Opinion

Constitution making:

Published

4 years ago

2020/10/3

Sahan Weerasooriya

A layman’s view

by ROHANA R. WASALA

‘At least since Rousseau’s Social Contract and the end of the divine right of kings, the state has been seen as party to a contract with the people – a contract to guarantee or supply the necessary order in society. Without the state’s soldiers, police and the apparatus of control, we are told, gangs or brigands would take over our streets. Extortion, rape, robbery and murder would rip away the last threads of the “thin veneer of civilization.”’ – Alvin Toffler, Powershift, 1990.

The late Alvin Toffler (American writer, journalist, educator, and businessman) says this while reflecting on the nature of power as one of the most basic social phenomena. ‘Power……implies a world that combines both chance, necessity, chaos and order.’ According to him, we humans ‘share an irrepressible, biologically rooted craving for a modicum of order in our daily lives, along with a hunger for novelty. It is the need for order that provides the main justification for the very existence of government’.

Sri Lankans are currently experiencing, in the raw, a taste of the evils that Toffler says the absence of order would breed, which makes constitution making interesting for them. But what is a constitution? Google offers a simple definition of the term: ‘a body of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is acknowledged to be governed’.

Now, Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda (‘A very wrong approach to Constitution-making’/The Island/September 29, 2020) opines that the proposed 20A has ‘several major defects’. One key fault, according to him, is that the approach adopted for drafting the amendment is ‘very wrong’. JU offers a number of reasons to explain this alleged wrongness of the ‘approach’: the ‘sponsors and framers’ (I suppose the phrase means the politicians and the legal experts behind the drafting of 20A) refuse to learn ‘constructive lessons from past constitutional reform experiments’, but they have learned some ‘partisan, narrow-minded, politically short-sighted ones’. What he probably means by this becomes clear (not clear enough though) in the rest of his article, but it is doubtful whether his sense of right and wrong in the context is shared by many outside the now diminished anti-nationalist coterie, who occupied the parliament for four and a half years and hexed it with the controversial 19A.

It is not necessary to read further into JU’s article to be able to infer where his own inexcusable biases lie. He is obviously in favour of 13A and 19A forced on the nation from outside, and is against the present government’s sincere effort to remove the obstacles placed on its path by the departing yahapalanaya through its ill-conceived constitutional mixed bag that is 19A, where what is bad is by choice, and what is good is by chance. This is not to argue that the new 20A is perfect in comparison. I share many objections raised in different quarters against the proposed 20A, but I believe that the moot points will be satisfactorily sorted out by the present leaders before they manage to get it through parliament.

The Opposition critics of 20A quite well know that it is, after all, only a stopgap measure to clear the way for the unhindered implementation of the government’s development plans. The government will introduce a completely new Constitution within a year or two. JU’s advice as a political scientist will come in handy then.

The proposed 20A is not an arbitrary piece of legislation that the government is introducing behind the back of the people. There is considerable opposition to some of its articles even within the government ranks. Unlike in the case of 19A, the passage of 20A will be a democratic, above-board affair. The Minister of Justice on behalf of the government issued it as a draft bill for public view and review in all three languages on September 2, 2020. The document clearly specifies what is to be amended, repealed, or replaced. The yahapalana constitutional fraud in the form of 19A is not being repeated. Over this four-week period, some thirty-nine petitions have been filed challenging 20A’s constitutionality before the Supreme Court and they were being heard for the third day (October 2) by a bench of five judges, at the time of writing. The government has already declared that it will abide by the court decision by duly adjusting its response to it. JU’s alarms and warnings are uncalled for.

By the phrase ‘past constitutional reform experiments’, JU must be referring to the making of the first and second republican Constitutions (of 1972 and 1978 respectively) and the substantial number of opportune as well as ad hoc amendments introduced by successive governments since, some of them questionable and controversial, where 19A stands in a class by itself as the best example of the worst type of constitutional reform introduced in Sri Lanka to date. What prompts him to describe them as experiments is probably the fact that he is a political scientist with his indispensable toolkit of academic analysis. My interest as a lay citizen, modestly informed of the original construction and subsequent reform of a constitution, is concerned with how good it is going to be for the largest number of the people of the country, as its supreme law, in the context of the more or less stable social and political realities that are prevailing.

As a Constitution is not holy writ, it is open to appropriate amendments from time to time, in compliance with the will of the people, as and when these realities change; a constitution specifies the legal way to reform or replace it as the case may be. The current 1978 republican constitution as amended up to 2015 (Chapter XII/Articles 82-84) specifies the procedure for amending or repealing the constitution. The people whose memory of the yahapalana misadventure is still fresh are anxiously aware of the necessity of passing the 20A.

Contrary to what JU asserts, the political leaders and the legal luminaries responsible for drafting the proposed 20A, have not forgotten the constructive lessons left by their respective predecessors in the form of Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Colvin R. de Silva (1972), and J.R. Jayewardene and J.A. Wilson (1978). Both Bandaranaike and Jayewardene cared about the country, the people, and the culture. Both displayed firm leadership in governing, and a high level of intellect in statecraft. Sirimavo Bandaranaike had her native wit, and Jayewardene possessed a good education. In April 1971, Bandaranaike nipped the JVP terrorism in the bud, not without some violence, though, that she never intended. Opposition leader Jayewardene approved of her actions, saying, ‘yes, a government must rule’. For her courage, firmness, and composure, she was described then as the only male in her cabinet. The contribution of the inspiration provided by Bandaranaike’s political leadership to the making of the first Republican Constitution, the principal architect of which was de Silva, must have been immense and indispensable. Later, hadn’t Jayewardene got Wilson to write the powerful institution of executive presidency into the second republican constitution (1978) as the main anchor to the unitary state, the sovereign Sri Lankan republic that Bandaranaike and de Silva created for the people would have disintegrated and drifted into wilderness and oblivion by now.

Back to the point.

The second alleged defect that JU asserts, without any evidence to support his opinion, is that ‘the framers of the 20A are not motivated by the broader democratic interests of all Sri Lankan people, but the ‘political self-interest’ (of someone or group that JU avoids mentioning). A third defect, JU identifies the Amendment’s supposed lack of ‘a democratic formative framework relevant to our society and its own progressive-modernist legacies of constitutionalism .. (together with the fact that).. it builds itself on one or two dreadful and destructive experiments of constitution-making in the recent past’. This is as close to clear as I can get in interpreting JU here. To illustrate the ‘one or two dreadful and destructive experiments of constitution-making in the recent past’, I think, he draws upon what he, assuming a kind of arbitrary academic license, calls the ‘relatively long history of unmaking, making, and amending constitutions’ that includes the 1972 and 1978 exercises on the one hand, and the 1978C and 18A on the other. JU’s adjectives ‘dreadful and destructive’ could be justifiably applied to the passage of 19A and other such ‘experiments’ in constitutional reform, as contained, for example, in Chapter IV of the Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (As amended up to 15th May 2015) (Revised Edition – 2015) issued by the Parliamentary Secretariat. Chapter IV – Language covers Articles 18-25. One is bewildered by what the crafty, ill-meaning, ‘sponsors and framers’ have from time to time done to degrade Sinhala in its official status with the uncomprehending concurrence of some self-seeking Sinhala MPs in the House. This, of course, would be an iconic piece of constitution-making for a theorist with one’s head in the clouds.

The practical reality is that the operative meaning of any Article (whether this is legally contested or not) is implicitly embodied in the English text (though, according to the present constitution Sinhala and Tamil are both official languages, while English is the link language.). So, it is vitally important to translate the draft document that is the Constitution into precise, unambiguous, formal and legally acceptable and uncontestable Sinhala and Tamil. I detected a couple of stark discrepancies between the original English draft and the Sinhala translation (not relating to the particular context – Chapter IV – mentioned above) when I made a very random comparison between the two versions while researching an article at the time, but I don’t remember whether I dwelt on the subject long enough for it to be taken notice of by the reader as something important, though beyond the central scope of that article. Apart from this, those sufficiently informed did not fail to see how some Tamil lawmakers wanted to openly hoodwink the Sinhalas with the word ‘akeeya’ stripped of its intended original meaning of unitary, but falsely insisting that the English term ‘unitary’ was not its equivalent and was not suitable as a translation, and started talking about an ‘Orumiththa Nadu’, reminiscent of Tamil Nadu. How the question which version should prevail in case of an incongruence between the Sinhala and Tamil texts should be resolved, I can’t remember having been discussed. But the last item (58) of the published draft of 20A runs: ‘In the event of any inconsistency between the Sinhala and Tamil texts of this Act, the Sinhala text shall prevail.’

Having outlined the lessons to be learnt from constitution-making, -unmaking, and -reforming exercises up to 18A, JU moves on to the many lessons that he thinks may be drawn from the ‘much maligned’ 19A. He identifies four key lessons. The first lesson he mentions is that wide public consultation is useful, and helps ‘improve the level of democratic health in the polity’. I cannot agree with him that this was true about the drafting of 19A. It was claimed that the constitutional experts including Jayampathy Wickremaratne, presumably its principal drafter, toured the country meeting with individuals and representatives of many minority civil groups during a short period of two or three months. They had to rush the job, they said, as they were in a hurry to finish it within a stipulated time frame. About two thousand people were consulted nevertheless, they claimed. It was obvious that they roamed the country making it their main aim to pay more attention to the minorities that they had decided were discriminated against by the majority Sinhalese, as they wanted the meddling foreign powers to believe in order to justify their interventionist excesses in the internal and external politics of the country. Meanwhile they paid only symbolic attention to the Sinhalese majority. Wickremaratne, the chief architect of the fraudulent document, is now rumoured/reported to have found or is seeking political asylum in Australia or somewhere (though there is absolutely no possibility of his being targeted for persecution in Sri Lanka). He has reportedly admitted that 19A is problematic.

The second lesson that JU asserts he can learn from the making of 19A is that it is ‘better to build consensus across all political parties in Parliament for a major amendment or a new Constitution’. If he means that 19A set a negative example of that principle, then he has a case. But in actuality, 19A destroyed the burgeoning interparty consensus in Parliament and the growing intercommunal goodwill in the broader society that the MR government achieved in the wake of victory over terrorism. It was because of this that ‘for partisan political reasons, some might later withdraw from the consensus’ as JU laments.

I agree with JU on the third lesson he derives from his seemingly iconic amendment, which is that ‘If the consultation and consensus-building in constitution-making is not politically managed with clarity of purpose, the overall goals of the constitutional compromise may run the risk of producing a constitutional scheme with potentially harmful internal anomalies and contradictions’. Yes, in other words, 19A is a very good illustration of a very bad constitutional amendment.

The fourth lesson that 19A offers, according to JU, is that ‘a democratic constitution-making exercise today needs, more than ever, an unwavering political leadership to champion it through to the end by innovative and imaginative democratic means’. In my opinion, this is what the pre-2015 government achieved. 19A, by dismantling it, demonstrated how ill the nation fared in the absence of such unwavering, innovative, and democratic leadership. Then, JU starts chewing his own tail, by suggesting a ‘paradoxical’ reason: ‘Alternatives to democracy are also competing with democracy, with enormous material resources, to gain popular support and loyalty through democratic means. In this age of right-wing populism, media-manufactured popular consent and manipulation of public perceptions through information pollution, post-democratic alternatives tend to gain easy currency and public legitimacy’. Frankly, I can’t make head or tail of this, but it makes me wonder whether JU is trying to make light of the very real persecution of the majority community that is hardly recognized by most mainstream politicians, who feel obliged to find refuge behind political correctness.

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Opinion

Who actually was ‘the first Sri Lankan Buddhist monk in 105 years to join Oxford University’?

Published

12 hours ago

2024/12/9

Thilina Walpola

Ven. Wadigala Samitaratna Thera

by Rohana R. Wasala

Reading the detailed news article under the title ‘First Sri Lankan Buddhist monk in 105 years joins Oxford for MPhil in Buddhist Studies’ (The Island/December 6, 2024) was a refreshing experience for me, as it should’ve been for others among the readers who feel concerned about the future of the young bhikkhu community of the country. No one else but the young bhikkhus themselves can play the leading role that has been historically assigned to the Maha Sanga over the millennia in safeguarding our invaluable but currently threatened Buddhist cultural heritage in these swiftly changing modern times. There is much to be reformed in the Buddhist Order to ensure its survival into the future, but the key to that long overdue, potentially convoluted process, is the proper education of young monks. It is in that context that I wholeheartedly congratulate Ven. Wadigala Samitharathana Thero on his many scholastic achievements.

However, the claim that Ven. Wadigala Samitharathana Thero has become the first Sri Lankan Buddhist monk in 105 years to study at Britain’s University of Oxford is not quite correct. The late great scholar monk Ven. Dr Labuduwe Siridhamma Thero, the then Chief Incumbent (1957-1985) of Getambe Sri Rajopawanaramaya temple near Peradeniya, had earned his PhD from Oxford University, UK. This fact I know because I used to see Dr Siridhamma’s official letterheads printed with his name followed by ‘PhD (Oxon)’. He was reputed to have been a supreme master of five languages including English. It was he who founded the Dharma Chakra Vidya Peetaya closely connected to the monastery that became an internationally known centre of higher education for young local and foreign bhikkhus. It even catered to secular intellectuals from around the world who took an interest in Buddhist philosophy and meditation.

The venerable monk as a young English tutor from the nearby Peradeniya University at his initiation, and was given the honour to briefly work with him more than fifty years ago. He was a very dedicated educator of Buddhist monks and a strict disciplinarian. This was in the late 1970s, only about two years into late president J.R. Jayewardene’s first term. Dr Siridhamma requested me to train a class of some young monks who already had a fairly good knowledge of English (at least two of them were assistant lecturers in the Arts Faculty of the Peradeniya University, where I taught at the sub department of English) in speaking and writing English and in translating Dhamma passages into English. I fondly remember now how I arranged and moderated debates in English between teams of monks, and sometimes was required to mediate when tempers flared up during heated exchanges. As these were all in English, the occasional lapses in language usage provided some diversion and lighter moments.

That was a little digression. Let’s get back to the subject. Ven. Siridhamma told me that he wanted these monks to be able to engage in Buddhist missionary work abroad. He himself had connections with foreign universities. I occasionally saw him conducting meditation classes and leading Dhamma discussions with some European participants. My own English classes with the young monks continued only for a short few months, however.

A few years later, while abroad, I heard that Ven. Siridhamma was facing the wrath of the then president over some severely critical remarks the monk had made against the latter concerning the way he handled the Tamil separatist problem at the time. It was suggested in the media that the president’s animosity resulted in certain impediments being placed on the fortunes of Sri Rajopawanaramaya and the functioning of the Dharma Chakra Vidya Peetaya. The venerable monk was presumably quite advanced in age, I think, though I didn’t notice it during the brief period I associated with him. Not long after the above incident, it was reported that Siridhamma Thera was taken ill suddenly and died. This was probably in 1985. I don’t know anything about the present situation of his legacy at Sri Rajopawanaramaya. Strangely, Wikipedia offers little or no information about this renowned scholar monk, though his name is mentioned in connection with a school named after him established a decade later iin his native village Labuduwa, Galle.

This is Siridhamma Vidyalaya/Siridhamma College at Labuduwa in the Akmeemana electorate, ceremonially opened by the then Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike at the invitation of the then minister of education Richard Pathirana on February 6, 1995. The information I gleaned from Wikipedia about this school mentions Ven. Dr Siridhamma as the first Buddhist monk to graduate from Oxford University. This seems to overlook the fact that Ven. Suriyagoda Sumangala got admission to Oxford University in 1919 and thus became the first Lankan Buddhist monk to do so. This is according to the December 6th article to which I am responding here. So, it is clear that the distinction of being the first Buddhist monk to study at Oxford goes to Suriyagoda Sumangala Thera, and not to Labuduwe Siridhamma Thera, who undoubtedly followed him many years later. In other words, Ven. Labuduwe Siridhamma Thera was the first Buddhist monk to enter Oxford University, and Ven. Wadigala Samitharathana Thera only the second to do so, in 105 years.

Isn’t the mysterious consignment of Dr Siridhamma Thera, a renowned national figure, to near oblivion food for thought for those young and old Sri Lankans concerned with the future of their country? Danno danithi (it is no secret to the informed).

Opinion

Sally Hulugalle

Published

1 day ago

2024/12/8

Thilina Walpola

Sally Hulugalle

Sally Hulugalle was a vibrant presence, and I am only sorry that I got to know her only over the last fifteen years or so. This was because her husband, Arjuna Hulugalle, who was distantly connected to my family through a Kurunegala link, got in touch with me in the aftermath of the war, for he was involved in various projects to help the people of the north.

I was able to get for his very worthy initiatives a lot of support, all on a small scale, from the Japanese government, through their hyper-active Deputy Ambassador, Mr Ishizuka, with whom I had bonded well from the time I took over the Peace Secretariat.

I would visit Arjuna at his house, and there I met his wife Sally, the daughter of a Civil Servant whose distinguished children included Barbara Sansoni. Sally was dedicated to social service, and was deeply concerned about the plight of women and children who suffered from neglect.

Having seen the appalling conditions at Mulleriyawa, where many women were incarcerated arbitrarily, given abuse of the Vagrants’ Ordinance, she set up NEST along with my old friend Kamini de Soysa. It worked at what is called the half way house for women meant to be released, but who rarely were, because they had nothing to go to. NEST gave them occupational therapy which provided a purpose in lives that were otherwise empty.

NEST also set up centres round the country which provided support to women and children in need. There were four of these when I first found out about them, though the one in Galle had to close. The other three, in Hendala and Dumbara and Kahatagasdigiliya, continue to provide yeoman service, the first two in houses belonging to NEST, the one in Dumbara having been set up after Sally received a cash prize from Norway for her work. Using what was given to her personally for those less fortunate was second nature to her.

Sally understood, in a way many of those in government responsible for those who fall through the net do not, the need for counseling, for listening to people in need, and for providing often very little things that made a substantial difference to their lives. She participated readily in the committees I set up when I was Adviser on Reconciliation to look into the plight of women and children, our recommendations extending to the rest of the country too, for I realized that government had not tried to coordinate the work of social service officials at divisional levels, and a few simple guidelines would have worked wonders.

But Mahinda Rajapaksa was not really interested in my advice and, though we had a thoughtful Ministry Secretary, Eric Illapayarachchi, he had to work with a neanderthal Minister who could not care less for the deprived. I could only think it sheer wickedness, that those in authority would not work swiftly to get rid of the Vagrants Ordinance, an archaic British law, which I was told was the only way prostitution could be stopped. That other women were swept into the net, and the way to stop prostitution was to make it illegal, not take in anyone on suspicion, were concepts beyond them.

I had another chance to make a difference when, as Chairman of the Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission, I set up a Health Sector Council. That did good work, under Dr Narme Wickremesinghe, but when I was sacked it, though it did much for nursing and pharmacology, lost interest in the counseling component of its brief, and Sally and her great friend Kusala Wettasinghe ceased to go to meetings. And since I lost my position on the National Education Commission, the efforts I had been making through the Sub-Committee on General Education to develop counseling in schools also came to naught.

But when I reflect on the failure of these efforts, I think too of the great work done by private initiatives, and how the intensity of Sally’s commitment has made such a difference to so many. This year, seeing the work of the centres at Hendala and at Kahatagasdigiliya, and the devotion of the staff to her memory, I was struck again by the way she transformed her passion for social welfare into practical support for so many. She will be greatly missed by hundreds outside the charmed circle in which she was born.

Rajiva Wijesinha

Opinion

Blueprint for economic empowerment in Sri Lanka’s gig economy

Published

4 days ago

2024/12/5

Sahan Weerasooriya

“Creating 300,000 Online Jobs:

By Dammike Kobbekaduwe,
FIPM (SL), Member-CIPM-SL, MBA(HRM)

Objectives of the Article

Assess

the viability and economic impact of creating 300,000 online jobs in Sri Lanka.

Present

a bankable business plan for investment support from financial institutions.

Outline

a detailed cost-benefit analysis, supported by viability ratios for funding eligibility.

Establish

a sustainable financial and operational model for building a skilled gig workforce.

Sri Lanka’s gig economy presents a compelling solution for youth employment, targeting 300,000 online jobs for young people, particularly those who completed GCE OL. With a goal of generating substantial monthly income streams, this project seeks to address the country’s economic challenges and stimulate growth through digital employment. While a monthly earning a realistic starting income of $300–$500 is achievable and scalable, infusing approximately $50 million monthly into the economy once the workforce reaches full capacity.

To ensure financial viability and attract investment, we conduct a comprehensive economic analysis. This document highlights key investment metrics, including viability ratios, projected cash flow, and a cost-benefit breakdown to support the proposal as a bankable doEconomic Analysis and Viability

This project’s financial feasibility and appeal for funding rely on assessing profitability and return potential. Calculations are based on the cost of infrastructure, worker setup costs, and recurring expenses.

1. Capital and Operational Costs

Capital Setup Per Worker

Laptop (16GB RAM):

LKR 300,000 (one-time purchase)

Data Plan:

LKR 8,000 per month

Electricity:

LKR 8,000 per month (solar option as a long-term cost-saving measure)

Annual Cost Per Worker

One-time Equipment Cost:

LKR 300,000

Recurring Monthly Costs:

LKR 192,000 (LKR 16,000 x 12)

Total Yearly Cost Per Worker

Year 1:

LKR 492,000

Year 2+ (Excluding Laptop):

LKR 192,000 per year

Total Initial Investment for 300,000 Workers

Laptops:

LKR 90 billion

Year 1 Recurring Costs:

LKR 57.6 billion

Initial Year Investment Requirement:

LKR 147.6 billion

2. Projected Revenue and Cash Injection

A monthly earning potential of $300–$500 per worker in Sri Lanka’s gig market (based on average entry-level online job earnings globally) provides realistic targets for cash generation.

Monthly Cash Injection at Full Capacity

Minimum Revenue Goal (300,000 workers at $300):

$90 million/month

Maximum Revenue Goal (300,000 workers at $500):

$150 million/month

Expected Economic Contribution:

$50 million/month as a sustainable average.

3. Viability Ratios and Business Metrics

To validate the project’s financial health, banks and investors can consider the following key metrics:

A. Return on Investment (ROI)

The ROI assesses the profitability relative to costs.

See FIG 1

For Year 1 (Initial setup + recurring costs):

Total Annual Revenue:

$90 million * 12 months * 300,000 = LKR 324 billion (at $300/month per worker) See FIG 2

Interpretation:

A 119.5% ROI suggests strong profitability, with returns significantly outpacing the initial investment within the first year, making it attractive for lenders and investors.

B. Break-even Point (BEP)

The BEP indicates when revenue will cover initial costs.

See FIG 3

For a $50 million monthly injection:

Interpretation: A break-even within three months reflects a rapid recovery period, underscoring the project’s viability. See FIG 4

C. Debt-Service Coverage Ratio (DSCR)

To ensure sufficient earnings to cover debt obligations, DSCR is critical for bank funding. See FIG 5

Assuming monthly operating income of LKR 3.24 billion and an estimated debt service of LKR 1.5 billion:

Interpretation:

With a DSCR above 2, the project is well-positioned for loan approval, demonstrating strong debt repayment capacity. See FIG 6

Implementation Plan for the National Gig Workforce

Phase 1: Training and Equipment Setup

Digital Literacy Programs:

Partner with local institutions to offer foundational training.

Laptop Financing:

Government-backed financing for laptops and solar installations for sustainable power solutions.

Phase 2: Skill Development and Placement

Skill Development Centers:

Partner with international e-learning platforms and host training boot camps.

Placement Programs:

Establish online job-matching platforms to connect workers with international clients.

Phase 3: Scaling and Economic Integration

Tax Incentives:

Offer tax breaks to local businesses hiring from the gig workforce.

Freelancer Support Network:

Create a national freelancer association for continued training and mentorship.

Resources Required For Workers:

Training:

Digital and language skills to enter global markets.

Equipment:

Laptops with financing options.

Connectivity:

Affordable data plans or subsidies.

For Stakeholders:

Government Initiatives:

Funding for training and incentives.

Private-Sector Partnerships: Skill development programs and job portals.

Financial Institutions: Loan products tailored for workers’ needs.

Conclusion

This plan offers a scalable solution to Sri Lanka’s unemployment crisis, particularly for young people with limited formal education. By creating 300,000 online jobs and targeting a monthly cash inflow of $50 million, the initiative supports economic resilience while empowering youth with valuable skills. A financial model based on solid viability ratios makes this project attractive to lenders, ensuring a rapid return on investment and sustainable growth.

References

International Labour Organization. (2023). The Gig Economy: Opportunities and Challenges for Youth Employment in Developing Economies. Available at: https://www.ilo.org/

Upwork. (2023). Freelancer Earnings and Trends Report. Available at: https://www.upwork.com/research

World Bank. (2022). Digital Jobs and Economic Growth:

A Guide for Developing Nations. Washington, DC: World Bank Publications.

Fiverr. (2023). Freelancer Earnings and Skill Development:

A Global Perspective. Available at: https://www.fiverr.com/research

Coursera. (2023). Skill Trends in the Digital Economy:

A Report on Online Education in Emerging Markets. Available at: https://www.coursera.com/research

Sri Lanka Department of Census and Statistics. (2023). Youth Unemployment and Educational Attainment: Annual Report.