Features

Landmarks in the history of the tea industry

Published

2 years ago

2024/06/16

by ACB Pethiyagoda

Commercial agriculture in Ceylon commenced over two centuries ago and much has been written on the subject over the years by scientists, economists, agriculturists and others. This effort is by one who was actively connected with the several aspects of the tea industry for about two decades. Needless to say the events which took place in the early years are recorded following reference to several writings such as ‘A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea’ by D. M. Forest, A History of Sri Lanka’ by K. M. De Silva, `Tea’ by T. Eden, ‘Tea Planting in Ceylon’ by E.C. Elliott and F.J. Whitehead, ‘A History of the Up-Country Tamil People in Sri Lanka’ by S. Nadesan etc.

In around 1769 the Dutch took to commercial cultivation of cinnamon when supplies from wild plants in the territory of the Kandyan kings dwindled. Organized plantations were therefore set up by Governor Iman Willem Falck in the now Maradana, Cinnamon Gardens and Borella areas. Villagers in various parts of the Southern region of the country, reasonably close to the Western coast, were also encouraged to take to the cultivation.

The quills were in great demand in Europe as a spice and also, particularly among the wealthy, to stir their tea from China in the cold of winter evenings to give it a ‘lift’. The industry diminished in importance during the period of the British Governor, Frederick North (1798-1805) on account of severe competition from Java and low-grade produce from South India and the Philippines. This was about 25 years before Buckingham Palace itself was built by Gorge IV and at the time when Britain ruled the waves and governed vast territories in Asia including parts of Ceylon, except its Kandyan Kingdom.

The next commercial crop, with a short overlapping period, was coffee introduced by the Arabs and which had its beginnings in the Wet Zone peasants’ home gardens. This was even before the arrival in Ceylon of the Portuguese, the first European invaders. It was first grown on a commercial scale at elevations of about 1,600ft around Kandy and Gampola commencing about the middle of the 1820s. The prime movers were Governor Lt. Gen Sir Edward Barnes (1824-1831) and the commander of the Army in Kandy Lt. Col Henry Bird.

While the latter established his plantation at Sinhapitiya near Gampola, Barnes’ plantation was at Gannoruwa, Peradeniya which is today the foremost Government Agricultural Research Station. Other Englishmen followed suit in rapid succession so that sales of land soared from about 350 acres in 1834 to around 79,000 acres in 1841 alone. These buyers were favoured with loans and from the Ceylon Bank (opened in 1841) together with Government land on a grant system up to 1832 and thereafter by auction at a minimum upset price of 5sh. an acre.

Several other laws related to land were enacted over the next few years favouring the English prospectors until the infamous Waste Lands Ordinance came into force in 1897 depriving the Sinhalese of all inherited or uncultivated land leaving no room, in some areas for even a burial ground of their own.

Who were the main buyers? Government Agents, Judges, other high Government officials, Army personnel, and even Archdeacons and Colonial Chaplains! While these gentlemen were the owners the lands were opened mostly by a rough and ready lot of adventurers and soldiers of various ranks discharged from the Army. They had no proper education or knowledge of agriculture but without hesitation they assumed the ranks of Captain, Major etc. according to their ability to get away with it!

Nearly 70 years after the commercial planting of cinnamon, tea came into the scene as seed and seedlings for experimental purposes in 1839 to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya, once the home of an early Kandyan chieftain, from the Calcutta Botanic Gardens. About 30 of the seedlings found their way to the property in Nuwara Eliya owned by Sir Anthony Oliphant, Chief Justice and were tended by the Rev E R Gepp, tutor of the Chief Justice’s son. Oliphant Estate at the entrance to Nuwara Eliya from the direction of Kandy would very likely have been the location of the Chief Justice’s house and garden.

The coffee blight, Hemileia Vastartrix was first seen around 1869 but was not considered a serious threat to plantations which in that year totaled some 176,000 acres and continued to be opened.

The extent under cultivation increased to 275,000 acres by 1880. Though yields declined gradually due to the disease prices increased with improved demand. Hence, plantation owners were not unduly bothered about the blight as their coffers kept filling. Further, rumours of labour shortages, financial difficulties and political problems in Brazil and Java and the consequent decline in crops contributed to the complacent attitude of the Ceylon planters.

With the industry thriving there was a demand for improved transport facilities and Governor Sir Henry Ward spent one million pounds sterling for the construction of over 3,000 miles of roadway during his five year period here from 1855. To his credit he also made plans for a railway to the coffee growing areas resulting in the completion of the line from Colombo to Kandy in 1867 and thereafter in stages to Nawalapitiya and beyond upto Nuwara Eliya and Badulla.

During a period of about 20 years with the gradual decline in coffee yields, concern about the situation emerged at last and as a replacement crop cinchona, now known as quinine, became popular. It was known as Jesuit bark, in honour of that Order whose members knew of its curative powers for malaria. In 1861 the Hakgalla Botanic Garden was established by Government for test planting and propagation of cinchona from seeds originally collected in South America.

Loolecondra Estate, Deltota of James Taylor fame, was one of the first estates in 1867 to plant cinchona on a commercial scale mostly as an intercrop with coffee and very much later with tea. Its quality was considered superior to produce from Java and India and Canavaralla Estate in Namunukula was another estate which pioneered in growing the crop. The extent under cultivation rapidly increased from 6,000 acres in 1878 to 64,000 acres by 1883. Similar expansion in other countries resulted in a decline in prices so that by 1890 trees were being uprooted in Ceylon or planted areas were abandoned to the jungle tide.

George Henry Thwaites was appointed Superintendent, later designated Director, of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya in 1849. He devoted 30 years of his life in the fight against the coffee disease and with equal enthusiasm the development of cinchona, nutmeg, cloves, cocoa and cardamom. His name in the development of tea as a commercial crop has a special place as he nurtured and took a serious interest in the first seedlings received at Peradeniya about 10 years before his appointment and for experimental planting in several estates with planting material which arrived from India from time to time thereafter. The modest man although with a Ph.D insisted on being addressed as Mr. Thwaites as there was at the time a Dr. Thwaites, MD in Gampola practicing medicine!

About the time of his retirement from service, to settle down in Kandy, the Planters’ Association of Ceylon nominated Mr. Thwaites a Life Member of the Association; the first of a long list of other distinguished persons connected with the industry.

It was from Thwaites that James Taylor received his first lot of tea seed in about 1860. From around 1866 large quantities of seeds and plants from the Botanic Gardens both at Peradeniya and Hakgalla were distributed widely. Interests in the cultivation became greater almost by the day as a result of a successful study of the industry in India initiated by the Planters’ Association, with Government’s support and led by Arthur Morice, Superintendent of Mooloya Estate, Hewaheta; a close associate of Taylor.

The study revealed that tea planting on a commercial scale was certainly a profitable venture in Ceylon if the seed of the best Assam hybrid variety is introduced and confined to plantations situated at high elevations. These conditions were not difficult to satisfy as expensive and time consuming operations such as jungle clearing and land preparation had already been carried out for coffee and cinchona planting; of greater importance was the urgent need to find a feasible alternative to the declining viability of coffee.

The next event of great significance to the tea industry was when Taylor opened a clearing of 19 acres with Assam seed in Loolecondra Estate in 1866. Some documents indicate the year as 1867 which could perhaps be correctly taken as 1866/67 as planting may have commenced late in ’66 and ended in early ’67 along with the North East Monsoon rains. Even if this was not the case the fact that it was the first planting on a commercial scale after several experimental plots had been raised for about 28 years from 1839 onwards at Peradeniya and Hakgalla Gardens, the Chief Justice’s garden in Nuwara Eliya and somewhat later in Rothschild Estate, Pussellawa, Condagalla Division of Labukelle Estate, Ramboda, Kotegoda Division of Glen Alpin Estate, Badulla and several other plantations.

Tea leaf manufacture is the other aspect which had to be developed along with cultivation. W.J. Jenkins, of Condagalla, claimed to have carried out the first experiments although Taylor also made a similar claim. Perhaps Taylor was right as he would have had sufficient leaf from his 19 acre field to carry out experiments closer in volume to that required for processing on a commercial scale. Jenkins teamed up with Taylor and carried out joint experiments in Taylor’s bungalow verandah until 1872 when Taylor set up a ‘Tea House’ conforming to his own design and plans.

Water wheels were used for motive power to roll the leaf before the fermentation period which was a definite improvement on Jenkins’ practice of rolling by hand which failed to give the much desired ‘twist’ to the fired leaf. This was an inefficient and slow process and therefore expensive even in those times.

As early as 1878 and 1880 Ceylon teas appeared in the London and Melbourne markets respectively and a record in 1881 indicates a valuation of 23 lbs of Loolecondra tea at three shillings per pound by a valuer in Mincing Lane. As the valuation was made in London it was naturally in sterling currency although Ceylon had its own currency in rupees and cents beginning January 1872.

To Taylor’s credit he found that fine plucking (two leaves and bud) as a result of close plucking intervals made better quality teas which naturally received higher prices than those from more mature leaf plucked at longer intervals. This requirement, clearly established over a century ago as a basic need to produce quality teas is to this day sometimes unwittingly ignored by planters; main reasons being their inability to organize close plucking rounds due to shortage of labour or lack of planning or both.

The undisputed pioneer known as the Father of Ceylon’s Tea Industry’ James Taylor was born in March 1835 in Kincandineshire near Aberdeen to Michael, a wheelwright and Margret Taylor who had five other children. At the age of 14 he became a pupil teacher but having met Peter Moir, a cousin on home leave from planting in Ceylon, James set his mind on following his cousin’s footsteps and arrived in Colombo and Naranhena (later a division of Loolecondra). He settled down in Loolecondra in his rough, thatched roofed bungalow enduring for many years the hardships of living under almost primitive conditions.

However, he appears to have enjoyed himself in total dedication to his job as Assistant Superintendent on a salary of $100 a year, less instalments on cost of passage and gear advanced to him by Ms. G & JA Halden of London. His only interests appear to have been on improving the profitability of the estate, experimenting with crops, manufacture of tea and being a good employer to his labour force. He subsequently built himself a comfortable bungalow on being appointed Superintendent but never once went back to England. The one holiday he took out of the country was in Assam to study tea planting and manufacture.

Taylor remained single and the Sinhalese woman who kept house for him is said to have cried her heart out when he died of dysentery at 57 years. He was buried in the Mahaiyawa cemetery in Kandy.

Taylor was recognised by both Government and his fellow planters for his various achievements and contribution to the industry. The Planters’ Association as a token of its appreciation gifted Taylor with a silver tea set made in London and a cheque for Rs. 2,871.11 being the balance of the amount collected. Governor, The Right Hon. Sir William Henry Gregory (1872-1877) who visited Lookcondra to congratulate Taylor on his achievements said that “many men have had monuments raised to them less deserving than Mr. Taylor”.

Up to about the 1870’s proprietors of estates were only Europeans but soon thereafter Indian names such as Eduljee who owned Wewessa in Passara and Benerajee Jeejeebhoy owner of Nahawilla in Demodara appeared in land transfer records. In the midcountry Sinhala names such as Amarasuriya, Pieris, de Mel, de Soysa etc. were known as prominent plantation owners.

It was only in about the 1860s that young Assistants from so called good and well to do families in England were recruited in preference to cashiered soldiers etc. who were engaged earlier. It was in these times that some senior planters and proprietors who considered themselves as superior in society even wore black tailcoat and white tie at dinner! In society they considered themselves the ‘cream, along with only the top Government administrators; others in business and lower grades in Government service were considered inferiors with little effort being made to conceal the attitude.

This account of the industry is in no way complete without mention of the Tea Research Institute of Ceylon, which was established in October 1925 from when crop research activities ceased at the Botanical Gardens in Peradeniya. It was funded by a cess of cents 10 per 100 lbs of tea exported. In 1928, St. Coombs Estate at Talawakelle with a planted acreage of 291 acres out of 424 acres was bought for Rs. 600,000/- out of a loan of rupees one million granted by Government to the Board of Control. Laboratories and quarters for staff were built and for long years the Institute held a unique and prestigious position as a specialized organization and ideal employer. In much later years Sub Stations were set up at Passara and Bombuwela and still later at Kandy and Ratnapura.

The contribution made by the Institute to the advancement of the industry was immense. In the early days it successfully controlled the Tea Tortirix pest by biological means and in about 1949 means for the control of the parasitic fungus Blister Blight were found expeditiously. The expansion of the area under cultivation and replanting of poor yielding seedling tea by vegetatively propagated means commenced in about 1947, although the technique was known in Japan in the nineteenth century and had been adopted in Assam in the 1930s. In Ceylon the results of the search for high yielding, drought, and Blister resistant clones with desirable manufacturing qualities was an outstanding success.

In 1930 the Institute commenced an Advisory Service to assist tea small holders as the planted extent under this category was then in the region of 60,000 acres. Three years later the Tea Control Department was set up to implement several Acts connected with the industry which were passed by the Government.

(To be continued next week)

(First published in 2,000. The late author was a tea planter who also worked for the Tea Research Institute early in his career. He ended his working life handling agricultural projects for the Ceylon Tobacco Co. Ltd.)

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Features

Coercive laws recipe for future misrule

Published

9 hours ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Jehan Perera

The NPP government is going after powerful figures from the past and present who have engaged in corruption, fraud and criminal activity in a way that no previous government in Sri Lanka has done. Former ministers, politicians and senior state officials are among those facing investigations and legal proceedings. The government has placed before Parliament a document listing 50 cases involving corruption, fraud and other crimes. These include not only financial offences but also cases relating to the Easter Sunday attacks, the killings of Lasantha Wickrematunge and Wasim Thajudeen, the disappearance of Prageeth Ekneligoda and attacks on journalists Keith Noyahr and Upali Tennakoon.

The significance of this effort is that it can demonstrate that nobody is above the law, regardless of political connections or social standing, which will help restore public confidence in institutions that have long been distrusted. It could also recover public resources, improve the investment climate and strengthen the foundations for a more prosperous and just Sri Lanka. When criticised for focusing on the past and not the present, the government position is that these investigations were initiated under earlier governments, particularly between 2015 and 2019, and that it is now allowing investigators to proceed to deal with the backlog without political interference.

But there is an aspect of the government’s approach that is less justifiable. While pursuing past wrongdoing by powerful individuals, it is also advancing a triumvirate of draft laws that could give the state sweeping powers over citizens, organisations and dissent in the present and future. The draft Prevention of Terrorism legislation, the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill and the NGO Registration and Supervision Bill raise serious questions about the over-centralisation of power. Each of these laws strengthens the powers of the state while weakening the rights and safeguards that protect people from their misuse and thus questions the basic rights of people in democracy where ‘the power of the people is vested in the government’. This is a recipe for future misrule rather than the rule of law. As the well-known saying goes, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Proposed Laws

The real test of system change, for which the government obtained an overwhelming mandate, requires not only a government willing to hold others accountable, but one prepared to subject itself to the same principles of legality, transparency and restraint. The three proposed laws that are particularly important in this regard are the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill, the Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill and the NGO Registration and Supervision Bill. Each of these draft laws has been presented as serving a legitimate purpose. Preventing terrorism, combating organised crime and ensuring that NGOs do not facilitate money laundering or terrorist financing are proper responsibilities of the state. Sri Lanka has international obligations in these areas, and no responsible government can disregard them. However, the existence of a legitimate objective does not justify every means adopted to achieve it.

The proposed Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill illustrates the problem. Although its definition of terrorism draws on a model developed by a former United Nations Special Rapporteur, the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka has warned that the definition of terrorism extends beyond the model and could bring legitimate political protest, trade union action and civil disobedience within the scope of counter-terrorism legislation. Its concerns also include prolonged detention, inadequate judicial oversight and restrictions on access to legal counsel. These are objections that go to the heart of the relationship between the citizen and the state. The government cannot credibly promise to protect democratic freedoms while creating powers that could be used to restrict them. It is necessary for the government to reassess the draft through transparent consultation and revise provisions that could criminalise legitimate dissent.

The Prevention of Organised Crimes Bill raises similar concerns. It is presented as giving effect to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, which Sri Lanka ratified in 2006. The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) has argued that the convention does not require many of the bill’s provisions. The proposed law extends to a broad range of offences, permits detention orders lasting up to a year, makes confessions to police admissible for purposes of legal evidence, and introduces extensive surveillance powers. A law intended to dismantle criminal networks should not create a parallel system of exceptional powers that could be applied far beyond organised crime. Nor should safeguards developed through years of experience with abuses under the Prevention of Terrorism Act be weakened through legislation bearing a different name. The government should review whether or not existing laws could be used effectively to control these crimes or whether each exceptional power is necessary.

Civil Society

The proposed NGO Registration and Supervision Bill presents another test of the government’s intentions. The government may reasonably seek transparency in the finances of organisations receiving public or foreign funds, including measures to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. It seeks to justify its overreach on the grounds of meeting the internationally mandated requirements of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) for the Asia-Pacific region. But these objectives do not justify placing civil society and NGOs under excessive administrative control when even the FATF ranks them as low to medium risks. The draft bill would require registration and renewal, impose extensive obligations on organisations and empower authorities to suspend or deregister them on broadly framed grounds. It is important to redraft provisions that confer excessive discretion over registration, renewal, suspension and deregistration of NGOs.

Among the concerns raised by United Nations human rights special rapporteurs with regard to the draft NGO law are provisions requiring organisations to align with government policies and restrictions that could affect advocacy, dissent and freedom of association. The implications extend well beyond organisations that engage directly with the government. Community groups, human rights organisations, independent researchers and organisations working on reconciliation or accountability could find their activities constrained by uncertainty over how these provisions might be interpreted. Organisations that criticise government policies are not thereby working against the country. Their freedom to do so is part of what distinguishes a democracy from a system in which the government determines which opinions and activities are acceptable.

The government has generated considerable public goodwill through its pursuit of corruption and criminality. It should not assume that this goodwill gives it an unlimited mandate to strengthen the coercive powers of the state. The NPP knows from its own history that governments can treat dissent as a threat and use the machinery of the state against their opponents. There is still time to correct the drafts through transparent public consultation, narrow definitions of offences, meaningful judicial control over detention and surveillance, and effective remedies against arbitrary decisions. A government that pursues corruption while weakening safeguards against state abuse risks undermining its own achievements. Besides bringing to light the abuse of power by previous governments, the NPP government needs to build a system in which no future government can abuse power in the belief they can get away with it.

Features

Quality assurance without quality enhancement: The irony of university QA

Published

9 hours ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

By Ramya Kumar

According to the Quality Assurance Council (QAC) of the University Grants Commission (UGC), quality assurance (QA) refers to “the means (i.e. the policies, attitudes, actions, procedures, etc.), by which an institution can guarantee with confidence and certainty, that the standards and quality of its educational provision are being maintained and enhanced”.

An expansive structure has been in place since 2005 to govern and implement QA processes within the state university system. The QAC is the focal point at the UGC that implements external reviews of state universities and institutes. Each university has its own Centre for Quality Assurance (CQA) tasked with performing QA in line with QAC directives. Faculties, in turn, have Internal Quality Assurance Cells (IQAC) performing their own QA; they are answerable to the CQA.

The big question is whether this all-encompassing top-down QA system, that in many ways undermines the internal dynamics of university governance, actually supports universities to enhance the quality of education. This article highlights some concerns.

Top-down check-box activities

The QAC conducts external reviews of universities and degree programmes. A review team appointed by the UGC (who may or may not have experience in the institution/programme in question) examines the self-evaluation report submitted by the said institution/programme. The team then conducts a site visit to verify the claims made in the university’s self-evaluation report, clarify issues identified during the desk review, and examine how QA procedures operate in practice. The team holds meetings with the university administration, members of the Council and Senate, Deans, Heads of Departments, academic and non-academic staff, students, and others. Following the visit, a draft report is submitted to the relevant institution/programme for comment before final publication. The reviewed institution/programme then prepares and publishes an action plan addressing the recommendations, with subsequent monitoring of progress.

There are some worthy QA initiatives under implementation, such as improving facilities for students with disabilities and strengthening mechanisms to address sexual- and gender-based violence. However, for the most part, QA activities have little to do with improving the quality of education. They are mostly preoccupied with monitoring faculty and department websites, digital transformation, student feedback, subject evaluation, course evaluation, peer evaluation, and, more recently, staff appraisal. These activities, which consume an inordinate amount of time—so precious at understaffed universities—have become check-box activities completed to generate evidence for the next review. Below is an excerpt of a conversation between two academics (1 and 2) that conveys how QA plays out at universities (reproduced with permission).

1: … .it’s like social media you know, like posting things on Facebook or twitter or Instagram. When people do a lot of social media, everything they do, they do thinking, “okay I’m going to post it in this way… this I have to put on my Instagram.” QA is a little like that… everything is considered in light of, “ah we can use this for the review, as evidence… for example very recently we were encouraged to have all the things that we do in our department in the faculty newsletter so then they can put in the review. Every little thing has to be noted down….

2: And with pictures and all…

1: At the very least it has to be written so that you have written evidence .. you can’t be doing something for the sake of doing something or because it is good for the department … and sometimes people tell me “oh yea that’s a good idea we can fit that under this x, y section of the review..”

2: Yea, and nobody really thinks about the actual outcome… whether it’s actually helping anyone..

1: I also find that a lot of the words that we used in different ways have now been co-opted to the QA discourse ..including quality.. I can’t actually say what I want as an “outcome”, for example, that the outcome of this workshop is that my students “think about” … then I am told “ah but no that’s not one of the Bloom’s taxonomy words, “think about”.…

2: And the worst part is these medical and agriculture people, these types of people go around spreading it like some kind of gospel!

1: Yea, this cookie cutter way of doing things, they think is the height of innovativeness or creativity, when actually it is so mundane … for me the most awful thing about it is like some fungus of mundanity has taken over through QA reviews.

2: yea, when you say QA, my mind closes off immediately and I stop listening…

Auditing everything but power

QA leaves out crucial aspects of university governance. For instance, there is no review or assessment of the “quality” of university administrations under Criterion 1 or the integrity of procedures governing the promotion of academic staff under Criterion 6 of the institutional reviews.

The majority in the Council—the university’s executive and governing body, which is responsible for selecting the Vice-Chancellor (VC)—are appointed in ad hoc fashion. Apart from the Ex-Officio members in the Council (VC, Deans, etc.), and the two members elected by the Senate, the remainder are appointed by the UGC with no formal consultation or vetting procedure. The VC appointment process described in UGC Circular No. 03/2023 exemplifies how an ostensibly technical process can become entangled in political sycophancy. The Registrar invites applications for the position of VC through advertisement. Applicants must submit a curriculum vitae, a statement of vision for the university and supporting documents. The University Council appoints a three-member Search Committee of senior academics to encourage “eminent persons” to apply, while the UGC appoints a former VC from another university to “observe” the selection process.

A Special Meeting of the University Council is convened. Candidates are interviewed and must make a presentation to the Council Members, followed by questions. Each Council member “gives marks” for seven prescribed criteria: strategic focus (20%), effective leadership (20%), holistic thinking/conceptual skills (10%), academic and research excellence (15%), personal integrity (10%), professional communication (10%) and managerial competence (15%). Marks are averaged, and the Council recommends three candidates to the UGC in rank order. The UGC-appointed observer separately submits a confidential report on the selection process.

This procedure is expected to guarantee quality, but does it? Applications are submitted to the Council Members, who have been appointed on questionable bases, and who are expected to review the applications and give scores, based on objective assessments. But, in reality, most Council Members are manipulated by VC candidates, who often have personal ties with them. The UGC-appointed observer usually has no genuine interest in the outcome. And there is no way for anyone to actually question the Council’s decision once it is made. Although the highest-ranked candidate may ultimately be appointed, the selection remains a political decision made by the President, who retains the discretion to appoint any one of the three.

External reviews also do not look into the promotions of academic staff, except to scrutinise whether there are policies and procedures in place to govern promotion. Academic staff may apply for promotion to Professor once they satisfy the prescribed eligibility requirements, which typically include the period of service, academic qualifications, research and publication achievements, teaching experience, and contributions to the university and wider community. Applications are evaluated against specified criteria, with research output and academic contributions assessed through documentary evidence and expert evaluation. Under the UGC’s scheme for Professors, two experts from outside the applicant’s institution assess specified aspects of research and knowledge dissemination. Again, beneath this technical process, which is externally evaluated, lies a problematic points-based scheme that can be manipulated and abused with impunity.

Rethinking university QA

Like the VC election process and the schemes of promotion for academic staff, QA reviews are open to manipulation. Before a review, there is a chaotic rush to complete evidence gathering and reporting. Academics leave all other work aside, including at times their teaching, to focus on completing documentation and preparing reports. The standardised criteria in the review manuals and scoring sheets often do not reflect differences in disciplines and institutional contexts. But this does not really matter because any serious problems experienced by institutions or programmes are hastily brushed under the carpet to conceal any evidence that could taint the review. The goal is to obtain an A or at least a B grade at whatever cost.

QA may result in positive change if it moves beyond top-down check-box activities towards internally designed and owned processes encompassing all aspects of university governance, led by departments and faculties, and supported by adequate resources. The current QA system needs to be dismantled and replaced by procedures that are accountable, not to the UGC, but to our students and the communities we serve.

(Ramya Kumar is attached to the Department of Community and Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Jaffna)

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

Features

Down Memory Lane — the Grand 20th Edition!

Published

9 hours ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

Down Memory Lane: Ready to sing again

Yes, Down Memory Lane, the beloved Sing-Along concert series that first struck a chord, way back in 1997, returns for its landmark 20th edition this Saturday, 17th October, at the beautiful Bolgoda Grand Resort, Moratuwa town centre.

Having celebrated its glorious 25th anniversary with the show in 2023, this milestone 20th concert promises to be even more special.

The organisers, the ever-popular Moratuwa Arts Forum, are pulling out all the stops to present yet another unforgettable evening, brimming with camaraderie, fellowship, and pure nostalgia.

Get ready for two-and-a-half hours of non-stop singing as veteran vocalists, from the Moratuwa Arts Forum, will take the stage to lead and inspire the happy audience to sing, sing and sing to their hearts’ content.

The repertoire? Absolutely magical, according to the organisers.

Veteran Arun Dias Bandaranaike: Will handle the evening’s proceedings / Priya Peiris: Event Conceptor

Around 40 golden oldies — from timeless English vintage evergreens and hits from the 50s to the 90s, to toe-tapping calypsos, soulful American plantation melodies, rousing cowboy and Dixieland favourites, aa well as cherished Sinhala standards. All to be sung with much gusto!

This year’s dedicated organising committee comprises Brian Coorey (Chairman), Priya Peiris (Event Conceptor), Hiran Fernando, Suranga Fernando, Viranjan Perera, Hemka Fernando and Neelesh Silva. Guidance and support comes from Moratuwa Arts Forum President Sarana Guneratne and Secretary Chandani Silva.

Adding his signature charm to the evening, as Master of Ceremonies, will be the veteran Arun Dias Bandaranaike.

Don’t miss this landmark celebration of music and memories!

For further details, contact Hiran Fernando on 0772636446 or WhatsApp 0783636446.