Category: Essay

In 2016-2017, Sri Lanka’s North-Central dry zone suffered what had been described as the worst drought in decades (Fernandez 2017). The severe drought conditions, followed by heavy rainfalls, led to widespread crop failures, particularly affecting the 2016/17 Maha and 2017 Yala cultivation seasons. The drought had a significant impact on paddy cultivation. Overall, paddy production… Continue reading When crises converge: how uneven agrarian development influences the effects of climate change in Sri Lanka’s North-Central dry zone by Harry M. Quealy and Cherisma Rajaratnam

Ranil Wickremesinghe’s Budget for 2024 had safe passage on third reading on 13 December as expected, with a majority of 41 votes in the 225-member legislature. The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP—People’s Front) with its rotten majority in parliament, having selected Wickremesinghe as president last year, made sure of that. There were 122 votes in… Continue reading Budget 2024: ‘Deep Marketisation’ in Sri Lanka by B. Skanthakumar

Exhibit 1: Throne of Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe, Colombo National Museum In 1934, the Duke of Gloucester paid a State visit to Ceylon, bringing with him the throne and regalia of Sri Wickrama Rajasinghe, the last king of Kandy. The return of the throne, which had been taken to Britain when Kandy was conquered in 1815,… Continue reading Repatriation and Reparation: Objects and the Colonial Museum by Lara Wijesuriya

November 2023 marks three years of the historic farmers’ protests in India that captured the imagination of people in India and around the world; and two years since the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government capitulated and repealed the farm laws at the bedrock of the protests.[i] The government’s retreat in the face of… Continue reading Fault Lines in Indian Agriculture: Solidarities and Contradictions in Southern Haryana by Srishti Yadav

In this essay, my aim is to reflect on the situation in Sri Lanka’s agrarian sphere, through the gaze of ‘critical agrarian studies’.[i] I begin with a glance at related discourses during the 1970s and early 1980s with their emphasis on the ‘peasantry’. I then turn to the present, arguing that the contemporary moment poses… Continue reading Reflections on Critical Agrarian Studies in Sri Lanka by Urs Geiser

Dick and Pauline Hensman, Mount Lavinia, 1982 The birth anniversaries of Pauline Hensman (née Swan) and Dick Hensman occurred over the course of the past year. This attempt to provide an overview of their life and times will inevitably suffer from gaps, since neither they nor most of their contemporaries are alive. It will, therefore,… Continue reading A Hundred Years of Pauline and C. R. (Dick) Hensman by Rohini Hensman

NM Perera addresses Galle Face Rally 23 July 1953  “It was the class struggle in free flow and it constituted the highest point that the class struggle had yet reached in Ceylon”[i] 70 years ago this month, on 12 August 1953, “a demonstration of the tremendous power of the masses in action”[ii] influenced by Left… Continue reading Ceylon’s ‘Great Hartal’ of 1953: The Masses Enter History – B. Skanthakumar

The IMF Staff Report on Sri Lanka released in March 2022 outlined a number of policy prescriptions to address Sri Lanka’s unprecedented economic crisis, including increasing women’s labour force participation. The few lines in the report on this issue provoked some responses within mainstream and social media with a rejoinder by Devaka Gunawardena.[i] As Gunawardena… Continue reading Women’s Labour Force Participation: Three Themes – Chulani Kodikara

Last year, in September 2022, Fortune Magazine reported that India was home to the second richest person in the world. The person in question was Gautam Adani, a business tycoon from the Western Indian state of Gujarat, who at that point in time commanded a fortune of 155.5 billion USD (Haraito 2022). Bloomberg, who put… Continue reading Feast, Famine, and Hegemony: On Neoliberalisation and Hindu Nationalism in India – Alf Gunvald Nilsen

The earliest record of sex reassignment surgery in a Sri Lankan public hospital can be traced back to 2003. Even though there was no government procedure for sex reassignment and change of gender in birth certificates, the Registrar General’s Department (RGD) had been facilitating the change of gender on birth certificates on a case-by-case basis… Continue reading Test for Real Life? The Gender Transition Process in Sri Lanka – Kaushalya Ariyarathne