Features

Elephant-Human Conflict: Sweet and sad moments frozen in time. A Requiem

Published

5 months ago

2025/08/29

Mother shot dead, metres from her fatally hit calf

This story about humans and elephants was told to me by my late mother, Beta Leelawathie, in 1980. It is not a folktale. This story really took place nearly seven decades ago, when the phrase ‘elephant-human conflict’ did not tango in the same sentence.

Back then, humans and elephants lived in harmony. By most measures, there was more forest cover for elephants then. Now, satellite images reveal that over 70% of the forest cover, once a haven for elephants, has been lost. As a result, they are at risk of harm, and land disputes between humans and them have become daily occurrences. This story is not about the daily iterations of wounded tuskers, electric fences, elephants decapitated by Yakada Yaka, or drowning in agri-wells.

This episode took place on a small chena clearing near Kidapolagama village, abandoned sometime around 1911, situated near Getalagamakanda by Galkulama, along the A9 highway in the North Central Province. Hundreds of teledrama episodes, or Dr. R. L. Spittle in Holly/Bollywood, could not have imagined such a tale.

I paraphrase here my mother, one of the four protagonists in this story of two babies – a human and an elephant – and their mothers coming into contact under extraordinary circumstances.

The Setting

It was a 2-hectare chena clearing, located two kilometers from the village. It had been formatted a couple of weeks ago after slashing the virgin forest and burning. Two solitary figures, my mother and father, were tilling millet, kurahan, on the charred soil. They were engaged in this task at a deceptively relaxed pace in the middle of this desolate space. Their frail frames were slightly bent as they scraped the topsoil. In front of them lay a series of grids by nera, the oldest form of geometry known to humans, drawn on the cleaned-out chena floor, the nawadella, to facilitate the easy broadcasting of seeds.

The man was wearing only a tamarind-coloured loincloth. He wrapped a piece of cloth around his head. His sweaty body shone in the sweltering midday sun. The woman was wearing a faded muslin cloth with floral designs wrapped around her waist, paired with a short-sleeved blouse. To escape the sun, she covered her head with a piece of rag that looked more like a compressed sunbonnet. Sweat dappled her blouse, a testament to her labour since morning. Occasionally, metallic clanks chimed as the iron blades of their mamoties struck pebbles on the soil.

A lone eagle’s high-pitched call to a mate from a tree-top at the edge of the chena clearing interrupted the jingle of the mamoties. A cuckooing avuncular pigeon shared his thoughts while sitting on a burnt-out tree stump nearby after helping himself with a few kurahan seeds. A clay pot of water with its mouth covered with a coconut shell sat dutifully under a tree that escaped the man’s axe a few weeks ago. Often, hot air let out its variant dispositions breezing across the chena, and eddies of ashen air climbed from its floor spinning like flying tops and dancing away, dying in the atmosphere.

From time to time, the woman paused and straightened up to check on a bundle of clothes in the shade under a grandfatherly Palu tree about two netball courts out. On a reed mat under its shade was her newborn son, only six months old, sleeping, half-covered with a few folds of clothing. That baby was me.

She brought her breastfeeding baby to the chena because she had no help with babysitting. She had to help her husband finish spreading seeds soon, as for a few days now, pregnant rain clouds of the Maha season had begun to pack the horizon. Her only choice was to introduce the baby to the drudgery of Chena life.

For the nursing hour, the mother often checked her one-arm clock, a short, blackened tree stump, and its slanting shadow—the gnomon of her impromptu sundial. After reassuring herself that it is not feeding time yet, she resumed tilling.

Visitors

In the meantime, from the other side of the clearing, a muted procession of six elephants, padding through the forest, entered the chena. In front walked a baby elephant, not taller than a kindergarten chair, struggling to stand still like someone coming out of a tavern. The calf’s prickly hair swayed in the light wind wafting through the chena. He moved aimlessly and sniffed at every tree stump of his size on his path. He wobbled but moved with a proprietary air, trying to do the job of being the big guy, supposedly. The mother who was right behind him watched his every step, though, ready to help if he ran into trouble. The other four family members obediently followed the matriarch in chronological order of age.

As the procession drifted towards the Palu tree, the calf suddenly stopped and straightened its ears. His pencil-like tail danced behind him, as if to make him look tall, long, and strong. To check the scent in the air, he raised his trunk, which wriggled like an enormous caterpillar stuck in the middle of his face. When his eyes fell on the bundle of clothes, the calf inched closer and stopped a few feet from the reed mat. Meanwhile, the baby on the mat woke up and began to move his limbs, trying to roll over while babbling a primordial form of pre-kindergarten talk.

Then, ever so gently, the calf took a step forward and tried to place his trunk on the baby, probably out of curiosity to know whether he liked to join him. Lacking deftness, the baby elephant’s sloppy efforts missed the target a few times. He shuffled his feet and tried again. Although this scene was unfolding in private in the open arena under the Palu tree, its full luminance had not yet reached the mother and father, who were hurrying to get to lunch break.

Meanwhile, no more than 20 meters behind the two babies in the conclave under the Palu tree, the matriarch and her entourage hardly had time to react. All five stood frozen, watching their little one and his dance with discovery. The only thing moving was the tip of the mother’s trunk, which hung loosely straight down. The baby elephant continued to engage his newfound pal on the reed mat.

Mother and Father

The mother or father had no idea of the silent visitors trying to improvise a dance under the Palu tree. Then, the mother stopped tilling and casually raised her head to check on her baby. The first thing that caught her weary eyes near the Palu tree was a line of large, earth-colored boulders that were not there before. She shook her head, brushed away her eyes, and her grip on the mamoty tightened. She was stunned, inert, and a knot formed in her throat. By her side, unaware of her conundrum, her husband had the world to himself, tilling to end the session. Slowly, the woman reached out and grabbed his arm and squeezed, nearly breaking it. As the husband turned, he too saw the audience under the Palu tree.

The mother closed her eyes and then opened them to ensure she was not in a deep dream. The midday sun caused her to see stars in the shaded area under the Palu tree. Mothers always dream good dreams about their babies. But this was no dream. As she clung to her husband’s forearm for support, she felt his pulse too, beating like drums at the temple.

Four years later, she would have another instance of a similar dimension with the same baby. One day, her son, a toddler then, stood in an alley between two houses directly in the path of a salivating dog with rabies, trotting through the same alley in the gammedda. Her son escaped the threat only when a thoughtful neighbour clubbed the dog squarely and broke its back a few meters from the toddler.

Here in the chena, the mother was choking with horror and could not send out a plea to the other mother to take her baby back. Had she asked, the other would not have understood it anyway – they spoke different languages. Besides, she feared any cry would alarm and create panic among elephants, and her baby would be in grave danger of being run over. She was sweating profusely, and her vision began to taunt her. In her view, the elephants were turning into swelling boulders. She feared that it would trample the baby. Her one-arm clock, the tree stump sundial, had hid its gnomon shadow, announcing the midday hour. At that moment, a tsunami was crashing into her oasis under the Palu tree, and she was drowning in delirium. She prayed to all the gods known and advertised. But they were not in hearing distance.

So incredible was the union in the middle of nowhere, without any forewarning, everything around her stood still as if to preserve that pristine yet intense moment. Both mothers stood still, hoping their instincts would take over during this once-in-a-lifetime encounter. The woman’s only hope was that an elephant mother would recognise that the other baby was just as vulnerable as her own.

Suddenly, as if awakened from a siesta, the mother elephant broached. Fearing her baby would be harmed or mixed up with other ‘things’ lying on the mat, she eased forward. With her extended trunk, she wrapped him and gently pulled him out towards her. The calf balked, but his mother’s silent insistence was too strong for him to break free. She shoved her son underneath her chin and nudged him away from the mat. When the matriarch began to move with her baby, her family fell in line and followed her towards the edge of the chena.

: Mother and calf strolling into the chena

: Mother elephant grieving by the body of her calf.

After reaching the edge of the clearing, the mother elephant paused, looked back, and, as if to sum up the brief meeting, blew a hissing sound at the two frail figures staring at her. Then, the boughs of the primeval forest opened to welcome her. With the grace of a tsarina walking into a Romanov ballroom, she disappeared into the woods. The last elephant, probably not weaned out from its incorrigible self yet, briefly stopped and looked at the bundle of clothes and wriggling baby, before hurrying to catch up with the rest.

Beta Leelawathie Tillakaratne

The woman and the man made no sound to alarm the elephants, not only because their mouths were dry, but also because they feared the worst if the elephants became cranky. So frozen were the two that someone could have mistaken them for two shabbily dressed clay figures. With measured steps, they then hurried to the mat. The woman impetuously picked up the baby with shaking hands and pressed him to her bosom. She could not spoil her relief by saying anything. But soon, a few tears rolled down her cheek. They stood stunned at this remarkable moment they had just witnessed, filled with fear which had no bottom.

Her husband closed his eyes, and images of his last watch hut on the tree in another chena, a howl away from here, flashed through his eyes. One evening last year, he came to his watch hut, located up on a ledge of a tree, to find that an irate elephant had pulled down its cabin after getting the scent of a small container of jaggery. He ate the contents of it and tore down the pillow and other paraphernalia to shreds.

My parents had no more desire to work and called it a day. Fearing there might be a tardy and unglued concatenation of elephants in the herd who might drop by soon they hurried home.

Recollections

In 1980, my mother remembered the lyrics of that near-deistic rendezvous. Each time she recalled it, I saw her eyes filled with tears. Even after rearing five more children of her own, that little quadruped devil still held a special place in her heart regardless of the panic he produced. She thought that by 1980, the calf must have grown to be an old statesman, leading his band through wide naked spaces that his ancestors had known as rank forest, and now had lost the war against the multiplying tracts of the human census. In her wistful thinking, in retrospect, she felt she owed something to that playful calf, which was ready for some mischief, who knows.

But she never thought of that family as intruders or a threat. She rightly believed that she was the intruder in another’s habitat. Those elephants had the right of way, which is needed now more than ever. However, we are encroaching on their space by clearing forests out of necessity and circumstances. Elephants, like in this mother’s story, lost the space that was theirs all along, where they could take their babies for safety when humans stood between them and that refuge, which Omar Khayyam called their Wilderness Paradise.

In 1980, my mother had the foresight to tell me that the inertia of population explosion (bowenawa, her words) and dwindling land brought us to today’s conundrum, which requires urgent population control of both humans and elephants.

Despite the danger to her baby’s life at that time, my mother would cherish that moment to the end, because it was another baby trying to charm the other in that most poignant time and place. She longingly wished she could see that baby one more time.

She told me this remarkable cross-cultural encounter, though unquestionably dangerous and unavoidable due to circumstances forcing both parties to an unwelcome council, was beautiful, nonetheless. Two babies, precious to their mothers and respective clans, but completely unrelated to each other in so many ways, found themselves extemporised in a blessed moment and thrust upon them by the very nature of the orchestral environments they rightfully owned, shared, and lived.

Dedication and a Requiem

I dedicate this story to the memory of another mother elephant and her baby, both killed by humans on a November 2019 night on the road near Habarana. Around 2.30 a.m. on that fateful, a Colombo-Trincomalee bus hit and killed the baby elephant standing by his mother on the edge of the road. As the mother stood grieving for hours by the body of the calf, heedless vehicular traffic and onlookers flustered her. However, thinking she would become a danger to people and vehicles passing by her lost world, the police took control of the scene.

Without ever trying to call the experts and sedate the mother to remove her dead calf from the road so that she could grieve undisturbed and alone, they shot her dead.

She took her last breath staring at the lifeless body of her calf. That mother did not have to be killed. May this be a requiem for her and her calf, and may both attain Nibbana!

Lokubanda Tillakaratne ✍️
(This essay is adapted from the writer’s Echoes of the Millstone (2013).

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Features

Trump’s Venezuela gamble: Why markets yawned while the world order trembled

Published

13 hours ago

2026/01/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

The world’s most powerful military swoops into Venezuela, in the dead of night, captures a sitting President, and spirits him away to face drug trafficking charges in New York. The entire operation, complete with at least 40 casualties, was announced by President Trump as ‘extraordinary’ and ‘brilliant.’ You’d think global financial markets would panic. Oil prices would spike. Stock markets would crash. Instead, something strange happened: almost nothing.

Oil prices barely budged, rising less than 2% before settling back. Stock markets actually rallied. The US dollar remained steady. It was as if the world’s financial markets collectively shrugged at what might be the most brazen American military intervention since the 1989 invasion of Panama.

But beneath this calm surface, something far more significant is unfolding, a fundamental reshaping of global power dynamics that could define the next several decades. The story of Trump’s Venezuela intervention isn’t really about Venezuela at all. It’s about oil, money, China, and the slow-motion collapse of the international order we’ve lived under since World War II. (Figure 1)

The Oil Paradox

Venezuela sits on the world’s largest proven oil reserves, more than Saudi Arabia, more than Russia. We’re talking about 303 billion barrels. This should be one of the wealthiest nations on Earth. Instead, it’s an economic catastrophe. Venezuela’s oil production has collapsed from 3.5 million barrels per day in the late 1990s to less than one million today, barely 1% of global supply (Figure 1). Years of corruption, mismanagement, and US sanctions have turned treasure into rubble. The infrastructure is so degraded that even if you handed the country to ExxonMobil tomorrow, it would take a decade and hundreds of billions of dollars to fix.

This explains why oil markets barely reacted. Traders looked at Venezuela’s production numbers and basically said: “What’s there to disrupt?” Meanwhile, the world is drowning in oil. The global market has a surplus of nearly four million barrels per day. American production alone hit record levels above 13.8 million barrels daily. Venezuela’s contribution simply doesn’t move the needle anymore (Figure 1).

But here’s where it gets interesting. Trump isn’t just removing a dictator. He’s explicitly taking control of Venezuela’s oil. In his own words, the country will “turn over” 30 to 50 million barrels, with proceeds controlled by him personally “to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States.” American oil companies, he promised, would “spend billions of dollars” to rebuild the infrastructure.

This isn’t subtle. One energy policy expert put it bluntly: “Trump’s focus on Venezuelan oil grants credence to those who argue that US foreign policy has always been about resource extraction.”

The Real Winners: Defence and Energy

While oil markets stayed calm, defence stocks went wild. BAE Systems jumped 4.4%, Germany’s Rheinmetall surged 6.1%. These companies see what others might miss, this isn’t a one-off. If Trump launches military operations to remove leaders he doesn’t like, there will be more.

Energy stocks told a similar story. Chevron, the only U.S. oil major currently authorised to operate in Venezuela, surged 10% in pre-market trading. ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, and oil services companies posted solid gains. Investors are betting on lucrative reconstruction contracts. Think Iraq after 2003, but potentially bigger.

The catch? History suggests they might be overly optimistic. Iraq’s oil sector was supposed to bounce right back after Saddam Hussein fell. Twenty years later, it still hasn’t reached its potential. Afghanistan received hundreds of billions in reconstruction spending, most of which disappeared. Venezuela shares the same warning signs: destroyed infrastructure, unclear property rights, volatile security, and deep social divisions.

China’s Venezuela Problem

Here’s where the story gets geopolitically explosive. China has loaned Venezuela over $60 billion, since 2007, making Venezuela China’s biggest debtor in Latin America. How was Venezuela supposed to pay this back? With oil. About 80% of Venezuelan oil exports were going to China, often at discounted rates, to service this debt.

Now Trump controls those oil flows. Venezuelan oil will now go “through legitimate and authorised channels consistent with US law.” Translation: China’s oil supply just got cut off, and good luck getting repaid on those $60 billion in loans.

This isn’t just about one country’s debt. It’s a demonstration of American power that China cannot match. Despite decades of economic investment and diplomatic support, China couldn’t prevent the United States from taking over. For other countries considering Chinese loans and partnerships, the lesson is clear: when push comes to shove, Beijing can’t protect you from Washington.

But there’s a darker flip side. Every time the United States weaponizes the dollar system, using control over oil sales, bank transactions, and trade flows as a weapon, it gives countries like China more reason to build alternatives. China has been developing its own international payment system for years. Each American strong-arm tactic makes that project look smarter to countries that fear they might be next.

The Rules Are for Little People

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this episode isn’t economic, it’s legal and political. The United States launched a military operation, captured a President, and announced it would “run” that country indefinitely. There was no United Nations authorisation. No congressional vote. No meaningful consultation with allies.

The UK’s Prime Minister emphasised “international law” while waiting for details. European leaders expressed discomfort. Latin American countries split along ideological lines, with Colombia’s President comparing Trump to Hitler. But nobody actually did anything. Russia and China condemned the action as illegal but couldn’t, or wouldn’t, help. The UN Security Council didn’t even meet, because everyone knows the US would just veto any resolution.

This is what scholars call the erosion of the “rules-based international order.” For decades after World War II, there was at least a pretense that international law mattered, that sovereignty meant something. Powerful nations bent those rules when convenient, but they tried to maintain appearances.

Trump isn’t even pretending. And that creates a problem: if the United States doesn’t follow international law, why should Russia in Ukraine? Why should China regarding Taiwan? Why should anyone?

What About the Venezuelan People?

Lost in all the analysis are the actual people of Venezuela. They’ve suffered immensely. Inflation is 682%, the highest in the world. Nearly eight million Venezuelans have fled. Those who remain often work multiple jobs just to survive, and their cupboards are still bare. The monthly minimum wage is literally 40 cents.

Many Venezuelans welcomed Maduro’s removal. He was a brutal dictator whose catastrophic policies destroyed the country. But they’re deeply uncertain about what comes next. As one Caracas resident put it: “What we don’t know is whether the change is for better or for worse. We’re in a state of uncertainty.”

Trump’s explicit focus on oil control, his decision to work with Maduro’s own Vice President, rather than democratic opposition leaders, and his promise that American companies will “spend billions”, all of this raises uncomfortable questions. Is this about helping Venezuelans, or helping American oil companies?

The Bigger Picture

Financial markets reacted calmly because the immediate economic impacts are limited. Venezuela’s oil production is already tiny. The country’s bonds were already in default. The direct market effects are manageable. But markets might miss the forest for the trees.

This intervention represents something bigger: a fundamental shift in how powerful nations behave. The post-Cold War era, with its optimistic talk of international cooperation and rules-based order, was definitively over. We’re entering a new age of imperial power politics.

In this new world, military force is back on the table. Economic leverage will be used more aggressively. Alliance relationships will become more transactional. Countries will increasingly have to choose sides between competing power blocs, because the middle ground is disappearing.

The United States might win in the short term, seizing control of Venezuela’s oil, demonstrating military reach, showing China the limits of its influence. But the long-term consequences remain uncertain. Every country watching is drawing conclusions about what it means for them. Some will decide they need to align more closely with Washington to stay safe. Others will conclude they need to build alternatives to American-dominated systems to stay independent.

History will judge whether Trump’s Venezuela gambit was brilliant strategy or reckless overreach. What we can say now is that the comfortable assumptions of the past three decades, that might not be right, that international law matters, that economic interdependence prevents conflict, no longer hold.

Financial markets may have yawned at Venezuela. But they might want to wake up. The world just changed, and the bill for that change hasn’t come due yet. When it does, it won’t be measured in oil barrels or bond prices. It will be measured in the kind of world we all have to live in, and whether it’s more stable and prosperous, or more dangerous and divided.

That’s a question worth losing sleep over.

(The writer, a senior Chartered Accountant and professional banker, is Professor at SLIIT, Malabe. The views and opinions expressed in this article are personal.)

Features

Living among psychopaths

Published

13 hours ago

2026/01/14

Sahan Weerasooriya

Bob (not his real name) who worked in a large business organisation was full of new ideas. He went out of his way to help his colleagues in difficulties. His work attracted the attention of his superiors and they gave him a free hand to do his work. After some time, Bob started harassing his female colleagues. He used to knock against them in order to kick up a row. Soon he became a nuisance to the entire staff. When the female colleagues made a complaint to the management a disciplinary inquiry was conducted. Bob put up a weak defence saying that he had no intention to cause any harm to the females on the staff. However, he was found guilty of harassing the female colleagues. Accordingly his services were terminated.

Those who conducted the disciplinary inquiry concluded that Bob was a psychopath. According to psychologists, a psychopath is a person who has a serious and permanent mental illness that makes him behave in a violent or criminal way. Psychologists believe that one per cent of the people are psychopaths who have no conscience. You may have come across such people in films and novels. The film The Silence of the Lambs portrayed a serial killer who enjoyed tormenting his innocent victims. Apart from such fictional characters, there are many psychopaths in big and small organisations and in society as well. In a reported case Dr Ahmad Suradji admitted to killing more than 40 innocent women and girls. There is something fascinating and also chilling about such people.

People without a conscience are not a new breed. Even ancient Greek philosophers spoke of ‘men without moral reason.’ Later medical professionals said people without conscience were suffering from moral insanity. However, all serial killers and rapists are not psychopaths. Sometimes a man would kill another person under grave and sudden provocation. If you see your wife sleeping with another man, you will kill one or both of them. A world-renowned psychopathy authority Dr Robert Hare says, “Psychopaths can be found everywhere in society.” He developed a method to define and diagnose psychopathy. Today it is used as the international gold standard for the assessment of psychopathy.

No conscience

According to modern research, even normal people are likely to commit murder or rape in certain circumstances. However, unlike normal people, psychopaths have no conscience when they commit serious crimes. In fact, they tend to enjoy such brutal activities. There is no general consensus whether there are degrees of psychopathy. According to Harvard University Professor Martha Stout, conscience is like a left arm, either you have one or you don’t. Anyway psychopathy may exist in degrees varying from very mild to severe. If you feel remorse after committing a crime, you are not a psychopath. Generally psychopaths are indifferent to, or even enjoy, the torment they cause to others.

In modern society it is very difficult to identify psychopaths because most of them are good workers. They also show signs of empathy and know how to win friends and influence people. The sheen may rub off at any given moment. They know how to get away with what they do. What they are really doing is sizing up their prey. Sometimes a person may become a psychopath when he does not get parental love. Those who live alone are also likely to end up as psychopaths.

Recent studies show that genetics matters in producing a psychopath. Adele Forth, a psychology professor at Carleton University in Canada, says callousness is at least partly inherited. Some psychopaths torture innocent people for the thrill of doing so. Even cruelty to animals is an act indulged in by psychopaths. You have to be aware of the fact that there are people without conscience in society. Sometimes, with patience, you might be able to change their behaviour. But on most occasions they tend to stay that way forever.

Charming people

We still do not know whether science has developed an antidote to psychopathy. Therefore remember that you might meet a psychopath at some point in your life. For now, beware of charming people who seem to be more interesting than others. Sometimes they look charismatic and sexy. Be wary of people who flatter you excessively. The more you get to know a psychopath, the more you will understand their motives. They are capable of telling you white lies about their age, education, profession or wealth. Psychopaths enjoy dramatic lying for its own sake. If your alarm bells ring, keep away from them.

According to the Psychiatric Diagnostic Manual, the behaviour of a psychopath is termed as antisocial personality disorder. Today it is also known as sociopath. No matter the name, its hallmarks are deceit and a reckless disregard for others. A psychopath’s consistent irresponsibility begets no remorse – only indifference to the emotional pain others may suffer. For a psychopath other people are always ‘things’ to be duped, used and discarded.

Psychopathy, the incapacity to feel empathy or compassion of any sort or the least twinge of conscience, is one of the more perplexing of emotional defects. The heart of the psychopath’s coldness seems to lie in their inability to make anything more than the shallowest of emotional connections.

Absence of empathy is found in husbands who beat up their wives or threaten them with violence. Such men are far more likely to be violent outside the marriage as well. They get into bar fights and battling with co-workers. The danger is that psychopaths lack concern about future punishment for what they do. As they themselves do not feel fear, they have no empathy or compassion for the fear and pain of their victims.

karunaratners@gmail.com

By R.S. Karunaratne

Features

Rebuilding the country requires consultation

Published

2 days ago

2026/01/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

A positive feature of the government that is emerging is its responsiveness to public opinion. The manner in which it has been responding to the furore over the Grade 6 English Reader, in which a weblink to a gay dating site was inserted, has been constructive. Government leaders have taken pains to explain the mishap and reassure everyone concerned that it was not meant to be there and would be removed. They have been meeting religious prelates, educationists and community leaders. In a context where public trust in institutions has been badly eroded over many years, such responsiveness matters. It signals that the government sees itself as accountable to society, including to parents, teachers, and those concerned about the values transmitted through the school system.

This incident also appears to have strengthened unity within the government. The attempt by some opposition politicians and gender misogynists to pin responsibility for this lapse on Prime Minister Dr Harini Amarasuriya, who is also the Minister of Education, has prompted other senior members of the government to come to her defence. This is contrary to speculation that the powerful JVP component of the government is unhappy with the prime minister. More importantly, it demonstrates an understanding within the government that individual ministers should not be scapegoated for systemic shortcomings. Effective governance depends on collective responsibility and solidarity within the leadership, especially during moments of public controversy.

The continuing important role of the prime minister in the government is evident in her meetings with international dignitaries and also in addressing the general public. Last week she chaired the inaugural meeting of the Presidential Task Force to Rebuild Sri Lanka in the aftermath of Cyclone Ditwah. The composition of the task force once again reflects the responsiveness of the government to public opinion. Unlike previous mechanisms set up by governments, which were either all male or without ethnic minority representation, this one includes both, and also includes civil society representation. Decision-making bodies in which there is diversity are more likely to command public legitimacy.

Task Force

The Presidential Task Force to Rebuild Sri Lanka overlooks eight committees to manage different aspects of the recovery, each headed by a sector minister. These committees will focus on Needs Assessment, Restoration of Public Infrastructure, Housing, Local Economies and Livelihoods, Social Infrastructure, Finance and Funding, Data and Information Systems, and Public Communication. This structure appears comprehensive and well designed. However, experience from post-disaster reconstruction in countries such as Indonesia and Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami suggests that institutional design alone does not guarantee success. What matters equally is how far these committees engage with those on the ground and remain open to feedback that may complicate, slow down, or even challenge initial plans.

An option that the task force might wish to consider is to develop a linkage with civil society groups with expertise in the areas that the task force is expected to work. The CSO Collective for Emergency Relief has set up several committees that could be linked to the committees supervised by the task force. Such linkages would not weaken the government’s authority but strengthen it by grounding policy in lived realities. Recent findings emphasise the idea of “co-production”, where state and society jointly shape solutions in which sustainable outcomes often emerge when communities are treated not as passive beneficiaries but as partners in problem-solving.

Cyclone Ditwah destroyed more than physical infrastructure. It also destroyed communities. Some were swallowed by landslides and floods, while many others will need to be moved from their homes as they live in areas vulnerable to future disasters. The trauma of displacement is not merely material but social and psychological. Moving communities to new locations requires careful planning. It is not simply a matter of providing people with houses. They need to be relocated to locations and in a manner that permits communities to live together and to have livelihoods. This will require consultation with those who are displaced. Post-disaster evaluations have acknowledged that relocation schemes imposed without community consent often fail, leading to abandonment of new settlements or the emergence of new forms of marginalisation. Even today, abandoned tsunami housing is to be seen in various places that were affected by the 2004 tsunami.

Malaiyaha Tamils

The large-scale reconstruction that needs to take place in parts of the country most severely affected by Cyclone Ditwah also brings an opportunity to deal with the special problems of the Malaiyaha Tamil population. These are people of recent Indian origin who were unjustly treated at the time of Independence and denied rights of citizenship such as land ownership and the vote. This has been a festering problem and a blot on the conscience of the country. The need to resettle people living in those parts of the hill country which are vulnerable to landslides is an opportunity to do justice by the Malaiyaha Tamil community. Technocratic solutions such as high-rise apartments or English-style townhouses that have or are being contemplated may be cost-effective, but may also be culturally inappropriate and socially disruptive. The task is not simply to build houses but to rebuild communities.

The resettlement of people who have lost their homes and communities requires consultation with them. In the same manner, the education reform programme, of which the textbook controversy is only a small part, too needs to be discussed with concerned stakeholders including school teachers and university faculty. Opening up for discussion does not mean giving up one’s own position or values. Rather, it means recognising that better solutions emerge when different perspectives are heard and negotiated. Consultation takes time and can be frustrating, particularly in contexts of crisis where pressure for quick results is intense. However, solutions developed with stakeholder participation are more resilient and less costly in the long run.

Rebuilding after Cyclone Ditwah, addressing historical injustices faced by the Malaiyaha Tamil community, advancing education reform, changing the electoral system to hold provincial elections without further delay and other challenges facing the government, including national reconciliation, all require dialogue across differences and patience with disagreement. Opening up for discussion is not to give up on one’s own position or values, but to listen, to learn, and to arrive at solutions that have wider acceptance. Consultation needs to be treated as an investment in sustainability and legitimacy and not as an obstacle to rapid decisionmaking. Addressing the problems together, especially engagement with affected parties and those who work with them, offers the best chance of rebuilding not only physical infrastructure but also trust between the government and people in the year ahead.

by Jehan Perera