Features

In Sri Lanka’s own interests

Published

5 years ago

2021/01/15

by Neville Ladduwahetty

India’s External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar during his recently concluded visit to Sri Lanka is reported to have stated at a Joint Press Conference that ‘It was in Sri Lanka’s own interest that expectations of the Tamil people for equality, justice, peace and dignity within a united Sri Lanka should be fulfilled and Delhi insists on the importance of the 13^th Amendment in fulfilling those expectations’ (The Island, January 7, 2021).

Assuming the accuracy of the reported statement, its content has significant implications on the State and Nation of Sri Lanka. For instance, why are expectations for “equality, justice, peace and dignity” limited only to the Tamil people? If that is the case, by implication it must mean that all other citizens of Sri Lanka other than the Tamil community do not have similar expectations because they already enjoy equality, justice, peace and dignity in Sri Lanka. This is a factually skewed assessment on the part of Dr. Jaishankar, because he must surely know that citizens in all countries throughout the world, including Sri Lanka, regardless of which community they belong to, and/or whether they are majorities or minorities, experience inequality, injustice and lack of peace and dignity in one form or another and that India is no exception. Therefore, what is so exceptional about the Tamil community?

By insisting on the importance of the 13^th Amendment in fulfilling expectations of the Sri Lankan Tamil community, Dr. Jaishankar has underscored the link between the 13^th Amendment and the expectations. However, since the 13^th Amendments impacts only on the smaller portion of the Tamil community living in the Northern and Eastern provinces, the fulfilment of expectations would be limited only to them. What about the expectations of the larger portion of the Tamil community living outside the Northern and Eastern provinces along with the rest of the communities in Sri Lanka? For India to be concerned only with this smaller proportion of the Tamil community and not with the decidedly larger portion of the Sri Lankan citizenry has the potential to endanger India’s interests in Sri Lanka from a geostrategic perspective.

Furthermore, when Dr. Jaishankar states that it is in Sri Lanka’s own interest to ensure that the expectations for equality, justice, peace and dignity within a “UNITED Sri Lanka”, he as India’s Minister for Foreign Affairs has added a new amendment to the 13^th Amendment that impacts on the hallowed unitary structure of the Sri Lankan State. When the 13^th Amendment was introduced in 1987, Sri Lanka was unitary and remains so today. To state that the precondition for the fulfilment of expectations of the Tamil people requires the structure of the Sri Lankan State to be changed from being unitary to one that is “united” amounts to naked interference in the internal affairs of the Sri Lankan State in violation of the principles of the Non-Aligned Movement in which India was a founding member. If this is how India’s policy of “neighborhood first” manifests, the neighborhood, and in particular Sri Lanka, should be more circumspect in its dealings with India than it had been in the past.

THE “NEIGHBOURHOOD FIRST” POLICY

When Dr. Jaishankar says that it is Sri Lanka’s own interest to fulfill the expectations of the Tamil community, he, as the foremost spokesperson for India, is washing India’s hands off of any responsibility for orchestrating a forced intervention and imposing a system of governance under the 13^th Amendment, that is totally unsuitable for Sri Lanka. The net effect of the legacy left behind is a frustrated Sri Lankan nation, struggling to make the best of an inappropriate system of governance.

Is Sri Lanka in a position to introduce a system of governance that serves all communities better? According to comments made by former president Sirisena, the answer is NO. During the course of a recent interview, he stated: “The 13^th Amendment is a product of the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987. The Provincial Council Act is a product of the 13^th Amendment. So I know that it is not so easy to abolish provincial councils…. Abolishing provincial councils is like playing with fire” (The Island, January 2, 2021).

This is the trap Sri Lanka finds itself in. This trap and the manner in which it was set by India, did not deter India from engaging in acts that violated the very principles it subscribed to and expected others to live by, despite being an influential founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement with the principles:

Mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty
Mutual non-aggression
Mutual non-interference in domestic affairs
Equality and mutual benefit
Peaceful co-existence.

Today India is not encumbered by inconvenient principles. India is now a key member of the QUAD with the U.S., Japan and Australia. Until the recent visit all leaders of India including Prime Minister Modi who visited Sri Lanka advised Sri Lanka to implement the 13^th Amendment. For the first time, what is being “insisted” upon is not only the implementation of the 13^th Amendment, but also that it should be within a “UNITED” Sri Lanka.

These expressions reflect the new India backed up by the new relationships of the QUAD. Blinded by the backing of the new relationship, India would not want to be seen by its partners in the QUAD as being weak by admitting that its experiment in Sri Lanka has failed. Therefore, they are bound to keep on pressuring Sri Lanka with proposals how to make devolution more meaningful. In such a background attempting to transform current arrangements would be met with such resistance that it may amount to “playing with fire”.

Continued attempts to make provincial councils under the 13^th Amendment work is not in keeping with India’s policy of “Neighbourhood First” because the 13^th Amendment is strictly meant to fulfill the expectations of only the Tamil community in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. It does not constitute the neighbourhood of India. Since it is in India’s own geostrategic interests to cultivate the neighbourhood, India has to cater to the interests of the larger segment of the Sri Lankan nation which for all intents and purposes constitutes the real neighbourhood as recognized by other sovereign States.

What India is yet to realize and admit is that the 13^th Amendment has not served the people of any community whether they be Tamil, Sinhala, Muslim or any other, because of the fundamental unsuitability of the structural arrangement imposed on Sri Lanka by India. This fact was confirmed by former President Sirisena in the interview referred to above. He stated: “the 30-year experience of running provincial councils has not yielded desired results in terms of developing all parts of the country”. According to him: “From a development perspective, I think a set up at the district level like a District Development board would work better than provincial councils given the fact that we are a small country”.

Realistic pragmatism requires that India rethinks its priorities because its current emphasis does not amount to its stated policy of “neighbourhood first”. Instead, the current policy as far as the 13^th Amendment in Sri Lanka is concerned amounts to “India First”, in the neighbourhood.

DENIAL of RIGHTS to DEVELOPMENT

There is a consensus in Sri Lanka that the provincial council system is an unsuitable mechanism to address the needs of the people. Despite this realization successive Sri Lankan governments have failed to present a formal statement to the leadership of India that because of the unsuitability of the existing provincial council system, Sri Lanka needs to develop an alternative. If India is opposed to an alternative that suits Sri Lanka, India should be informed that Sri Lanka would be engaging in an exercise to find an alternative, because what is at stake is the denial of a right to human development of millions in Sri Lanka brought about by India’s intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign State that introduced a system of governance that does not serve the interests of people in Sri Lanka.

Having so stated, Sri Lanka should set up a mechanism to develop an alternative to provincial councils with a mandate to develop a proposal to ensure the delivery of goods and services to all communities in the periphery independent of all parochial political and other considerations. Such an alternative should be based on inputs from the people in the periphery, and definitely not on inputs from the political leaders of all hues as has been in the past. Furthermore, such a proposal should have the flexibility to function whether the arrangement at the center is Parliamentary, or Presidential.

Hoping that the framers of the new constitution would give the needed attention to develop an alternative to the existing provincial council system together with other weighty and controversial issues, is not only to complicate the daunting task of constitution making but also to rob the attention the alternative should deserve. Therefore, since the exercise of developing a system to ensure that those at the periphery are served requires the engagement of persons with skills and experience of a sort that is different to those conversant with constitutions and how governments function, the task of developing an alternative to provincial councils should be carried out independently.

India must surely be aware that the provincial council system introduced under the 13^th Amendment has failed to fulfill intended expectations. Despite this for India to continue to insist that the 13^th Amendment is implemented by every visiting dignitary is being disingenuous to a neighbor, under a policy of “neighbourhood first”. Since the insistence on the 13^th Amendment denies the fundamental right to human development of millions in Sri Lanka, India must he held accountable and responsible for their fate.

IN INDIA’S OWN INTEREST

India’s stated policy is “Neighbourhood First”. Explaining the concept, Amb. (Retd) V.P. Haran at the Central University of Tamil Nadu stated: “Policy of Govt. of India towards neighbors is encapsulated in the phrase, ‘Neighbors First’. This policy priority holds true for almost every country in the world. For, anything that happens in one country will affect the other countries in the neighborhood. Former PM Dr. Manmohan Singh once said, ‘the real test of foreign policy is in the handling of neighbors’. We often hear political leaders say that India wants a peaceful, prosperous and stable neighborhood. Reason is simple. This means less trouble for us and will enable us to focus on development, without distraction. Neighborhood diplomacy is challenging and difficult but one that is satisfying at the end” (July 14, 2017).

If as stated above, India’s peace prosperity and stability depends on the stability of its neighbors, it is in India’s own interest that there is peace, prosperity and stability in Sri Lanka. The question then becomes, could there be prosperity in Sri Lanka under a system spawned by the 13^th Amendment that denies the right to human development to the entire population of Sri Lanka because of the systemic unsuitability of the system imposed by India? Furthermore, how could there be stability in Sri Lanka when the overwhelming majority is disadvantaged by the system of provincial governance introduced by India?

India’s interest in the Tamil community in Sri Lanka is driven by India’s own internal imperatives because of the perception that a Tamil community in Sri Lanka with fulfilled expectations would not give cause for instability in Tamil Nadu on account of Tamils in Sri Lanka. However, the context in which such notions thrived has changed. Therefore, India has to think beyond internal parochial interests. Having joined the QUAD India has to act as a global player. To do so India has to reset its sights and see nation-states as whole entities and not as made up of ethnic communities which means India has to address the concerns of the rump of sovereign States As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, this is to accept that the model imposed by India has failed, and that India should not to stand in the way of Sri Lanka developing an alternative to the provincial council system, because it is in India’s own interest to do so.

CONCLUSION

The comment by India’s External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar Joint Press Conference was that ‘It was in Sri Lanka’s own interest that expectations of the Tamil people for equality, justice, peace and dignity within a united Sri Lanka should be fulfilled and Delhi insists on the importance of the 13^th Amendment in fulfilling those expectations’.

For a seasoned diplomat to use words such as fulfilling expectations within a UNITED Sri Lanka and to INSIST on the importance of the 13^th Amendment means that the gloves have come off. As it is with the U.S. using human rights issues in Sri Lanka to contain China’s influence in Sri Lanka, India is using the 13^th Amendment coupled with Japanese funds to get involved in Sri Lanka to dilute Chinese influence in Sri Lanka.

This is the background in which Sri Lanka has to act. After thirty plus years of denial of the right to human development of the citizens of Sri Lanka as a result of the provincial councils set up under the 13^th Amendment that was imposed in violation of principles of the Non-Aligned Movement of which India was a founding member, the people of Sri Lanka cannot afford to wait any longer. Therefore, the people who elected this President and this Parliament should prevail on the government to submit a formal statement to India that Sri Lanka would engage in an exercise to develop an alternative to the existing system.

The repeated references to the 13^th Amendment demonstrate that India’s take on Sri Lanka has not changed. Even after a lapse of nearly thirty plus years and the passing away of most of the major actors associated with Tamil politics in India and Sri Lanka, India continues to see Sri Lanka from the perspective of Tamil politics. In the meantime, the global landscape has changed dramatically with the ascendance of formidable global players that view Sri Lanka’s strategic location as being vital to their geostrategic interests. They view Sri Lanka as a nation-state and not as one made up of communities as demonstrated by India. This difference in perspective is not in India’s own interest. Therefore, in keeping with India’s own policy of “Neighbourhood First”, it is in India’s own interest to change its take on Sri Lanka, and to recognize it as being a sovereign nation-state and not one made up of disparate communities, if India is not to be seen as “India First in the Neighbourhood”.

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Features

Ranking public services with AI — A roadmap to reviving institutions like SriLankan Airlines

Published

1 day ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

Efficacy measures an organisation’s capacity to achieve its mission and intended outcomes under planned or optimal conditions. It differs from efficiency, which focuses on achieving objectives with minimal resources, and effectiveness, which evaluates results in real-world conditions. Today, modern AI tools, using publicly available data, enable objective assessment of the efficacy of Sri Lanka’s government institutions.

Among key public bodies, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka emerges as the most efficacious, outperforming the Department of Inland Revenue, Sri Lanka Customs, the Election Commission, and Parliament. In the financial and regulatory sector, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) ranks highest, ahead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the Sri Lanka Standards Institution.

Among state-owned enterprises, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) leads in efficacy, followed by Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. Other institutions assessed included the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and the Sri Lanka Transport Board. At the lower end of the spectrum were Lanka Sathosa and Sri Lankan Airlines, highlighting a critical challenge for the national economy.

Sri Lankan Airlines, consistently ranked at the bottom, has long been a financial drain. Despite successive governments’ reform attempts, sustainable solutions remain elusive.

Globally, the most profitable airlines operate as highly integrated, technology-enabled ecosystems rather than as fragmented departments. Operations, finance, fleet management, route planning, engineering, marketing, and customer service are closely coordinated, sharing real-time data to maximise efficiency, safety, and profitability.

The challenge for Sri Lankan Airlines is structural. Its operations are fragmented, overly hierarchical, and poorly aligned. Simply replacing the CEO or senior leadership will not address these deep-seated weaknesses. What the airline needs is a cohesive, integrated organisational ecosystem that leverages technology for cross-functional planning and real-time decision-making.

The government must urgently consider restructuring Sri Lankan Airlines to encourage:

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

=Collaborative strategic decisions on route rationalisation, fleet renewal, partnerships, and cost management, rather than exclusive top-down mandates

Sustainable reform requires systemic change. Without modernised organisational structures, stronger accountability, and aligned incentives across divisions, financial recovery will remain out of reach. An integrated, performance-oriented model offers the most realistic path to operational efficiency and long-term viability.

Reforming loss-making institutions like Sri Lankan Airlines is not merely a matter of leadership change — it is a structural overhaul essential to ensuring these entities contribute productively to the national economy rather than remain perpetual burdens.

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

Features

Why Pi Day?

Published

1 day ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

The approximate value of Pi (π) is 3.14 in mathematics. Therefore, the day 14 March is celebrated as the Pi Day. In 2019, UNESCO proclaimed 14 March as the International Day of Mathematics.

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians figured out that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times its diameter. But they could not come up with an exact value for this ratio although they knew that it is a constant. This constant was later named as π which is a letter in the Greek alphabet.

Archimedes

It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes (250 BC) who was able to find an upper bound and a lower bound for this constant. He drew a circle of diameter one unit and drew hexagons inside and outside the circle such that the sides of each hexagon touch the sides of the circle. In mathematics the circle passing through all vertices of a polygon is called a ‘circumcircle’ and the largest circle that fits inside a polygon tangent to all its sides is called an ‘incircle’. The total length of the smaller hexagon then becomes the lower bound of π and the length of the hexagon outside the circle is the upper bound. He realised that by increasing the number of sides of the polygon can make the bounds get closer to the value of Pi and increased the number of sides to 12,24,48 and 60. He argued that by increasing the number of sides will ultimately result in obtaining the original circle, thereby laying the foundation for the theory of limits. He ended up with the lower bound as 22/7 and the upper bound 223/71. He could not continue his research as his hometown Syracuse was invaded by Romans and was killed by one of the soldiers. His last words were ‘do not disturb my circles’, perhaps a reference to his continuing efforts to find the value of π to a greater accuracy.

Archimedes can be considered as the father of geometry. His contributions revolutionised geometry and his methods anticipated integral calculus. He invented the pulley and the hydraulic screw for drawing water from a well. He also discovered the law of hydrostatics. He formulated the law of levers which states that a smaller weight placed farther from a pivot can balance a much heavier weight closer to it. He famously said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Mathematicians have found many expressions for π as a sum of infinite series that converge to its value. One such famous series is the Leibniz Series found in 1674 by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, which is given below.

π = 4 ( 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – ………….)

The Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan came up with a magnificent formula in 1910. The short form of the formula is as follows.

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

For practical applications an approximation is sufficient. Even NASA uses only the approximation 3.141592653589793 for its interplanetary navigation calculations.

It is not just an interesting and curious number. It is used for calculations in navigation, encryption, space exploration, video game development and even in medicine. As π is fundamental to spherical geometry, it is at the heart of positioning systems in GPS navigations. It also contributes significantly to cybersecurity. As it is an irrational number it is an excellent foundation for generating randomness required in encryption and securing communications. In the medical field, it helps to calculate blood flow rates and pressure differentials. In diagnostic tools such as CT scans and MRI, pi is an important component in mathematical algorithms and signal processing techniques.

This elegant, never-ending number demonstrates how mathematics transforms into practical applications that shape our world. The possibilities of what it can do are infinite as the number itself. It has become a symbol of beauty and complexity in mathematics. “It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go.” said Sophie Germain.

Mathematics fans are intrigued by this irrational number and attempt to calculate it as far as they can. In March 2022, Emma Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated it to 100 trillion decimal places in Google Cloud. It had taken 157 days. The Guinness World Record for reciting the number from memory is held by Rajveer Meena of India for 70000 decimal places over 10 hours.

Happy Pi Day!

The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate in the UK and an educational consultant at the Overseas School of Colombo.

by R N A de Silva

Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

Published

2 days ago

2026/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

A combined US-Israel attack on Iran.(BBC)

The recent humanly costly torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone by a US submarine has raised a number of issues of great importance to international political discourse and law that call for elucidation. It is best that enlightened commentary is brought to bear in such discussions because at present misleading and uninformed speculation on questions arising from the incident are being aired by particularly jingoistic politicians of Sri Lanka’s South which could prove deleterious.

As matters stand, there seems to be no credible evidence that the Indian state was aware of the impending torpedoing of the Iranian vessel but these acerbic-tongued politicians of Sri Lanka’s South would have the local public believe that the tragedy was triggered with India’s connivance. Likewise, India is accused of ‘embroiling’ Sri Lanka in the incident on account of seemingly having prior knowledge of it and not warning Sri Lanka about the impending disaster.

It is plain that a process is once again afoot to raise anti-India hysteria in Sri Lanka. An obligation is cast on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that incendiary speculation of the above kind is defeated and India-Sri Lanka relations are prevented from being in any way harmed. Proactive measures are needed by the Sri Lankan government and well meaning quarters to ensure that public discourse in such matters have a factual and rational basis. ‘Knowledge gaps’ could prove hazardous.

Meanwhile, there could be no doubt that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was violated by the US because the sinking of the Iranian vessel took place in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone. While there is no international decrying of the incident, and this is to be regretted, Sri Lanka’s helplessness and small player status would enable the US to ‘get away with it’.

Could anything be done by the international community to hold the US to account over the act of lawlessness in question? None is the answer at present. This is because in the current ‘Global Disorder’ major powers could commit the gravest international irregularities with impunity. As the threadbare cliché declares, ‘Might is Right’….. or so it seems.

Unfortunately, the UN could only merely verbally denounce any violations of International Law by the world’s foremost powers. It cannot use countervailing force against violators of the law, for example, on account of the divided nature of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members have shown incapability of seeing eye-to-eye on grave matters relating to International Law and order over the decades.

The foregoing considerations could force the conclusion on uncritical sections that Political Realism or Realpolitik has won out in the end. A basic premise of the school of thought known as Political Realism is that power or force wielded by states and international actors determine the shape, direction and substance of international relations. This school stands in marked contrast to political idealists who essentially proclaim that moral norms and values determine the nature of local and international politics.

While, British political scientist Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was a proponent of Political Realism, political idealism has its roots in the teachings of Socrates, Plato and latterly Friedrich Hegel of Germany, to name just few such notables.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no getting way from the conclusion that coercive force is the deciding factor in international politics. If this were not so, US President Donald Trump in collaboration with Israeli Rightist Premier Benjamin Natanyahu could not have wielded the ‘big stick’, so to speak, on Iran, killed its Supreme Head of State, terrorized the Iranian public and gone ‘scot-free’. That is, currently, the US’ impunity seems to be limitless.

Moreover, the evidence is that the Western bloc is reuniting in the face of Iran’s threats to stymie the flow of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world. The recent G7 summit witnessed a coming together of the foremost powers of the global North to ensure that the West does not suffer grave negative consequences from any future blocking of western oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Israel is having a ‘free run’ of the Middle East, so to speak, picking out perceived adversarial powers, such as Lebanon, and militarily neutralizing them; once again with impunity. On the other hand, Iran has been bringing under assault, with no questions asked, Gulf states that are seen as allying with the US and Israel. West Asia is facing a compounded crisis and International Law seems to be helplessly silent.

Wittingly or unwittingly, matters at the heart of International Law and peace are being obfuscated by some pro-Trump administration commentators meanwhile. For example, retired US Navy Captain Brent Sadler has cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which provides for the right to self or collective self-defence of UN member states in the face of armed attacks, as justifying the US sinking of the Iranian vessel (See page 2 of The Island of March 10, 2026). But the Article makes it clear that such measures could be resorted to by UN members only ‘ if an armed attack occurs’ against them and under no other circumstances. But no such thing happened in the incident in question and the US acted under a sheer threat perception.

Clearly, the US has violated the Article through its action and has once again demonstrated its tendency to arbitrarily use military might. The general drift of Sadler’s thinking is that in the face of pressing national priorities, obligations of a state under International Law could be side-stepped. This is a sure recipe for international anarchy because in such a policy environment states could pursue their national interests, irrespective of their merits, disregarding in the process their obligations towards the international community.

Moreover, Article 51 repeatedly reiterates the authority of the UN Security Council and the obligation of those states that act in self-defence to report to the Council and be guided by it. Sadler, therefore, could be said to have cited the Article very selectively, whereas, right along member states’ commitments to the UNSC are stressed.

However, it is beyond doubt that international anarchy has strengthened its grip over the world. While the US set destabilizing precedents after the crumbling of the Cold War that paved the way for the current anarchic situation, Russia further aggravated these degenerative trends through its invasion of Ukraine. Stepping back from anarchy has thus emerged as the prime challenge for the world community.