Features
Quality of medicinal drugs
by Geewananda Gunawardana Ph.D.
It is a relief to see that some actions are being taken to safeguard the nation’s medicinal drugs supply. Marking the World Antimicrobial Resistance Week, Health Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa stated that laws and regulations governing medicinal drugs must be strengthened. Seeing what has happened to the country’s drug supply in the recent past, that may come as an understatement. The half a billion-dollar question is whether the new administration will be effective in changing the system even if it has good intentions and political muscle. There are a few reg flags raised already. The reason for that doubt is that this problem is shrouded in mystery, presumed to be a subject that we mortals could not understand, a subject only accessible to a certain class of elite. This information gap makes finding a solution to this problem several orders of magnitudes harder than that for many other problems facing the country.
Our problems are not new. In the late nineteenth century, when a shrewd businessman started selling bottled stream water as a panacea, the American authorities saw the need for verifying and regulating medicinal products. That was the beginning of the US Food and Drug Administration. For better or for worse, the infamous human immunoglobulin fiasco when senior officials were caught passing bottled water has triggered Sri Lanka’s FDA moment. We had a system in place, but as the no confidence vote in the parliament highlighted, it had been callously disregarded with impunity for decades. This is not limited to the health sector but deep rooted in all institutions. The continued adoration of the main culprit after the fact shows our ingrained tendency to venerate the elite blindly no matter what harm they inflict. Change has arrived, but success is not guaranteed; we the public must continue to be vigilant.
Vulnerability of systems
The recent incident in which a crook swindled passports right in front of the junior minister highlights the vulnerability of our systems, the gaping information gap, and the extent of disregard for law and order. If a lawmaker can be blinded to a simple protocol, hoodwinking even a well-meaning expert in the field can be child’s play when it comes to drug safety. The process is so convoluted that the proverbial entering through one ear and coming out the other can be extended to any other pore. The decades of neglect and corruption in drug regulation necessitate an all-out war against the system; applying band-aids here and there will not work. Eliminating the information gap is a major step in that process.
There are three main functional areas of specialization involved in getting safe medications to the patients: discovery and development of a drug, diagnosis of the ailment and prescription of the drug, and dispensing the drug to the patient in the prescribed manner. The professionals involved are pharmaceutics experts, medical doctors, and pharmacists. Except in research settings that exist in drug discovery and development organizations, the interactions between the three disciplines stated above are limited. The most common exchange of information takes place through the salespeople of the drug manufacturers; there is no need to explain whose interest they have in mind. As a result, there exists an information gap. Many tend to take it for granted that the world’s drug supply is safe and efficacious; in fact, to the dismay of this writer, a person in a responsible position made a statement to that effect, recently. That would have been true in an ideal world.
The World Health Organization report (2017) estimates that 1 in 10 medicines in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified, and the losses incurred as a result is about $ 30.5 billion annually. According to another report (jamanetworkopen.2018.1685), the figures are higher: 13% substandard drugs and $200 billion in economic losses. No numbers are available for Sri Lanka, but the name of a former health minister should be sufficient to highlight the enormity of the problem, which is reprehensible by any human standards, to say the least.
It is obvious why the substandard drug manufactures target low-income countries and countries with corrupt systems: they are easy targets. We Sri Lankans have more reasons to be vigilant as there are vultures within the system hellbent on looting public funds with impunity and are ready and willing to collude with them. However, there are two powerful tested and proven approaches to curb all these evils. They are Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC). If properly administered, they do not leave any room for corruption within this process. However, the irregularities associated with purchasing practices must be dealt with separately.
The scientists that discover, develop, and bring drugs to market identify a set of qualities or attributes of drugs that must be maintained for them to be safe and efficacious. These requirements are known as specifications, and they include a list of tests to be performed on each drug, the analytical test procedures, and appropriate acceptance criteria, which are numerical limits, ranges, or other criteria for the tests described. All such information for all approved drugs is available through the drug manufacturers, approving agencies of the region, and international organizations such as WHO and the International Council for Harmonization (ICH). Following such guidance, these qualities of the drugs and any external factors that may affect them must be monitored and controlled throughout the life of the drug.
Two vital stages
This is done in two stages: quality assurance involves having all necessary precautions in place during manufacture, packaging, storage, distribution, and throughout the shelf life at the pharmacy and the patient’s home. Fortunately, the WHO has a programme for certifying manufacturers and suppliers that meet these stringent requirements. Any drug purchased must be accompanied by a certificate of analysis (CoA), which lists the required qualities, and the test results relevant to that specific lot of drugs. If the drug originates from a WHO certified manufacturer, the CoA is a document that can be trusted. Naturally, having such quality assurance measures is costly, and their products could be more expensive than those coming from uncertified manufacturers. The certificates of analyses originating from non-certified manufacturers require verification by the purchasing country. The verification process becomes much more difficult with injectables and vaccines. The quality control of ‘biologics’ requires special techniques. This is how the low-income countries get in trouble, by going for the least expensive suppliers of drugs.
Even under the best of conditions, things can go wrong, and subpar drugs can enter the system unintentionally. The objective of quality control, the second measure, is to assure that the manufactured product meets all the specifications throughout its life. Therefore, incorporation of a full-fledged quality control function to the system is necessary for ensuring the safety and efficacy of the drugs provided to the patient, not just when it leaves the manufacturing facility. Testing drug samples during the supplier selection process is a necessary step. However, an often-overlooked aspect of this practice is that the samples provided by non-certified manufacturers may not represent the bulk product supplied to the end users. Therefore, periodic testing of drugs circulating through the system is necessary to assure their quality.
Quality control involves performing a set of tests according to the specification set forth by the drug manufacturer in agreement with the approving regulatory agency of the region or country. These tests are various spectroscopic methods to test drug purity, potency, identity, and other critical characteristics. Once the drug is released by the manufacturer, the quality control function goes to the pharmacist, not the doctor nor the pharmaceutics scientist.
The quality control activity must be conducted in accordance with the current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) as described by international agencies like the ICH. An important feature of cGMP is that when implemented properly, it ensures data integrity, traceability, verifiability, and accountability. Almost all the test methods prescribed in specifications are now instrument based. There are hardly any wet chemistries involved as used in pharmacy practice at the turn of the century. As a result, the entire process can be digitalised. That is the system change we need to eliminate corruption. That is the way to bring in desperately needed transparency and accountability.
If the reader gets the impression that what was discussed above are new concepts to the Sri Lankan scene, they are mistaken. Hundreds, if not thousands, of laboratories in many countries are performing these tasks routinely safeguarding their drug supply. They manage to catch inadvertent manufacturing errors and prevent costly and damaging outcomes in a timely fashion. What went wrong in our country?
Bibile and Kottegoda
We have had concerned and forward-looking people like Professors Bibile and Kottegoda and many others who foresaw what was to come. It may come as a surprise, but all the laws and regulations that are necessary to assure the safety and efficacy of drugs exist in the books – the country’s rules and regulations. The facilities, people, and procedures are in place. However, things didn’t go as they expected. According to news reports, there is a shortage of pharmacists in the country. The agency’s labs are not only poorly equipped, but the existing equipment is inadequate and outdated. The agency has become a non-entity; if the fake immunoglobulin samples were tested for identity at a minimum, for example, the debacle that ensued could have been averted.
We must hold all three branches of the government responsible for the erosion of this institution; they have not done their job. They are expected to be independent bodies providing checks and balances. Somewhere along the way, they all got together and colluded to hoodwink us, the people. The situation we are in is no accident: besides the rampant corruption, Sri Lanka did not have a formal academic programme to train pharmacists until recently. Initial efforts to start pharmacy programmes were opposed by the medical profession. Why? Because they viewed it as a threat to their hierarchy in the system. The agency’s laboratories were not maintained at adequate levels because the politicians saw it as an impediment to their nefarious activities. Let us have no illusions that our government, all three branches, were responsible for creating the national ecosystem that made cGMP in state-owned organisations a complete mockery. We the people are responsible as well; after elections, we pay no attention to governance till the next election. If they throw some bones at us, we let them do what they wish. Ignorance reigns throughout.
Fortunately, things have changed favourably. The judiciary liberated itself from the political grip, people cleaned up the rotten politics as best they could. The new President has sent a stern signal that things will be different. He did not send his beloved mother to Singapore for treatment at taxpayer’s expense as previous rulers did. What else is missing? The role of one and a half million civil servants of the country. They have an enormous responsibility at this critical juncture not to let the word bureaucracy become another dirty word like the elite. They are the men and women, our relatives, friends, and colleagues who carry out the day-to-day business of the government. They are expected to be experts in their respective fields and perform their duties according to standard operating procedures without any political bias. The president or the 225 members of the parliament alone cannot run the country no matter how well-meaning their intentions are.
Power of people to make change
We the people have the power to replace the president and the members of the parliament, but we cannot hire or fire bureaucrats. Our system is such that they enjoy lifelong employment regardless of their performance. They get promoted and their pay increases automatically irrespective of their performance. This lack of responsibility is not sustainable. In addition, we must recognize the fact that due to our entrenched practice of political favoritism, some positions were filled with people who are not qualified to carry out their duties. That is not acceptable in any place, but in the drug safety business, which is a recipe for disaster. Therefore, we must recognize the administration’s right to retrain or replace those who do not meet their job descriptions, irrespective of their political affiliations, for the good of the country. That may be unpleasant, but that is the reality.
We must plan for building this expertise in the country. Pharmacy education in our universities must be expanded to include the pharmaceutics functions, especially the analytical aspects. The opportunity exists for the local manufacture of most widely used drugs. That will need expertise on many subjects at various levels. We must develop a culture that encourages innovation; there are many unmet needs as well as opportunities in this field. For example, there is the opportunity to bring Ayurvedic practices to the twenty-first century and add value. Health care is one of the largest industries consuming about 10% of the GDP of most developed countries.
There is no argument that we must procure our drugs from the most affordable sources. However, it must be kept in mind that they are less expensive due to cost-cutting measures taken by the manufacturers, and that could have implications for quality. Therefore, it is paramount that we maintain the integrity of the quality control functions at our end to assure the safety and efficacy of the drugs made available to the patients. This is especially important with the intravenous drugs as there is no room for error; once the drug is injected, there is no way to take it back. Investing in qualified personnel, training, and upgrading the agency’s testing capabilities could be negligible compared to the waste of funds spent on subpar drugs and the suffering they cause.
In one of India’s coldest and most remote regions, a group of women have taken on an unlikely role: protecting one of Asia’s most elusive predators, the snow leopard.
Snow leopards are found in just 12 countries across Central and South Asia. India is home to one of the world’s largest populations, with a nationwide survey in 2023 – the first comprehensive count ever carried out in the country – estimating more than 700 animals, .
One of the places they roam is around Kibber village in Himachal Pradesh state’s Spiti Valley, a stark, high-altitude cold desert along the Himalayan belt. Here, snow leopards are often called the “ghosts of the mountains”, slipping silently across rocky slopes and rarely revealing themselves.
For generations, the animals were seen largely as a threat, for attacking livestock. But attitudes in Kibber and neighbouring villages are beginning to shift, as people increasingly recognise the snow leopard’s role as a top predator in the food chain and its importance in maintaining the region’s fragile mountain ecosystem.
Nearly a dozen local women are now working alongside the Himachal Pradesh forest department and conservationists to track and protect the species, playing a growing role in conservation efforts.
Locally, the snow leopard is known as Shen and the women call their group “Shenmo”. Trained to install and monitor camera traps, they handle devices fitted with unique IDs and memory cards that automatically photograph snow leopards as they pass.
“Earlier, men used to go and install the cameras and we kept wondering why couldn’t we do it too,” says Lobzang Yangchen, a local coordinator working with a small group supported by the non-profit Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) in collaboration with the forest department.
Yangchen was among the women who helped collect data for Himachal Pradesh’s snow leopard survey in 2024, which found that the state was home to 83 snow leopards – up from 51 in 2021.
The survey documented snow leopards and 43 other species using camera traps spread across an area of nearly 26,000sq km (10,000sq miles). Individual leopards were identified by the unique rosette patterns on their fur, a standard technique used for spotted big cats. The findings are now feeding into wider conservation and habitat-management plans.
“Their contribution was critical to identifying individual animals,” says Goldy Chhabra, deputy conservator of forests with the Spiti Wildlife Division.
Collecting the data is demanding work. Most of it takes place in winter, when heavy snowfall pushes snow leopards and their prey to lower altitudes, making their routes easier to track.
On survey days, the women wake up early, finish household chores and gather at a base camp before travelling by vehicle as far as the terrain allows. From there, they trek several kilometres to reach camera sites, often at altitudes above 14,000ft (4,300m), where the thin air makes even simple movement exhausting.
The BBC accompanied the group on one such trek in December. After hours of walking in biting cold, the women suddenly stopped on a narrow trail.
Yangchen points to pugmarks in the dust: “This shows the snow leopard has been here recently. These pugmarks are fresh.”
Along with pugmarks, the team looks for other signs, including scrapes and scent‑marking spots, before carefully fixing a camera to a rock along the trail.
One woman then carries out a “walk test”, crawling along the path to check whether the camera’s height and angle will capture a clear image.
The group then moves on to older sites, retrieving memory cards and replacing batteries installed weeks earlier.
By mid-afternoon, they return to camp to log and analyse the images using specialised software – tools many had never encountered before.
“I studied only until grade five,” says Chhering Lanzom. “At first, I was scared to use the computer. But slowly, we learned how to use the keyboard and mouse.”
The women joined the camera-trapping programme in 2023. Initially, conservation was not their motivation. But winters in the Spiti Valley are long and quiet, with little agricultural work to fall back on.
“At first, this work on snow leopards didn’t interest us,” Lobzang says. “We joined because we were curious and we could earn a small income.”
The women earn between 500 ($5.46; £4) and 700 rupees a day.
But beyond the money, the work has helped transform how the community views the animal.
“Earlier, we thought the snow leopard was our enemy,” says Dolma Zangmo, a local resident. “Now we think their conservation is important.”
Alongside survey work, the women help villagers access government insurance schemes for their livestock and promote the use of predator‑proof corrals – stone or mesh enclosures that protect animals at night.
Their efforts come at a time of growing recognition for the region. Spiti Valley has recently been included in the Cold Desert Biosphere Reserve, a Unesco-recognised network aimed at conserving fragile ecosystems while supporting local livelihoods.
As climate change reshapes the fragile trans-Himalayan landscape, conservationists say such community participation will be crucial to safeguarding species like the snow leopard.
“Once communities are involved, conservation becomes more sustainable,” says Deepshikha Sharma, programme manager with NCF’s High Altitudes initiative.
“These women are not just assisting, they are becoming practitioners of wildlife conservation and monitoring,” she adds.
As for the women, their work makes them feel closer to their home, the village and the mountains that raised them, they say.
“We were born here, this is all we know,” Lobzang says. “Sometimes we feel afraid because these snow leopards are after all predatory animals, but this is where we belong.”
[BBC]
If elephants are truly to be given “freedom” in Udawalawe, the solution is not simply to open gates or redraw park boundaries. The map itself tells the real story — a story of shrinking habitats, broken corridors, and more than a decade of silent but relentless ecological destruction.
“Look at Udawalawe today and compare it with satellite maps from ten years ago,” says Sameera Weerathunga, one of Sri Lanka’s most consistent and vocal elephant conservation activists. “You don’t need complicated science. You can literally see what we have done to them.”
What we commonly describe as the human–elephant conflict (HEC) is, in reality, a land-use conflict driven by development policies that ignore ecological realities. Elephants are not invading villages; villages, farms, highways and megaprojects have steadily invaded elephant landscapes.
Udawalawe: From Landscape to Island
Udawalawe National Park was once part of a vast ecological network connecting the southern dry zone to the central highlands and eastern forests. Elephants moved freely between Udawalawe, Lunugamvehera, Bundala, Gal Oya and even parts of the Walawe river basin, following seasonal water and food availability.
Today, Udawalawe appears on the map as a shrinking green island surrounded by human settlements, monoculture plantations, reservoirs, electric fences and asphalt.
“For elephants, Udawalawe is like a prison surrounded by invisible walls,” Sameera explains. “We expect animals that evolved to roam hundreds of square nationakilometres to survive inside a box created by humans.”
Elephants are ecosystem engineers. They shape forests by dispersing seeds, opening pathways, and regulating vegetation. Their survival depends on movement — not containment. But in Udawalawa, movement is precisely what has been taken away.
Over the past decade, ancient elephant corridors have been blocked or erased by:
Irrigation and agricultural expansion
Tourism resorts and safari infrastructure
New roads, highways and power lines
Human settlements inside former forest reserves
Sameera
“The destruction didn’t happen overnight,” Sameera says. “It happened project by project, fence by fence, without anyone looking at the cumulative impact.”
The Illusion of Protection
Sri Lanka prides itself on its protected area network. Yet most national parks function as ecological islands rather than connected systems.
“We think declaring land as a ‘national park’ is enough,” Sameera argues. “But protection without connectivity is just slow extinction.”
Udawalawe currently holds far more elephants than it can sustainably support. The result is habitat degradation inside the park, increased competition for resources, and escalating conflict along the boundaries.
“When elephants cannot move naturally, they turn to crops, tanks and villages,” Sameera says. “And then we blame the elephant for being a problem.”
The Other Side of the Map: Wanni and Hambantota
Sameera often points to the irony visible on the very same map. While elephants are squeezed into overcrowded parks in the south, large landscapes remain in the Wanni, parts of Hambantota and the eastern dry zone where elephant density is naturally lower and ecological space still exists.
“We keep talking about Udawalawe as if it’s the only place elephants exist,” he says. “But the real question is why we are not restoring and reconnecting landscapes elsewhere.”
The Hambantota MER (Managed Elephant Reserve), for instance, was originally designed as a landscape-level solution. The idea was not to trap elephants inside fences, but to manage land use so that people and elephants could coexist through zoning, seasonal access, and corridor protection.
“But what happened?” Sameera asks. “Instead of managing land, we managed elephants. We translocated them, fenced them, chased them, tranquilised them. And the conflict only got worse.”
The Failure of Translocation
For decades, Sri Lanka relied heavily on elephant translocation as a conflict management tool. Hundreds of elephants were captured from conflict zones and released into national parks like Udawalawa, Yala and Wilpattu.
Elephant deaths
The logic was simple: remove the elephant, remove the problem.
The reality was tragic.
“Most translocated elephants try to return home,” Sameera explains. “They walk hundreds of kilometres, crossing highways, railway lines and villages. Many die from exhaustion, accidents or gunshots. Others become even more aggressive.”
Scientific studies now confirm what conservationists warned from the beginning: translocation increases stress, mortality, and conflict. Displaced elephants often lose social structures, familiar landscapes, and access to traditional water sources.
“You cannot solve a spatial problem with a transport solution,” Sameera says bluntly.
In many cases, the same elephant is captured and moved multiple times — a process that only deepens trauma and behavioural change.
Freedom Is Not About Removing Fences
The popular slogan “give elephants freedom” has become emotionally powerful but scientifically misleading. Elephants do not need symbolic freedom; they need functional landscapes.
Real solutions lie in:
Restoring elephant corridors
Preventing development in key migratory routes
Creating buffer zones with elephant-friendly crops
Community-based land-use planning
Landscape-level conservation instead of park-based thinking
“We must stop treating national parks like wildlife prisons and villages like war zones,” Sameera insists. “The real battlefield is land policy.”
Electric fences, for instance, are often promoted as a solution. But fences merely shift conflict from one village to another.
“A fence does not create peace,” Sameera says. “It just moves the problem down the line.”
A Crisis Created by Humans
Sri Lanka loses more than 400 elephants and nearly 100 humans every year due to HEC — one of the highest rates globally.
Yet Sameera refuses to call it a wildlife problem.
“This is a human-created crisis,” he says. “Elephants are only responding to what we’ve done to their world.”
From expressways cutting through forests to solar farms replacing scrublands, development continues without ecological memory or long-term planning.
“We plan five-year political cycles,” Sameera notes. “Elephants plan in centuries.”
The tragedy is not just ecological. It is moral.
“We are destroying a species that is central to our culture, religion, tourism and identity,” Sameera says. “And then we act surprised when they fight back.”
The Question We Avoid Asking
If Udawalawe is overcrowded, if Yala is saturated, if Wilpattu is bursting — then the real question is not where to put elephants.
The real question is: Where have we left space for wildness in Sri Lanka?
Sameera believes the future lies not in more fences or more parks, but in reimagining land itself.
“Conservation cannot survive as an island inside a development ocean,” he says. “Either we redesign Sri Lanka to include elephants, or one day we’ll only see them in logos, statues and children’s books.”
And the map will show nothing but empty green patches — places where giants once walked, and humans chose. roads instead.
By Ifham Nizam
SAARC or the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation has been declared ‘dead’ by some sections in South Asia and the idea seems to be catching on. Over the years the evidence seems to have been building that this is so, but a matter that requires thorough probing is whether the media in South Asia, given the vital part it could play in fostering regional amity, has had a role too in bringing about SAARC’s apparent demise.
That South Asian governments have had a hand in the ‘SAARC debacle’ is plain to see. For example, it is beyond doubt that the India-Pakistan rivalry has invariably got in the way, particularly over the past 15 years or thereabouts, of the Indian and Pakistani governments sitting at the negotiating table and in a spirit of reconciliation resolving the vexatious issues growing out of the SAARC exercise. The inaction had a paralyzing effect on the organization.
Unfortunately the rest of South Asian governments too have not seen it to be in the collective interest of the region to explore ways of jump-starting the SAARC process and sustaining it. That is, a lack of statesmanship on the part of the SAARC Eight is clearly in evidence. Narrow national interests have been allowed to hijack and derail the cooperative process that ought to be at the heart of the SAARC initiative.
However, a dimension that has hitherto gone comparatively unaddressed is the largely negative role sections of the media in the SAARC region could play in debilitating regional cooperation and amity. We had some thought-provoking ‘takes’ on this question recently from Roman Gautam, the editor of ‘Himal Southasian’.
Gautam was delivering the third of talks on February 2nd in the RCSS Strategic Dialogue Series under the aegis of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, at the latter’s conference hall. The forum was ably presided over by RCSS Executive Director and Ambassador (Retd.) Ravinatha Aryasinha who, among other things, ensured lively participation on the part of the attendees at the Q&A which followed the main presentation. The talk was titled, ‘Where does the media stand in connecting (or dividing) Southasia?’.
Gautam singled out those sections of the Indian media that are tamely subservient to Indian governments, including those that are professedly independent, for the glaring lack of, among other things, regionalism or collective amity within South Asia. These sections of the media, it was pointed out, pander easily to the narratives framed by the Indian centre on developments in the region and fall easy prey, as it were, to the nationalist forces that are supportive of the latter. Consequently, divisive forces within the region receive a boost which is hugely detrimental to regional cooperation.
Two cases in point, Gautam pointed out, were the recent political upheavals in Nepal and Bangladesh. In each of these cases stray opinions favorable to India voiced by a few participants in the relevant protests were clung on to by sections of the Indian media covering these trouble spots. In the case of Nepal, to consider one example, a young protester’s single comment to the effect that Nepal too needed a firm leader like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seized upon by the Indian media and fed to audiences at home in a sensational, exaggerated fashion. No effort was made by the Indian media to canvass more opinions on this matter or to extensively research the issue.
In the case of Bangladesh, widely held rumours that the Hindus in the country were being hunted and killed, pogrom fashion, and that the crisis was all about this was propagated by the relevant sections of the Indian media. This was a clear pandering to religious extremist sentiment in India. Once again, essentially hearsay stories were given prominence with hardly any effort at understanding what the crisis was really all about. There is no doubt that anti-Muslim sentiment in India would have been further fueled.
Gautam was of the view that, in the main, it is fear of victimization of the relevant sections of the media by the Indian centre and anxiety over financial reprisals and like punitive measures by the latter that prompted the media to frame their narratives in these terms. It is important to keep in mind these ‘structures’ within which the Indian media works, we were told. The issue in other words, is a question of the media completely subjugating themselves to the ruling powers.
Basically, the need for financial survival on the part of the Indian media, it was pointed out, prompted it to subscribe to the prejudices and partialities of the Indian centre. A failure to abide by the official line could spell financial ruin for the media.
A principal question that occurred to this columnist was whether the ‘Indian media’ referred to by Gautam referred to the totality of the Indian media or whether he had in mind some divisive, chauvinistic and narrow-based elements within it. If the latter is the case it would not be fair to generalize one’s comments to cover the entirety of the Indian media. Nevertheless, it is a matter for further research.
However, an overall point made by the speaker that as a result of the above referred to negative media practices South Asian regionalism has suffered badly needs to be taken. Certainly, as matters stand currently, there is a very real information gap about South Asian realities among South Asian publics and harmful media practices account considerably for such ignorance which gets in the way of South Asian cooperation and amity.
Moreover, divisive, chauvinistic media are widespread and active in South Asia. Sri Lanka has a fair share of this species of media and the latter are not doing the country any good, leave alone the region. All in all, the democratic spirit has gone well into decline all over the region.
The above is a huge problem that needs to be managed reflectively by democratic rulers and their allied publics in South Asia and the region’s more enlightened media could play a constructive role in taking up this challenge. The latter need to take the initiative to come together and deliberate on the questions at hand. To succeed in such efforts they do not need the backing of governments. What is of paramount importance is the vision and grit to go the extra mile.
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