Features
Ananda Coomaraswamy on Arts and Crafts:
A Review of Ayesha Wickramasinghe’s ‘The Dress of Women in Sri Lanka’ – part II
by Laleen Jayamanne
(Continued from yesterday)
Dr. Ayesha Wickramasinghe, with her technical skills and historical interests, appears to have heard Coomaraswamy’s implicit call to study the neglected crafts of Lanka, to look back at our traditions of dress, even as she is focused on the technological future of the craft with her students. As a contemporary designer, she is interested in developing new industrial techniques and materials suited to the 21st Century, with sustainability as a value. She has researched clothing and ornament to understand their forms and functions within a rapidly changing modern era, unlike the relatively stable era of pre-1815 Kandyan Kingdom, where the traditional crafts were practised as they were perennially, nourished by South Indian and indigenous craft practices and craftsmen. Despite its modest disclaimer, Coomaraswamy’s scholarship is peerless. Wickramasinghe on her part, dedicates her book to, ‘The unknown designers who have created clothing fashions of ancient Sri Lanka.’ She draws from a wide variety of sources including Coomaraswamy’s text and the handful of books on clothing and costume in Lanka and also from Lanka’s long history of art which includes temple paintings and stone sculpture. What she does with these sources is ingenious.
The book is broadly divided into six sections and a conclusion. The presentation begins with the variety in female ornamentation and textiles and then progresses chronologically. She shows examples of female dress sculpted on stone figures, from the Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa periods and in temple paintings within the colonial era. A stone sculptural figure (Anuradhapura Museum), the life-size bronze of the Bodhisattva icon Tara (8th Century, British Museum), and a female Doratupala (13th Century) Dalada Maligava, Yapahuva, are all seen clad in very finely woven garments covering the lower part of the bodies, while the breasts are left uncovered. The more familiar Sigiriya frescoes are also presented. Perhaps with the Indian Hindu influence, the display of semi-clothed bodies is accepted and appreciated without the sense of shame endemic to the Christian European traditions of the colonisers, in relation to human flesh, and the body, burdened by the idea of ‘Original Sin’. Puritanical, Victorian patriarchal values are said to have been introduced to Lanka by the Christian English colonisers and consolidated by Lankan middle classes themselves, such as the influential nationalist and social reformer, Anagarika Dharmapala, who incorporated these values, according to the anthropologist Gananath Obeyesekera. He coined the astute phrase, ‘Protestant- Buddhism,’ to capture this phenomenon. More of this later.
Wickramasinghe takes account of the island’s geography, situated on trade routes, as a factor in its hybridised forms of dress. The topic of colonialism explores the Western influence on local upper-class women’s taste. The broad political theme of decolonisation of dress, emphasising ethnic differences, nationalism and dress among the Sinhala folk and dress among other groups, including the low caste, and very poor women of the Sakkiliya caste or Dalit women, are also presented. The final chapter deals with the period after 1977 when the economy was opened up to neo-liberal globalisation, which created a ‘free-trade zone’ to manufacture garments, to encourage foreign capital by providing cheap female labour.
Genesis of Art in Human Craft Labour
In the feudal 18th Century that Coomaraswamy studied, there was of course a hierarchical social structure, but even the most humble craftsman belonged to an integrated community. It is worth noting that he thought it worth publishing in the book a large number of songs kavi that crafts persons sang while working. In English, the word ‘yarn’ means both thread and also to tell a tale, as in ‘to spin a yarn’. These two examples indicate the vital fact of the link between the deep history of human craft skills and the creation and emergence of art itself (story-telling and song, for example), from these very craft practices, that is from human labour. This is the deep link between arts and crafts, like twins, linking the hand and the mouth, dance and song emerging from spinning and weaving. This is the very heart of his philosophical intuition of the integral links between craft, human labour and art. It is this civilisational loss which Coomaraswamy wrote about and documented and preserved for posterity, at the Boston Fine Art Museum in the US, where he was the curator of Indian, Persian and Islamic Art. He lived and worked in the US from 1917 until his death in 1947. He was forced to leave England because he spoke up against joining WWI and also against British colonial rule in India and Ceylon. His property was confiscated but America gave him refuge, where he published some of his major works.
Lankan Elephants and Ivory Crafts
I saw at the Boston Fine Art Museum an exquisitely carved little ivory box and was delighted to read that it was from Ceylon! Though indeed in his book Coomaraswamy says that the collection of ivory carvings is rather large in Lanka, whereas there is relatively very little ivory work in India. Then he goes on to say that the Hindus would have found working on a material from an animal source unacceptable, polluting. One wonders how a Buddhist country reconciled this, especially because Coomaraswamy says that tusked elephants were very rare in Lanka. Were the tusks taken from dead elephants, who by the way have long natural lives, and what of the huge tusks that are ceremonially such an integral part of contemporary Lankan Sinhala Nationalist State ceremonies and religious ritual? Learning this deep history, I find the tusk decoration rather grotesque, inhumane. We know that the English loved to go on shooting sprees killing Lankan wild animals, but then they left in 1947 and the profound Buddhist doctrine of Ahimsa (non-violence) toward all sentient life is not a Christian virtue.
Fashion Industry: Cheap Female Labour
Wickramasinghe goes on to say that the fashion industry in Lanka is now very large and provides employment for many women. Whether the young women get burnt out by very poor work conditions in the free trade zone, appears not to concern successive governments. According to the young trade union leader, labour lawyer and prominent political activist, Swasthika Arulingam, the garment workers have very few labour rights even now after over four decades.
However, a plethora of global styles and materials were made affordable as a result of the garment industry, democratising sartorial tastes and providing access to fashion to a large number of people across social classes. One can view the rather wide use of denim jeans by young women, as an example of equalising gendered dress through a unisex-garment. It would appear that traditional ideas of femininity are also being questioned by women through access to new forms of clothing, education in feminist ideas and politics and access to the internet which diminishes Lankan insularity.
Pop-Cultural Influence
Two unusual examples of dress innovation for comfort and style are presented in stills from two popular Sinhala films from the 1960s, which have now returned in newer styles. A popular star at the time, Jeevarani Kurukulasooriya, is seen lounging in a salwar kameez, while in Hithata Hitha (1965), Vijitha Mallika lounges stylishly in slacks and a top with a shirt collar, all in a single dark colour. The ‘60s are presented as an era when mini-skirts and bell-bottom pants and jeans became popular among the middle classes who enjoyed the freedom of movement and sense of fun these garments provided in feeling connected to the youth pop culture of the West seen in Hollywood films and fashion magazines. This was indeed part of my world along with that of my school friends during that period in Colombo. We also loved a frock called a Tent, which looked like one, where the body floated in the garment.
The Sari-Drama in Parliament
So, with this diverse, long Lankan sartorial history, it’s surprising to see the current controversy about the female dress mandated for Lankan school teachers, who are expected to wear either a sari or the upcountry Ohoriya to school. The ‘problem’ arose when a group of teachers decided recently to collectively flout this mandate by wearing comfortable clothes they thought were appropriate for their professional work. Among the photos they posted, there was a teacher wearing a smart salwar kameez, a set of clothes worn by Muslim women with the Dupatta shawl, and also a Kurta, again an elegant, uni-sex garment traditionally worn by men across North India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh, going further back to the ancient Persian Imperial era. It is a tailored garment, unlike the draped clothing of ancient India and Greece. During the Persian wars, they introduced the tailored garment to Classical Greece where both men and women wore draped clothing.
In the 19th Century, the highly influential Sinhala Buddhist social reformer, Anagarika Dharmapala expressed the following, says Wickramasinghe.
“Dharmapala stated that the Ohoriya and sari were the most suitable attire for Sri Lankan women. The morally acceptable dress covered the entire body with a proper blouse and a cloth ten riyans long.” (N. Wickramasinghe, Dressing the Colonised Body; Politics, Clothing and identity. New Delhi; Longman, 2003) p195.
This is an encapsulation of a ‘Protestant-Buddhist’ sentiment identified by Obeyesekera, referred to earlier. It appears then that in linking morality with forms of dress, some Sinhala male attitudes to women’s clothing are still stuck in the puritanical and patriarchal mores of the 19th Century English Victorian era. Besides the Dalit women who did the municipal labour of sweeping streets and cleaning public toilets and the Malaiyahi women who plucked tea would not have been able to afford the stipulated 10 riyan. But then he was not addressing them!
Women in a Teachers’ Trade Union have calmly and rationally explained to the public that they wanted the freedom to wear garments of their choice to the schools in which they teach, clothes that combine comfort and professional decorum. They have said clearly that to mandate the sari for teachers is an unreasonable rule. Its cost, its considerable upkeep and lack of ease of movement in scrambling onto packed buses have made some of them choose to wear garments they deem suitable for their workplace which combine comfort and ease. It would appear that some men fear that their ability to control women is at risk. Dress is a powerful means of expression of a sense of freedom and comfort of self-enjoyment in ease of movement. This is amply demonstrated in the history of the Western Women’s Movements of the 20th Century. The teachers who question the sari mandate do not dislike the sari or Ohoriya – how could one, when the two garments are mostly so beautiful, for the right occasion and time? But Lankan women will decide when they would like to wear it and how exactly to drape it and the way in which they will style their hair and blouses.
Women’s Dress and Resistance to Patriarchy
Coincidentally, Ayesha Wickramasinghe’s book provides a timely synoptic vision of the diversity of Lankan women’s dress across the ages, at this very moment of an important feminist act of political resistance, within the wider ongoing political struggle in Lanka. Lankan teachers and other professionals with a social conscience have repeatedly highlighted how the current economic crisis is affecting poor young school students’ ability to learn, or even attend school because of the cost of travel, lack of proper clothes and shoes and even food. As many say, these are the matters that need to be addressed urgently in parliament. If ignorant men invoke the ‘sanctity of Sinhala- Buddhist tradition’ against western influence, sitting in a Westminster style Democratic parliament, one could rhetorically ask, which Buddhist traditions, because there are several and the many Taras are clad in marvellous clothes and ornaments in Tibet and Nepal, in the Mahayana traditions of meditation.
Guru-Shishya-Parampara in Lanka
Because I have chosen to frame my account of Ayesha’s book on The Dress of Women in Sri Lanka with Ananda Coomaraswamy’s book on Mediaeval Sinhalese Arts and Crafts, I would like to conclude with a few personal thoughts about this most gifted of scholars. Of mixed parentage, with an English mother, on his father’s side he comes from one of the most illustrious Jaffna Tamil families of Lanka. His father, Sir Muttu Coomaraswamy (who died when Ananda was just three), had two brilliant nephews, Arunachalam Ponnambalam and Arunachalam Ramanadan, who played major public roles in colonial Ceylon. Two halls of residence at Peradeniya University are named after them. Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy’s very name (a serendipitous combination of Sinhala, English and Tamil), appears now, more than ever, as a beacon of light to contemporary Lankan scholarship. His profound work admonishes us not to delimit Lankan humanities research within a narrow Sinhala-Buddhist- Nationalist, supremacist-ideology of art and politics, but rather, to widen our perspectives by understanding the rich diversity of cultures, languages and religions of Lanka which includes its many traditions of dress. Ananda had hoped to spend his last years in his beloved India as a Sanyasi, but he died suddenly of a heart attack, in his Japanese garden in New England, beside his Brazilian wife. His ashes, it is said, were released into the Ganga but some of it set afloat in a river in Lanka.
Features
Citizenship, Devolution, Land and Language: The Vicarious Legacies of SJV Chelvanayakam
SJV Chelvanayakam, the founder leader of the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi, aka Ceylon Tamil Federal Party, passed away 49 years ago on 26 April 1977. There were events in Sri Lanka and other parts of the world where Tamils live, to commemorate his memory and his contributions to Tamil society and politics. His legacy is most remembered for his espousal of the cause of federalism and his commitment to pursuing it solely through non-violent politics. Chelvanayakam’s political life spanned a full 30 years from his first election as MP for Kankesanthurai in 1947 until his death in 1977.
Under the rubric of federalism, Chelvanayakam formulated what he called the four basic demands of the Tamil speaking people, a political appellation he coined to encompass – the Sri Lankan Tamils, Sri Lankan Muslims and the hill country Tamils (Malaiyaka Tamils). The four demands included the restoration of the citizenship rights of the hill country Tamils; cessation of state sponsored land colonisation in the North and East; parity of status for the Sinhala and Tamil languages; and a system of regional autonomy to devolve power to the northern and eastern provinces.
High-minded Politics
Although the four basic demands that Chelvanayakam articulated were not directly delivered upon during his lifetime, they became part of the country’s political discourse and dynamic to such an extent that they had to be dealt with, one way or another, even after his death. So, we can call these posthumous developments as Chelvanayakam’s vicarious legacies. There is more to his legacy. He belonged to a category of Sri Lankans, Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims, who took to politics, public life, public service, and even private business with a measure of high-mindedness that was almost temperamental and not at all contrived. Chelvanayakam personified high-minded politics. But he was not the only one. There were quite a few others in the 20th century. There have not been many since.
Born on 31 March 1898, Chelvanayakam was 49 years old when he entered parliament. He was not an upstart school dropout dashing into politics or coming straight out of the university, or even a hereditary claimant, but a self-made man, an accomplished lawyer, a King’s Counsel, later Queen’s Counsel, and was widely regarded as one of the finest civil lawyers of his generation. He was a serious man who took to politics seriously. Howard Wriggins, in his classic 1960 book, “Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New Nation”, called Chelvanayakam “the earnest Christian lawyer.”
Chelvanayakam’s professional standing, calm demeanour, his personal qualities of sincerity and honesty, and his friendships with men of the calibre of Sir Edward Jayatilleke KC (Chief Justice, 1950-52), H.V. Perera QC, P. Navaratnarajah, QC, and K.C. Thangarajah, were integral to his politics. The four of them were also mutual friends of Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike and they played a part in the celebrated consociational achievement in 1957, called the B-C Pact.
Chelvanayakam effortlessly combined elite consociationalism with grass roots politics and mass movements. He led the Federal Party both as a democratic organization and an open movement. Chelvanayakam and the Federal Party used parliament as their forum to present their case, the courts to fight for their rights, and took to organizing non-violent protests, political pilgrimages and satyagraha campaigns. He was imprisoned in Batticaloa, detained in Panagoda, and was placed under house arrest several times. His Alfred House Gardens neighbours in Colombo used to wonder why the government and the police were after him, of all people, and why wouldn’t they do something about his four boisterous, but studious, sons!
He was a rare politician who filed his own election petition when he was defeated in the 1952 election, his first as the leader of the Federal Party, and was rewarded with punitive damages by an exacting judge. He had to borrow money from Sir Edward Jayatilleke to pay damages. The common practice for losing candidates was to file vexatious petitions in the name of one of their supporters with no asset to pay legal costs. Chelvanayakam was too much of a principled man for that. As a matter of a different principle, the two old Left parties never challenged election losses in court, but Dr. Colvin R de Silva singled out Chelvanayakam’s uniqueness for praise in parliament, in the course of a debate on amendments to the country’s election laws in 1968.
Disenfranchisement & Disintegration
Although he became an MP in 1947, Chelvanayakam had been associated with GG Ponnambalam and the Tamil Congress Party for a number of years. GG was the flamboyant frontliner, SJV the quiet mainstay behind. Tamil politics at that time was all about representation. In fact, all politics in Sri Lanka has been all about representation all the time. It started when British colonial rulers began nominating local (Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim) representatives to quasi legislative bodies, and it became a contentious political matter after the introduction of universal franchise in 1931.
Communal representation was conveniently made to look ugly by those who themselves were politically communal. Indeed, under colonial rule, if not later too, Sri Lankans were a schizophrenic society where most Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims were socially friendly, but politically communal. The underlying premise to the fight over representation was that British colonialists were not leaving in a hurry and they were there to stay and rule for a long time. Hence the jostling for positions under a foreign master. It was in this context that Ponnambalam made his celebrated 50-50 pitch for balanced representation between the Sinhalese, on the one hand, and all the others – Tamils, Muslims, Indian Tamils – combined on the other. It was a perfectly rational proposition, but it was also perfectly poor politics.
But independence came far sooner than expected. The Soulbury Constitution was set up not for a continuing colonial state, but as the constitution for an independent new Ceylon. So, the argument for balanced representation became irrelevant in the new circumstances. The new Soulbury Constitution was enacted in 1945, general elections were held in 1947, a new parliament was elected, and Ceylon became independent in 1948. SJV Chelvanayakam was among the seven Tamil Congress MPs elected to the first parliament led by GG Ponnambalam.
The Tamil Congress campaigned in the 1947 election against accepting the Soulbury Constitution and for a vaguely formulated mandate “to cooperate with any progressive Sinhalese party which would grant the Tamil their due rights.” But what these rights are was not specified. In a Feb. 5, 1946 speech in Jaffna, Ponnambalam specifically proposed “responsive cooperation between the communities” – not parties – and advocated “a social welfare policy” to benefit not only the poor masses of Tamils but also the large masses of the Sinhalese.
So, when Ponnambalam and four of the seven Tamil Congress MPs decided to join the government of DS Senanayake with Ponnambalam accepting the portfolio of the Minister of Industries, Industrial Research and Fisheries, they were opposed by Chelvanayakam and two other Tamil Congress MPs. The immediate context for this split was the Citizenship question that arose soon after independence when DS Senanayake’s UNP government introduced the Ceylon Citizenship Bill in parliament. The purpose and effect of the bill was to deprive the estate Tamils of Indian origin (then numbering about 780,000) of their citizenship. Previously the government had got parliament to enact the Elections Act to stipulate that only citizens can vote in national elections. In one stroke, the whole working population of the plantations was disenfranchised.
GG Ponnambalam and all seven Tamil Congress MPs voted against the two bills. Joining them in opposition were the six MPs from the Ceylon Indian Congress representing the Malaiyaka Tamils and 18 Sinhalese MPs from the Left Parties. The Citizenship Bill was passed in Parliament on 20 August 1948. Ponnambalam called it a dark day for Ceylon and accused Senanayake of racism. But less than a month later, on September 3, 1948, he joined the Senanayake cabinet as a prominent minister and the government’s principal defender in parliamentary debates. Dr. NM Perera once called Ponnambalam “the devil’s advocate from Jaffna.”
Chelvanayakam remained in the opposition with two of his Congress colleagues. A little over an year later, on December 18, 1949, Chelvanayakam founded the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, Federal Party in English. Not long after, joining Chelvanayakam in the opposition was SWRD Bandaranaike, who broke away from the UNP government over succession differences and went on to form another new political party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. As was his wont as a Marxist to see trends and patterns in politics, Hector Abhayavardhana saw the breakaways of Chelvanayakam and Bandaranaike, as well as the emergence of Thondaman as the leader of the disenfranchised hill country Tamils, as symptoms of a disintegrating society as it was transitioning from colonial rule to independence.
Abhayavardhana saw the Citizenship Act as the political trigger of this disintegration in the course of which “what was set up for the purpose of a future nation ended in caricature as a Sinhalese state.” Chelvanayakam may have agreed with this assessment even though he was located at the right end of the ideological continuum. “Ideologically, SJV is to the right of JR,” was part of political gossip in the old days. He saw “seeds of communism” in Philip Gunawardena’s Paddy Lands Act. For all their differences, Chelvanayakam and Ponnambalam were united in one respect – as unrepentant opponents of Marxism.
The Four Demands
Chelvanayakam had his work cut out as the leader of a new political party and pitting himself against a formidable political foe like Ponnambalam with all the ministerial resources at his disposal. Chelvanayakam may not have quite seen it that way. Rather, he saw his role as a matter of moral duty to fill the vacuum created by what he believed to be Ponnambalam’s betrayal, and to provide new leadership to a people who were at the crossroads of uncertainty after the unexpectedly early arrival of independence.
He set about his work by expanding his political constituency to include not only the island’s indigenous Tamils, but also the Muslims and the Tamil plantation workers from South India – as the island’s Tamil speaking people. It was he who vigorously introduced the disenfranchised Indian Tamils as hill country Tamils. In the aftermath of the Citizenship Act and disenfranchisement, restoring their citizenship rights became an obvious first demand for the new Party.
Having learnt the lesson from Ponnambalam’s failed 50-50 demand, Chelvanayakam territorialized the representation question by identifying the northern and eastern provinces as “traditional Tamil homelands,” and adding a measure regional autonomy to make up for the shortfall in representation at the national level in Colombo. To territorialization and autonomy, he added the cessation of state sponsored land colonization especially in the eastern province. Chelvanayakam and the Federal Party painstakingly explained that they were by no means opposed to Sinhalese voluntarily living in Tamil areas, either as a matter of choice, pursuing business or as government and private sector employees, but the nuancing was quite easily lost in the political shouting match.
The fourth demand, after citizenship, regional autonomy, and land, was about language. Language was not an issue when Chelvanayakam started the Federal Party. But he pessimistically predicted that sooner or later the then prevailing consensus, based on a State Council resolution, over equality between the two languages would be broken. He was proved right, sooner than later, and language became the explosive question in the 1956 election. As it turned out, the UNP government was thrown out, SWRD Bandaranaike led a coalition of parties to victory and government in the south, while SJV Chelvanayakam won a majority of the seats in the North and East, including two Muslims from Kalmunai and Pottuvil.
After the passage of the Sinhala Only Act on June 5, 1956, the Federal Party launched a political pilgrimage and mobilized a convention that was held in Trincomalee in the month of August. The four basic demands were concretized at the convention, viz., citizenship restoration for the hill country Tamils, parity of status for the Sinhala and Tamil languages, the cessation of state sponsored land colonization, and a system of regional autonomy in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
The four demands became the basis for the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam agreement – the B-C Pact of 1957, and again the agreement between SJV Chelvanayakam and Dudley Senanayake in 1965. The former was abrogated by Prime Minister Bandaranaike under political duress but was not abandoned by him. The latter has been implemented in fits and starts.
The two agreements which should have been constitutionally enshrined, were severely ignored in the making of the 1972 Constitution and the 1978 Constitution – with the latter learning nothing and forgetting everything that its predecessor had inadvertently precipitated. The political precipitation was the rise of Tamil separatism and its companion, Tamil political violence. Ironically, Tamil separatism and violence created the incentive to resolve what Chelvanayakam had formulated and non-violently pursued as the four basic demands of the Tamils.
After his death in 1977, the citizenship question has finally been resolved. The 13th Amendment to the 1978 Constitution that was enacted in 1987 resolved the language question both in law and to an appreciable measure in practice. The same amendment also brought about the system of provincial councils, substantially fulfilling the regional autonomy demand of SJV Chelvanayakam. The land question, however, has taken a different turn with state sponsored land colonisation in the east giving way to government security forces sequestering private residential properties of Tamil families in the north, especially in the Jaffna Peninsula.
Further, the future of the Provincial Council system has become uncertain with the extended postponement of provincial elections by four Presidents and their governments, including the current incumbents. The provinces are now being administered by the President through handpicked governors without the elected provincial councils as mandated by the constitution. Imagine a Sri Lanka where there is only an Executive President and no parliament – not even a nameboard one. “What horror!”, you would say. But that is the microcosmic reality today in the country’s nine provinces.
by Rajan Philips
Features
Application of AI in Logistics in Sri Lanka can improve efficiency, reduce cost and enhance decision making
“AI increases profits while reducing un ethical intervention which is proven by Successful Global Business Models”
Artificial Intelligence(AI) is still only a buzz word in the Sri Lankan society, though many wanted to have an awareness of the concept the resources are scares, even still the IT industry has not formulated any awareness programs or a Degree yet to cope with the development. But world education warns that there want be any IT based jobs in future without learning the AI. AI has multiple use in any discipline and it has the ability to increase the efficiency of the work intern cut down the product or the service cost. Below description is how the application of AI can smoother the function of Logistic or the Supply Chain Management.
Using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in logistics can greatly improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance decision-making in simple enhance the profit margins. Below is a structured overview of how AI can be used in logistics, including key applications, tools, and real-world examples. Machine Learning(ML) is the foundation to AI but subsequently develops the capability of absorbing the information from the cloud (IT environment) and produce future behavior or trends by analyzing the fed data to the computers on a certain period of time. In some occasions vendors offer unbelievable discounts by using ML or AI, because it clearly understands the market behavior, human behavior, expiration and many other variables that gives the profits or losses to the product or the service.
Key Areas Where AI is Used in Logistics;
· Demand Forecasting
· Route Optimization
· Warehouse Automation
· Predictive Maintenance
· Inventory Management
· Supply chain Management
· Customer Service with Chat bots
· Fraud Detection and Risk Management
1. Demand Forecasting
AI can analyze historical data, market trends, and external factors (like weather or news) to:
· Predict product demand more accurately
· Optimize inventory levels
· Reduce stockouts or overstocking
Tools: Machine learning models (e.g., time series forecasting) and IT platforms/software like Amazon Forecast, Prophet by Meta. These are the software applications that helps to understand the future trends.
Amazon Forecasting software
Traditional forecasting methods typically rely on statistical modeling, but software like “Chronos” that treats time series data (data collected during a certain period of time) as a language to be modeled and uses a pre-trained FM (forecast Models) to generate forecasts, which similar to how “Large Language Models” (LLMs) generate texts helps you achieve accurate predictions faster, significantly reducing development time compared to traditional methods.
Prophet by Meta
Prophet is a very efficient and accurate procedure for forecasting time series data based on an additive model where non-linear trends are fit with yearly, weekly, and daily seasonality, plus holiday effects. It works best with time series that have strong seasonal effects and several seasons of historical data. This software adds many social, cultural and geographical variables other than internal information to decision making.
2. Route Optimization
AI-powered systems can calculate the most efficient delivery routes in real-time using:
· Traffic data
· Weather conditions
· Delivery time windows
· Vehicle capacity and fuel usage
Example: UPS (one of the largest Logistic companies in the world) uses its ORION system (AI-based) to save millions of gallons of fuel per year.
IT Tools: Google OR-Tools, Route4Me, Mapbox with ML integration.
The “Route4Me” IT platform automates and integrates mission-critical last mile workflows, empowering route planners, dispatchers, drivers, and managers to take the business to the next level. Distribution networks, passenger transportation networks can achieve much cost reduction by using above platforms. This is a good platform for the Sri Lanka passenger industry to reduce the overheads for the population. In Sri Lanka “Pick me” and “Uber” uses similar platforms in their transportation industry. Whole three wheeler industry can be regulating with this kind of software and transfer benefits to the passengers.
3. Warehouse Automation
AI enables:
· Robotics for picking, packing, and sorting
· Vision systems for scanning and inventory management
· Autonomous forklifts and drones for internal transport
Example: Amazon’s use of “Kiva robots” in fulfillment(distribution) centers.
Kiva Robots in Warehouses
Traditionally, goods are moved around a distribution center using a conveyor system or by human-operated machines (such as forklifts). In Kiva’s approach, items are stored in portable storage units. When an order is entered into the Kiva database system, the software locates the closest automated guided vehicle to the item and directs it to retrieve it. The mobile robots navigate around the warehouse by following a series of computerized bar-code stickers on the floor. Each drive unit has a sensor that prevents it from colliding with others. When the drive unit reaches the target location, it slides underneath the pod(Pallet) and lifts it off the ground through a corkscrew action. The robot then carries the pod to the specified human operator to pick up the items or subsequently hand over to the “drone” to deliver to the customer. Human intervention is minimal and accordingly overheads are reduced, Sri Lanka needs to achieve this kind of operational level in order to par with the international markets.
4. Predictive Maintenance
Traditionally Sri Lankans are week in maintenance, they basically wait until the machine stops in the other way bureaucratic too are much restrict on the maintenance and the procurement procedure. Applying this kind of maintenance software will eradicate all of these lethargies and the bureaucratic blocks. Subsequently continuing the smooth operations and productions.
AI monitors equipment (vehicles, conveyor belts, etc.) to:
· Predict when they will fail
· Schedule maintenance proactively
· Reduce downtime and repair costs
Tools: IoT(internet of things as cameras, sensors, GPS etc.) sensors + ML models (e.g., anomaly detection), IT platforms like IBM Maximo.
IBM Maximo is a multi-facet coordinator
“From equipment to factories, from fleets to infrastructure, Maximo Application Suite empowers users across verticals to coordinate maintenance and management for a broad range of asset classes”.
5. Supply Chain Visibility
AI can analyze data across the supply chain to:
· Track shipments in real-time
· Identify delays or bottlenecks
· Provide predictive ETAs
📦 Example: DHL (Logistic Company) uses AI to forecast transit delays and offer dynamic ETA updates.
This is an ideal tool for cargo management, ideal for sea ports and the air ports in Sri Lanka. This is one of the grave gray areas in the port system, though the port system is lacking the required information due to that the client has to pay the demurrages and warehouse cost for the ports. Also, cut down unnecessary delays and reduce bribes and corruption at all levels.
6. Inventory Management
AI helps optimize:
· Stock levels across multiple warehouses
· Replenishment timing
· Safety stock calculation
Tools: ERP (Entrepreneur Resource Planning) systems with embedded AI (e.g., SAP, Oracle), custom ML models.
These systems drastically reduce the human intervention and speedup the Supply management process.
7. Customer Service & Chatbots
AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can:
· Handle customer queries 24/7
· Track orders
· Provide personalized delivery updates
Tools: Dialogflow, Microsoft Bot Framework, ChatGPT API
Dialogflow
“Dialogflow” is a natural language understanding IT platform that makes it easy to design and integrate a conversational user interface into the mobile app, web application, device, bot, interactive voice response system, and so on. Using Dialogflow, establishments can provide new and engaging ways for users to interact with the product. Dialogflow can analyze multiple types of input from the customers, including text or audio inputs (like from a phone or voice recording). It can also respond to the customers in a couple of ways, either through text or with synthetic speech.
AI Conversational Chatbots Platform
Above IT platforms control the human intervention and reduce the cost of employees. Chatbots are basically efficient than the humans due to the high memory power for the standard customer inquiries. Application to Government sector will reduce the burden for the general public.
8. Fraud Detection & Risk Management
AI detects unusual patterns in:
· Orders
· Transactions
· Supplier behavior
Helps prevent:
· Cargo theft
· Counterfeit goods
· Financial fraud
*”KPMG Clara” for Supply Chain Risk Management
“KPMG Clara” is an AI-powered IT platform offering supply chain analytics, risk detection, and compliance management.
Key Features:
· AI-driven risk modeling
· ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and compliance monitoring
· Predictive analytics for disruptions
· Supplier risk scoring
“Geo Analysis” (AI based) IT platform in Supply Chain Access Control
Above IT platform Monitor access patterns across cross-border freight hubs, regional warehouses, and remote carrier logins. “Geo analysis” for supply chain authentication identifies impossible travel, geo-inconsistencies, and spoofed IPs to reduce credential abuse and unauthorized entry into logistics systems. This important IT platform can reduce corruption and many unethical practices, ideal tool for the Sri Lankan Government sector that can curb the mal practices.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a remarkable IT tool which can apply in almost all the sectors that can reap the Efficiency and Accuracy. In above paragraphs I have described the application in different stages of the Logistic or the Supply Chain Management. Application of AI tools can be done on stages as initially find the specific pain points pertaining to the supply chain and then, prepare data from the GPS, inventory systems, sales forecasts and supplier records. Subsequently can understand the specific AI platforms and ML models to suit the SCM operation. Further, can apply in a small scale as a pilot project and analyze impact as cost savings or efficiency gains. Once understand the model can roll out to other areas of operations in the establishment.
Final outcome will be “15% reduction in fuel cost, 20% faster deliveries, Increased customer satisfaction”
There may be many negative lobbies since this is new to the many sectors in the country and further ability to proof the corruption but proper education and understanding the world AI based business models, establishments can reach the required goal.
(Writer can be reached at, chandana_w@yahoo.com)
by Lt Col. Chandana Weerakoon.
Chartered Logistician
Features
Motherhood is not ‘giving up’
Since having my baby, I have been regularly met with the question, “Are you back at work?”
“No,”
I reply. “I am doing my PhD from home.”
Several emotions arise. I feel guilty that I am not back at work, that somehow I should be. I also feel relieved that I can justify my time at home by offering up the PhD as a worthy endeavour. Sometimes, the person responds in surprise, “Oh, so no work?” Other times, they are approving, “How lucky for you and your baby.” Occasionally, there is the advice, “Don’t give up work.”
At the back of my mind are certain thoughts. “Am I not ‘working’? Isn’t the work of motherhood also considered ‘work’? If it isn’t, shouldn’t it be?”
Although the questions, comments, and advice about returning to work are made innocently enough, mostly benevolently, they have prompted me to reflect on the idea of work and motherhood, and how mothers and society view both.
Motherhood, I believe, is a full-time, highly skilled, unpaid job that never ends. All mothers work at least two jobs. They do the work of mothering, and also work in either a paid or unpaid additional role. Many women will do even more. They mother, care for their elderly parents, work a paid job, voluntarily contribute to community building, and try to fit in creative pursuits, hobbies, or ‘self-care’ when they can.
Motherhood requires many skills. You are, effectively, the CEO of your family and home (with hopefully a supportive co-CEO by your side). There is the work of child-rearing, which requires patience, energy, creativity, presence, flexibility, courage, fortitude, knowledge, and the ability to research, learn, and unlearn. You are raising the future. Then there is the work of home and family life, which requires skills in leadership, organisation, prioritisation, delegation, negotiation, financial management, crisis management, and conflict resolution. There is also the internal work of being self-aware, forgiving yourself and others, practicing compassion, and accepting the inherent imperfections of ‘doing it all’.
This work of motherhood is now recognised as ‘unpaid caregiving and domestic work’ and ‘invisible labour’ by international organisations such as the United Nations. It includes physical labour, direct care labour, mental or cognitive labour, and emotional labour, and is mostly the work of women.
I am not complaining. Men have their own unpaid labour. I love being a mother and wife. I view it as a privilege and a blessing. Ideally, the job can also be supported by paid or unpaid help. My point is that the work of women, and specifically mothers, should be recognised and respected, not only by society, but also by women and mothers themselves.
I know it is not just me who has experienced conflicting emotions about ‘giving up’ traditional work to focus on family life. Within my social circle and more widely, mothers describe a loss of self-worth and identity unless they are ‘working mothers’, and feeling embarrassment and guilt when asked the dreaded question, “What do you do?” There is the loss of financial dignity that comes with taking on an unpaid job, no matter how important you may think it is. Dynamics with husbands also need to shift, where both members are viewed as equally valuable to making the business of ‘home’ successful.
Neha Ruch, the author of The Power Pause, is an American brand strategist-turned-full-time stay-at-home mother and home maker, who addresses this very issue. Many of my thoughts for this article are based on her book. She argues that the time a woman wishes to invest in this phase of life, motherhood and family life, is valuable, not just for the children or family unit, but for the mother herself. It is a time for growth, skill-building, and expanding networks and connections.
Often, it leads women in new, creative, and more fulfilling directions, and provides an opportunity for them to re-enter the workforce on their own terms. She also points out that ‘the pause’ is not a luxury for a lucky minority, as many women become the default caregiver for their children if childcare is too costly, or not the preferred option. Through the movement she has created, Ruch provides legitimacy, validation, and structure to this phase of life (because, after all, it is only a phase, not forever) that is often spoken of as mindless, monotonous, and unglamorous, and I am grateful for it.
I suppose what I am saying is, next time you meet a mother, consider asking her, “How are you?”, and next time I am asked what I do, I should proudly declare (using Ruch’s script), “Right now, I am on a career pause and get to be home with my baby, and I am exploring possibilities for the future.”
(Lihini Wijeyaratne Cooray
Lihini is rediscovering her love for writing while embracing first-time motherhood and her ‘Power Pause’. She is also navigating her roles as a doctor and PhD researcher. She hopes that her writing can inspire a fresh perspective on motherhood as being valuable, powerful, and exciting.)
by Lihini Wijeyaratne Cooray
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