Features

Economic challenges: Restructuring welfare state

Published

4 years ago

2022/05/30

By Dr D. Chandraratna

Sri Lanka is in a serious financial crisis. But that is not all. It is distressing to see the emerging sporadic violence. Are we desperately losing the ability to govern, one wonders? Not many are respecting the laws of the state and anarchy reigns occasionally while the general law-abiding citizens look aghast at the spectacle. Some are admiring the Galle Face protest in wonderment while some bloggers are openly calling the armed forces to mutiny. Treasonable offence in all civilized nations! The authorities have not got the ‘guts’ to order them to disperse in the best interests of the country. A few thousand protesters have no mandate to hold the country to ransom. I do not want to malign the noble intentions of the protesters, but our system of government cannot search for solutions outside the democratic framework. If a small window is opened outside constitutional channels, elephants will walk through, the next time. Let me also state that many who align themselves with this ‘aragalaya’ are indirect/direct beneficiaries of the corrupted ‘systems’; i.e., education, health, law, universities, public service, taxation systems, customs, and practically everything under the sun, which have made governance farcical. To put the blame on Rajapaksa’s only is more ‘deserving opportunism’ than the complete truth.

Losing the trust with our representatives has been long-time coming but the voting public opted for them everytime. People have lived with patience and with much favour as justice and fairness will allow. True that patience has now run out. Few months ago, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel retired after nearly two decades in the highest public office, a six-minute applause in the Chancellery reverberated in tandem by countrymen from all over. Such wonders we are unlikely to see ever in our ‘land like no other’. Our politicians are apparently born with a wish to retire in disgrace, having forsaken all opportunities to die as revered statesmen and women. Let us not talk anymore on the subject.

As expats with a debt to the land of our birth, we are sad for the country. People with some intellect cannot see the end anytime soon. Reading the English dailies every morning we are surprised by the waste of Parliamentary time. Perplexed and disturbed, like everyone else, why are the representatives not venturing out with ways and means of earning forex or bridging the ever-expanding budget deficit—fixing the economy. I must express my appreciation to Mr Ali Sabry and some TNA representatives for being honest in their contribution to the parliamentary debates If only we had more of such people, as politicians, no matter which party, how high we could have aimed for and how valuable the Hansard be as a historical document. It hurts us deeply to hear that we are on par with Lebanon, Afghanistan and where else. Bangladesh, Maldives with respect, have become our saviours!

Systems that need Change

Three major developments in the latter part of the last century have changed the economic, political and ideological context of the Sri Lankan economy for good. They are firstly, we have arrived at a time where any semblance of a socialist alternative to capitalism has almost disappeared. Secondly, free market and globalization have become the new economic landscape and our national economy is subject to supranational economic influences. Thirdly, the national economy of Sri Lanka, like most developing countries, is subsumed and refashioned by both geopolitical and global economic systems from which we cannot extricate ourselves. Trade liberalization, and the growing importance of export and imports have resulted in the structural dependence of the state virtually on a open global economy. We knew that by 1980 the Keynesian strategies of reflation, demand management and stimulation were in disarray and the neoliberal economics unilaterally dismantled exchange controls. The major consequence for third world economies, like ours, was distancing the national economy from National State control. Instead of boosting domestic production and creating wealth through whatever stimuli the global economy offered we were unprepared to grab them due to lack of research and development capabilities. Aspirational middle classes with high consumerist tastes, credit card mentalities boosted imports creating an annually yawning deficit managed only by borrowing from lenders at exorbitant rates. We are now drowned in debt. Economic bankruptcy was inevitable.

We were like the proverbial diner who was hoping to pay for the meal from the gems inside the mussels on the plate. While Bretton Woods agencies advocated international competitiveness as the single route to resolve trade imbalances and forex shortages, countries, such as Sri Lanka, had missed the boat in entering the international marketplace, unlike India and other Western countries. We were made to depend on two things, and they were, the export of labour and tourism, the easy route. Oblivious to the ephemeral nature of these two avenues, we were ‘all band-chune’ like the proverbial crabs in the pot. The moment these sources dried up, due to the pandemic, we were scraping the barrel, insolvent and bankrupt. Credit rating agencies broadcast our failure to the world. As an aside, when you see our parliamentarians exiting ‘Temple Trees’ in a luxury vehicle parade the world outside begins to understand how the crisis unfolded. Understandably public anger has burst out in flames as the catastrophe unravelled.

Unprepared entry into the global economy

Our economy, fashioned for years under the shadow of socialism, was thrust headfirst, into the free market with the change of government in 1977. In one stroke all previous attempts to become relatively self-sufficient in import substitution was dealt a major blow. The disarray of Keynesian economics in the 1970 and 80s, followed by a fury of political violence in the ensuing decades, halted the chance of internationalization of the economy. True there were debates about ‘a middle way’ as a method to manage the private/public mix mooted in some quarters but Sri Lanka was tardy in adapting that ‘Middle Way’. The political elements put paid to any such enterprises. For example, in the sphere of higher education where we had the capacity to attract exchange, radical elements thwarted the move. These were fruitfully grasped by European countries and Australia.

The only foray into global markets was in the production of apparel but its boundaries were dictated by outside. Explosive growth of the social expenditure and the rising expectations of the middle classes in the developing world generally made national economies open to advice and restructuring by international agencies, such as the IMF and the World Bank. In the local scene, mismanagement of national finances, clientelist politics, anti-intellectualism of the legislators, the menace of corruption engulfed the whole social fabric, hellbent in pursuit of illicit windfall gains.

In the Third World, Sri Lanka included, a higher level of poverty and inequality appeared demanding more of welfare and an improved social wage. Excessive demand eroded the gains made by the welfare state in its formative years. Education and Health needed supplementation by an exploitative alternate system which was eating into the vitals of the state system. The retreat from the notions of a mixed economy plus an overburdened welfare state, euphemistically but appropriately, called the Nanny State became a millstone round the neck, wasteful and inefficient.

Fiscal crisis of the Welfare State

Sri Lankan welfare state was modelled on the British, after World War II ,to achieve national integration and nation building with national efficiency in education and health and social citizenship. The idea of a one nation with citizenship rights for all was a laudable national objective at the time. Consolidating the nation economically, politically and socially was ideologically sound and yielded fantastic results in the period up to the changes in the world economic architecture. Our ‘Quality of Life’ indices were the best in Asia. With globalisation this laudable objective has become burdensome and the hollow attachment to a lofty ideological dream has become a drain on the economy.

The ideology of welfare exerts a downward pressure on the economy. The time has come for an honest debate on restructuring the welfare state and one system that must change is the ‘Nanny State’. We must, without fear or favour address this burden and follow countries in the West who have ridden over this fiscal crisis of the welfare state. While the Sri Lankan welfare state must be enriched for the deserving by not sticking to universality and institutional welfare, we must look for ways and means to restructure it so that the needy receive a boost in their life chances and are not left behind. We can only afford a residualist welfare state where the vulnerable sections of society are assisted while those who can afford are made to pay. This has been done in many Scandinavian countries. Australia has done the best and we must learn from these nations.

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Features

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

Published

4 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

4 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

4 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