Features

My time at Sussex University in the mid-1970s

Published

2 years ago

2024/08/4

Thilina Walpola

“Culture is like jam; the less you have, the more you spread”

by Jayantha Perera

The Central Bank of Ceylon had stringent forex laws and regulations in the seventies. In 1975, it approved 18 sterling pounds for me to take to England as a student and recorded the amount in my passport. The postgraduate studentship from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) of Sussex University paid my airfare, tuition fees, and living expenses.

I travelled to Karachi from Colombo on October 1. The connecting flight to London was delayed because the plane had engine troubles. I did not have money to make a call to IDS or ARTI about the delay. The plan was for someone from IDS to meet me at Falmer railway station (the nearest to the university) on October 2 in the afternoon.

Pakistan Airlines organised a city tour on the third day for the stranded travellers. I was amazed to see crowded public buses and thousands of pedestrians. At a bazaar, I bought a rosewood pipe and a small tobacco pouch for nine pounds. I visualised how professors at Peradeniya smoked their pipes at the senior common room. I wanted to be a mature, pipe-smoking Marxist scholar at Sussex, which was then known to be a hotbed of Socialists and Marxists.

On October 5, I landed at the Heathrow Airport, tired and disoriented. I remembered it was my father’s eighth death anniversary. I tried to imagine what he would have told me about England. For him, leaving home was a hazardous business. At least, initially, he would have opposed my going to England. He had set ideas of what was suitable for his four sons. He wanted me to study law. Once, I asked him jokingly whether it would be okay to marry after completing my first degree. He was shocked and said I had enough time to think about such matters and should study without “spoiling’ my mind. He blamed my mother for “corrupting” me.

There were several immigration officers on duty, and most of them looked like Indians or Pakistanis. The immigration officer wanted to know my sources of finance at Sussex. He read the studentship offer letter carefully and re-checked the UK visa on my passport. He politely told me to get a chest X-ray at the airport clinic.

At the customs, an officer wanted to know why I was visiting England. I told him about my postgraduate studies at Sussex. He inquired if I had any cooked food in my bag. When I told him I hadn’t, he smiled and said, “Usually, Asian students bring cooked fish, meat, and dried fruits.” I was hungry. I walked to a café and bought a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. (That was the first time I ate ham and drank cold milk from a carton.) I took a double-decker bus to Victoria Railway Station.

I reached London Central Bus Station at 3 pm. A uniformed bus conductor called a taxi and told the driver to drop me at the Victoria railway station. It was a very short ride. I asked the driver how much I owed him and showed him several coins. He carefully checked them, took a 50 pence coin, and said, “This is enough.”

The train to Brighton was an express train, and I could not believe a train could travel that fast. I saw a young woman pushing a trolley on the aisle. She served coffee, tea, and sandwiches. Passengers paid for the food they took from her. I wanted to buy a sandwich, but I did not because I had only a few pounds in my pocket. I needed that money to buy a train ticket from Brighton to Falmer.

The view from the train was breathtaking. I enjoyed the undulating landscape and the mild haze that enveloped distant low mountains and woods. They reminded me of the picturesque English villages I had seen in school English textbooks. Occasionally, I spotted sheep grazing in vast stretches of rolling land. Lines of old houses, narrow streets, and forests with glistening streams uplifted my spirit. I thought about my childhood and adolescence, especially my life after my father’s death. As the train rattled on, I found myself lost in a whirlwind of memories and emotions, each landscape outside the window triggering a new thought or feeling.

There was a connecting local train to Lewis from Brighton, and it reached Falmer railway station in about 20 minutes. When I got off the train, an elderly gentleman greeted me. He introduced himself as the station master. He took my suitcase and led me to a tiny room at the Station. I saw a jar of biscuits, a few slices of cake, a large flask, and two mugs on a small table. He wanted to know why I was late. I told him that the flight was delayed in Karachi. He offered me a slice of cake on a paper plate with a plastic fork and asked whether I wanted a cup of tea.

When I said, “Yes, please”, he asked me, “With or without sugar?” I said, “With sugar.” He pushed a container of white sugar cubes towards me. I asked him how many cubes to dissolve in the mug. He said two would be enough.

Then he said, “Oh, I am sorry. Would you like some milk with your tea?” I said, “Yes.” He opened a small packet of milk and poured a little into my tea mug, making tea lukewarm. I ate two slices of cake, and he then offered me a sizeable homemade chocolate biscuit from a jar in the room. He sat before me and said he was a young cadet at the Trincomalee Royal Air Force Base during World War II. He revisited Sri Lanka in the 1960s and stayed with his wife at the Galle Face Hotel for three nights before going to Trincomalee to see the Air Force base.

The station master accompanied me along the narrow path behind the Station to the Brighton-Lewis Highway. He advised me to cross the highway and read students’ graffiti on parapet walls. He waited until I crossed the road. I was thrilled to see the large graffiti on a parapet wall. One read –

‘Culture is like jam

the less you have,

the more you spread!’

I read the graffiti several times, stopping for a minute to absorb its meaning and context. It hinted that British culture was shallow. The British used force to deal with the people they met in the East or the West. China, which invented gunpowder, paper, the compass, and the printing press could have used such ‘weapons’ to conquer other people and build an empire, but they did not.

In five minutes, I reached the front entrance of the university. There was a Student Union kiosk. A student approached me, introduced himself, and welcomed me to the university. He offered me a cup of tea. I told him that I had just had tea at the railway station. Then, a man in a dark suit approached me and asked politely, “Are you Jayantha from Sri Lanka?” I smiled, and he introduced himself as Charlie and welcomed me to IDS. He was a porter at IDS. The stationmaster had phoned IDS to inform them of my arrival. Charlie opened a plastic bag, took out an old black overcoat, and asked me to wear it as it was getting cold. He carried my suitcase on his shoulder. We walked through the central court of the university. I could see the university’s motto – Be Still and Know – enshrined on the horizontal beam that connected two tall towers.

The IDS was a two-storied octagon-shaped building nestled in an undulating grassland that rose rapidly to form a thicket behind the university. Charlie introduced me to his colleagues and took me down to the cafeteria for a cup of tea. I ate a roll and drank a cup of hot chocolate. It reminded me of my mother, who gave me a hot cup of Ovaltine whenever I had a fever. Charlie paid the bill. He took me to the IDS Administrator’s office and told me to collect my suitcase from the porter’s office.

The Administrator was a charming man in his seventies with a disarming smile on his bearded face. He cordially hugged me for a minute or two and asked me, “How are you, son?” He told me he had spent a few weeks in Sri Lanka as a young army officer during the war. He opened a drawer, took out a brown envelope, and gave it to me, saying, “This is your stipend for the first term.” I felt happy and settled. He informed me I could stay at the IDS’ residential wing for two nights at the IDS’ expense. He invited me to dinner at the IDS cafeteria at 7 pm. I met Charlie downstairs, and he carried the suitcase to my suite.

The attached bathroom of the suite mesmerised me. It had a large bathtub and a beautiful wash basin with two taps. I opened one, and boiling water came gushing down; the other gave me ice-cold water. I plugged the washbasin drain and filled it with water from the two taps. I decided to drain water each time I rinse my mouth. I needed help with how to fill the bathtub or control the shower. I stepped out of the suite to get help and saw a tall old man with a beard at a fancy coffee machine in the corridor.

I asked him to show me how to operate the shower knobs to get hot water for a shower. He introduced himself as Dudley Seers, the former IDS director, and welcomed me to the IDS. I introduced myself and told him I had just arrived in the UK from Sri Lanka. He said that he was happy to meet me. He had many great memories of Sri Lanka, where, in the early 1970s, he led the ILO Employment and Development Mission. He remembered hot curries and aappa that he ate at roadside tea kiosks. He turned the knobs and showed me how to control cold and hot water.

I asked him how to operate the machine to get coffee. He inserted a coin, patiently played with several buttons, and produced a creamy coffee. It was different from the half glass of coffee my mother gave me, which had lots of sugar. He gave me two twenty-cent coins to get morning coffee from the machine.

Soon after I had a shower, there was a knock on the door. At the door was an old woman who introduced herself as the manager of the residential wing. She called me ‘my glamour,’ and I did not know how to respond. She smiled and told me she would return to take me down to dinner in an hour. Her sailor husband had visited Sri Lanka many times and once brought her a blue sapphire ring from Colombo.

I had a cold draft beer at the IDS bar, and it was like amurtha (nectar). I studied how the bartender siphoned beer into a large mug from a hidden barrel while debating with a customer on the British economy. The dinner was lavish. First, I had soup with bread and butter. This reminded me of issaraha kaema (a slice of bread served with a bowl of soup) at Sri Lankan weddings before lunch or dinner. I chose a steak covered with baked vegetables and fried onions. Then I had cheeses and crackers and, finally, a glass of Port.

The next day, I visited the Chairperson of the Sociology Department to introduce myself and to get the first term timetable. He sat behind a beautiful dark table. On it, there was a carved bamboo container with several pipes of different colours and shapes, neatly arranged according to their length. He asked me to sit down, picked a pipe, and fumbled with it without looking up. He then lighted his pipe and started smoking. His eyes got smaller, and I thought he was asleep, but he was awake. He welcomed me to the MA Sociology course and asked me about my preferred two courses for the term. I selected Marxist Sociology and Sociology of Development from the list he gave me. He was sad that I would not follow his course on European Radical Sociology, which focused on Jews and their persecution.

My principal teacher, Tom Bottomore, was a Marxist scholar. When I met him in his office room, I was overwhelmed by heavy pipe smoke. He was a friendly teacher. He told me he had spent time writing the well-known Sociology textbook for Indian students. He wore a thick tweed jacket with leather patches on his elbows. The other teacher was Prof Ron Dore, a development expert who published many books on Japan’s land reforms, city life, and industrial development. His famous book, ‘ Diploma Disease’, discussed the pitfalls of the traditional education system in Sri Lanka. He did not smoke. Once, he saw me smoking, and a few days later, when I visited him, he sarcastically remarked that pipe smoking is an emblem of the bourgeoisie, not the proletariat. Ron was the only IDS Fellow who did not profess Marxist thoughts.

By the end of the first term, I was well-adjusted to the university community, which was warm and friendly. Listening to debates over a pint of beer at the IDS bar in the evenings became my habit. I learned a lot from such debates and discussions. Two doctoral students from Sri Lanka often joined me at the bar. One of them, Newton, urged me to read Das Kapital as early as possible. It was a pleasure to listen to his stories and to watch how he explained complicated social theories with his fieldwork findings in the Kandyan countryside in Sri Lanka.

Tilak, the other doctoral student, told me to avoid visiting Brighton City on Sunday mornings. He said droves of ‘punks’ descended on the Brighton beach from London on Sundays, and the two piers were their favourite joints. They came in noisy motorcycles and wore dark denim jackets and silver chains. They had heavy boots with silver buckles. Their hairstyle, Tilak said, was short and coloured, which gave them the title of ‘punks.’ They were loud and carefree. He said that he had lived in an apartment not far from the Brighton Piers and avoided the town on Sundays.

I became curious about the punks and their subculture, which emerged in the 1970s in the UK. It was a youth subculture, and the youth wanted a cultural revolt and believed it was underway in the UK. People feared punks and thought that they would target, harass, and assault them. But punks were not hooligans or criminals. They demanded a cultural space for the youth to play a vital role in society. In this sense, the label ‘punk’ is for young people who want space to reimagine, discover, and challenge the society in which they are coming of age.

One Sunday morning, I went to Brighton Beach to see them. Around 10 am, I could hear motorcycles coming along the railway station road to the city’s heart. I counted 21 motorcycles, each carrying two punks. They parked their motorbikes and walked around shouting and laughing. One punk got knocked down by a car when he tried to cross the road recklessly. He was limping but refused to seek medical help.

Bands such as Sex Pistols and the Damned were popular in the UK in the 1970s. They gave punks some recognition and respect among the youth. Skirmishes with authorities were the centre pieces of the subculture that exposed chaos, ugliness, and outrage against the state in the 1970s. They showed anti-establishment sentiments and their desire for personal freedom. They hated hippies’ laid-back attitudes. Punks thought hippies who guided some youth in the 1960s to seek freedom just sat around and got high on drugs rather than getting out to act.

While settling down in England, I felt hidden and persisting ambivalence among some locals in Brighton towards towards South Asians. Once, at a small shop in Brighton, its owner told me that he would not sell anything to Asians, especially to Pakis. He thought I was a Pakistani. He felt I should live in my own country, not his country.

I thought he had expressed a general feeling among the English about Asians. An Indian friend at the university told me she had a similar experience at a bric-a-brac store in Brighton where the shopkeeper told her to “go home to your country. This is not your country.” When she ignored him, he became aggressive and started telling her rude jokes about Asian women, and my friend did not understand most of what he had said.

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Features

‘Lord Edgware Dies’

Published

2 days ago

2026/09/11

Thilina Walpola

It has been some time since I read an Agatha Christie, the plot of which I cannot remember. So, I was delighted to find on the shelves of a friend Lord Edgware Dies, which I had a vague memory of, but no certainty about who had done it.

When I read it, I found that my memory of who was probably the killer was correct, but I could not be certain and the red herrings Christie threw in were so diverting that until almost the very end I wondered if I had been wrong.

The plot is very simple. Jane Wilkinson, who is married to Lord Edgware, tells him that she is desperate for a divorce since she is in love with a very proper Anglo-Catholic peer, Lord Melton, but Edgware refuses to divorce her. She asks Poirot to talk to him, which he does, and is surprised to find that Edgware has told Jane he is prepared to give her a divorce. This was, after he had categorically refused, through a letter, which Jane said she had not received.

That night Edgware is murdered, after Jane had been to see him, or so the butler said, and also Edgware’s secretary. But Jane had been that evening at a grand dinner many miles away, where a dozen fellow guests could swear to her presence.

There was a solution however to the mystery of two Jane Wilkinsons, namely a skilful impersonator called Carlotta Adams who, in the opening chapter had impersonated Jane Wilkinson, who had also been at the performance. But when Poirot goes to see her, he finds that she had been found dead on the morning after Edgware had been killed, of an overdose. And in her bag was a gold case, with a strange inscription, that contained the drug, along with a pair of pince-nez.

Her maid said she had written a letter to her sister in America and posted it the previous night. Poirot asks Inspector Japp to get the letter, and a transcript is received from America, and in it the name of Edgware’s nephew Ronald Marsh is mentioned; he had taken Carlotta to dinner after her performance, with which the book opens, and had then set her a challenge. Japp arrests Marsh, but Poirot is not happy and asks for the original of the letter, which the sister sends him. That shows that a page is missing, and the tear is obvious, though that raises the question as to why it had not simply been cut.

Matters are further complicated by the fact that Marsh had gone in a taxi to the Edgware house, along with Edgware’s daughter Geraldine, in the interval of an opera which had previously seemed to provide them with cast iron alibis. Geraldine had gone in to fetch her pearls so that Marsh could raise money he needed, and thus had an opportunity to kill Edgware, as did Marsh, for the driver said he had got out of the taxi while waiting and gone into the house.

Agatha Christie

Marsh explained why he had gone to the house on the night of the murder as having followed Bryan Martin, an American actor, who had been in love with Jane, whom he saw go into the house with a key. But there was no one visible when he entered, and Geraldine almost immediately came down and they left together. And Martin too has become an object of suspicion to Poirot, for he had been to see him before the murders were discovered with a story of being followed by a man with a gold tooth – a story Poirot immediately realized was false when he was asked how old the man was, and was told he was young, for young people did not have gold teeth.

A heap of French money Edgware had got for a trip to Paris was missing, but since Marsh had no need for it after his cousin’s offer of help, Poirot deduces that it must have been taken by the butler, who has disappeared. Christie has stressed that he is astonishingly handsome, unusual in a butler, and Poirot notes a resemblance to Martin, so he thinks the mysterious man going into the house must have been him.

Incidentally, later Poirot assumes that Edgware’s change of mind was because he was involved in some scandal, and I believe Christie intends us to see the cause of this in his handsome butler, though this is not specified.

Meanwhile, Poirot has asked Japp to find out the provenance of the case found in Carlotta’s handbag, and it turns out to have been made in Paris, specially commissioned, and collected by a woman with pince-nez.

But then another murder occurs—that of another guest at the grand dinner, which provided Jane with her alibi. The victim is an actor who had been bemused when Jane, at a lunch, thought the Judgment of Paris referred to the city. He told Hastings he wanted to see Poirot, but was killed before he could get to the appointment. Poirot had rushed there when told about his request, but it was too late.

Meanwhile, Poirot has tried out the pince-nez on Edgware’s secretary, but she could not see through these. It was only a chance remark heard outside the theatre that led him to try them out on Wilkinson’s maid Ellis, a spare pair that had been appropriated for the night of the murders.

Poirot then lays things out, having summoned Martin and told him that he probably suppressed Edgware’s letter, as he had been dropped by then and he did not want Jane to marry another. But after teasing Martin, Poirot says that Jane was in fact the murderer, and she got Carlotta to impersonate her at the dinner while she went to the house and killed her husband. After meeting Carlotta later and checking with her through a call that she had not been rumbled, Jane had gone ahead with the murder – she put veronal into her drink and the case with veronal into the handbag. She forgot to take out the pince-nez she had used earlier to imitate an American. Carlotta had registered as the American in a hotel and Jane had gone to see her, and there they exchanged identities. After seen the letter, she made use of it by tearing off the page that referred to her, and the S of She, so that the person who had challenged Carlotta to impersonate her seemed to be a man.

There is a coda in which Jane, condemned to death, writes to Hastings, still full of pride at her ingenuity hoping she will be remembered.

Features

Desilt reservoirs, learn from our ancient irrigation systems

Published

2 days ago

2026/09/11

Thilina Walpola

Polgolla

by Prof. O. A. Ileperuma

Silting of reservoirs is a major problem today affecting our hydropower production and irrigation systems. The main Mahaweli reservoirs are silted to a considerable extent reducing the water holding capacity of them. Due to poor soil management practices, floodwaters deposit large amounts of silt in these reservoirs. When the Polgolla reservoir was fully drained about two years back, one could see mountains of silt in the lower reaches of the reservoir. A rough estimate is that 50% of the total capacity of these reservoirs has been lost to siltation. This is a serious issue which affects not only power and agriculture but also flood control.

Our ancient irrigation systems ensured that desilting of reservoirs took place under royal decree where all users of the reservoirs were ordered to carry out desilting of reservoirs during the dry season. The clay thus collected was used in making bricks for the construction of great stupas which dot the landscape of our ancient kingdoms. This ensured that the reservoirs had their full capacity filled with water for the next cultivating season. Our ancient kings were clever enough not to construct reservoirs by blocking main rivers such as the Mahaweli. A classic example is the Minipe left canal where they tapped only the surface water of Mahaweli. Even the bigger tanks such as Nuwara Wewa and Parakrama Samudraya were fed with minor rivulets. There were also other ingenious features in the cascade irrigation systems built by the ancient kings, such as mud sluice canals and forest reservations between the reservoirs in the cascade system. These reservations helped trap silt and remove excess nutrients, which could otherwise contribute to increasing salinity as water flowed from one reservoir to another.

: Parakrama Samudraya

: Kalawewa

: Kotmale

Victoria

Moragahakanda

A classic engineering marvel is the former Yoda Ela, which carries water from Kalawewa to Nuwara Wewa and Tissa Wewa. It is 87 km long although the straight distance between these points is only about 40 km. The gradient of this canal is about 10 cm per km or 6 inches per mile. Yodha Ela functions as a moving reservoir and feeds about 4,600 hectares of paddy lands. It is a winding canal with about 120 smaller reservoirs on its way. It was constructed during the reign of King Dhatusena around 459 AD and later expanded by King Parakramabahu by connecting more reservoirs to the network. Unfortunately, during the Mahaweli project our modern-day engineers constructed a concrete canal replacing the winding path of this Yoda Ela also called Jaya Ganga. This effectively removed the ability of the old Yoda Ela to remove silt and nutrients. The bank of this Ela has wet zone trees such as jak and areca nut growing well. They take up the nutrients from the flowing stream making the water suitable for irrigation later.

Ancient Mesopotamian civilisations depended on dams constructed along the two main rivers, Euphrates and Tigris. After continuous irrigation of their fields over several thousand years, salinity of the irrigated lands increased making them unsuitable for agriculture. People died due to famine and this clearly illustrates the danger of blocking main rivers for agriculture. There is scientific evidence that the salinity of paddy soils in the Mahaweli C area is increasing.

We saw the devastation caused by Cyclone Ditwah. The sluice gates of the Kotmale Reservoir were opened, and Kandy and Peradeniya were flooded. If the reservoir had had greater storage capacity, couldn’t the opening of the gates have been delayed? This may not be an argument that modern-day engineers would readily accept, and I am not an irrigation expert. These ideas may well be naïve. But most of us tend to think of reservoirs mainly in terms of hydropower generation and irrigation, while their role in flood control receives much less attention. The question therefore deserves serious consideration. Could restoring lost reservoir capacity through desilting help improve our ability to manage extreme rainfall and reduce flood risks?

Desilting our reservoirs should be considered a national priority.

Features

Losing out to Ethiopia

Published

2 days ago

2026/09/11

Thilina Walpola

From Trailblazer to Tailender

Export diversification – Missing the wood for the trees – Part III

by Gomi Senadhira

In Sri Lanka, the word “Ethiopia” is often used as disparaging slang to describe individuals or areas experiencing extreme poverty, starvation, or severe economic hardship. This linguistic habit originated in the 1980s with the Western media coverage of the devastating Ethiopian famine of 1983-85. That media coverage shocked the world but also left an outdated and offensive global stereotype that the country is permanently starving. Much has changed since then. By now, with an annual growth rate of around 9%, it is the fastest-growing economy in sub-Saharan Africa. Ethiopia has also emerged as a highly competitive exporter and is challenging not only its competitors in the region but also countries like Sri Lanka. This article is on how Sri Lanka has lost ground to Ethiopia (and a few other countries) in the GCC markets for agricultural and floricultural products.

Sri Lanka – A Pioneer in the Agriculture and Floricultural Market in the GCC

As discussed in Part II of this article, by the mid-1980s Sri Lanka had established a strong foothold in the GCC’s fruit, vegetable, and floricultural market. Geographical proximity and well-established shipping and air links gave Sri Lanka a strong comparative advantage over Southeast Asian and African nations. Thailand, Vietnam, and Kenya were not even in the market. At that time, Ethiopia was experiencing (as BBC news reports described) “a biblical famine”.

The market was not very large, but it was lucrative and growing. Trade Minister Lalith Athulathmudali as well as the Chairman of the Export Development Board, Victor Santiapillai, who visited Kuwait (and the GCC countries), recognised the market potential for these products and encouraged us to continue with our work. The minister was particularly keen to further develop links between the market for these products, exporters, and his Export Production Villages (EPVs). So, it was becoming a successful case not only for export diversification but also for transferring gains from exports directly to rural households.

From Trailblazer to Tailender

As a result, even by the beginning of this century Sri Lanka had a larger market share than most of its competitors from Asia or Africa. But since then, our competitiveness has weakened significantly. The tables below provide a comparative snapshot of Sri Lanka’s performance vis-à-vis Thailand, Vietnam, Kenya and Ethiopia in the GCC market for vegetables, fruits and floricultural products. As illustrated therein, in 2001 Sri Lanka was ahead of Thailand, Kenya and Ethiopia in this small but rapidly growing market. Since then, we have fallen behind Thailand, Kenya and many other countries in that lucrative market. If this trend continues, Sri Lanka will fall behind Ethiopia within the next few years. (See Table 1)

In the GCC market for vegetables (covered in HS chapter 07), Sri Lanka was ahead of most other competitors in 2001. As illustrated in Table 1 , Sri Lanka had failed to develop this market, while Thailand, Kenya, and even Ethiopia had very efficiently increased their market shares. The GCC is a market to which Sri Lanka can supply some vegetables, like cabbages, by sea. It appears Sri Lanka had also failed to exploit this mode of supply.

We can see a similar trend in the market for fruits. Vietnam, Kenya, and Thailand have emerged as major players, while exports from Sri Lanka have staggered on slowly. In this segment, Vietnam has emerged as a leading player during the last twenty years and the GCC imports from Viet Nam have shot up from US$44 thousand in 2001 to US$346 million by 2024. In part one of these articles, I discussed the remarkable increase of jackfruit exports from Vietnam “…just $3 million in 2015 to an impressive $236.8 million in 2023” while most of our jackfruit production rots under the trees. This explains how countries develop their markets, geographically and product-wise. (See Table 2)

Sri Lanka’s performance has been weakest in the market for floricultural products (HS Chapter 06), which groups live trees, cut flowers, and ornamental foliage. When we first entered the market in the 1980s, the market was dominated by the Netherlands, and Kenya and Ethiopia were not even in the market. At that time, we identified the Gulf states as a market where Sri Lanka could have a dominant presence due to geographical proximity. Even in 2001, Sri Lanka was ahead of Kenya, Ethiopia, and Thailand. But by now, Kenya has emerged as the dominant supplier. Ethiopia is also expanding its market share and is the third-largest exporter. (See Table 3)

Missing the Wood for the Trees

In the mid-1980s, Sri Lanka first established its foothold in the GCC market. Since then, Thailand, Vietnam, Kenya, and even Ethiopia have moved well ahead of us and have become leading players. Why did we lag behind in our export diversification efforts in general and, more particularly, in the GCC market?

The reasons are very clear. After the initial attempts in the 1980s and early 1990s, Sri Lanka has not been proactively involved in identifying, developing, and promoting new products and markets, or protecting and further developing new markets already established. The focus has simply been on traditional exports: tea, coconut, cinnamon, and garments, while other products were almost ignored. In essence, we have been and continue to focus intensely on a narrow group of products and markets, and we have lost sight of the bigger picture.

(The writer can be reached at senadhiragomi@gmail.com)