Features

The Aftermath of Empire – Reappraisal and Reconciliation (Part 1)

Published

5 years ago

2021/03/7

by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe*

*The author is an Honorary Professor at the University of Buckingham, UK, at the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, and also at the National Institute of Fundamental Studies in Sri Lanka.

He was a former Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, Staff Member of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, and former Professor at Cardiff University. He is a pioneer of the discipline of Astrobiology and the author of over 450 scientific papers and some 35 books.

In our post-colonial modern world, the restoration of unity and harmony in our ethnically diverse multicultural polities stands out as an important priority. However, we have another task we cannot neglect – to explore and sift the enormous treasures of ancient wisdom and knowledge that have come to light following a long colonial history. An impartial assessment of competing paradigms would be of crucial importance for progress.

The British Empire finally ended in India in 1947, and a year later in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Its legacy – including the use of the English language pervades the modern world. But we also see many unresolved conflicts – conflicts between races in our newly generated polities, as well as clashes between competing paradigms. This article will explore a personal perspective of the decolonisation process focussing in particular on the Indian subcontinent. In this context it is relevant to declare my own personal background. I am very much a part of the British Empire, having grown up in the crown colony of Ceylon during the twilight years of the Raj. I went to a school (Royal College Colombo) that was modelled on Eton, learning Greek and Latin, but regretfully less of my own native mother tongue and culture. My early upbringing epitomises what the Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus (AD56-120) famously said of conquered people – that they readily adopt novelties of the conqueror’s ‘civilization’ whilst in fact they were adopting features of their own enslavement.

Two generations of my ancestors have epitomised this connection. My paternal grandfather Dionicious Lionel had worked in the office of the Governor General Sir Reginald Edward Stubbs for which he was later honoured with the title Mohandirum. My father Percival Herbert**, who was a Cambridge-trained mathematician obtaining the highest distinctions in the Mathematical Tripos in the 1930’s (being taught by Sir Arthur Eddington), went on to become an Indian Civil Servant with his first posting as “Deputy Collector of Customs” in the Bihar state in India. With such a background and education a more colonially-oriented upbringing could not be imagined. To cap it all my arrival in Cambridge in 1960 and the start of my long career as an astronomer and astrobiologist in the UK began with the award of a Commonwealth Scholarship, a scholarship scheme that was presumably launched as part of a process of post-colonial atonement. However, the process of decolonisation at a much deeper level, which involves accommodation and acceptance of a diversity of races as well as ideas has still a long way to go.

Injustices of Empire

British rule in India has been variously described as benevolent and generous on one the one hand, and replete with cruelty, plunder and pillage on the other. The truth lies somewhere in between. However, the evidence of cruelty, of punitive taxation and concerted attempts at de-industrialising of India throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries abound.

In the pursuance of purely commercial objectives the British administration in India has carried out many acts of violence and cruelty that in modern times would be deemed violations of human rights and crimes against humanity. These include the extraction of punitive taxation from the population of Bengal during two major famines that led to the deaths of millions of people. There was also the deliberated flooding of rice paddy fields in the coastal plains of Ceylon rendering the land unsuitable for paddy cultivation, done it would seem for the sole purpose of enhancing demand for the Empire’s new rice plantations in Burma; and the illegal sale of opium to China leading to addiction and great distress. The impoverished state of the subcontinent when the British finally left India in 1947 was at least in part due the imperial encounter of the preceding 3 centuries.

In my view, one of the most regrettable aspects of colonial rule both in India and Sri Lanka was its implementation of a policy of divide and rule – divide et impera (one that has been originally attributed to the father of Alexander the Great – Emperor Phillip II of Macedon (359-366BC)). The effect of imposing such a policy was to make it easier for the British to rule a religiously and ethnically diverse group of subjects; but on their eventual departure it undoubtedly contributed to many tragic events. The partition of India and its regrettable fallout had roots in the divide et impera policy, as did the ethnic conflicts that erupted between the Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka in the 1980’s.

Deep History of Empire

Empires in one form or other have existed throughout the history of human civilization. It is a process of colonisation that probably started in the fertile valleys of Mesopotamia and the Indus region over four thousand years ago. The formation of empires has always brought far-flung peoples and races together under a common banner, and this contributed to the spread of technological and intellectual discoveries over ever larger parts of the globe. But these advantages were often gained at the expense of much hardship and suffering, a feature that tends to go unnoticed in the euphoria of triumphant victories and achievement. We all know that in the recent history of empire, which included genocide, slavery and racism, amongst other evils, there is a great deal that is to be regretted. There is also much to be celebrated. I would not be writing this article in English if it was not for the British Raj that had once coloured a third of the world in its red vermilion hue and dominated world history for at least four centuries (Fig.1).

The British Empire and its European counterparts can all trace their cultural ancestry back to the Roman Empire that had dominated for a full millennium, and before that to the city states of classical Greece – “The glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome”. Beyond this point in history our westernised collective cultural memory conveniently begins to falter. What about the Persian Empire that preceded the Greeks, and the Mesopotamian and Indus Valley civilisations in the preceding two millennia? It was these most ancient civilizations that had indep0endently laid down the framework for mathematics, science as well as literature.

This is the point at which a Eurocentric culture with its built-in prejudices begin to assert itself most stridently.

Unravelling of Ancient wisdom

There is now little doubt that the Babylonians knew Pythagoras’s theorem and had even invented calculus by at least the 2^nd millennium BCE. These were probably used as tools both for their development of city planning, surveying and engineering, as well as in nurturing their interest in astronomy. The Indians and the Indus valley civilizations of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa at about the same time bear a similar testimony to a highly sophisticated scientific culture that included the invention of the so-called Hindu number system with concepts of zero and infinity, both of which were crucial for the later flourishing of mathematics. Throughout the middle ages, long after the collapse of the Roman Empire, the cumbersome system of Roman numerals continued to be used throughout Europe for arithmetic as well as for accounts for purely chauvinistic reasons. When the far better ancient system of Hindu numerals came to be discovered in Europe the reluctance to switch to this system is well documented.

The Arab mathematician Al-Khwarizmi in the 9th century was among the first to use Hindu numerals but it took over two centuries before translations of his work appeared in Europe. The great advantages of the new number system very slowly dawned on European mathematicians, although it was not until the 16th century when the Hindu numerals (renamed Hindu-Arabic numerals) completely replaced the old Roman numeral system. The delay in the transition was undoubtedly connected with a deep-rooted suspicion of the alien non-Christian pagan culture from which the system had emanated.

Trade and culture

After the start of the British East India Company in 1600CE a deeper knowledge of the ancient civilization of the subcontinent began to slowly dawn. The intellectual responses to this West-East encounter varied with time. The British colonisers and traders were initially surprised to find the Moghul empire of India far richer and more sophisticated than they might ever have imagined. Throughout the 17^th and 18^th centuries the technological difference between India and Britain was minimal. Moreover, the economy of India based on its long-established supremacy in cloth weaving, combined with a thriving steel and ship-building industries, made India among the richest countries of the world.

There can be no doubt that Britain’s trade with India over the next two centuries served to greatly increase its own prosperity at home. The planned demolition of the centuries-old cloth weaving industry in Bengal (allegedly including the chopping off of the weaver’s thumbs) was directly connected with the growth of similar industries in the north of England in the 18^th century.

The development of an intellectual culture that was centred around Coffee houses (and later Tea houses) in London was also directly the result of the tea and coffee trade with India and later Ceylon. But despite all the beneficial developments that followed from Empire, responses to the encounter between Britain and India remained fraught with a deep sense of ambivalence. It was clear that Britain was dealing with an exceedingly sophisticated and very ancient civilization – albeit in straightened circumstances – one that was considerably older than any in the West. And this fact remained very difficult to admit and come to terms with.

Unravelling the treasures of Sanskrit

The realisation of the great literary and cultural heritage of the Indian subcontinent began to fully dawn through the work of the British Orientalist and Philologist Sir William Jones who arrived in Calcutta in March 1783 to take up a post as Judge in the Supreme Court of India. Besides quickly mastering Sanskrit and assiduously translating a vast body of ancient Indian literature, Jones as a philologist unravelled the ancestral relationship between Sanskrit several European languages of later date including Greek and Latin. His work is seen today as the starting point of comparative linguistics and the birth of the idea of an Indo-European family of languages. The genres of Sanskrit literature that were unravelled by Jones included epic poetry, drama, history that in its total volume far exceeds the combined content of the surviving Greek and Latin literature of Europe.

The European colonial rulers at this time found it exceedingly difficult to accept that their own languages and literature had any ancestral debt to any language that belonged to the dark-skinned people of the subcontinent, people who in their view were only fit to be servants and slaves. Although this sounds a harsh indictment today it remains a fact and one that we have to grasp.

William Jones founded the Asiatic Society on 15 January 1784 (later to become “The Royal Asiatic Society”) based in structure on the Royal Society of London. Its declared aim was ‘…….the investigation of subjects connected with, and for the encouragement of science, literature and the Arts in relation to Asia’. It perhaps came as no surprise that native Sanskrit scholars were initially excluded from membership of the society, a society that was ostensibly dedicated to unravelling their own indigenous intellectual culture and traditions! This constraint was lifted in later years but the racist overtones of the entire venture became clear at the outset and echoes of it rumbled long after.

A more recent shock to Eurocentric pride came in 1905 with the discovery in India of a Sanskrit text dating back to the 3^rd century BCE dealing with statecraft which was amazingly similar in spirit and content to Niccolo Machiavelli’s classic work “The Prince” published in the 16^th century of the common era. This was Kautiliya’s Arthashastra which was a comprehensive treatise on how a king should rule so as to enlarge his empire and his treasury as well as to bring happiness to his subjects. In one memorable statement Kautiliya recommends scrutiny of accounts supplied by his staff because: “Just as it is impossible to know when a swimming fish is drinking water, so it is impossible to find out when a government servant is stealing money”. This book that predated Machiavelli by nearly two millennia was a bitter pill for Western scholars to swallow. But the lesson to be learnt from the experience of Empire became clear – that no single polity or civilization can claim a monopoly of intellectual attainments of any kind.

(To be continued)

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Features

Making ‘Sinhala Studies’ globally relevant

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/16

Thilina Walpola

On 8 January 2026, I delivered a talk at an event at the University of Colombo marking the retirement of my longtime friend and former Professor of Sinhala, Ananda Tissa Kumara and his appointment as Emeritus Professor of Sinhala in that university. What I said has much to do with decolonising social sciences and humanities and the contributions countries like ours can make to the global discourses of knowledge in these broad disciplines. I have previously discussed these issues in this column, including in my essay, ‘Does Sri Lanka Contribute to the Global Intellectual Expansion of Social Sciences and Humanities?’ published on 29 October 2025 and ‘Can Asians Think? Towards Decolonising Social Sciences and Humanities’ published on 31 December 2025.

At the recent talk, I posed a question that relates directly to what I have raised earlier but drew from a specific type of knowledge scholars like Prof Ananda Tissa Kumara have produced over a lifetime about our cultural worlds. I do not refer to their published work on Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit languages, their histories or grammars; instead, their writing on various aspects of Sinhala culture. Erudite scholars familiar with Tamil sources have written extensively on Tamil culture in this same manner, which I will not refer to here.

To elaborate, let me refer to a several essays written by Professor Tissa Kumara over the years in the Sinhala language: 1) Aspects of Sri Lankan town planning emerging from Sinhala Sandesha poetry; 2) Health practices emerging from inscriptions of the latter part of the Anuradhapura period; 3) Buddhist religious background described in inscriptions of the Kandyan period; 4) Notions of aesthetic appreciation emerging from Sigiri poetry; 5) Rituals related to Sinhala clinical procedures; 6) Customs linked to marriage taboos in Sinhala society; 7) Food habits of ancient and medieval Lankans; and 8) The decline of modern Buddhist education. All these essays by Prof. Tissa Kumara and many others like them written by others remain untranslated into English or any other global language that holds intellectual power. The only exceptions would be the handful of scholars who also wrote in English or some of their works happened to be translated into English, an example of the latter being Prof. M.B. Ariyapala’s classic, Society in Medieval Ceylon.

The question I raised during my lecture was, what does one do with this knowledge and whether it is not possible to use this kind of knowledge profitably for theory building, conceptual and methodological fine-tuning and other such essential work mostly in the domain of abstract thinking that is crucially needed for social sciences and humanities. But this is not an interest these scholars ever entertained. Except for those who wrote fictionalised accounts such as unsubstantiated stories on mythological characters like Rawana, many of these scholars amassed detailed information along with their sources. This focus on sources is evident even in the titles of many of Prof. Tissa Kumara’s work referred to earlier. Rather than focusing on theorising or theory-based interpretations, these scholars’ aim was to collect and present socio-cultural material that is inaccessible to most others in society including people like myself. Either we know very little of such material or are completely unaware of their existence. But they are important sources of our collective history indicating what we are where we have come from and need to be seen as a specific genre of research.

In this sense, people like Prof. Tissa Kumara and his predecessors are human encyclopedias. But the knowledge they produced, when situated in the context of global knowledge production in general, remains mostly as ‘raw’ information albeit crucial. The pertinent question now is what do we do with this information? They can, of course, remain as it is. My argument however is this knowledge can be a serious source for theory-building and constructing philosophy based on a deeper understanding of the histories of our country and of the region and how people in these areas have dealt with the world over time.

Most scholars in our country and elsewhere in the region believe that the theoretical and conceptual apparatuses needed for our thinking – clearly manifest in social sciences and humanities – must necessarily be imported from the ‘west.’ It is this backward assumption, but specifically in reference to Indian experiences on social theory, that Prathama Banerjee and her colleagues observe in the following words: “theory appears as a ready-made body of philosophical thought, produced in the West …” As they further note, in this situation, “the more theory-inclined among us simply pick the latest theory off-the-shelf and ‘apply’ it to our context” disregarding its provincial European or North American origin, because of the false belief “that “‘theory’ is by deﬁnition universal.” What this means is that like in India, in countries like ours too, the “relationship to theory is dependent, derivative, and often deeply alienated.”

In a somewhat similar critique in his 2000 book, Provincialising Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference Dipesh Chakrabarty points to the limitations of Western social sciences in explaining the historical experiences of political modernity in South Asia. He attempted to renew Western and particularly European thought “from and for the margins,” and bring in diverse histories from regions that were marginalised in global knowledge production into the mainstream discourse of knowledge. In effect, this means making histories of countries like ours relevant in knowledge production.

The erroneous and blind faith in the universality of theory is evident in our country too whether it is the unquestioned embrace of modernist theories and philosophies or their postmodern versions. The heroes in this situation generally remain old white men from Marx to Foucault and many in between. This indicates the kind of unhealthy dependence local discourses of theory owe to the ‘west’ without any attempt towards generating serious thinking on our own.

In his 2002 essay, ‘Dismal State of Social Sciences in Pakistan,’ Akbar Zaidi points out how Pakistani social scientists blindly apply imported “theoretical arguments and constructs to Pakistani conditions without questioning, debating or commenting on the theory itself.” Similarly, as I noted in my 2017 essay, ‘Reclaiming Social Sciences and Humanities: Notes from South Asia,’ Sri Lankan social sciences and humanities have “not seriously engaged in recent times with the dominant theoretical constructs that currently hold sway in the more academically dominant parts of the world.” Our scholars also have not offered any serious alternate constructions of their own to the world without going crudely nativistic or exclusivist.

This situation brings me back to the kind of knowledge that scholars like Prof. Tissa Kumara have produced. Philosophy, theory or concepts generally emerge from specific historical and temporal conditions. Therefore, they are difficult to universalise or generalise without serious consequences. This does not mean that some ideas would not have universal applicability with or without minor fine tuning. In general, however, such bodies of abstract knowledge should ideally be constructed with reference to the histories and contemporary socio-political circumstances

from where they emerge that may have applicability to other places with similar histories. This is what Banerjee and her colleagues proposed in their 2016 essay, ‘The Work of Theory: Thinking Across Traditions’. This is also what decolonial theorists such as Walter Mignolo, Enrique Dussel and Aníbal Quijano have referred to as ‘decolonizing Western epistemology’ and ‘building decolonial epistemologies.’

My sense is, scholars like Prof. Tissa Kumara have amassed at least some part of such knowledge that can be used for theory-building that has so far not been used for this purpose. Let me refer to two specific examples that have local relevance which will place my argument in context. Historian and political scientist Benedict Anderson argued in his influential 1983 book, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism that notions of nationalism led to the creation of nations or, as he calls them, ‘imagined communities.’ For him, unlike many others, European nation states emerged in response to the rise of ‘nationalism’ in the overseas European settlements, especially in the Western Hemisphere. But it was still a form of thinking that had Europe at its center.

Comparatively, we can consider Stephen Kemper’s 1991 book, The Presence of the Past: Chronicles, Politics, and Culture in Sinhala Life where the American anthropologist explored the ways in which Sinhala ‘national’ identity evolved over time along with a continual historical consciousness because of the existence of texts such as Mahawamsa. In other words, the Sinhala past manifests with social practices that have continued from the ancient past among which are chronicle-keeping, maintaining sacred places, and venerating heroes.

In this context, his argument is that Sinhala nationalism predates the rise of nationalist movements in Europe by over a thousand years, thereby challenging the hegemonic arguments such as those of Anderson, Ernest Gellner, Elie Kedourie and others who link nationalism as a modern phenomenon impacted by Europe in some way or another. Kemper was able to come to his interpretation by closely reading Lankan texts such as Mahawamsa and other Pali chronicles and more critically, theorizing what is in these texts. Such interpretable material is what has been presented by Prof. Tissa Kumara and others, sans the sing.

Similarly, local texts in Sinhala such as kadaim poth’ and vitti poth, which are basically narratives of local boundaries and descriptions of specific events written in the Dambadeniya and Kandyan periods are replete with crucial information. This includes local village and district boundaries, the different ethno-cultural groups that lived in and came to settle in specific places in these kingdoms, migratory events, wars and so on. These texts as well as European diplomatic dispatches and political reports from these times, particularly during the Kandyan period, refer to the cosmopolitanism in the Kandyan kingdom particularly its court, the military, town planning and more importantly the religious tolerance which even surprised the European observers and latter-day colonial rulers. Again, much of this comes from local sources or much less focused upon European dispatches of the time.

Scholars like Prof. Tissa Kumara have collected this kind of information as well as material from much older times and sources. What would the conceptual categories, such as ethnicity, nationalism, cosmopolitanism be like if they are reinterpreted or cast anew through these histories, rather than merely following their European and North American intellectual and historical slants which is the case at present? Among the questions we can ask are, whether these local idiosyncrasies resulted from Buddhism or local cultural practices we may not know much about at present but may exist in inscriptions, in ola leaf manuscripts or in other materials collected and presented by scholars such as Prof. Tissa Kumara.

For me, familiarizing ourselves with this under- and unused archive and employing them for theory-building as well as for fine-tuning what already exists is the main intellectual role we can play in taking our cultural knowledge to the world in a way that might make sense beyond the linguistic and socio-political borders of our country. Whether our universities and scholars are ready to attempt this without falling into the trap of crude nativisms, be satisfied with what has already been collected, but is untheorized or if they would rather lackadaisically remain shackled to ‘western’ epistemologies in the sense articulated by decolonial theorists remains to be seen.

Features

Extinction in isolation: Sri Lanka’s lizards at the climate crossroads

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/16

Thilina Walpola

Climate change is no longer a distant or abstract threat to Sri Lanka’s biodiversity. It is already driving local extinctions — particularly among lizards trapped in geographically isolated habitats, where even small increases in temperature can mean the difference between survival and disappearance.

Cnemaspis rajakarunai (Adult Male), Salgala, Kegalle District (In a communal egg laying site)

According to research by Buddhi Dayananda, Thilina Surasinghe and Suranjan Karunarathna, Sri Lanka’s narrowly distributed lizards are among the most vulnerable vertebrates in the country, with climate stress intensifying the impacts of habitat loss, fragmentation and naturally small population sizes.

Isolation Turns Warming into an Extinction Trap

Sri Lanka’s rugged topography and long geological isolation have produced extraordinary levels of reptile endemism. Many lizard species are confined to single mountains, forest patches or rock outcrops, existing nowhere else on Earth. While this isolation has driven evolution, it has also created conditions where climate change can rapidly trigger extinction.

“Lizards are especially sensitive to environmental temperature because their metabolism, activity patterns and reproduction depend directly on external conditions,” explains Suranjan Karunarathna, a leading herpetologist and co-author of the study. “When climatic thresholds are exceeded, geographically isolated species cannot shift their ranges. They are effectively trapped.”

The study highlights global projections indicating that nearly 40 percent of local lizard populations could disappear in coming decades, while up to one-fifth of all lizard species worldwide may face extinction by 2080 if current warming trends persist.

: Cnemaspis_gunawardanai (Adult Female), Pilikuttuwa, Gampaha District

: Cnemaspis_ingerorum (Adult Male), Sithulpauwa, Hambantota District

: Cnemaspis_hitihamii (Adult Female), Maragala, Monaragala District

: Cnemaspis_gunasekarai (Adult Male), Ritigala, Anuradapura District

: Cnemaspis_dissanayakai (Adult Male), Dimbulagala, Polonnaruwa District

: Cnemaspis_kandambyi (Adult Male), Meemure, Matale District

Heat Stress, Energy Loss and Reproductive Failure

Rising temperatures force lizards to spend more time in shelters to avoid lethal heat, reducing their foraging time and energy intake. Over time, this leads to chronic energy deficits that undermine growth and reproduction.

“When lizards forage less, they have less energy for breeding,” Karunarathna says. “This doesn’t always cause immediate mortality, but it slowly erodes populations.”

Repeated exposure to sub-lethal warming has been shown to increase embryonic mortality, reduce hatchling size, slow post-hatch growth and compromise body condition. In species with temperature-dependent sex determination, warming can skew sex ratios, threatening long-term population viability.

“These impacts often remain invisible until populations suddenly collapse,” Karunarathna warns.

Tropical Species with No Thermal Buffer

The research highlights that tropical lizards such as those in Sri Lanka are particularly vulnerable because they already live close to their physiological thermal limits. Unlike temperate species, they experience little seasonal temperature variation and therefore possess limited behavioural or evolutionary flexibility to cope with rapid warming.

“Even modest temperature increases can have severe consequences in tropical systems,” Karunarathna explains. “There is very little room for error.”

Climate change also alters habitat structure. Canopy thinning, tree mortality and changes in vegetation density increase ground-level temperatures and reduce the availability of shaded refuges, further exposing lizards to heat stress.

Narrow Ranges, Small Populations

Many Sri Lankan lizards exist as small, isolated populations restricted to narrow altitudinal bands or specific microhabitats. Once these habitats are degraded — through land-use change, quarrying, infrastructure development or climate-driven vegetation loss — entire global populations can vanish.

“Species confined to isolated hills and rock outcrops are especially at risk,” Karunarathna says. “Surrounding human-modified landscapes prevent movement to cooler or more suitable areas.”

Even protected areas offer no guarantee of survival if species occupy only small pockets within reserves. Localised disturbances or microclimatic changes can still result in extinction.

Climate Change Amplifies Human Pressures

The study emphasises that climate change will intensify existing human-driven threats, including habitat fragmentation, land-use change and environmental degradation. Together, these pressures create extinction cascades that disproportionately affect narrowly distributed species.

“Climate change acts as a force multiplier,” Karunarathna explains. “It worsens the impacts of every other threat lizards already face.”

Without targeted conservation action, many species may disappear before they are formally assessed or fully understood.

Science Must Shape Conservation Policy

Researchers stress the urgent need for conservation strategies that recognise micro-endemism and climate vulnerability. They call for stronger environmental impact assessments, climate-informed land-use planning and long-term monitoring of isolated populations.

“We cannot rely on broad conservation measures alone,” Karunarathna says. “Species that exist in a single location require site-specific protection.”

The researchers also highlight the importance of continued taxonomic and ecological research, warning that extinction may outpace scientific discovery.

A Vanishing Evolutionary Legacy

Sri Lanka’s lizards are not merely small reptiles hidden from view; they represent millions of years of unique evolutionary history. Their loss would be irreversible.

“Once these species disappear, they are gone forever,” Karunarathna says. “Climate change is moving faster than our conservation response, and isolation means there are no second chances.”

By Ifham Nizam ✍️

Features

Online work compatibility of education tablets

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/16

Thilina Walpola

Enabling Education-to-Income Pathways through Dual-Use Devices

The deployment of tablets and Chromebook-based devices for emergency education following Cyclone Ditwah presents an opportunity that extends beyond short-term academic continuity. International experience demonstrates that the same category of devices—when properly governed and configured—can support safe, ethical, and productive online work, particularly for youth and displaced populations. This annex outlines the types of online jobs compatible with such devices, their technical limitations, and their strategic national value within Sri Lanka’s recovery and human capital development agenda.

Compatible Categories of Online Work

At the foundational level, entry-level digital jobs are widely accessible through Android tablets and Chromebook devices. These roles typically require basic digital literacy, language comprehension, and sustained attention rather than advanced computing power. Common examples include data tagging and data validation tasks, AI training activities such as text, image, or voice labelling, online surveys and structured research tasks, digital form filling, and basic transcription work. These activities are routinely hosted on Google task-based platforms, global AI crowdsourcing systems, and micro-task portals operated by international NGOs and UN agencies. Such models have been extensively utilised in countries including India, the Philippines, Kenya, and Nepal, particularly in post-disaster and low-income contexts.

At an intermediate level, freelance and gig-based work becomes viable, especially when Chromebook tablets such as the Lenovo Chromebook Duet or Acer Chromebook Tab are used with detachable keyboards. These devices are well suited for content writing and editing, Sinhala–Tamil–English translation work, social media management, Canva-based design assignments, and virtual assistant roles. Chromebooks excel in this domain because they provide full browser functionality, seamless integration with Google Docs and Sheets (including offline drafting and later (synchronization), reliable file upload capabilities, and stable video conferencing through platforms such as Google Meet or Zoom. Freelancers across Southeast Asia and Africa already rely heavily on Chromebook-class devices for such work, demonstrating their suitability in bandwidth- and power-constrained environments.

A third category involves remote employment and structured part-time work, which is also feasible on Chromebook tablets when paired with a keyboard and headset. These roles include online tutoring support, customer service through chat or email, research assistance, and entry-level digital bookkeeping. While such work requires a more consistent internet connection—often achievable through mobile hotspots—it does not demand high-end hardware. The combination of portability, long battery life, and browser-based platforms makes these devices adequate for such employment models.

Functional Capabilities and Limitations

It is important to clearly distinguish what these devices can and cannot reasonably support. Tablets and Chromebooks are highly effective for web-based jobs, Google Workspace-driven tasks, cloud platforms, online interviews conducted via Zoom or Google Meet, and the use of digital wallets and electronic payment systems. However, they are not designed for heavy video editing, advanced software development environments, or professional engineering and design tools such as AutoCAD. This limitation does not materially reduce their relevance, as global labour market data indicate that approximately 70–75 per cent of online work worldwide is browser-based and fully compatible with tablet-class devices.

Device Suitability for Dual Use

Among commonly deployed devices, the Chromebook Duet and Acer Chromebook Tab offer the strongest balance between learning and online work, making them the most effective all-round options. Android tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab A8 or A9 and the Nokia T20 also perform reliably when supplemented with keyboards, with the latter offering particularly strong battery endurance. Budget-oriented devices such as the Xiaomi Redmi Pad remain suitable for learning and basic work tasks, though with some limitations in sustained productivity. Across all device types, battery efficiency remains a decisive advantage.

Power and Energy Considerations

In disaster-affected and power-scarce environments, tablets outperform conventional laptops. A battery life of 10–12 hours effectively supports a full day of online work or study. Offline drafting of documents with later synchronisation further reduces dependence on continuous connectivity. The use of solar chargers and power banks can extend operational capacity significantly, making these devices particularly suitable for temporary shelters and community learning hubs.

Payment and Income Feasibility in the Sri Lankan Context

From a financial inclusion perspective, these devices are fully compatible with commonly used payment systems. Platforms such as PayPal (within existing national constraints), Payoneer, Wise, LankaQR, local banking applications, and NGO stipend mechanisms are all accessible through Android and ChromeOS environments. Notably, many Sri Lankan freelancers already conduct income-generating activities entirely via mobile devices, confirming the practical feasibility of tablet-based earning.

Strategic National Value

The dual use of tablets for both education and income generation carries significant strategic value for Sri Lanka. It helps prevent long-term dependency by enabling families to rebuild livelihoods, creates structured earning pathways for youth, and transforms disaster relief interventions into resilience-building investments. This approach supports a human resource management–driven recovery model rather than a welfare-dependent one. It aligns directly with the outcomes sought by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Labour and HRM reform initiatives, and broader national productivity and competitiveness goals.

Policy Positioning under the Vivonta / PPA Framework

Within the Vivonta/Proprietary Planters Alliance national response framework, it is recommended that these devices be formally positioned as “Learning + Livelihood Tablets.” This designation reflects their dual public value and supports a structured governance approach. Devices should be configured with dual profiles—Student and Worker—supplemented by basic digital job readiness modules, clear ethical guidance on online work, and safeguards against exploitation, particularly for vulnerable populations.

Performance Indicators

From a monitoring perspective, the expected reach of such an intervention is high, encompassing students, youth, and displaced adults. The anticipated impact is very high, as it directly enables the transition from education to income generation. Confidence in the approach is high due to extensive global precedent, while the required effort remains moderate, centering primarily on training, coordination, and platform curation rather than capital-intensive investment.

We respectfully invite the Open University of Sri Lanka, Derana, Sirasa, Rupavahini, DP Education, and Janith Wickramasinghe, National Online Job Coach, to join hands under a single national banner—
“Lighting the Dreams of Sri Lanka’s Emerging Leaders.”

by Lalin I De Silva, FIPM (SL) ✍️