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The COVID-19 Pandemic in Sri Lanka: Contextualizing it Geographically

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By Dr. Nalani Hennayake and Dr. Kumuduni Kumarihamy

(Continued from Tuesday)

Part III

The mapping of COVID-19 cases at the local level (preferably at the GN division level), but at least at the MOH level, is essential for future planning. It is commendable that such a map has been produced at the Divisional Secretariat Division level for the Kandy District.

In Map 06, the DSD/MOH areas are categorized, based on the number of patients detected up to November 11, 2020, into six categories. Such mapping again runs the risk of the ‘modifiable areal unit problem’ since the data are aggregated to the DSD/MOH level. However, the dot density map of the Kandy District (Map 07) is more useful as it randomly marks the locations of positive cases within the GN division. Compared with the previous choropleth map, such a density map allows us to see the geographical patterning of COVID-19 to a certain extent and to identify the ‘hotspots’. If the density map is overlaid with the GN boundary map, the spatial heterogeneities will be highlighted more than at the DSD/MOH level.

We produced a new map (Map 08) of Kandy District with the limited data available for the GN level to see the spatial dispersion of COVID-19 as a sample exercise. By November 21, 2020, there were only 14 positive cases in the Medadumbara division, and they are distributed only in six GN divisions (Udatenna – 4, Vilamuna – 3, Waradiwela – 1, Randeniya -1, Karalliyadda 1, Kandegama 1, being updated 1), as shown in map 8. In map 06, the entire Medadumbara division is marked in red as a high-risk area giving a very different spatial impression.

If the spatial heterogeneity can be depicted at the GN division level, we can identify COVID-19 clusters/hotspots more accurately in a given area. Moreover, we can further investigate the relationship between the COVID-19 clusters/hotspots and the socioeconomic and ecological determinants such as road density, education level, poverty and connectivity (using road network). It is clear that high population density, high accessibility, and poverty, to a certain extent, correlates with the spread of the pandemic. We have done this exercise using Kandy as an example to show how such mapping and the resulting geo-visualization can be a powerful tool in understanding the severity of the situation and enabling decision-makers and implementers of control strategies. If such maps can be propagated through media, as we do with elections and weather reporting, and given their visual effect, people themselves may enforce their spatial restrictions.

If such maps can be developed for all MOH areas taking the GN division as the spatial unit of analysis, Sri Lanka would have a much better representation and geo-visualization of the COVID-19 pandemic situation, which in turn would enable one to envisage its severity and be guided by anticipatory actions. The determination of the COVID-19 positive cases’ location, for mapping, can be based on any one of the following; where it was contracted, the person’s place of work, and place of residence. The critical information needed here is not any identity-related information of the infected, but the geographical locations, the possible spaces and places of contact. Therefore, marking any one or all of the above or whatever available data would provide a map of potential localities and places for contracting the coronavirus. Travel restrictions can be enforced either by the government or exercised voluntarily by individuals when such information is provided at the GN level. Identifying such spaces and places with a potential for spreading the disease and clusters of locally developing cases is extremely important to prevent further escalation of the coronavirus. Our argument here is that mapping geographies of infection at a micro-scale, such as GN divisions, is vital. It provides a visual outlook of the crisis and its localized nature.

 

Geographies of vulnerability

One of the most important results of such mapping, especially if it can be done at a micro-scale level such as the GN division, is that such spatial patterns guide us to understand the social vulnerabilities. We already explained how the COVID-19 pandemic correlates with high population density, high road density, and poverty. In other words, this allows us to denaturalize the pandemic within the local context and to recognize the social, economic, and political contexts that engender the pandemic situation. Those who were infected were infected not because they were at ‘the wrong place at the wrong time,’ but have inherited or made to live/work in ‘wrong places’, socio-economically downtrodden places.

The national data provided by the Ministry of Health on the distribution of the total number of COVID-19 patients at district level and the information released from the National Operations Centre for the Prevention of COVID-19 (NOCPC) allows us to speculate that several communities are in danger. COVID-19 has become severe in certain types of localities and spaces at the outset. For example, in Colombo, high density, low-income (we prefer to call these poverty-stricken) localities are worst affected by the pandemic. Such localities are locked down to prevent from spreading outwards.

Even in Kandy, one of the localities where a higher number of cases have been reported is a poverty-stricken, high-density urban locality that provides essential labor to the city. Thus, it is clear that the urban high-density and low-end social category is a straightforward victim of this pathogen.



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Education, democracy and unravelling liberal order

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Dewey / Kannangara

by Ahilan Kadirgamar

Sri Lanka is now at the crossroads with a new regime in formation that has to choose from different social and economic pathways for the country. In the United States, Trump is back with a fascist tide that is likely to sweep the world. In this context, what will become of the long journey of free education in Sri Lanka?

The trend in Sri Lanka after the open economy reforms of the late 1970s has been defunding free education, leading to the slow implosion of the education system. In fact, particularly over the last decade, there has been an insidious project of engineering the failure of state education, in order to create the environment for commercialising education. Privatisation, including fee-levying institutions, are now making education a cash earner – even as students become indebted – and a privilege of the wealthy. In this column, I sketch the ideological underpinnings of education that have to be debated and struggled for, as education, like other social pillars, are confronted with diverging paths ahead.

Kannangara and Dewey

When it comes to free education in Sri Lanka, we often go back to Kannangara’s Free Education Bill of 1944. Indeed, Kannangara claimed a new democracy like Sri Lanka needed universal free education. There were, however, great gaps in terms of those who continued to be excluded from free education after independence, particularly oppressed caste communities, the rural and urban subaltern classes, and the Hill Country Tamils in the plantations.

Few decades back, when I began thinking about the legacy of free education in Sri Lanka, I also read with much enthusiasm, the American pragmatist philosopher John Dewey’s classic work ‘Democracy and Education’. Dewey put forward an educational philosophy about the importance of critical learning and engagement for a democracy. Such advancements in educational thinking and policies were the backdrop for public free education with the emergence social welfare states in the post-Second World War era, including in the Third World after decolonisation. However, with the neoliberal turn following the long economic downturn in the 1970s, social welfare was rolled back with liberal democratic states abandoning education to the whims of the market.

Now, what happens when the liberal order itself comes under attack as with the re-emergence of Trump? Will it be more of market-oriented education or illiberal education – characterised by attacks, for example, on secularism and progressive values of gender equality – with the rise of conservative forces? Indeed, the story in the United States, in recent times, has been the merging of the two backed, by the Christian Right.

In this context, where is education in Sri Lanka headed? Will the NPP Government be able to redirect education towards universal free education from the commercialised educational thrust we have seen over the last few years? Much will depend on how the World Bank and the elite in Colombo engage with the Government and the resistance put forward by the people.

6% of GDP demand

The NPP claims it will slowly address the demand for 6% of GDP in state expenditure for education. Given the economic constraints and the drastic cuts to spending with the IMF programme, substantively increasing the allocation would require considerable political will on the part of the government, including walking away from the IMF’s austerity conditionalities.

Following the major FUTA struggle with its demand for 6% of GDP 12 years ago, in 2012, some of us took the issue of defunding general education seriously, and did some research on the state of rural schools in the Jaffna District. We found that even where there were adequate facilities and teachers, students did not perform well and many dropped out of school due to poor social and economic conditions. I published some of the findings of this research in a chapter titled, “From the Margins of Jaffna: A Political Economy of the Crisis in Education” (Crisis in Education, Dialogue, Vol. XXXIX 2012). I critiqued the World Bank claim that educational attainment will lead to higher earnings by analysing the opposite causal dynamics, where, in reality, social and economic exclusion undermines educational advancement.

All this is important today, as Sri Lanka goes through a long economic crisis. The social and economic impact in the country today is similar to the great disruption of social life during the decades of war in Jaffna where education deteriorated with intergenerational impact. We know that children are skipping meals, with increasing levels of absenteeism, and also dropping out of schools and universities to find cheap work for survival. While state investment in education is absolutely necessary at the current moment, economic rejuvenation and social protection programmes are also necessary to ensure meaningful education for the children of working people. In other words, the ongoing austerity measures pushed by the IMF, have a double impact on education, both defunding state education and disabling communities’ ability to access and engage in education. I believe, particularly amidst the economic crisis, there is need to think about the social determinants of education, along the lines of progressive analysis in health with their emphasis on the social determinants of health.

Emancipatory initiative

As Sri Lanka emerges out of presidential and parliamentary elections, the next six months are going to be crucial for education in Sri Lanka. While Dewey and Kannangara saw education as critical for democracy, I emphasise that the educational system is determined by broader political, social and economic changes. A polarised world with unrestrained extraction of resources and tremendous exploitation in the Global South will drastically affect the educational possibilities of the working people. In this context, what can a left of centre government, coming to power with support of a non-elite electorate, do to address the maligned state of free education?

I argue that demanding larger allocations for education alone will not be enough. We need to struggle against commercialisation of education and once again demand free education for all. Furthermore, free education has to come with the necessary social supports that enable the dispossessed sections of our society to meaningfully access education, which means an end to austerity. Moreover, in the troubling years ahead characterised by the rise of authoritarian and fascist tendencies around the world, the assault on education is likely to come in the form of both commercial extraction through educational businesses and an attack on the liberal freedoms.

In this context, I believe the idea of educational attainment leading to higher earnings and social mobility, in a time when an economic depression has disrupted livelihoods and people don’t even have the wherewithal to access education, for the moment has to be shelved. The struggle for free education needs to draw from more radical thinking in our times as we focus on self-sufficiency and the essential needs of our people. I draw inspiration from Paulo Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’, and emphasise the need again to think of education as an emancipatory initiative for the millions in our country who have been dispossessed and reduced to poverty. We need to unconditionally reinforce free education as essential for democracy, equality and freedom.

(Ahilan Kadirgamar is a political economist and Senior Lecturer, University of Jaffna)

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies , subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies

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Govt. needs to consider broader coalition

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President Dissanayake (A file picture reproduced from The Tamil Guardian)

by Jehan Perera

The government is aware as much as anyone else that the country continues to be in an extremely vulnerable situation with the possibility of reversal to a state of economic decline a possible scenario. Both national and international experts have pointed this out with the IMF saying that the country is poised at knife’s edge. The government’s care taken in navigating the situation has included accepting the IMF package, which the main opposition party is making so bold as to reject, but which the former government negotiated and considered to be its signal triumph. The government has also not been engaging in any high cost and self-interested activities unlike its predecessors who sooner rather than later made major wasteful expenditures.

The government has also demonstrated discipline most commendably by not abusing state resources for election purposes. This indicates a commitment to rule within the law, unlike previous leaders who saw themselves as above the law. The country’s leading election monitoring bodies have made this point, noting that at previous elections, including the recently concluded presidential election, governments were blatant in their misuse of state resources.

All of them used state vehicles, including helicopters, without any hesitation and allocated large sums of money for their party members to spend on the ground as development activities. The NPP government is however showing that it is clearly different from its predecessors and wishes to spearhead the formation of a new political culture.

The government’s desire to show that it is different from its predecessors may also explain the appearance of its aversion to joining hands with other political parties in the formation of a new government. Instead, the government’s leading spokespersons are openly saying that will not offer any positions in the government to the opposition member who appear to be falling over themselves to say that they would like to support the government in its noble endeavours and would want to join up to do the same.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has made it plain that after the parliamentary election, when it comes to forming the new government, the only persons who would be offered ministerial positions will be those from within the ruling party.

ADEQUATE REPRESENTATION

The government’s announcement that it will only be having members from within the ruling party appointed as ministers has been in reaction to members of other political parties publicly expressing their readiness to join the government as ministers if invited. Some of them have even claimed endorsement by the president himself for their plans of joining the government.

However, the president has been very specific that he will not be having any members of the two immediate past government in his government. This will rule out that the practices of the past whenever opportunities to move from one side to the other, they did so with gusto, only to find that they were not the only ones who had crossed over.

From the viewpoint of those who feel they have a lot of energies within themselves they would like to join the government to multiply the impact of their work. On the other hand, many of those same political leaders have very poor track records of governance, being highly corrupt and acting with impunity, without following the due process that was set out.

It makes sense for the NPP government to wish to keep a distance between themselves and the older generation of politicians. More or less all of them are now tainted with the brush of corruption and impunity that has made it possible for the more powerful among them to get away with murder.

However, relying on one’s own party to make decisions for the country is inadvisable. The fact is that Sri Lanka is a multi-ethnic, multi religious, multi lingual and multi caste society. The core decision making group within the NPP needs to have the ability the represent them directly.

However, this core group of decision makers is still not widely known but is generally believed to be from the Sinhalese ethnic majority. The question is whether they, even if ideologically driven by the Marxist belief in the equality of all persons, can represent the interests of the ethnic and religious minorities. The reason that adequate representation in decision making is essential is that it is difficult for those who are from one group to fully comprehend the needs and aspirations of those from other groups.

STAYING POWER

As a country that experienced over three decades of violent ethnic conflict which continues without resolution, the issue of ensuring adequate representation of ethnic and religious minorities in the government needs to be taken as a matter of primary importance. In a similar manner, the issue of adequate representation of women in politics also needs to be taken seriously, with a women’s quota of at least 25 percent becoming part of the political debate. The government will have many other priorities. But having the ethnic and religious minority representation to come from having been elected by the people, and not being simply selected from above, will be essential.

The absence of strong and independent minority representation can be seen in some of the cosmetic actions taken by the government which in their minds might be a worthwhile endeavour. A few weeks ago, a road that had been closed for nearly three decades in the Jaffna airport area was reopened. But the situation there is one of extreme poverty and underdevelopment, which the opening of the road contributes little or nothing to alleviate. They see the road as connecting nowhere special with another place at its end which is also going to nowhere special. The road is seen by the people living there in the north to be an action, but one that is not improving their lifestyles and life prospects.

The NPP’s reversal of its stance on the issue of abolition of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) has been discouraging to the people of the north and east. This law which is called a draconian law on account of its severity, discourages their activism as they do not want to protest about anything and taken in under the PTA. The Tamil and Muslim people see the PTA as a weapon to harass them and to subjugate them through fear of the fate of their compatriots. The way that Sinhalese people see the situation is different and focuses on the fact that for most Sinhalese, the PTA is simply the fastest and most efficient way to provide national security to the country and its people. This is the reason why power sharing between the representatives of the different parties is necessary that they may engage in repeated and frequent internal debates and find themselves rethinking the country and its laws.

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Sri Lanka not in the scene at Grammy Awards 2025

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The Grammy Awards were much in the news, in our scene, the past few weeks, and that was mainly because our artistes were seeking CONSIDERATION for a Grammy Award.

Those who are not familiar with the criteria for nomination got the impression that submitting an entry for consideration is a great achievement, and there were congratulatory messages on social media.

One must remember that an entry that has been submitted for consideration is sent to the members of the Recording Academy, assuming that particular entry meets the criteria, to be voted on.

From these votes, nominations for each category are derived.

Being Grammy-nominated is a PRESTIGIOUS ACHIEVEMENT, but simply seeking consideration is NOT, and we were seeking consideration for Best Global Music Album.

Well, the nominees for Grammy Awards 2025 were announced last Friday, 8th November, 2024, and Sri Lanka is missing from that list.

Best Global Music Album brought into the spotlight the following:

Alkebulan II

– Matt B feat. Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Paisajes

– Ciro Hurtado

Heis

– Rema

Historias De Un Flamenco

– Antonio Rey

Born In The Wild

– Tems

Beyoncé added to her all-time record number of Grammy nominations with 11, for the 67th Grammy Awards, followed by Kendrick Lamar, Charli XCX and Billie Eilish with seven nods each.

Beyoncé now has a career total of 99 Grammy nominations – more than any other artiste – but she’s not yet won the Recording Academy’s top prize, Album of the Year. Who knows, we may see her do it this time!

The winners of Grammy Awards 2025 will be revealed at the event in Los Angeles, on 2nd February, 2025.

Yes, Sri Lanka did have a Grammy Award winner, and that was in 2014.

Hussain Jiffry won the prestigious Grammy Award as a member of the Herb Alpert Quintet. They won the Best Pop Instrumental Album Award for their album ‘Steppin’ Out.’

For the record, the renowned bassist, who is now based in LA, in the States, has performed with many artistes, including Sergio Mendes, Al McKay, Yanni, Dave Weckl Band, and Herb Alpert, and is said to be one of the most sought-after bassists in LA.

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