Features

Memories of “Dusty” Miller of the Colombo Commercial Company

Published

4 years ago

2022/05/29

by ACB Pethiyagoda

The Business (Acquisition) Act No. 35 of 1971 enabled the then government to take over any business undertaking in the country. One of its intended purposes was to have complete control over their commercial activities and thereby ensure that rightful dues to the country earned from exports and other trading activities internationally were brought in.

That was an urgent need then as the country was in dire need of every dollar and pound (for short called FOREX) as other sources such as foreign aid and loans were woefully short or had dried up. That was the beneficial side of the exercise but what was detrimental was that men with long and valuable commercial experience in the organizations taken over were at times replaced by incompetent political stooges.

In 1976 The Colombo Commercial Company (CCC) with its office in Acland House, 25, Lillie Street, Colombo 2 and branches in Badulla, Hatton, Kandapola, Kandy and Ratnapura was taken over. Its Principal’s office was in Mincing Lane, London and according to the Ferguson’s Directory of 1965 the Company dealt in Estate Management, Fertilizers, Tea, Insurance, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Building construction and were Agents and Distributors of products of about fifty foreign Companies.

Google reveals that the Company was founded in London with John Burn an engineer who was born in Aberdeen setting up its branch in Colombo. “Burn had gained considerable experience since 1848 opened up his business in Colombo on premises purchased, namely Acland House and grounds covering 13 acres at Slave Island, which was formerly the mess of the Ceylon Rifle Regiment. During the early years of the Company’s progress, the Slave Island Mills handled coffee, tea and artificial manures.”

The company’s stature then was such that it even had, “A very neat and well struck copper token.” On its obverse was “The Colombo Commercial Co. Limited 1876” with an embossed tea plant and on the reverse “Slave Island Mills” with two sprigs of orange leaves. Each of the 500 tokens struck were brass, “round in shape, 29.9 mm in diameter each weighing 8.05 grams.”

Acland House (now Visumpaya) when first taken over by Government was refurbished and used by it as a guest house for high visiting official dignitaries. The stately two stories building was large by any standard, no wonder having been an Army Mess, with the ground floor used as CCC’s office.

Memories go back to early 1960 when the writer was interviewed by A.W. Halstead, Head of the Estates Department, who was later replaced by Kenneth Ratwatte as a Director. The writer was first appointed as Junior Assistant Superintendent of Mooloya Estate, two years later Senior Assistant Superintendent and another two years later Acting Superintendent of Mayfield Estate — the first Ceylonese in that position. Soon after, progression led to manage Braemore and thereafter Mayfield Estate.

Visits by superintendents to the offices of their Agents were then mostly on ‘summons’ and those often resulted in a dressing down; these were rare and for very serious offences only. The writer, to the somewhat surprise of the Directors, Managers and Assistants often made unexpected visits to Acland House to consult Kumar Paul, Nirmala Ranasinghe, Brian Tranchel and Peter Dardart, manager of the Tea Department to pick their brains and improve the quality of teas he produced.

Information on market trends was also sought — all efforts being made to improve the profitability of the property in his charge — cost cutting exercises having been exhausted. Profitability then was the only way to keep at times even offensive correspondence from Principals and Agents to the barest minimum and ensure advancement in the Company.

The ultimate beneficiary, of course, was the country itself selling its produce at optimum prices and bringing in scarce foreign exchange to import essentials such as rice, sugar, petroleum products etc.

These visits to Colombo and reciprocal visits by the Tea Department’s Executives to the Estates paid handsomely as the quotes below show:

“The Tea Department offer congratulations on you producing a tea as good as this……. ..

“The prices realised for the BOPS of these two Invoices are the highest obtained by Braemore during the past few years and we are writing this letter to convey our appreciation to you and your staff on this achievements. “

“This is one of the best invoices we have ever seen from Mayfield Estate and it is the unanimous opinion of the members of the Tea Department that this Invoice is better than Bogawanthalawa Inv. 25.”

The work ethic then was different from now in many spheres of employment; positive results only were the criteria recognized. Hence, these laudatory messages were read, reread as the joy and satisfaction was greater than most anything else. The achievements were solely due to planning and execution over long days in the tea fields ensuring good agricultural practices and leaf standards followed by equally long nights in the factories monitoring each and every stage of manufacture from evening to next morning. Within the company, between companies and even at the bars at Radella, Talawakelle and Agras Clubs excellence in results were recognized by fellow planters with a few jokes and jibes thrown in.

Two months ago about thirty of Colombo Commercial Co’s Old Crocks, many accompanied by their wives got together for their annual dinner organized by Asoka Gopallawa and Shanthi Wijesundera. Many of the reminiscences were of the time — roughly in the mid years of the nineteen hundreds when CCC was accepted as one of the best private sector organizations in the country.

Practically everyone had something to relate about his experiences with Mr. E W Miller, the money minded and shrewd Englishman who took over the Company in London in 1961 by some clever maneuvering and came to Colombo as if carried by a whirlwind. He was unconventional in talk, dress and manners to a point that many an old fashioned brow was raised or a jaw dropped and some of the owners of those parts of the body feared they would next find themselves on the beach or cart road — jobless.

Many of them were the highly paid Europeans with palatial accommodation, overseas leave, children’s education allowances etc, who were eventually replaced by Miller with equally competent Ceylonese with significant financial advantage to himself. He (Dusty in conversations other than in his presence), virtually turned the Company upside down from its conservative and staid business etiquette and practices to such unconventional methods which shocked many within and outside the Company.

For instance he would himself drive to a Branch Office or Department or an estate in the Agency unannounced when at that time even Auditors gave two weeks notice and enquired whether the dates were convenient to the Superintendent! Dusty talked straight and he appreciated unvarnished replies. If one got on with him skies were the limit because he could be generous and friendly. The opposite situation was also very well known!

The writer’s first meeting with Miller is still fresh in his mind when as an Assistant Superintendent he was appointed Acting Superintendent of Mayfield (the first Ceylonese in that position) as an urgent stop gap arrangement. On ‘taking over’ the property from the Superintendent, who was induced by Miller to retire, the writer within the first few days found the estate in a king sized mess.

However, the five bedroom bungalow with wall to wall carpeting and tastefully furnished looked like something out of the “Home and Garden” magazine. Obviously the wife was a better manager of property than the Superintendent! In these circumstances, grappling with the many, many problems who arrives? Miller, his wife and a business buddy giving one day’s notice.

The evening of their arrival was nothing but a hot tin roof the writer was walking on as the visitors (except the lady) were obviously gauging their host in a mildly patronizing way at times — they drank numerous whiskeys and the host a pint of beer. The main topics of discussion were local politics, a general election being due, and the state of the property.

Questions were fended off somewhat firmly by declaring that the only politics that concerned their host was his welfare and if the visitors were good enough to call over in a month’s time an educated opinion on the state of the property and some solutions to its problems would be given as he had hardly time to take proper stock of the situation.

On reflection later on in the night, left to his own thought, he thought it was ‘kaput’ for him and it would have been prudent to have indulged the visitors. Next morning, while waiting for the men for breakfast, the writer and the lady making small talk the writer said he thought he had mishandled the previous evening.

To his great surprise and even greater relief she said Dusty thought their host was straight, cautious and would deliver the goods. That he did in due course, and it was kosher with Dusty making an unexpected ex gratia payment for a successful Act and a handsome wedding gift two years later.

There’s good and bad even among the sharpest businessmen — Dusty Miller was one of them, the former characteristic being a bit more pronounced.

(First published in June 2009)

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Features

Ranking public services with AI — A roadmap to reviving institutions like SriLankan Airlines

Published

1 day ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

Efficacy measures an organisation’s capacity to achieve its mission and intended outcomes under planned or optimal conditions. It differs from efficiency, which focuses on achieving objectives with minimal resources, and effectiveness, which evaluates results in real-world conditions. Today, modern AI tools, using publicly available data, enable objective assessment of the efficacy of Sri Lanka’s government institutions.

Among key public bodies, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka emerges as the most efficacious, outperforming the Department of Inland Revenue, Sri Lanka Customs, the Election Commission, and Parliament. In the financial and regulatory sector, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) ranks highest, ahead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the Sri Lanka Standards Institution.

Among state-owned enterprises, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) leads in efficacy, followed by Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. Other institutions assessed included the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and the Sri Lanka Transport Board. At the lower end of the spectrum were Lanka Sathosa and Sri Lankan Airlines, highlighting a critical challenge for the national economy.

Sri Lankan Airlines, consistently ranked at the bottom, has long been a financial drain. Despite successive governments’ reform attempts, sustainable solutions remain elusive.

Globally, the most profitable airlines operate as highly integrated, technology-enabled ecosystems rather than as fragmented departments. Operations, finance, fleet management, route planning, engineering, marketing, and customer service are closely coordinated, sharing real-time data to maximise efficiency, safety, and profitability.

The challenge for Sri Lankan Airlines is structural. Its operations are fragmented, overly hierarchical, and poorly aligned. Simply replacing the CEO or senior leadership will not address these deep-seated weaknesses. What the airline needs is a cohesive, integrated organisational ecosystem that leverages technology for cross-functional planning and real-time decision-making.

The government must urgently consider restructuring Sri Lankan Airlines to encourage:

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

=Collaborative strategic decisions on route rationalisation, fleet renewal, partnerships, and cost management, rather than exclusive top-down mandates

Sustainable reform requires systemic change. Without modernised organisational structures, stronger accountability, and aligned incentives across divisions, financial recovery will remain out of reach. An integrated, performance-oriented model offers the most realistic path to operational efficiency and long-term viability.

Reforming loss-making institutions like Sri Lankan Airlines is not merely a matter of leadership change — it is a structural overhaul essential to ensuring these entities contribute productively to the national economy rather than remain perpetual burdens.

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

Features

Why Pi Day?

Published

1 day ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

The approximate value of Pi (π) is 3.14 in mathematics. Therefore, the day 14 March is celebrated as the Pi Day. In 2019, UNESCO proclaimed 14 March as the International Day of Mathematics.

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians figured out that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times its diameter. But they could not come up with an exact value for this ratio although they knew that it is a constant. This constant was later named as π which is a letter in the Greek alphabet.

Archimedes

It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes (250 BC) who was able to find an upper bound and a lower bound for this constant. He drew a circle of diameter one unit and drew hexagons inside and outside the circle such that the sides of each hexagon touch the sides of the circle. In mathematics the circle passing through all vertices of a polygon is called a ‘circumcircle’ and the largest circle that fits inside a polygon tangent to all its sides is called an ‘incircle’. The total length of the smaller hexagon then becomes the lower bound of π and the length of the hexagon outside the circle is the upper bound. He realised that by increasing the number of sides of the polygon can make the bounds get closer to the value of Pi and increased the number of sides to 12,24,48 and 60. He argued that by increasing the number of sides will ultimately result in obtaining the original circle, thereby laying the foundation for the theory of limits. He ended up with the lower bound as 22/7 and the upper bound 223/71. He could not continue his research as his hometown Syracuse was invaded by Romans and was killed by one of the soldiers. His last words were ‘do not disturb my circles’, perhaps a reference to his continuing efforts to find the value of π to a greater accuracy.

Archimedes can be considered as the father of geometry. His contributions revolutionised geometry and his methods anticipated integral calculus. He invented the pulley and the hydraulic screw for drawing water from a well. He also discovered the law of hydrostatics. He formulated the law of levers which states that a smaller weight placed farther from a pivot can balance a much heavier weight closer to it. He famously said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Mathematicians have found many expressions for π as a sum of infinite series that converge to its value. One such famous series is the Leibniz Series found in 1674 by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, which is given below.

π = 4 ( 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – ………….)

The Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan came up with a magnificent formula in 1910. The short form of the formula is as follows.

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

For practical applications an approximation is sufficient. Even NASA uses only the approximation 3.141592653589793 for its interplanetary navigation calculations.

It is not just an interesting and curious number. It is used for calculations in navigation, encryption, space exploration, video game development and even in medicine. As π is fundamental to spherical geometry, it is at the heart of positioning systems in GPS navigations. It also contributes significantly to cybersecurity. As it is an irrational number it is an excellent foundation for generating randomness required in encryption and securing communications. In the medical field, it helps to calculate blood flow rates and pressure differentials. In diagnostic tools such as CT scans and MRI, pi is an important component in mathematical algorithms and signal processing techniques.

This elegant, never-ending number demonstrates how mathematics transforms into practical applications that shape our world. The possibilities of what it can do are infinite as the number itself. It has become a symbol of beauty and complexity in mathematics. “It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go.” said Sophie Germain.

Mathematics fans are intrigued by this irrational number and attempt to calculate it as far as they can. In March 2022, Emma Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated it to 100 trillion decimal places in Google Cloud. It had taken 157 days. The Guinness World Record for reciting the number from memory is held by Rajveer Meena of India for 70000 decimal places over 10 hours.

Happy Pi Day!

The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate in the UK and an educational consultant at the Overseas School of Colombo.

by R N A de Silva

Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

Published

2 days ago

2026/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

A combined US-Israel attack on Iran.(BBC)

The recent humanly costly torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone by a US submarine has raised a number of issues of great importance to international political discourse and law that call for elucidation. It is best that enlightened commentary is brought to bear in such discussions because at present misleading and uninformed speculation on questions arising from the incident are being aired by particularly jingoistic politicians of Sri Lanka’s South which could prove deleterious.

As matters stand, there seems to be no credible evidence that the Indian state was aware of the impending torpedoing of the Iranian vessel but these acerbic-tongued politicians of Sri Lanka’s South would have the local public believe that the tragedy was triggered with India’s connivance. Likewise, India is accused of ‘embroiling’ Sri Lanka in the incident on account of seemingly having prior knowledge of it and not warning Sri Lanka about the impending disaster.

It is plain that a process is once again afoot to raise anti-India hysteria in Sri Lanka. An obligation is cast on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that incendiary speculation of the above kind is defeated and India-Sri Lanka relations are prevented from being in any way harmed. Proactive measures are needed by the Sri Lankan government and well meaning quarters to ensure that public discourse in such matters have a factual and rational basis. ‘Knowledge gaps’ could prove hazardous.

Meanwhile, there could be no doubt that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was violated by the US because the sinking of the Iranian vessel took place in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone. While there is no international decrying of the incident, and this is to be regretted, Sri Lanka’s helplessness and small player status would enable the US to ‘get away with it’.

Could anything be done by the international community to hold the US to account over the act of lawlessness in question? None is the answer at present. This is because in the current ‘Global Disorder’ major powers could commit the gravest international irregularities with impunity. As the threadbare cliché declares, ‘Might is Right’….. or so it seems.

Unfortunately, the UN could only merely verbally denounce any violations of International Law by the world’s foremost powers. It cannot use countervailing force against violators of the law, for example, on account of the divided nature of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members have shown incapability of seeing eye-to-eye on grave matters relating to International Law and order over the decades.

The foregoing considerations could force the conclusion on uncritical sections that Political Realism or Realpolitik has won out in the end. A basic premise of the school of thought known as Political Realism is that power or force wielded by states and international actors determine the shape, direction and substance of international relations. This school stands in marked contrast to political idealists who essentially proclaim that moral norms and values determine the nature of local and international politics.

While, British political scientist Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was a proponent of Political Realism, political idealism has its roots in the teachings of Socrates, Plato and latterly Friedrich Hegel of Germany, to name just few such notables.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no getting way from the conclusion that coercive force is the deciding factor in international politics. If this were not so, US President Donald Trump in collaboration with Israeli Rightist Premier Benjamin Natanyahu could not have wielded the ‘big stick’, so to speak, on Iran, killed its Supreme Head of State, terrorized the Iranian public and gone ‘scot-free’. That is, currently, the US’ impunity seems to be limitless.

Moreover, the evidence is that the Western bloc is reuniting in the face of Iran’s threats to stymie the flow of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world. The recent G7 summit witnessed a coming together of the foremost powers of the global North to ensure that the West does not suffer grave negative consequences from any future blocking of western oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Israel is having a ‘free run’ of the Middle East, so to speak, picking out perceived adversarial powers, such as Lebanon, and militarily neutralizing them; once again with impunity. On the other hand, Iran has been bringing under assault, with no questions asked, Gulf states that are seen as allying with the US and Israel. West Asia is facing a compounded crisis and International Law seems to be helplessly silent.

Wittingly or unwittingly, matters at the heart of International Law and peace are being obfuscated by some pro-Trump administration commentators meanwhile. For example, retired US Navy Captain Brent Sadler has cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which provides for the right to self or collective self-defence of UN member states in the face of armed attacks, as justifying the US sinking of the Iranian vessel (See page 2 of The Island of March 10, 2026). But the Article makes it clear that such measures could be resorted to by UN members only ‘ if an armed attack occurs’ against them and under no other circumstances. But no such thing happened in the incident in question and the US acted under a sheer threat perception.

Clearly, the US has violated the Article through its action and has once again demonstrated its tendency to arbitrarily use military might. The general drift of Sadler’s thinking is that in the face of pressing national priorities, obligations of a state under International Law could be side-stepped. This is a sure recipe for international anarchy because in such a policy environment states could pursue their national interests, irrespective of their merits, disregarding in the process their obligations towards the international community.

Moreover, Article 51 repeatedly reiterates the authority of the UN Security Council and the obligation of those states that act in self-defence to report to the Council and be guided by it. Sadler, therefore, could be said to have cited the Article very selectively, whereas, right along member states’ commitments to the UNSC are stressed.

However, it is beyond doubt that international anarchy has strengthened its grip over the world. While the US set destabilizing precedents after the crumbling of the Cold War that paved the way for the current anarchic situation, Russia further aggravated these degenerative trends through its invasion of Ukraine. Stepping back from anarchy has thus emerged as the prime challenge for the world community.