Features

THE DEMONISATION OF AN ICON OF UDA WALAWE

Published

2 years ago

2024/05/5

by Rohan Wijesinha

Bullet (or Senadhi, which is his official name) was brought to the Elephant Transit Home (ETH) in Uda Walawe, in 1998, at the approximate age of six months. He was found in the Settikulam (Cheddikulam) area, north of the Wilpattu National Park, and was bequeathed his nickname as, even at that tender age, there was a bullet lodged near his jaw. He was released into the National Park in 2003, at approximately five years old. He was not seen between 2009 and 2015 but since reappearing, seems to have largely stayed within the confines of the Park apart from in one instance, about three years ago, when he strayed into an adjacent sugar cane plantation with punishing consequences. He suffered several gunshot wounds and had to be treated by the veterinarian staff of the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC).

Still growing, with a pair of tusks that reach almost to the ground, Bullet is truly a treasure of Uda Walawe and is one of the great successes of the ETH and its founding philosophy, that of rehabilitating orphaned baby elephants back into the wild, to live free of the shackles of servitude that would otherwise be placed on them.

A Human-created Problem

Despite frequently spaced sign boards along the electric fences bordering the Park asking people to refrain from feeding the elephants, they are largely ignored. The elephants who have been drawn here have now become conditioned to expecting food from people, even van loads of tourists, who stop to feed them. These creatures now associate people with food, human grown food, and they will begin to seek it from nearby cultivations too. This will exacerbate an already escalating human-elephant conflict (HEC) in the area, resulting in the deaths of both elephants and humans. One can hardly blame the elephants for seeking other sources of food as due to decades of mismanagement, the Park has become choked by invasive alien floral species which have destroyed the grasslands that once provided them with their staple diet.

Bullet, too, started seeking human handouts from approximately 2019 onward. Whenever he is by the fence, even more people stop by to admire his magnificent tusks, and crowd around to feed him. He, as do the others, now see humans as benefactors and expect food from any person, within and outside of the National Park, even when in the supposed safety of a jeep. Thus are monsters created, by ignorance and inadequate checks and controls. This human created problem is not confined to Uda Walawe but also to the Yala National Park, where the tuskers Gemunu and Nandimithra cause consternation to visitors, and along the Buttala Road too, where several males have turned highway robbers.

A maturing young elephant bull

Bullet is approximately 26 years old but still has a lot of growing to do. He will reach full sexual maturity in his early to mid-fifties. There were once many mature bulls in Uda Walawe who, as is the norm, would have kept him in check and influenced his behaviour. In fact, in mid-2023, he briefly came into musth but met up with a bigger bull who not only chastised him for his presumption, but also bit off a part of his tail. He soon lost his state of musth, and its associated aggression.

Such large, mature bulls are now few and far between in this Park and when, for the first time in February, Bullet attained a state of full musth, there was none around to put him in his place. Now unrestrained, and like any young male, he is giving vent to his hormone-induced aggression, against human and elephant, with no bigger to compete for the females currently in estrous.

An inconvenience to the DWC

Wild elephants have become an inconvenience to the hierarchy of the DWC. The ever increasing annual deaths of elephants (and of humans) due to HEC, the increasing loss of habitat due to invasive alien species and illegal encroachment, with little initiative from the department to take proactive action to stop it, spells disaster not just for the elephant but for all wildlife in Sri Lanka. Yet what would happen to places like Uda Walawe if its elephants disappeared, and to the human communities and economies that are dependent on them, and the Park?

Up to 25 years ago, Uda Walawe was a little collection of shops, with just one small guest house, and not even a petrol station in close proximity. Today, it boasts over 120 hotels and guest houses, restaurants, a variety of shops, and provides employment to hundreds, and more. Would tourists still come here if there were very few, or no, wild elephants in Uda Walawe? At one time, Uda Walawe could boast of being the one place in Asia where a wild elephant could be seen 24×7, at any hour of the day, on any day of the week. No more.

National Parks are sanctuaries for wildlife

National Parks are sanctuaries for wild animals. These are the last remaining places where they can behave naturally in pursuit of their instinctive search for food, water and procreation. Humans are privileged visitors into their domain and should remember that by observing and not intruding, by learning and not interacting, and above all by respecting and not harassing, they aid in their conservation. It is the responsibility of the DWC to see that this is practiced, and that strict disciplinary action is taken if it is not. The park authorities seem to have largely reneged on this responsibility.

At present, Bullet’s hormones confuse his view of humans; one-time benefactors have now become intruders into his domain. He is a bewildered young male, with none larger to put him in his place. Yet, he has every right to behave the way he does within the sanctuary of the Park. After all, it is his.

A Breach of Trust

Astonishingly, the DWC do not see it this way. They see Bullet, rather than the visitors, as the problem. Instead of advising the jeep drivers, who are all well aware of Bullet’s current condition, to observe him from a distance, they have taken to shooting him with rubber bullets, shooting in the air, or throwing thunder flashes at him. It is alleged that their reason for doing this is to protect tourists. Since when did the protection of tourists become a priority of the DWC over that of conservation? Herein lies the rub. The DWC has abandoned the very principles of its foundation. It has breached its trust to the people of this Nation, and to the wildlife it is supposed to safeguard.

The reality is that in a few weeks Bullet will drift out of musth and revert to being the placid young tusker he was before. The DWC’s actions, however, will ensure that he becomes even more aggressive, as have others who have been treated by them this same way. This will inevitably result in tragedy and Bullet will pay the price. And his Guardians, by Statute, well they will do what they have been doing all along, and take the easy way out.

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Features

Recruiting academics to state universities – beset by archaic selection processes?

Published

3 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

by Kaushalya Perera

Time has, by and large, stood still in the business of academic staff recruitment to state universities. Qualifications have proliferated and evolved to be more interdisciplinary, but our selection processes and evaluation criteria are unchanged since at least the late 1990s. But before I delve into the problems, I will describe the existing processes and schemes of recruitment. The discussion is limited to UGC-governed state universities (and does not include recruitment to medical and engineering sectors) though the problems may be relevant to other higher education institutions (HEIs).

How recruitment happens currently in SL state universities

Academic ranks in Sri Lankan state universities can be divided into three tiers (subdivisions are not discussed).

* Lecturer (Probationary)

– recruited with a four-year undergraduate degree. A tiny step higher is the Lecturer (Unconfirmed), recruited with a postgraduate degree but no teaching experience.

* A Senior Lecturer can be recruited with certain postgraduate qualifications and some number of years of teaching and research.

* Above this is the professor (of four types), which can be left out of this discussion since only one of those (Chair Professor) is by application.

State universities cannot hire permanent academic staff as and when they wish. Prior to advertising a vacancy, approval to recruit is obtained through a mind-numbing and time-consuming process (months!) ending at the Department of Management Services. The call for applications must list all ranks up to Senior Lecturer. All eligible candidates for Probationary to Senior Lecturer are interviewed, e.g., if a Department wants someone with a doctoral degree, they must still advertise for and interview candidates for all ranks, not only candidates with a doctoral degree. In the evaluation criteria, the first degree is more important than the doctoral degree (more on this strange phenomenon later). All of this is only possible when universities are not under a ‘hiring freeze’, which governments declare regularly and generally lasts several years.

Problem type 1

– Archaic processes and evaluation criteria

Twenty-five years ago, as a probationary lecturer with a first degree, I was a typical hire. We would be recruited, work some years and obtain postgraduate degrees (ideally using the privilege of paid study leave to attend a reputed university in the first world). State universities are primarily undergraduate teaching spaces, and when doctoral degrees were scarce, hiring probationary lecturers may have been a practical solution. The path to a higher degree was through the academic job. Now, due to availability of candidates with postgraduate qualifications and the problems of retaining academics who find foreign postgraduate opportunities, preference for candidates applying with a postgraduate qualification is growing. The evaluation scheme, however, prioritises the first degree over the candidate’s postgraduate education. Were I to apply to a Faculty of Education, despite a PhD on language teaching and research in education, I may not even be interviewed since my undergraduate degree is not in education. The ‘first degree first’ phenomenon shows that universities essentially ignore the intellectual development of a person beyond their early twenties. It also ignores the breadth of disciplines and their overlap with other fields.

This can be helped (not solved) by a simple fix, which can also reduce brain drain: give precedence to the doctoral degree in the required field, regardless of the candidate’s first degree, effected by a UGC circular. The suggestion is not fool-proof. It is a first step, and offered with the understanding that any selection process, however well the evaluation criteria are articulated, will be beset by multiple issues, including that of bias. Like other Sri Lankan institutions, universities, too, have tribal tendencies, surfacing in the form of a preference for one’s own alumni. Nevertheless, there are other problems that are, arguably, more pressing as I discuss next. In relation to the evaluation criteria, a problem is the narrow interpretation of any regulation, e.g., deciding the degree’s suitability based on the title rather than considering courses in the transcript. Despite rhetoric promoting internationalising and inter-disciplinarity, decision-making administrative and academic bodies have very literal expectations of candidates’ qualifications, e.g., a candidate with knowledge of digital literacy should show this through the title of the degree!

Problem type 2 – The mess of badly regulated higher education

A direct consequence of the contemporary expansion of higher education is a large number of applicants with myriad qualifications. The diversity of degree programmes cited makes the responsibility of selecting a suitable candidate for the job a challenging but very important one. After all, the job is for life – it is very difficult to fire a permanent employer in the state sector.

Widely varying undergraduate degree programmes.

At present, Sri Lankan undergraduates bring qualifications (at times more than one) from multiple types of higher education institutions: a degree from a UGC-affiliated state university, a state university external to the UGC, a state institution that is not a university, a foreign university, or a private HEI aka ‘private university’. It could be a degree received by attending on-site, in Sri Lanka or abroad. It could be from a private HEI’s affiliated foreign university or an external degree from a state university or an online only degree from a private HEI that is ‘UGC-approved’ or ‘Ministry of Education approved’, i.e., never studied in a university setting. Needless to say, the diversity (and their differences in quality) are dizzying. Unfortunately, under the evaluation scheme all degrees ‘recognised’ by the UGC are assigned the same marks. The same goes for the candidates’ merits or distinctions, first classes, etc., regardless of how difficult or easy the degree programme may be and even when capabilities, exposure, input, etc are obviously different.

Similar issues are faced when we consider postgraduate qualifications, though to a lesser degree. In my discipline(s), at least, a postgraduate degree obtained on-site from a first-world university is preferable to one from a local university (which usually have weekend or evening classes similar to part-time study) or online from a foreign university. Elitist this may be, but even the best local postgraduate degrees cannot provide the experience and intellectual growth gained by being in a university that gives you access to six million books and teaching and supervision by internationally-recognised scholars. Unfortunately, in the evaluation schemes for recruitment, the worst postgraduate qualification you know of will receive the same marks as one from NUS, Harvard or Leiden.

The problem is clear but what about a solution?

Recruitment to state universities needs to change to meet contemporary needs. We need evaluation criteria that allows us to get rid of the dross as well as a more sophisticated institutional understanding of using them. Recruitment is key if we want our institutions (and our country) to progress. I reiterate here the recommendations proposed in ‘Considerations for Higher Education Reform’ circulated previously by Kuppi Collective:

* Change bond regulations to be more just, in order to retain better qualified academics.

* Update the schemes of recruitment to reflect present-day realities of inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary training in order to recruit suitably qualified candidates.

* Ensure recruitment processes are made transparent by university administrations.

Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.

(Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.)

Features

Talento … oozing with talent

Published

3 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

Talento: Gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band

This week, too, the spotlight is on an outfit that has gained popularity, mainly through social media.

Last week we had MISTER Band in our scene, and on 10th February, Yellow Beatz – both social media favourites.

Talento is a seven-piece band that plays all types of music, from the ‘60s to the modern tracks of today.

The band has reached many heights, since its inception in 2012, and has gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band in the scene here.

The members that makeup the outfit have a solid musical background, which comes through years of hard work and dedication

Their portfolio of music contains a mix of both western and eastern songs and are carefully selected, they say, to match the requirements of the intended audience, occasion, or event.

Although the baila is a specialty, which is inherent to this group, that originates from Moratuwa, their repertoire is made up of a vast collection of love, classic, oldies and modern-day hits.

The musicians, who make up Talento, are:

Prabuddha Geetharuchi:

Geilee Fonseka: Dynamic and charismatic vocalist

Prabuddha Geetharuchi: The main man behind the band Talento

(Vocalist/ Frontman). He is an avid music enthusiast and was mentored by a lot of famous musicians, and trainers, since he was a child. Growing up with them influenced him to take on western songs, as well as other music styles. A Peterite, he is the main man behind the band Talento and is a versatile singer/entertainer who never fails to get the crowd going.

Geilee Fonseka (Vocals):

A dynamic and charismatic vocalist whose vibrant stage presence, and powerful voice, bring a fresh spark to every performance. Young, energetic, and musically refined, she is an artiste who effortlessly blends passion with precision – captivating audiences from the very first note. Blessed with an immense vocal range, Geilee is a truly versatile singer, confidently delivering Western and Eastern music across multiple languages and genres.

Chandana Perera (Drummer):

His expertise and exceptional skills have earned him recognition as one of the finest acoustic drummers in Sri Lanka. With over 40 tours under his belt, Chandana has demonstrated his dedication and passion for music, embodying the essential role of a drummer as the heartbeat of any band.

Harsha Soysa:

(Bassist/Vocalist). He a chorister of the western choir of St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa, who began his musical education under famous voice trainers, as well as bass guitar trainers in Sri Lanka. He has also performed at events overseas. He acts as the second singer of the band

Udara Jayakody:

(Keyboardist). He is also a qualified pianist, adding technical flavour to Talento’s music. His singing and harmonising skills are an extra asset to the band. From his childhood he has been a part of a number of orchestras as a pianist. He has also previously performed with several famous western bands.

Aruna Madushanka:

(Saxophonist). His proficiciency in playing various instruments, including the saxophone, soprano saxophone, and western flute, showcases his versatility as a musician, and his musical repertoire is further enhanced by his remarkable singing ability.

Prashan Pramuditha:

(Lead guitar). He has the ability to play different styles, both oriental and western music, and he also creates unique tones and patterns with the guitar..

Features

Special milestone for JJ Twins

Published

3 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

Twin brothers Julian and Jason Prins

The JJ Twins, the Sri Lankan musical duo, performing in the Maldives, and known for blending R&B, Hip Hop, and Sri Lankan rhythms, thereby creating a unique sound, have come out with a brand-new single ‘Me Mawathe.’

In fact, it’s a very special milestone for the twin brothers, Julian and Jason Prins, as ‘Me Mawathe’ is their first ever Sinhala song!

‘Me Mawathe’ showcases a fresh new sound, while staying true to the signature harmony and emotion that their fans love.

This heartfelt track captures the beauty of love, journey, and connection, brought to life through powerful vocals and captivating melodies.

It marks an exciting new chapter for the JJ Twins as they expand their musical journey and connect with audiences in a whole new way.

Their recent album, ‘CONCLUDED,’ explores themes of love, heartbreak, and healing, and include hits like ‘Can’t Get You Off My Mind’ and ‘You Left Me Here to Die’ which showcase their emotional intensity.

Readers could stay connected and follow JJ Twins on social media for exclusive updates, behind-the-scenes moments, and upcoming releases:

Instagram: http://instagram.com/jjtwinsofficial

TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@jjtwinsmusic

Facebook: http://facebook.com/jjtwinssingers

YouTube: http://youtube.com/jjtwins