Features
Rebuilding Sri Lanka: 78 Years of Independence and 78 Modules of Reform
“The main theme of this year’s Independence Day is “Rebuilding Sri Lanka,” so spoke President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka as he ceremonially commemorated the island’s 78th independence anniversary. That was also President AKD’s second independence anniversary as President. Rebuilding implies that there was already something built. It is not that the NPP government is starting a new building on a vacant land, or whatever that was built earlier should all be destroyed and discarded.
Indeed, making a swift departure from NPP’s usual habit of denouncing Sri Lanka’s entire post independence history as useless, President AKD conceded that “over the 78 years since independence, we have experienced victories and defeats, successes and failures. We will not hesitate to discard what is harmful, nor will we fear embracing what is good. Therefore, I believe that the responsibility of rebuilding Sri Lanka upon the valuable foundations of the past lies with all of us.”
Within the main theme of rebuilding, the President touched on a number of sub-themes. First among them is the he development of the economy predicated on the country’s natural resources and its human resources. Crucial to economic development is the leveraging of our human resource to be internationally competitive, and to be one that prioritises “knowledge over ignorance, progress over outdated prejudices and unity over division.” Educational reform becomes key in this context and the President reiterated his and his government’s intention to “initiate the most transformative era in our education sector.”
He touched on his pet theme of fighting racism and extremism, and insisted that the government “will not allow division, racism, or extremism and that national unity will be established as the foremost strength in rebuilding Sri Lanka.” He laid emphasis on enabling equality before the law and ensuring the supremacy of the law, which are both necessary and remarkable given the skepticism that is still out there among pundits
Special mention was given to the Central Highlands that have become the site of repeated devastations caused by heavy rainfall, worse than poor drainage and inappropriate construction. Rebuilding in the wake of cyclone Ditwah takes a special meaning for physical development. Nowhere is this more critical than the hill slopes of the Central Highlands. The President touched on all the right buttons and called for environmentally sustainable construction to become “a central responsibility in the ‘Rebuilding Sri Lanka’ initiative.”. Recognizing “strong international cooperation is essential” for the rebuilding initiative, the President stated that his government’s goal is to “establish international relations that strengthen the security of our homeland, enhance the lives of our people and bring recognition to our country on a new level.”
The President also permitted himself some economic plaudits, listing his government’s achievements in 2025, its first year in office. To wit, “the lowest budget deficit since 1977, record-high government revenue after 2006, the largest current account balances in Sri Lanka’s history, the highest tax revenue collected by the Department of Inland Revenue and the sustained maintenance of bank interest rates at a long-term target, demonstrating remarkable economic stability.” He was also careful enough to note that “an economy’s success is not measured by data alone.”
Remember the old Brazilian quip that “the economy is doing well but not the people.” President AKD spoke to the importance of converting “the gains at the top levels of the economy … into improved living standards for every citizen,” and projected “the vision for a renewed Sri Lanka … where the benefits of economic growth flow to all people, creating a nation in which prosperity is shared equitably and inclusively.”
Rhetoric, Reform and Reality
For political rhetoric with more than a touch of authenticity, President AKD has no rival among the current political contenders and prospects. There were pundits and even academics who considered Mahinda Rajapaksa to be the first authentic leadership manifestation of Sinhala nationalism after independence, and that he was the first to repair the rupture between the Sri Lankan state and Sinhala nationalism that was apparently caused by JR Jayewardene and his agreement with India to end the constitutional crisis in Sri Lanka.
To be cynical, the NPP or AKD were not the first to claim that everything before them had been failures and betrayals. And it is not at all cynical to say that the 20-year Rajapaksa era was one in which the politics of Sinhala nationalism objectively served the interests of family bandyism, facilitated corruption, and enabled environmentally and economically unsustainable infrastructure development. The more positive question, however, is to ask the same pundits and academics – how they would view the political authenticity of the current President and the NPP government. Especially in terms of rejecting chauvinism and bigotry and rejuvenating national inclusiveness, eschewing corruption and enabling good governance, and ensuring environmental stewardship and not environmental slaughter.
The challenge to the NPP government is not about that it is different from and better than the Rajapaksa regime, or than any other government this century for that matter. The global, regional and local contexts are vastly different to make any meaningful comparison to the governments of the 20th century. Even the linkages to the JVP of the 1970s and 1980s are becoming tenuous if not increasingly irrelevant in the current context and circumstances. So, the NPP’s real challenge is not about demonstrating that it is something better than anything in the past, but to provide its own road map for governing, indicating milestones that are to be achieved and demonstrating the real steps of progress that the government is making towards each milestone.
There are plenty of critics and commentators who will not miss a beat in picking on the government. Yet there is no oppositional resonance to all the criticisms that are levelled against the government. The reason is not only the political inability of the opposition parties to take a position of advantage against the government on any issue where the government is seen to be vulnerable. The real reason could be that the criticisms against the government are not resonating with the people at large. The general attitude among the people is one of relief that this government is not as corrupt as any government could be and that it is not focused on helping family and friends as past governments have been doing.
While this is a good situation for any government to be in, there is also the risk of the NPP becoming too complacent for its good. The good old Mao’s Red Book quote that “complacency is the enemy of study,” could be extended to be read as the enemy of electoral success as well. In addition, political favouritism can be easily transitioned from the sphere of family and friends to the sphere of party cadres and members. The public will not notice the difference but will only lose its tolerance when stuff hits the fan and the smell becomes odious. It matters little whether the stuff and the smell emanate from family and friends, on the one hand, or party members on the other.
It is also important to keep the party bureaucracy and the government bureaucracy separate. Sri Lanka’s government bureaucracy is as old as modern Sri Lanka. No party bureaucracy can ever supplant it the way it is done in polities where one-party rule is the norm. A prudent approach in Sri Lanka would be for the party bureaucracy to keep its members in check and not let them throw their weight around in government offices. The government bureaucracy in Sri Lanka has many and severe problems but it is not totally dysfunctional as it often made out to be. Making government efficient is important but that should be achieved through internal processes and not by political party hacks.
Besides counterposing rhetoric and reality, the NPP government is also awash in a spate of reforms of its own making. The President spoke of economic reform, educational reform and sustainable development reform. There is also the elephant-in-the-room sized electricity reform. Independence day editorials have alluded to other reforms involving the constitution and the electoral processes. Even broad sociopolitical reforms are seen as needed to engender fundamental attitudinal changes among the people regarding involving both the lofty civic duties and responsibilities, as well as the day to day road habits and showing respect to women and children using public transport.
Education is fundamental to all of this, but I am not suggesting another new module or website linkages for that. Of course, the government has not created 78 reform modules as I say tongue-in-cheek in the title, but there are close to half of them, by my count, in the education reform proposals. The government has its work cut out in furthering its education reform proposals amidst all the criticisms ranged against them. In a different way, it has also to deal with trade union inertia that is stymieing reform efforts in the electricity sector. The government needs to demonstrate that it can not only answer its critics, but also keep its reform proposals positively moving ahead. After 78 years, it should not be too difficult to harness and harmonize – political rhetoric, reform proposals, and the realities of the people.
by Rajan Philips
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.)
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..
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
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