Pri's blog

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 Anus...

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" i...

" 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 sit...

In Duncan Green’s From Poverty to Power blog, Who is an expert?   guest blogger Farida Bena confesses to “hav[ing] many lists of experts on file” and noticing that “it’s usually people from a Northern/Western background, with endless degrees and credentials, most of them English-speaking.”   She asks the pertinent question “What if there’s a whole world of ‘expertise’ that we simply don’t consider?” Interestingly this comes on the heels of the launch of ReCAP’s “ Retaining Rural Access Knowledge of Experienced Rural Transport Sector Experts ”   set of short videos, which, if one was to describe rather crassly, is a collection of snippets on different topics from 17 talking heads who were selected on their seniority and probability of either not being around much longer, or losing it even if they were!! A rather depressing thought considering I was one of them!!    Equally depressing was the fact that of the 17 chosen few, 12 were white and 13 were...

It is amazing how my post on the White Saviour Complex of Development Consultancy reached so many people once I included  it on LinkedIn  and tagged it appropriately.  Over a 1000 reads.. a bit overwhelmed by it all.  Also, given that right now it is at the forefront of my mind, I was pleased to see drop into my inbox an initiative that provides an alternative.  Maybe there is a case to be made for a collection of such alternatives - so here goes. The first paragraph of Kristen Cheney's ISS blog  on Children as Experts could be easily paraphrased to present the problematic of the white saviour way of doing development, or in this instance, development research.  Here's my modified version. My changes in italics. " It is often assumed that social research is the domain of experts - and that those experts are necessarily researchers from the global north. Most development research is northern-led and northern-centric, not only ignoring souther...

photo taken from  https://e11e99.wordpress.com/2012/10/06/identity-in-a-post-colonial-world/ I am sharing some thoughts that I picked  randomly from a relatively progressive Christian facebook page (Sojourners)that I follow, mainly to help me counter the rather misinformed opinions of my true believer Christian friends (brown not white).  The article is called , 6 HARMFUL CONSEQUENCES OF THE WHITE SAVIOR COMPLEX, BY RYAN KUJA  and is so relevant to the northern development consultancy space that many of my (white) friends and colleagues occupy (and that I too sometimes venture into) that I thought to use it to write a blog post that I can share with that community.   R yan Kuja confesses that he was "never a missionary in the standard sense of the word, never proselytized or attempted to save souls"  but admits that "the engine driving [him] was the white saviour complex..... The other Westerners [he] worked with believed [they] had it al...

Went with a friend to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) yesterday, and was excited to find that one of the exhibits to be The Jeweled Isle: Art from Sri Lanka .   My friend, not of Sri Lankan origin, had a connection to whoever it was that curated the exhibit, so we both had an  interest in checking it out.  Some great stuff on display, including a beautiful tapestry loaned from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, some beautiful masks, a carved ivory chest and an inflatable sleeping Buddha, in the style of the stone statue at the Gal Viharaya in Polonnaruwa  - great idea! Coming out of the exhibit and seeing many of the other collections that LACMA had to offer, two things struck me about The Jeweled Isle.  One was how so many of the exhibits were borrowed from collectors or museums in the global North; and secondly how the artefacts and artists featured were not contemporary.   It was as if artistic endeavours in ...