Features

A JOURNEY THROUGH SRI LANKA’S NIGHT

Published

3 years ago

2022/10/23

Thilina Walpola

by Razeen Sally

Our life is a journey
Through winter and night
We look for our way
In a sky without light

Louis-Ferdinand Céline,Journey to the End of the Night

I had watched Sri Lanka’s latest catastrophe unfold from the safety and comfort of Singapore, not having been to the country for two years due to the pandemic. But I felt this catastrophe personally. I am half Sri Lankan. Colombo is my hometown, where I spent most of my childhood. After an almost three-decade absence, I returned to Sri Lanka in my forties and spent a decade travelling its length and breadth to write a travel memoir. From 2015 to 2018, I was an economic-policy adviser to the government.

I arrived at Katunayake airport in late April. A score of porters stood idle around luggage conveyor belts – one sign of chronic overstaffing in Sri Lanka’s public sector. Once on the Southern Expressway, there were striking differences from pre-pandemic times: roadside billboards were naked, reduced to their iron frames, denuded of advertising; shops and small tourist hotels and eateries were shuttered and boarded up.

Galle was front and centre in the post-2009 tourist boom, heaving with visitors all year round, with a transformative facelift of its crumbling buildings and soaring property prices. But now I saw hardly any foreign tourists, just a Colombo crowd down for the weekend.On May 9, the government imposed a nationwide curfew. In Colombo, there had been violence between Rajapaksa supporters and protestors demanding the resignation of Gotabaya, Mahinda and the rest of the government. Mahinda resigned that afternoon. That night mobs burnt down homes belonging to the Rajapaksa clan and other Rajapaksa-supporting politicians.

Armed with a tourist permit to avoid the continuing curfew, my driver Nihal and I, accompanied by Indian friends visiting from Singapore, drove from Galle to Tissamaharama. The coast road was predictably quiet. Most shops were shut, and the odd police or army checkpoint waved us through. Just out of Tangalle, the scenery changed suddenly from the deep dark green of the wet zone to the dry zone’s wider spaces and bigger skies, more economical vegetation, a paler shade of green and fewer people.

On my previous visits, Tangalle and Hambantota were plastered with posters and billboards of the Rajapaksa brothers and Mahinda’s son Namal. This time none were to be seen. A police and army cordon protected Carlton House, the family’s home in Tangalle. Right opposite, lying by the main road, was the toppled statue of D.A. Rajapaksa, Gota’s and Mahinda’s father and founder of the dynasty, a victim of anti-Rajapaksa retribution on May 9.

Initially we were the only guests at our hotel in Tissamaharama. Priyantha, a boat operator on Tissawewa, complained of hard times: no tourists, no diesel for his boat, his children’s school without new textbooks due to a paper shortage, skyrocketing prices for everything. Nearby Kataragama, normally jam-packed with worshippers from all over the island and lots of tourists, was eerily quiet.

From the south coast, Nihal and I drove to Kandy. The Kandy road seemed to be a never-ending stretch of cars, lorries, motorbikes and three-wheelers queueing for petrol and diesel, often sprouting subsidiary branches snaking down side roads. Many stations had run out of fuel; vehicles were parked in queues overnight, their drivers hoping to get fuel the following morning. This day, May 16, was Vesak. But this was the most subdued Vesak I had seen: just a few lanterns here and there, no pandals, and much less food at threadbare roadside stalls.

The following day I walked around a down-at-heel Kandy. The handful of tourists I saw were young backpackers. The Suisse and Queens, Kandy’s venerable colonial hotels, looked even more faded than they did before the pandemic, in dire need of renovation. I popped into a sepulchral Suisse for tea, seemingly the only guest that afternoon. Opposite Queens, bordering the Tooth Temple, several tourist shops and a hotel had closed down.

Back at my hotel, one of the managers told me his family were now drinking tea without milk and not eating chicken to cut down on expenses – a symptom of hyperinflation immiserating the middle class. He said poorer folk in his village were down to one meal a day. Parents were giving up meals to feed their children. Many – all day labourers in the informal economy – had lost their jobs. On my last day in Kandy I spent a couple of late-afternoon hours with Ruwan, one of the founders of the Aragalaya protests in Kandy. We met close to the small group of protesters settled in by the central roundabout and clock tower.

Ruwan, in his late twenties, with unkempt black hair and a straggly brown goatee, had an earnest sincerity and practical idealism I found immediately attractive. He spoke in intelligible, though sometimes halting, English. He was a village boy who got top A-level grades and went to the University of Peradeniya. After graduation and a Colombo internship, he ran a small advertising business from his village home, where he looked after his widowed father. He remained a villager at heart, rejecting the noise, dirt and money-driven rat race that, he thought, poisoned human relations in Colombo. He took his Buddhist philosophy and meditation seriously: a simple, focused, present-in-the-moment life was his Buddhist ideal.

Ruwan told me of his entrepreneurial plans: marketing organic agricultural products from his village; a bike-sharing scheme in Kandy that had won him a nationwide competition. And of his myriad other pursuits: singing in a Sinhala folk-rock band, for which he composed songs with social and environmental commentary; a few screenplays for teledramas; and a novel he was writing on three generations of a family of Kandyan dancers, drawing on his own family and village experience. A visit to the Aragalaya protests in Colombo convinced him to start something similar with a group of friends in Kandy. He was hopeful the movement would bring about real change – “maybe 40 per cent if not 100 per cent”. And determined, unlike so many of his university contemporaries, not to emigrate but to stay in his homeland and do his bit.

Ruwan’s simple life-philosophy, his idealism and engagement, and his varied talents, reminded me how much potential there was in Sri Lanka’s heartlands. But it had long been quashed by the country’s entrenched elite and its noxious politics. And depleted by decades of emigration to faraway places with more opportunities than obstacles – emigration is accelerating fast in the present crisis.

From Kandy I went to the high tea country for a week. The winding, climbing road to Nuwara Eliya was practically deserted, free of the usual traffic of local and foreign tourists, but, alas, still scarred by the billboards that uglify landscapes along Sri Lanka’s main roads. And from Nuwara Eliya we drove to the Uva hills, where my father was born and grew up, and where I spent childhood holidays on a little tea estate.

The petrol queues were nearly as long as they were on the Colombo-Kandy road. Wherever I went I heard the same complaints about fuel, cooking-gas and milk-powder shortages, and prices of eggs, meat, fish and vegetables going through the roof. But life in these mostly rural areas did not seem quite as desperate as it was in the cities and big towns, at least for those who tilled their own land: Sinhala villagers had their paddy fields, orchards, cows and hens to fall back on; and Tamil estate workers assiduously cultivated large, neat vegetable plots next to often straggly tea bushes, rusting tea factories and the cramped, cheek-by-jowl line-rooms they lived in. Most had ready access to firewood for cooking. But even they were anxious about the fertiliser shortage that endangered the next harvest.

I arrived in Colombo after over a month outstation. How different it looked from my last visit in February 2020: so many shops and offices closed – on a Monday afternoon; half the population seemingly queueing for fuel and kerosene; multi-storey hotels, malls and condos on and just off the Galle Road, now hulking eyesores with construction suspended due to lack of finance and concrete. At one end of Galle Face Green, right next to the Aragalaya protest site, Port City lay idle, as it had done since early 2020 when its Chinese workers were whisked back to their homeland. And I saw beggars in numbers I had not seen since my childhood in the 1970s: often wizened men and women with destitution and hopelessness written in their downcast eyes.

Conversations with old friends and acquaintances were almost uniformly depressing. Corruption was endemic: grand larceny at the top and everyday petty graft at the bottom. Hyperinflation, food and fuel shortages and power cuts made daily life a wasteful, exhausting grind. Burglary was on the rise; the poor were getting desperate. Many bemoaned a galloping brain drain. Local companies were haemorrhaging professional staff who were probably leaving the country for good. But the Colombo rich were still OK, filling their favourite clubs, hotel bars and restaurants and upscale malls most evenings.

On a clear, balmy Sunday night I paid my first visit to the Aragalaya protest site, passing crowds of all ages promenading on Galle Face Green, enjoying the post-sunset Indian Ocean breeze. The Aragalaya cluster of tents, stalls and raised wooden stages started right in front of the Shangri La hotel, mall and condo complex, an in-your-face contrast between an elite in glass-encased airconditioned luxury and a suffering majority outside. A flag-bedecked “Love Stage” obscured a roadside view of the statue of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. Big white boards attached to a fence were filled with protest scrawls in Sinhala, English and, very occasionally, Tamil. One board displayed mugshots of all the Rajapaksa clan involved in politics. I passed a small tent with a makeshift “art gallery”, and a much larger one housing a well-frequented lending library.

One raised stage had a twenty-something man pumping his fist and shouting a slogan about Rajapaksa “robbers” repetitively, punctuated by an equally young woman singing the refrain, to the rhythmic beat of drums and cymbals. On another stage a university student, to emphasise communal unity, shouted Sinhala Ape … Damila Ape … Muslim Ape … Lanka Ape. The crowds were overwhelmingly young and Sinhala, but with Muslims and a few Tamils mixed in, even including the odd head-shaven, saffron-robed Buddhist monk and white-cassocked Catholic priest.

As I walked by one tent, my gaze turned towards a young man in a wheelchair, clad in a banian and sarong and with dishevelled hair. He made direct eye contact and beckoned me over, addressing me in Sinhala, his speech a little slurred. He took firm hold of my hand with his good hand – the other arm was skeletal, ending in a stump just below the elbow – placed it on the back of his scalp to one side, and ran it across and down to his forehead. It felt ridge-like and lumpy. These were bullet wounds, he said. He pointed to a bullet wound under one eyebrow. The eye below was clearly disfigured. A scar crossed his Adam’s apple – another bullet wound. Then he raised himself using a long crutch, lifted his sarong and showed me a broad gash running down the side of his lame leg – more bullet wounds. He told me he was hit by an LTTE sniper on Nandikidal lagoon, only two months after he got engaged. He spent over a year in a coma and the next five in hospitals undergoing surgeries and rehabilitation. Now he lived on a war veteran’s disability pension, unable to work. And never married.

As we chatted, other disabled veterans gathered round. Two had leg prosthetics, victims of landmines from battles in the Jaffna peninsula. They had all been here, in their disabled war veterans’ tent, since the first day of the protests. It was now Day 58. I found it difficult to keep up with their fast village Sinhala, but “system change”, oft repeated in English, was easy enough to understand.

My last trip outstation was to Jaffna. The scenery changed dramatically once we passed Vavuniya and entered the Vanni, becoming flat, arid, almost airless scrub jungle under an enormous sky and immensely distant horizons. We passed Kilinochchi. On my first visit, over a decade earlier, it was practically deserted, full of empty spaces where the LTTE’s buildings, parade ground and giant cemetery for its fallen soldiers had been razed to the ground by the victorious Sri Lankan army. Now it looked transformed. The smooth A9, heavily potholed a decade ago, expanded to four lanes through a town centre packed with gleaming white shops and showrooms.

The scenery changed again as we approached the causeway at Pooneryn. Parched brown scrub jungle gave way to a shallow expanse of glistening water and, entering the Jaffna peninsula, groves of black-brown palmyrahs, paddy fields and vegetable plots.

We entered Jaffna town, also busier and noisier than I had seen it before. There were new shops and eating houses, hotels and guest houses, reception halls, Hindu temples which looked like money had recently been lavished on them, and more cars and motorbikes replacing the ubiquitous bicycles I had seen on my first visit just over a decade earlier. Battered Austin Cambridges and Morris Oxfords from the 1950s and ‘60s, kept running during the lean war years, were then a familiar sight. Now I saw just one lonesome Austin Cambridge parked in a garage. In town and around the peninsula, ancestral homes that had been destroyed or lay derelict during the war had been rebuilt or renovated by their owners in Colombo and abroad. A new Indian Cultural Centre, built by the Indian government, was now the tallest building in town. But some sights and smells had not changed: plastic and other rubbish strewn on roadsides; the stench of open drains; roaming packs of stray dogs. And maddeningly dangerous driving: motorbikes, three wheelers and bicycles kept shooting out of side roads and sped across the main road.

On previous visits I had heard much about Jaffna’s post-war problems: grievances against the army and the government in Colombo; caste divisions; and disaffected youth freely spending money sent by relatives in the diaspora, indulging in drink and drugs, or whose only ambition was to emigrate. None of that had gone away. But Jaffna, like Kilinochchi, clearly had a post-war bounce. It was up and doing again, partially reviving its pre-war reputation for industriousness, alongside thrift and a thirst for education.

Selvi, introduced to me by a Colombo friend, embodied what I thought were the best Jaffna qualities. In her mid-twenties, short and bespectacled, she came to see me sprucely turned out in her Sunday best of long blouse and pants, her long raven hair brushed straight back. Her English was good. She had a mind of her own and exuded confidence.

There was tragedy in the family. Selvi’s father, a contractor, had an accident; his operation went wrong and he died after four months in hospital. A few months later, her adored younger brother, just nineteen, whose ambition was to become a pilot, committed suicide. She was left alone to support her traumatised mother.

Selvi wanted to make a career in aviation. She put herself through a training school in Colombo and was doing part-time jobs for aviation companies at Jaffna’s Palaly airport. She ran a vegetable export business on the side that generated a steady income. She did not want to rely on handouts from relatives in the diaspora, let alone emigrate via an arranged marriage with a diaspora Jaffna Tamil. Rather she wanted to stay, look after her mother and make the most of professional possibilities in post-war Sri Lanka. She told me there was a younger, aspirational generation in Jaffna without wartime baggage, who wanted to bridge old divides and mix productively with other Sri Lankans.

Jaffna, like the rest of the country, had its long queues in front of petrol stations, shortages of this and that, and hyperinflation. But it cast a different light on Sri Lanka’s present crisis to what I had seen elsewhere in the country. On our last evening in town, my hosts and I met a livewire doctor at the Northgate hotel bar, nursing a weird multicoloured cocktail and conversing in his fast-and-furious, semi-broken English. He was based at Jaffna hospital just around the corner.

He warned us to steer well clear of stray dogs; the country had run out of the anti-rabies vaccine, not to mention other essential medicines. Then he added: “The rest of the country is miserable because they don’t have petrol and cooking gas and suffer daily power cuts. But, during the war, we went for years without petrol, cooking gas and electricity. We had bombs dropping on us. We were terrorised by the army and the LTTE. This is nothing in comparison. So we cope as best we can and get on with life.”

The crisis got even worse after I left in June. In late July, the swelling Aragalaya protests finally prompted Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign as president. But the protestors’ victory was hollow. Parliament voted in Ranil Wickremesinghe as the new president. He owed his election to SLPP MPs and the backing of the Rajapaksas. He appointed a new prime minister and cabinet of Rajapaksa loyalists. The army and police cleared the Aragalaya protest site; some protesters were arrested and prosecuted.

There was no “system change”. Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s unopposed return to Colombo in early September, enjoying all the privileges due to a former head of state, was proof enough that the system really had not changed. Sri Lanka’s economic and humanitarian crisis continues, so far without substantial reforms to turn the situation round. Complex negotiations with international organisations (the IMF, World Bank and ADB), sovereign creditors (especially China, India and Japan) and mainly US-based private bondholders are proceeding slowly. For ordinary Sri Lankans, there is no end in sight to their suffering.Razeen Sally is author of Return to Sri Lanka: Travels in a Paradoxical Island. He was a professor at the London School of Economics and the National University of Singapore, chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies, and an adviser to the Sri Lankan government.

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Features

Building on Sand: The Indian market trap

Published

16 hours ago

2026/02/25

Sahan Weerasooriya

(Part III in a series on Sri Lanka’s tourism stagnation.)

Every SLTDA (Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority) press release now leads with the same headline: India is Sri Lanka’s “star market.” The numbers seem to prove it, 531,511 Indian arrivals in 2025, representing 22.5% of all tourists. Officials celebrate the “half-million milestone” and set targets for 600,000, 700,000, more.

But follow the money instead of the headcount, and a different picture emerges. We are building our tourism recovery on a low-spending, short-stay, operationally challenging segment, without any serious strategy to transform it into a high-value market. We have confused market size with market quality, and the confusion is costing us billions.

Per-day spending: While SLTDA does not publish market-specific daily expenditure data, industry operators and informal analyses consistently report Indian tourists in the $100-140 per day range, compared to $180-250 for Western European and North American markets.

The math is brutal and unavoidable: one Western European tourist generates the revenue of 3-4 Indian tourists. Building tourism recovery primarily on the low-yield segment is strategically incoherent, unless the goal is arrivals theater rather than economic contribution.

Comparative Analysis: How Competitors Handle Indian Outbound Tourism

India is not unique to Sri Lanka. Indian outbound tourism reached 30.23 million departures in 2024, an 8.4% year-on-year increase, driven by a growing middle class with disposable income. Every competitor destination is courting this market.

This is not diversification. It is concentration risk dressed up as growth.

How did we end up here? Through a combination of policy laziness, proximity bias, and refusal to confront yield trade-offs.

1. Proximity as Strategy Substitute

India is next door. Flights are short (1.5-3 hours), frequent, and cheap. This makes India the easiest market to attract, low promotional cost, high visibility, strong cultural and linguistic overlap. But easiest is not the same as best.

Tourism strategy should optimize for yield-adjusted effort. Yes, attracting Europeans requires longer promotional cycles, higher marketing spend, and sustained brand-building. But if each European generates 3x the revenue of an Indian tourist, the return on investment is self-evident.

We have chosen ease over effectiveness, proximity over profitability.

2. Visa Policy as Blunt Instrument

3. Failure to Develop High-Value Products for Indian Market

There are segments of Indian outbound tourism that spend heavily:

* Wedding tourism: Indian destination weddings can generate $50,000-200,000+ per event

* Wellness/Ayurveda tourism: High-net-worth Indians seek authentic wellness experiences and will pay premium rates

* MICE tourism: Corporate events, conferences, incentive travel

Sri Lanka has these assets—coastal venues for weddings, Ayurvedic heritage, colonial hotels suitable for corporate events. But we have not systematically developed and marketed these products to high-yield Indian segments.

For the first time in 2025, Sri Lanka conducted multi-city roadshows across India to promote wedding tourism. This is welcome—but it is 25 years late. The Maldives and Mauritius have been curating Indian wedding and MICE tourism for decades, building specialised infrastructure, training staff, and integrating these products into marketing.

We are entering a mature market with no track record, no specialised infrastructure, and no price positioning that signals premium quality.

4. Operational Challenges and Quality Perceptions

Indian tourists, particularly budget segments, present operational challenges:

* Shorter stays mean higher turnover, more check-ins, more logistical overhead per dollar of revenue

* Price sensitivity leads to aggressive bargaining, complaints over perceived overcharging

* Large groups (families, wedding parties) require specialised handling

None of these are insurmountable, but they require investment in training, systems, and service design. Sri Lanka has not made these investments systematically. The result: operators report higher operational costs per Indian guest while generating lower revenue, a toxic margin squeeze.

Additionally, Sri Lanka’s positioning as a “budget-friendly” destination reinforces price expectations. Indians comparing Sri Lanka to Thailand or Malaysia see Sri Lanka as cheaper, not better. We compete on price, not value, a race to the bottom.

The Strategic Error: Mistaking Market Size for Market Fit

India’s outbound tourism market is massive, 30 million+ and growing. But scale is not the same as fit.

Market size ≠ market value: The UAE attracts 7.5 million Indians, but as a high-yield segment (business, luxury shopping, upscale hospitality). Saudi Arabia attracts 3.3 million—but for religious pilgrimage with high per-capita spending and long stays.

Thailand attracts 1.8 million Indians as part of a diversified 35-million-tourist base. Indians represent 5% of Thailand’s mix. Sri Lanka has made Indians 22.5% of our mix, 4.5 times Thailand’s concentration, while generating a fraction of Thailand’s revenue.

This reveals the error. We have prioritised volume from a market segment without ensuring the segment aligns with our value proposition.

These needs are misaligned. Indians seek budget value; Sri Lanka needs yield. Indians want short trips; Sri Lanka needs extended stays. Indians are price-sensitive; Sri Lanka needs premium segments to fund infrastructure.

We have attracted a market that does not match our strategic needs—and then celebrated the mismatch as success.

The Way Forward: From Dependency to Diversification

Fixing the Indian market trap requires three shifts: curation, diversification, and premium positioning.

First

, segment the Indian market and target high-value niches explicitly:

* Wedding tourism: Develop specialised wedding venues, train planners, create integrated packages ($50k+ per event)

* Wellness tourism: Position Sri Lanka as authentic Ayurveda destination for high-net-worth health seekers

* MICE tourism: Target Indian corporate incentive travel and conferences

* Spiritual/religious tourism: Leverage Buddhist and Hindu heritage sites with premium positioning

Market these high-value niches aggressively. Let budget segments self-select out through pricing signals.

Second

, rebalance market mix toward high-yield segments:

* Increase marketing spend on Western Europe, North America, and East Asian premium segments

* Develop products (luxury eco-lodges, boutique heritage hotels, adventure tourism) that appeal to high-yield travelers

* Use visa policy strategically, maintain visa-free for premium markets, consider tiered visa fees or curated visa schemes for volume markets

Third

, stop benchmarking success by Indian arrival volumes. Track:

* Revenue per Indian visitor

* Indian market share of total revenue (not arrivals)

* Yield gap: Indian revenue vs. other major markets

If Indians are 22.5% of arrivals but only 15% of revenue, we have a problem. If the gap widens, we are deepening dependency on a low-yield segment.

Fourth

, invest in Indian market quality rather than quantity:

* Train staff on Indian high-end expectations (luxury service standards, dietary needs)

* Develop bilingual guides and materials (Hindi, Tamil)

* Build partnerships with premium Indian travel agents, not budget consolidators

We should aim to attract 300,000 Indians generating $1,500 per trip (through wedding, wellness, MICE targeting), not 700,000 generating $600 per trip. The former produces $450 million; the latter produces $420 million, while requiring more than twice the operational overhead and infrastructure load.

Fifth

, accept the hard truth: India cannot and should not be 30-40% of our market mix. The structural yield constraints make that model non-viable. Cap Indian arrivals at 15-20% of total mix and aggressively diversify into higher-yield markets.

This will require political courage, saying “no” to easy volume in favour of harder-won value. But that is what strategy means: choosing what not to do.

The Dependency Trap

Every market concentration creates path dependency. The more we optimize for Indian tourists, visa schemes, marketing, infrastructure, pricing, the harder it becomes to attract high-yield markets that expect different value propositions.

Hotels that compete on price for Indian segments cannot simultaneously position as luxury for European segments. Destinations known for “affordability” struggle to pivot to premium. Guides trained for high-turnover, short-stay groups do not develop the deep knowledge required for extended cultural tours.

We are locking in a low-yield equilibrium. Each incremental Indian arrival strengthens the positioning as a “budget-friendly” destination, which repels high-yield segments, which forces further volume-chasing in price-sensitive markets. The cycle reinforces itself.

Breaking the cycle requires accepting short-term pain—lower arrival numbers—for long-term gain—higher revenue, stronger positioning, sustainable margins.

The Hard Question

Is Sri Lanka willing to attract two million tourists generating $5 billion, or three million tourists generating $4 billion?

The current trajectory is toward the latter, more arrivals, less revenue, thinner margins, greater fragility. We are optimizing for metrics that impress press releases but erode economic contribution.

The Indian market is not the problem. The problem is building tourism recovery primarily on a low-yield segment without strategies to either transform that segment to high-yield or balance it with high-yield markets.

We are building on sand. The foundation will not hold.

(The writer, a senior Chartered Accountant and professional banker, is Professor at SLIIT, Malabe. The views and opinions expressed in this article are personal.)

Features

Digital transformation in the Global South

Published

2 days ago

2026/02/24

Sahan Weerasooriya

AI Summit, India

Understanding Sri Lanka through the India AI Impact Summit 2026

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has rapidly moved from being a specialised technological field into a major social force that shapes economies, cultures, governance, and everyday human life. The India AI Impact Summit 2026, held in New Delhi, symbolised a significant moment for the Global South, especially South Asia, because it demonstrated that artificial intelligence is no longer limited to advanced Western economies but can also become a development tool for emerging societies. The summit gathered governments, researchers, technology companies, and international organisations to discuss how AI can support social welfare, public services, and economic growth. Its central message was that artificial intelligence should be human centred and socially useful. Instead of focusing only on powerful computing systems, the summit emphasised affordable technologies, open collaboration, and ethical responsibility so that ordinary citizens can benefit from digital transformation. For South Asia, where large populations live in rural areas and resources are unevenly distributed, this idea is particularly important.

People friendly AI

One of the most important concepts promoted at the summit was the idea of “people friendly AI.” This means that artificial intelligence should be accessible, understandable, and helpful in daily activities. In South Asia, language diversity and economic inequality often prevent people from using advanced technology. Therefore, systems designed for local languages, and smartphones, play a crucial role. When a farmer can speak to a digital assistant in Sinhala, Tamil, or Hindi and receive advice about weather patterns or crop diseases, technology becomes practical rather than distant. Similarly, voice based interfaces allow elderly people and individuals with limited literacy to use digital services. Affordable mobile based AI tools reduce the digital divide between urban and rural populations. As a result, artificial intelligence stops being an elite instrument and becomes a social assistant that supports ordinary life.

Transformation in education sector

The influence of this transformation is visible in education. AI based learning platforms can analyse student performance and provide personalised lessons. Instead of all students following the same pace, weaker learners receive additional practice while advanced learners explore deeper material. Teachers are able to focus on mentoring and explanation rather than repetitive instruction. In many South Asian societies, including Sri Lanka, education has long depended on memorisation and private tuition classes. AI tutoring systems could reduce educational inequality by giving rural students access to learning resources, similar to those available in cities. A student who struggles with mathematics, for example, can practice step by step exercises automatically generated according to individual mistakes. This reduces pressure, improves confidence, and gradually changes the educational culture from rote learning toward understanding and problem solving.

Healthcare is another area where AI is becoming people friendly. Many rural communities face shortages of doctors and medical facilities. AI-assisted diagnostic tools can analyse symptoms, or medical images, and provide early warnings about diseases. Patients can receive preliminary advice through mobile applications, which helps them decide whether hospital visits are necessary. This reduces overcrowding in hospitals and saves travel costs. Public health authorities can also analyse large datasets to monitor disease outbreaks and allocate resources efficiently. In this way, artificial intelligence supports not only individual patients but also the entire health system.

Agriculture, which remains a primary livelihood for millions in South Asia, is also undergoing transformation. Farmers traditionally rely on seasonal experience, but climate change has made weather patterns unpredictable. AI systems that analyse rainfall data, soil conditions, and satellite images can predict crop performance and recommend irrigation schedules. Early detection of plant diseases prevents large-scale crop losses. For a small farmer, accurate information can mean the difference between profit and debt. Thus, AI directly influences economic stability at the household level.

Employment and communication reshaped

Artificial intelligence is also reshaping employment and communication. Routine clerical and repetitive tasks are increasingly automated, while demand grows for digital skills, such as data management, programming, and online services. Many young people in South Asia are beginning to participate in remote work, freelancing, and digital entrepreneurship. AI translation tools allow communication across languages, enabling businesses to reach international customers. Knowledge becomes more accessible because information can be summarised, translated, and explained instantly. This leads to a broader sociological shift: authority moves from tradition and hierarchy toward information and analytical reasoning. Individuals rely more on data when making decisions about education, finance, and career planning.

Impact on Sri Lanka

The impact on Sri Lanka is especially significant because the country shares many social and economic conditions with India and often adopts regional technological innovations. Sri Lanka has already begun integrating artificial intelligence into education, agriculture, and public administration. In schools and universities, AI learning tools may reduce the heavy dependence on private tuition and help students in rural districts receive equal academic support. In agriculture, predictive analytics can help farmers manage climate variability, improving productivity and food security. In public administration, digital systems can speed up document processing, licensing, and public service delivery. Smart transportation systems may reduce congestion in urban areas, saving time and fuel.

Economic opportunities are also expanding. Sri Lanka’s service based economy and IT outsourcing sector can benefit from increased global demand for digital skills. AI-assisted software development, data annotation, and online service platforms can create new employment pathways, especially for educated youth. Small and medium entrepreneurs can use AI tools to design products, manage finances, and market services internationally at low cost. In tourism, personalised digital assistants and recommendation systems can improve visitor experiences and help small businesses connect with travellers directly.

Digital inequality

However, the integration of artificial intelligence also raises serious concerns. Digital inequality may widen if only educated urban populations gain access to technological skills. Some routine jobs may disappear, requiring workers to retrain. There are also risks of misinformation, surveillance, and misuse of personal data. Ethical regulation and transparency are, therefore, essential. Governments must develop policies that protect privacy, ensure accountability, and encourage responsible innovation. Public awareness and digital literacy programmes are necessary so that citizens understand both the benefits and limitations of AI systems.

Beyond economics and services, AI is gradually influencing social relationships and cultural patterns. South Asian societies have traditionally relied on hierarchy and personal authority, but data-driven decision making changes this structure. Agricultural planning may depend on predictive models rather than ancestral practice, and educational evaluation may rely on learning analytics instead of examination rankings alone. This does not eliminate human judgment, but it alters its basis. Societies increasingly value analytical thinking, creativity, and adaptability. Educational systems must, therefore, move beyond memorisation toward critical thinking and interdisciplinary learning.

AI contribution to national development

In Sri Lanka, these changes may contribute to national development if implemented carefully. AI-supported financial monitoring can improve transparency and reduce corruption. Smart infrastructure systems can help manage transportation and urban planning. Communication technologies can support interaction among Sinhala, Tamil, and English speakers, promoting social inclusion in a multilingual society. Assistive technologies can improve accessibility for persons with disabilities, enabling broader participation in education and employment. These developments show that artificial intelligence is not merely a technological innovation but a social instrument capable of strengthening equality when guided by ethical policy.

Symbolic shift

Ultimately, the India AI Impact Summit 2026 represents a symbolic shift in the global technological landscape. It indicates that developing nations are beginning to shape the future of artificial intelligence according to their own social needs rather than passively importing technology. For South Asia and Sri Lanka, the challenge is not whether AI will arrive but how it will be used. If education systems prepare citizens, if governments establish responsible regulations, and if access remains inclusive, AI can become a partner in development rather than a source of inequality. The future will likely involve close collaboration between humans and intelligent systems, where machines assist decision making while human values guide outcomes. In this sense, artificial intelligence does not replace human society, but transforms it, offering Sri Lanka an opportunity to build a more knowledge based, efficient, and equitable social order in the decades ahead.

by Milinda Mayadunna

Features

Governance cannot be a postscript to economics

Published

2 days ago

2026/02/24

Sahan Weerasooriya

Kristalina-Georgieva

The visit by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva to Sri Lanka was widely described as a success for the government. She was fulsome in her praise of the country and its developmental potential. The grounds for this success and collaborative spirit go back to the inception of the agreement signed in March 2023 in the aftermath of Sri Lanka’s declaration of international bankruptcy. The IMF came in to fulfil its role as lender of last resort. The government of the day bit the bullet. It imposed unpopular policies on the people, most notably significant tax increases. At a moment when the country had run out of foreign exchange, defaulted on its debt, and faced shortages of fuel, medicine and food, the IMF programme restored a measure of confidence both within the country and internationally.

Since 1965 Sri Lanka has entered into agreements with the IMF on 16 occasions none of which were taken to their full term. The present agreement is the 17^th agreement . IMF agreements have traditionally been focused on economic restructuring. Invariably the terms of agreement have been harsh on the people, with priority being given to ensure the debtor country pays its loans back to the IMF. Fiscal consolidation, tax increases, subsidy reductions and structural reforms have been the recurring features. The social and political costs have often been high. Governments have lost popularity and sometimes fallen before programmes were completed. The IMF has learned from experience across the world that macroeconomic reform without social protection can generate backlash, instability and policy reversals.

The experience of countries such as Greece, Ireland and Portugal in dealing with the IMF during the eurozone crisis demonstrated the political and social costs of austerity, even though those economies later stabilised and returned to growth. The evolution of IMF policies has ensured that there are two special features in the present agreement. The first is that the IMF has included a safety net of social welfare spending to mitigate the impact of the austerity measures on the poorest sections of the population. No country can hope to grow at 7 or 8 percent per annum when a third of its people are struggling to survive. Poverty alleviation measures in the Aswesuma programme, developed with the agreement of the IMF, are key to mitigating the worst impacts of the rising cost of living and limited opportunities for employment.

Governance Included

The second important feature of the IMF agreement is the inclusion of governance criteria to be implemented alongside the economic reforms. It goes to the heart of why Sri Lanka has had to return to the IMF repeatedly. Economic mismanagement did not take place in a vacuum. It was enabled by weak institutions, politicised decision making, non-transparent procurement, and the erosion of checks and balances. In its economic reform process, the IMF has included an assessment of governance related issues to accompany the economic restructuring process. At the top of this list is tackling the problem of corruption by means of publicising contracts, ensuring open solicitation of tenders, and strengthening financial accountability mechanisms.

The IMF also encouraged a civil society diagnostic study and engaged with civil society organisations regularly. The civil society analysis of governance issues which was promoted by Verite Research and facilitated by Transparency International was wider in scope than those identified in the IMF’s own diagnostic. It pointed to systemic weaknesses that go beyond narrow fiscal concerns. The civil society diagnostic study included issues of social justice such as the inequitable impact of targeting EPF and ETF funds of workers for restructuring and the need to repeal abuse prone laws such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the Online Safety Act. When workers see their retirement savings restructured without adequate consultation, confidence in policy making erodes. When laws are perceived to be instruments of arbitrary power, social cohesion weakens.

During a meeting between the IMF Managing Director Georgeiva and civil society members last week, there was discussion on the implementation of those governance measures in which she spoke in a manner that was not alien to the civil society representatives. Significantly, the civil society diagnostic report also referred to the ethnic conflict and the breakdown of interethnic relations that led to three decades of deadly war, causing severe economic losses to the country. This was also discussed at the meeting. Governance is not only about accounting standards and procurement rules. It is about social justice, equality before the law, and political representation. On this issue the government has more to do. Ethnic and religious minorities find themselves inadequately represented in high level government committees. The provincial council system that ensured ethnic and minority representation at the provincial level continues to be in abeyance.

Beyond IMF

The significance of addressing governance issues is not only relevant to the IMF agreement. It is also important in accessing tariff concessions from the European Union. The GSP Plus tariff concession given by the EU enables Sri Lankan exports to be sold at lower prices and win markets in Europe. For an export dependent economy, this is critical. Loss of such concessions would directly affect employment in key sectors such as apparel. The government needs to address longstanding EU concerns about the protection of human rights and labour rights in the country. The EU has, for several years, linked the continuation of GSP Plus to compliance with international conventions. This includes the condition that the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) be brought into line with international standards. The government’s alternative in the form of the draft Protection of the State from Terrorism Act (PTSA) is less abusive on paper but is wider in scope and retains the core features of the PTA.

Governance and social justice factors cannot be ignored or downplayed in the pursuit of economic development. If Sri Lanka is to break out of its cycle of crisis and bailout, it must internalise the fact that good governance which promotes social justice and more fairly distributes the costs and fruits of development is the foundation on which durable economic growth is built. Without it, stabilisation will remain fragile, poverty will remain high, and the promise of 7 to 8 percent growth will remain elusive. The implementation of governance reforms will also have a positive effect through the creative mechanism of governance linked bonds, an innovation of the present IMF agreement.

The Sri Lankan think tank Verité Research played an important role in the development of governance linked bonds. They reduce the rate of interest payable by the government on outstanding debt on the basis that better governance leads to a reduction in risk for those who have lent their money to Sri Lanka. This is a direct financial reward for governance reform. The present IMF programme offers an opportunity not only to stabilise the economy but to strengthen the institutions that underpin it. That opportunity needs to be taken. Without it, the country cannot attract investment, expand exports and move towards shared prosperity and to a 7-8 percent growth rate that can lift the country out of its debt trap.

by Jehan Perera