Features
What makes a ‘knowledge centre’?

By Usvatte-aratchi
A translation of an essay written by Professor Sirimal Abeyratne (Colombo) appeared in the Lankadeepa of 18 August, 2021. As I have difficulties obtaining typescripts in Sinhala, I will write in English. Abeyratne dwelt on two questions. First, who benefits from ‘free education’? Second, how do you engineer a knowledge centre?
Prior to answering the first question, he forays briefly into discussing ‘what is free education’. As we have developed the usage, free education is what is free to the student or her parents. But the community as a whole, that includes you and me, pays for ‘free education’. Education is provided by the state. The state, unless you are Hegelian, is the community organised for political purposes. In order to pay for my education, the state using its agent the government, collects taxes from my parents. Instead of paying fees to a private school to educate me, my parents pay taxes to the government which pays the public schools to educate me. No matter who organises the provision of education, my parents pay for my education. However, there is a difference of critical importance of who actually pays for my schooling. When it is necessary that students or their parents pay for a child’s education, whether a child goes to school depends on whether parents can afford to pay for the child’s education. When the community pays for children’s education, the child can go to school, no matter whether his parents have the wherewithal to pay for his education. The rest of the community takes on that burden. This is fairer, far more just and far more productive for social wellbeing. Education is free in school and in university in the same sense as it is in Sri Lanka in France, Germany and Finland and may be elsewhere. In the US, primary and secondary education is free in the same sense. We are in no sense unique.
US school education
In the US, school education (K-12) is organised by School Boards, elected by voters in the School Board area. School Boards pay for education with property taxes paid by owners in the area. The Board is accountable to those that elected them, by and large, the same persons who pay property taxes: an excellent example of the principle of subsidiarity at work. Parents are commonly closely associated with the school. One of them may volunteer to substitute for a teacher absent without expectation, another may help in the library and still another may accompany a class on a day-outing. That gives a clue to the differentiating in the quality of teaching in schools. The more educated and the better informed the parents are, the better their schools. Imagine a young couple who have come out of an elite university and together earn $100,000 to $200,000 a month. They can buy an expensive house in a School Board area (e.g. Montgomery County in Virginia), where public schools are of high quality. In New York City, Brooklyn High School, Bronx High School and Manhattan Science High School, all in the public sector, have excellent reputations. The high prices of houses will keep out those with low incomes. (The State of California introduced, a few years ago, a scheme to make equalisation grants to improve the quality of education in poorer counties.) The parents will take care to provide a home environment conducive to creative activity and the growth of the children’s minds. Besides, they can buy private tuition to supplement what is done in excellent schools. Parents will take the children to see the beauty of the country, to great museums, to enjoy a play and in summer perhaps to Italy, to China, to India or to Japan. The children will learn at least one foreign language (perhaps Greek or Latin, in addition), some music, to dance, play baseball and to debate. Their teachers, counsellors and parents will be aware of what elite college admission committees look for and send the children to volunteer work in a hospital or the local library. In these and many other ways children from educated and high earning families will ‘hoard the dreams’ of children of common families. Contrast that with the experience of poorly educated and low-income families whose children may never have been out of their hometowns, never seen a museum or even seen even the ocean, if in Iowa or Idaho. That pattern, on a lower scale, is quite common in our country. I had not been to Galle till I was 15 when I was hospitalised there for three nights. (I was shocked to hear from a ward doctor in a private hospital in Colombo, who normally worked in a government hospital, that he, although owning a car, had never been to Matara or to Nuwara- Eliya. He had gone to school in Veyangoda.) Given these wide disparities in income levels, educational levels and cultural practices among families, it is utopian to imagine that there are equal opportunities for all children to do well in school and in university. We can observe these differences played out in daily lives. How many physicians or surgeons have you met in this country, whose parents were tea pluckers in the hill country? Even as early as the 5th standard scholarship examination, you can see children whose parents earn regular incomes, commonly from government, end up in the top one or two percent of high scorers. Look at sharp differences of those who score high Z scores at A’Level in Mullaitivu and in Gampaha districts. There are odd instances when an extraordinarily intelligent student may break these barriers. But they are exceptional and prove the rule. In China, the same result is achieved with the hukou system and competition at gaokao, the entrance examination to universities. The $70 billion private tuition industry, now under attack there, is stark evidence of differences in the capacity between the rich and the poor to buy ‘good education’. In Colombo, you can see the same schemes at work through property prices. Borella, Maradana, Kurunduvatta, Bambalapitiya and Kollupitiya have nests of high-quality schools which feed into the more coveted faculties in selected universities. You can observe that even those who score high at Grade V scholarship examination are from families where parents have had more education in them than others. Given even the best intentions (e.g. China), there is no way that advantages enjoyed by children from families of well-educated parents, who almost invariably earn high and stable incomes, can be denied advantages in education.
Creating knowledge centers
Let us briefly, look at the idea of creating ‘knowledge centres’ that Abeyratne wrote abut. The presence of foreign students and teachers is not always a mark of a knowledge centre. There are a large number of foreign students in both China and India, although neither is yet known as a knowledge centre. A country may have a large number of foreigners as teachers, simply because it is short of competent teachers. In Peradeniya in the 1950s, the professor of Samskrt was German, four teachers in economics (Das Gupta, Sarkar, Oliver Henry and Eiteman) were from overseas, in history two and one each in Sociology, Geography and English.) Gradually local scholars replaced them. Abeyratne, in fact, was looking for students and teachers who are attracted by leading scholars in particular disciplines, who open up new lines of inquiry that may extend the width and depth of that discipline and well-functioning labs working on frontier problems in a particular discipline. In the University of Cambridge in 1989-90, out of 10,243 undergraduates, 568 or about 5% were overseas students and of 2,975 postgraduate students 1,022 or about a third from overseas. In the History Faculty in the same year, out of 60 postgraduate students admitted, 33 or more than a half were from overseas. The reputation of good scholars matters much.
Importance of libraries
The importance of libraries, especially for undergraduates has diminished somewhat with computer technology, but not entirely. For research students a great library is an essential asset. A reputation for good research is earned with publications in high quality journals and books that explore new areas or develop new insights into existing problems. That in turn implies that there are good publishing houses. University Presses are essential ingredients for ‘knowledge centres’. The Cambridge University Press comes from 1534 CE and Oxford UP from 1536. There is not a single good publishing house in our country. Good research comes out of universities with strong leaders in certain disciplines. This was most clearly evident in German universities from about 1850 to the disaster that was Hitler. This practice of powerful professors who assembled a number of researchers started in mid-nineteenth century Germany, soon spread to Britain and the US. In US, the outstanding example is Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. The expulsion of Jewish university teachers and researchers in the 1930s from Germany by Hitler and their dispersal in Britain and the US helped greatly to promote research in many disciplines in those countries: mathematics, physics, linguistics and sociology. Amsterdam, Utrecht and London had had great publishing houses from the 17th century, when dissenters of various kinds fled their home cities in search of welcoming havens: e.g. Benedictus Spinoza from Madrid, John Locke and James Mill from London.
Instance of our failure
An instance where we failed to make use of strong leaders in anthropology to establish a centre for the study of societies in South Asia was in Peradeniya in the 1950s. The leaders were Ralph Peiris, Stanley Tambiah, Gananath Obeysekera, Kitsiri Malalgoda and H. L. Seneviratne, all distinguished anthropologists. A younger scholar Sarath Amunugama joined the Civil Service. In addition, there were Michael Roberts in History and K. N. O. Dharmadasa in Sinhala, both of whom had made contributions to anthropology. They all, except KNO, dispersed themselves to more welcome homes in the US, New Zealand and Australia. Some distinguished scientists dispersed to Britain, the US, Canada and Hong Kong. There is a centripetal force at work here, without destroying which, it is unlikely that we will develop a knowledge centre in our country.
I would rather emphasise the development of good undergraduate schools from which may grow graduate schools, as was emanant in the late 1950s in the University of Ceylon but was aborted by ill-informed judgement on the development of higher education. The present ill-founded emphasis on ‘discipline’ in universities would welcome a worse disaster. The memory of Hitler destroying German universities 1930s has not been erased from our memories.
(This is the last of three notes I wrote on university matters in August, during the worst days of the epidemic in our country. It helped me to keep my mind off impending horrors. Then, our son came home spreading sunshine for a brief two weeks.)
Features
A plural society requires plural governance

The local government elections that took place last week saw a consolidation of the democratic system in the country. The government followed the rules of elections to a greater extent than its recent predecessors some of whom continue to be active on the political stage. Particularly noteworthy was the absence of the large-scale abuse of state resources, both media and financial, which had become normalised under successive governments in the past four decades. Reports by independent election monitoring organisations made mention of this improvement in the country’s democratic culture.
In a world where democracy is under siege even in long-established democracies, Sri Lanka’s improvement in electoral integrity is cause for optimism. It also offers a reminder that democracy is always a work in progress, ever vulnerable to erosion and needs to be constantly fought for. The strengthening of faith in democracy as a result of these elections is encouraging. The satisfaction expressed by the political parties that contested the elections is a sign that democracy in Sri Lanka is strong. Most of them saw some improvement in their positions from which they took reassurance about their respective futures.
The local government elections also confirmed that the NPP and its core comprising the JVP are no longer at the fringes of the polity. The NPP has established itself as a mainstream party with an all-island presence, and remarkably so to a greater extent than any other political party. This was seen at the general elections, where the NPP won a majority of seats in 21 of the country’s 22 electoral districts. This was a feat no other political party has ever done. This is also a success that is challenging to replicate. At the present local government elections, the NPP was successful in retaining its all-island presence although not to the same degree.
Consolidating Support
Much attention has been given to the relative decline in the ruling party’s vote share from the 61 percent it secured in December’s general election to 43 percent in the local elections. This slippage has been interpreted by some as a sign of waning popularity. However, such a reading overlooks the broader trajectory of political change. Just three years ago, the NPP and its allied parties polled less than five percent nationally. That they now command over 40 percent of the vote represents a profound transformation in voter preferences and political culture. What is even more significant is the stability of this support base, which now surpasses that of any rival. The votes obtained by the NPP at these elections were double those of its nearest rival.
The electoral outcomes in the north and east, which were largely won by parties representing the Tamil and Muslim communities, is a warning signal that ethnic conflict lurks beneath the surface. The success of the minority parties signals the different needs and aspirations of the ethnic and religious minority electorates, and the need for the government to engage more fully with them. Apart from the problems of poverty, lack of development, inadequate access to economic resources and antipathy to excessive corruption that people of the north and east share in common with those in other parts of the country, they also have special problems that other sections of the population do not have. These would include problems of military takeover of their lands, missing persons and persons incarcerated for long periods either without trial or convictions under the draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (which permits confessions made to security forces to be made admissible for purposes of conviction) and the long time quest for self-rule in the areas of their predominance
The government’s failure to address these longstanding issues with urgency appears to have caused disaffection in electorate in the north and east. While structural change is necessarily complex and slow, delays can be misinterpreted as disinterest or disregard, especially by minorities already accustomed to marginalisation. The lack of visible progress on issues central to minority communities fosters a sense of exclusion and deepens political divides. Even so, it is worth noting that the NPP’s vote in the north and east was not insignificant. It came despite the NPP not tailoring its message to ethnic grievances. The NPP has presented a vision of national reform grounded in shared values of justice, accountability, development, and equality.
Translating electoral gains into meaningful governance will require more than slogans. The failure to swiftly address matters deemed to be important by the people of those areas appears to have cost the NPP votes amongst the ethnic and religious minorities, but even here it is necessary to keep matters in perspective. The NPP came first in terms of seats won in two of the seven electoral districts of the north and east. They came second in five others. The fact that the NPP continued to win significant support indicates that its approach of equity in development and equal rights for all has resonance. This was despite the Tamil and Muslim parties making appeals to the electorate on nationalist or ethnic grounds.
Slow Change
Whether in the north and east or outside it, the government is perceived to be slow in delivering on its promises. In the context of the promise of system change, it can be appreciated that such a change will be resisted tooth and nail by those with vested interests in the continuation of the old system. System change will invariably be resisted at multiple levels. The problem is that the slow pace of change may be seen by ethnic and religious minorities as being due to the disregard of their interests. However, the system change is coming slow not only in the north and east, but also in the entire country.
At the general election in December last year, the NPP won an unprecedented number of parliamentary seats in both the country as well as in the north and east. But it has still to make use of its 2/3 majority to make the changes that its super majority permits it to do. With control of 267 out of 339 local councils, but without outright majorities in most, it must now engage in coalition-building and consensus-seeking if it wishes to govern at the local level. This will be a challenge for a party whose identity has long been built on principled opposition to elite patronage, corruption and abuse of power rather than to governance. General Secretary of the JVP, Tilvin Silva, has signaled a reluctance to form alliances with discredited parties but has expressed openness to working with independent candidates who share the party’s values. This position can and should be extended, especially in the north and east, to include political formations that represent minority communities and have remained outside the tainted mainstream.
In a plural and multi-ethnic society like Sri Lanka, democratic legitimacy and effective governance requires coalition-building. By engaging with locally legitimate minority parties, especially in the north and east, the NPP can engage in principled governance without compromising its core values. This needs to be extended to the local government authorities in the rest of the country as well. As the 19th century English political philosopher John Stuart Mill observed, “The worth of a state in the long run is the worth of the individuals composing it,” and in plural societies, that worth can only be realised through inclusive decision-making.
by Jehan Perera
Features
Commercialising research in Sri Lanka – not really the healthiest thing for research

In the early 2000s, a colleague, returning to Sri Lanka after a decade in a research-heavy first world university, complained to me that ‘there is no research culture in Sri Lanka’. But what exactly does having a ‘research culture’ mean? Is a lot of funding enough? What else has stopped us from working towards a productive and meaningful research culture? A concerted effort has been made to improve the research culture of state universities, though there are debates about how healthy such practices are (there is not much consideration of the same in private ‘universities’ in Sri Lanka but that is a discussion for another time). So, in the 25 years since my colleague bemoaned our situation, what has been happening?
What is a ‘research culture’?
A good research culture would be one where we – academics and students – have the resources to engage productively in research. This would mean infrastructure, training, wholesome mentoring, and that abstract thing called headspace. In a previous Kuppi column, I explained at length some of the issues we face as researchers in Sri Lankan universities, including outdated administrative regulations, poor financial resources, and such aspects. My perspective is from the social sciences, and might be different to other disciplines. Still, I feel that there are at least a few major problems that we all face.
Number one: Money is important.
Take the example American universities. Harvard University, according to Harvard Magazine, “received $686.5 million in federally sponsored research grants” for the fiscal year of 2024 but suddenly find themselves in a bind because of such funds being held back. Research funds in these universities typically goes towards building and maintenance of research labs and institutions, costs of equipment, material and other resources and stipends for graduate and other research assistants, conferences, etc. Without such an infusion of money towards research, the USA would not have been able to attracts (and keeps) the talent and brains of other countries. Without a large amount of money dedicated for research, Sri Lankan state universities, too, will not have the research culture it yearns for. Given the country’s austere economic situation, in the last several years, research funds have come mainly from self-generated funds and treasury funds. Yet, even when research funds are available (they are usually inadequate), we still have some additional problems.
Number two: Unending spools of red tape
In Sri Lankan universities red tape is endless. An MoU with a foreign research institution takes at least a year. Financial regulations surrounding the award and spending of research grants is frustrating.
Here’s a personal anecdote. In 2018, I applied for a small research grant from my university. Several months later, I was told I had been awarded it. It comes to me in installments of not more than Rs 100,000. To receive this installment, I must submit a voucher and wait a few weeks until it passes through various offices and gains various approvals. For mysterious financial reasons, asking for reimbursements is discouraged. Obviously then, if I were working on a time-sensitive study or if I needed a larger amount of money for equipment or research material, I would not be able to use this grant. MY research assistants, transcribers, etc., must be willing to wait for their payments until I receive this advance. In 2022, when I received a second advance, the red tape was even tighter. I was asked to spend the funds and settle accounts – within three weeks. ‘Should I ask my research assistants to do the work and wait a few weeks or months for payment? Or should I ask them not to do work until I get the advance and then finish it within three weeks so I can settle this advance?’ I asked in frustration.
Colleagues, who regularly use university grants, frustratedly go along with it; others may opt to work with organisations outside the university. At a university meeting, a few years ago, set up specifically to discuss how young researchers could be encouraged to do research, a group of senior researchers ended the meeting with a list of administrative and financial problems that need to be resolved if we want to foster ‘a research culture’. These are still unresolved. Here is where academic unions can intervene, though they seem to be more focused on salaries, permits and school quotas. If research is part of an academic’s role and responsibility, a research-friendly academic environment is not a privilege, but a labour issue and also impinges on academic freedom to generate new knowledge.
Number three: Instrumentalist research – a global epidemic
The quality of research is a growing concern, in Sri Lanka and globally. The competitiveness of the global research environment has produced seriously problematic phenomena, such as siphoning funding to ‘trendy’ topics, the predatory publications, predatory conferences, journal paper mills, publications with fake data, etc. Plagiarism, ghost writing and the unethical use of AI products are additional contemporary problems. In Sri Lanka, too, we can observe researchers publishing very fast – doing short studies, trying to publish quickly by sending articles to predatory journals, sending the same article to multiple journals at the same time, etc. Universities want more conferences rather than better conferences. Many universities in Sri Lanka have mandated that their doctoral candidates must publish journal articles before their thesis submission. As a consequence, novice researchers frequently fall prey to predatory journals. Universities have also encouraged faculties or departments to establish journals, which frequently have sub-par peer review.
Alongside this are short-sighted institutional changes. University Business Liankage cells, for instance, were established as part of the last World Bank loan cycle to universities. They are expected to help ‘commercialise’ research and focuses on research that can produce patents, and things that can be sold. Such narrow vision means that the broad swathe of research that is undertaken in universities are unseen and ignored, especially in the humanities and social sciences. A much larger vision could have undertaken the promotion of research rather than commercialisation of it, which can then extend to other types of research.
This brings us to the issue of what types of research is seen as ‘relevant’ or ‘useful’. This is a question that has significant repercussions. In one sense, research is an elitist endeavour. We assume that the public should trust us that public funds assigned for research will be spent on worth-while projects. Yet, not all research has an outcome that shows its worth or timeliness in the short term. Some research may not be understood other than by specialists. Therefore, funds, or time spent on some research projects, are not valued, and might seem a waste, or a privilege, until and unless a need for that knowledge suddenly arises.
A short example suffices. Since the 1970s, research on the structures of Sinhala and Sri Lankan Tamil languages (sound patterns, sentence structures of the spoken versions, etc.) have been nearly at a standstill. The interest in these topics are less, and expertise in these areas were not prioritised in the last 30 years. After all, it is not an area that can produce lucrative patents or obvious contributions to the nation’s development. But with digital technology and AI upon us, the need for systematic knowledge of these languages is sorely evident – digital technologies must be able to work in local languages to become useful to whole populations. Without a knowledge of the structures and sounds of local languages – especially the spoken varieties – people who cannot use English cannot use those devices and platforms. While providing impetus to research such structures, this need also validates utilitarian research.
This then is the problem with espousing instrumental ideologies of research. World Bank policies encourage a tying up between research and the country’s development goals. However, in a country like ours, where state policies are tied to election manifestos, the result is a set of research outputs that are tied to election cycles. If in 2019, the priority was national security, in 2025, it can be ‘Clean Sri Lanka’. Prioritising research linked to short-sighted visions of national development gains us little in the longer-term. At the same time, applying for competitive research grants internationally, which may have research agendas that are not nationally relevant, is problematic. These are issues of research ethics as well.
Concluding thoughts
In moving towards a ‘good research culture’, Sri Lankan state universities have fallen into the trap of adopting some of the problematic trends that have swept through the first world. Yet, since we are behind the times anyway, it is possible for us to see the damaging consequences of those issues, and to adopt the more fruitful processes. A slower, considerate approach to research priorities would be useful for Sri Lanka at this point. It is also a time for collective action to build a better research environment, looking at new relationships and collaborations, and mentoring in caring ways.
(Dr. Kaushalya Perera teaches at the Department of English, University of Colombo)
Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.
By Kaushalya Perera
Features
Melantha …in the spotlight

Melantha Perera, who has been associated with many top bands in the past, due to his versatility as a musician, is now enjoying his solo career, as well … as a singer.
He was invited to perform at the first ever ‘Noon2Moon’ event, held in Dubai, at The Huddle, CityMax Hotel, on Saturday, 3rd May.
It was 15 hours of non-stop music, featuring several artistes, with Melantha (the only Sri Lankan on the show), doing two sets.
According to reports coming my way, ‘Noon2Moon’ turned out to be the party of the year, with guests staying back till well past 3.00 am, although it was a 12.00 noon to 3.00 am event.

Having Arabic food
Melantha says he enjoyed every minute he spent on stage as the crowd, made up mostly of Indians, loved the setup.
“I included a few Sinhala songs as there were some Sri Lankans, as well, in the scene.”
Allwyn H. Stephen, who is based in the UAE, was overjoyed with the success of ‘Noon2Moon’.
Says Allwyn: “The 1st ever Noon2Moon event in Dubai … yes, we delivered as promised. Thank you to the artistes for the fab entertainment, the staff of The Huddle UAE , the sound engineers, our sponsors, my supporters for sharing and supporting and, most importantly, all those who attended and stayed back till way past 3.00 am.”

Melantha:
Dubai and
then Oman
Allwyn, by the way, came into the showbiz scene, in a big way, when he featured artistes, live on social media, in a programme called TNGlive, during the Covid-19 pandemic.
After his performance in Dubai, Melantha went over to Oman and was involved in a workshop – ‘Workshop with Melantha Perera’, organised by Clifford De Silva, CEO of Music Connection.
The Workshop included guitar, keyboard and singing/vocal training, with hands-on guidance from the legendary Melantha Perera, as stated by the sponsors, Music Connection.
Back in Colombo, Melantha will team up with his band Black Jackets for their regular dates at the Hilton, on Fridays and Sundays, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Warehouse, Vauxhall Street.
Melantha also mentioned that Bright Light, Sri Lanka’s first musical band formed entirely by visually impaired youngsters, will give their maiden public performance on 7th June at the MJF Centre Auditorium in Katubadda, Moratuwa.
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