force which remains predominantly agricultural and rural, while a small proportion of the population – that which is urban and more highly-skilled  enjoys the benefits of growth and integration with the global economy. What I wanted to point out in this session was that growth within cities is not equal either.  If one begins to talk economics as if people mattered, then one would see that urban development is beginning to transform city space, and relationships between people living in the city, in ways  that privilege some city dwellers an...