tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/sri-lanka-851/articlesSri Lanka – The Conversation2024-03-21T12:25:24Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2251482024-03-21T12:25:24Z2024-03-21T12:25:24ZFor centuries, owls were considered to bring bad luck in many cultures as well as in the US, but the outpouring of grief in New York over Flaco shows how times have changed<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582910/original/file-20240319-18-c403qf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C0%2C6332%2C3736&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tributes left at a memorial for Flaco the owl in Central Park in New York.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/EscapedOwlCentralPark/0e033d63fec14c708cde28f9250f19da/photo?Query=flaco%20owl&mediaType=photo&sortBy=&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=37&currentItemNo=20">AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There has been an <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/02/24/1233703492/flaco-new-york-owl-dies-building-collision">outpouring of grief in New York City</a> ever since the beloved Eurasian eagle-owl Flaco died on Feb. 23, 2024, after striking a building. In 2023, after escaping from Central Park Zoo, Flaco survived for over a year on his own, captivating New Yorkers.</p>
<p>Mourners <a href="https://abc7ny.com/videoClip/14465905/">are leaving notes and flowers</a> at the base of an old oak tree in Central Park, reportedly a favorite roost of his. <a href="https://www.artandobject.com/news/fans-call-statue-honor-beloved-owl-flaco#">Thousands have signed a petition for a statue in his honor</a>. Figure skaters honored him with a show called “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/flaco-the-owl-remembered-with-fly-be-free-ice-show-at-central-parks-wollman-rink/">Fly. Be Free</a>.” </p>
<p>This reaction to Flaco’s death would be mystifying for many people around the world. I <a href="https://www.macalester.edu/anthropology/facultystaff/arjunguneratne/">have spent a decade studying</a> the history of ornithology in Sri Lanka, including local beliefs in the owl as a bird that foretells deaths. Meanwhile, in some societies, owls were (and are) seen as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/24750263.2023.2254823">a symbol of wisdom</a> or even a sign of good luck.</p>
<p>But, by far, the most widespread belief about owls is that they are associated with witchcraft and death. </p>
<p>In much of the world – in African societies, among <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shw089">African Americans in the U.S. South</a> and the <a href="https://ugapress.org/book/9780820328157/spirits-of-the-air/">Indigenous people</a> <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo34116501.html">of the Americas</a>, and throughout South and Southeast Asia as well as in Europe – owls are seen as harbingers of death. The Cajuns, French-speaking refugees who settled in Louisiana’s bayou country after being driven out of Nova Scotia by the British, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/534893">feared the screech of an owl</a>.</p>
<p>The American philosopher Henry David Thoreau <a href="https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/walden/chapter04.html">wrote in his book “Walden</a>” that owls “represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have.” Nineteenth and early 20th century Americans <a href="https://www.carolinabirdclub.org/BOCC/Non-Passerines/25%20Owls/01%20Strigidae%20Family%20True%20Owls.pdf">were more likely to shoot an owl as an undesirable predator</a> than leave flowers at a memorial for one. But Flaco’s year of fame shows <a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/9080/owls-united-states-and-canada">the sea change in the way Western cultures have come to regard owls</a> since Thoreau’s time. </p>
<h2>Birds of ill-omen</h2>
<p>During the Tang dynasty, which ruled China from the seventh to the 10th century, owls were thought to bring bad luck; they were despised for <a href="https://doi.org/10.3406/befeo.2016.6236">supposedly eating their mothers</a>. The Aztec god of death, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-8266452">Mictlantecuhtli, is accompanied by an owl</a>. Jahangir, one of the Mughal emperors of India, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417523000245">sought to control the sale of owl meat in his empire</a> because it was believed to be an ingredient for sorcery. </p>
<p>Such beliefs also prevailed in Europe. The Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder, who died in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, said the owl was a “<a href="https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/9080/owls-united-states-and-canada">monster of the night … [and] a direful omen</a>.” In the European Middle Ages, owls were thought to accompany witches. No wonder, then, that J.K. Rowling has Harry Potter’s mail delivered by an owl. </p>
<p>The French call the barn owl “chouette effraie des clochers,” literally, “the scary owl of the bell towers.” Shakespeare made use of the idea that owls foretold death in many of his plays. For instance, Lady Macbeth says, “It was the owl that shrieked,” foretelling the murder of Duncan by her husband. </p>
<p>These beliefs lingered in England until World War II, when they began to disappear. </p>
<h2>The legend from Sri Lanka</h2>
<p>For centuries, people living in rural areas in Sri Lanka <a href="https://youtu.be/p46A3HMuoCo?feature=shared">have believed in a “devil bird,” or “ulama</a>” in the local Sinhala language, that foretold a death. </p>
<p>The basis of this belief was a legend that told of a man who, to punish his wife, gave her the flesh of her murdered child to cook. On discovering the truth, she fled screaming into the jungle. As the legend goes, she was turned into the ulama by the gods. In some versions of the tale, she was reborn as the devil bird. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/p46A3HMuoCo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The sound of the ulama.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ever since, she is believed to haunt the jungle, her terrible cries foretelling a death in the community of whoever happens to hear them. </p>
<p>Such beliefs made sense to British colonizers, including planters carving out coffee estates in remote, forested areas during the 19th century. They would have heard strange, blood-curdling cries from the forests that surrounded their houses. The local villagers’ explanations for these cries would have made sense to them. The British, after all, also came from a society where superstitions concerning owls – the definitive birds of the night – <a href="https://books.google.com.vc/books?id=66N7I_6M7WUC&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q=owls&f=false">were a part of folk belief</a>. </p>
<p>The identity of the ulama was <a href="http://archives.sundayobserver.lk/2004/01/18/fea14.html">extensively debated</a> throughout the 19th and early 20th century by ornithologists, who attributed these night sounds to some species of owl. Colonial British ornithologists eventually determined that the <a href="https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/61724#page/215/mode/1up">ulama was a species of large owl</a>, probably the <a href="https://ebird.org/species/sbeowl1">spot-bellied eagle-owl</a>. The identification is said to have been clinched when an eagle-owl was shot one moonlit night by a planter while it was making the ulama’s cry. </p>
<h2>Celebration of owls today</h2>
<p>The development of both scientific knowledge of birds and the popular hobby of birding has given people who live in the U.S. and Britain a decidedly different take on owls. Urbanization may also have something to do with it. Sri Lankan beliefs in the ulama, for example, are much less prevalent in urban areas than in the countryside. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An illustration showing an owl sitting on top of a red polka dot couch with a honey pot resting on it, and a bear standing in front." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582912/original/file-20240319-16-8obym8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/582912/original/file-20240319-16-8obym8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582912/original/file-20240319-16-8obym8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582912/original/file-20240319-16-8obym8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582912/original/file-20240319-16-8obym8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582912/original/file-20240319-16-8obym8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/582912/original/file-20240319-16-8obym8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An antique postcard showing Winnie-the-Pooh and Owl.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/reproduction-of-antique-postcard-shows-winnie-the-pooh-and-news-photo/1318727117?adppopup=true">Igor Golovniov/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In popular literature and culture in North America and Britain, owls have had their reputations rehabilitated. In A.A. Milne’s “Winnie-the-Pooh,” Owl is a likable bird who does his best to be intelligent and erudite. The National Audubon Society, one of the oldest bird conservation organizations in the U.S., sells <a href="https://www.audubon.org/marketplace/plush-birds#!">cuddly owl toys</a> that will hoot when squeezed. There’s even an annual <a href="https://www.festivalofowls.com/">International Festival of Owls</a> in Houston, Minnesota, where owls are celebrated. </p>
<p>That New Yorkers want to erect a memorial to Flaco is a remarkable instance of the ongoing rehabilitation of a group of birds that are charismatic, fascinating and quite undeserving of the bad rap they’ve been given over thousands of years.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225148/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arjun Guneratne receives funding from American Council of Learned Societies and Council of American Overseas Research Centers for work on the history of ornithology.</span></em></p>Owls, once seen as harbingers of death, are now celebrated in popular literature and culture in North America and Britain.Arjun Guneratne, Professor of Anthropology, Macalester CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2239822024-02-22T07:45:37Z2024-02-22T07:45:37ZAfrica’s debt crisis needs a bold new approach: expert outlines a way forward<p>It hasn’t been easy for African states to finance their developmental and environmental policy objectives over the past few years.</p>
<p>Recent events suggest that the situation may be improving. For the first time in two years, three African states have been able <a href="https://www.economist.com/middle-east-and-africa/2024/02/15/african-governments-return-to-international-bond-markets">to access international financial markets, albeit at high interest rates.</a> Kenya, for example, is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-12/kenya-said-to-tap-eurobond-market-at-exorbitant-rate-for-buyback?sref=UnSQjRxb">now paying over 10%</a> compared to about 7% in 2014. </p>
<p>Many African countries continue to face challenging sovereign debt situations.</p>
<p>Total external debts as a share of Africa’s export earnings increased from <a href="https://unctad.org/publication/world-of-debt/regional-stories">74.5% in 2010 to 140% in 2022</a>. In 2022, African governments had to <a href="https://data.one.org/topics/african-debt/">allocate about 12% of their revenues to servicing their debt</a>. Between 2019 and 2022, <a href="https://unctad.org/publication/world-of-debt/regional-stories">25 African governments</a> allocated more resources to servicing their total debts than to the health of their citizens. And in late 2023 the <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/09/26/cf-how-to-avoid-a-debt-crisis-in-sub-saharan-africa">International Monetary Fund estimated</a> that over half the low income African countries were either potentially or actually experiencing difficulties paying their debts. </p>
<p>This suggests that it will be very difficult for Africa to raise the US$1.6 trillion that <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/3269532b-en/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/3269532b-en#:%7E:text=Africa's%20sustainable%20financing%20gap%20until,Sustainable%20Development%20Goals%20by%202030">the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates</a> it needs to reach the sustainable development goals by 2030.</p>
<p>One of the lessons of the COVID pandemic and the climate negotiations is that Africa can’t count on the global community to provide it with sufficient new funds or with debt relief to deal with either its development needs or the consequences of crises such as pandemics or extreme weather events. </p>
<p>Its official bilateral creditors appear more focused on their own needs and on other parts of the world than on Africa. Commercial creditors are happy to provide financing when conditions are favourable and African debt can help them satisfy their investment mandates. But they are less forthcoming when the going gets tough and the risks associated with the transaction – and for which they have been compensated – actually materialise.</p>
<p>This suggests that Africa needs to advocate more aggressively for its own interests. </p>
<p>This year offers some good opportunities to promote a more effective approach to African debt. </p>
<h2>Careful planning needed</h2>
<p>There are two <a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/financing-for-development/">international</a> <a href="https://www.un.org/en/summit-of-the-future#:%7E:text=22%2D23%20September%202024,Solutions%20for%20a%20Better%20Tomorrow">conferences</a> where global economic governance will be on the agenda. This is also the first year that the African Union participates as a full member in the G20. In addition, South Africa, the G20 chair in 2025, currently serves on the troika that manages the G20 process. </p>
<p>Debt and development finance will be an important topic in all these forums. African representatives can use their participation to advocate for a new approach to sovereign debt that is more responsive to African needs and concerns. They can also lobby other participating states and non-state actors for their support.</p>
<p>But African states will need to plan carefully. Their starting point should be the well recognised fact that the current sovereign debt restructuring process is not working for anyone. The G20 agreed a <a href="https://clubdeparis.org/sites/default/files/annex_common_framework_for_debt_treatments_beyond_the_dssi.pdf">Common Framework</a> that was supposed to help resolve the sovereign debt crises in low income countries. <a href="https://saiia.org.za/research/africas-debt-priorities-a-sustainability-perspective-required-support-from-the-g20/#:%7E:text=The%20Common%20Framework%20was%20established,applied%20include%20Ethiopia%20and%20Ghana.">Four African countries</a> applied to have their debts restructured through the framework. Despite years of negotiations, it has failed to fully resolve the debt crisis in three of them. </p>
<p>Countries outside the Common Framework, such as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/sri-lanka-bondholders-raise-concerns-over-debt-deal-transparency-2023-12-01/">Sri Lanka</a>, have not managed to fully resolve their debt crises either. This is costly for both debtors and creditors. It is therefore in everyone’s interest to look for a new approach.</p>
<p>This requires all parties to be willing to entertain new ideas and to experiment with new approaches to old problems. African states should offer their own innovative proposals. They should also state that they are willing to take on new responsibilities if their creditors are willing to do the same.</p>
<p>They can remind their creditors that these experiments would not be taking place in a vacuum. They can be guided by the many existing, but underutilised, international norms and standards applicable to responsible sovereign debt transactions, for example the Unctad principles on <a href="https://unctad.org/publication/principles-promoting-responsible-sovereign-lending-and-borrowing#:%7E:text=Sovereign%20lending%20and%20borrowing%20conducted,neighbors%20and%20its%20trading%20partners.">responsible sovereign debt transactions</a>. Some of these relate to the conduct of sovereign borrowers. Others focus on responsible lending behaviour and are often cited by creditors in their own policies dealing with environmental and social issues, social responsibility or human rights. </p>
<p>By basing any new approach on these international norms and standards, both debtors and creditors will merely be agreeing to implement principles that they have already accepted. </p>
<p>Working from this starting point, African states should make three specific proposals. </p>
<h2>Concrete proposals</h2>
<p>First, they should commit to making both the process for incurring debts and the terms of all their public debt transactions transparent. </p>
<p>This will ensure that their own citizens understand what obligations their governments are assuming on their behalf. It will encourage governments to adopt responsible borrowing and debt management practices. They should also agree that they can be held accountable for their failure to comply with these transparent and responsible sovereign debt practices and procedures.</p>
<p>Second, African states should point out that there is a fundamental problem with a sovereign debt restructuring process that only focuses on the contractual obligations that the debtor state owes its creditors. This focus means, in effect, that servicing its debt obligations will trump the debtor state’s efforts to deal with the country’s vulnerability to climate change and the loss of biodiversity, and with its poverty, inequality and unemployment challenges. This follows from the fact that their creditors can use the restructuring process to force sovereign borrowers in difficulty, unlike corporations in bankruptcy, to pay those who lend them money without regard, for example, to the impact on their obligations to pensioners, public sector employees or the welfare of their citizens. </p>
<p>This exclusive focus on debt contracts is inconsistent with the international community’s interest in addressing global challenges like climate and inequality. </p>
<p>This problem can be resolved if both creditors and debtors agree that they will adopt an approach to debt negotiations that incorporates the financial, economic, social, environmental, human rights and governance dimensions of sovereign debt crises.</p>
<p>Third, African states should propose that their creditors publicly commit to base the new approach to sovereign debt on an agreed list of international norms and standards relevant to responsible international financial practices. These will include those dealing with transparency, climate and environmental issues, and social matters, including human rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223982/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danny Bradlow previously had a grant from ther Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa to work on issues relating to sovereign debt. </span></em></p>Africa needs to advocate more aggressively for its own interests when it comes to negotiating debt terms.Danny Bradlow, Professor/Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2230492024-02-16T15:52:25Z2024-02-16T15:52:25ZSri Lanka: why the country’s wait for elections must end<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576016/original/file-20240215-28-3959qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C8%2C5535%2C3676&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sri Lankan protesters invade the prime minister's residence in Colombo, July 13 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/colombo-sri-lanka-july-13-2022-2178308091">Sebastian Castelier/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sri Lanka is grappling with its worst <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-61028138">economic crisis</a> since independence in 1948. Soaring prices, shortages of essential goods and crippling external debts have sparked widespread protests across the country in recent years. In 2022, enraged demonstrators even stormed the residence of the then president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, forcing him to flee the country and resign. </p>
<p>The following year, elections were <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/world/sri-lanka-delays-first-vote-since-new-president-12203902.html">postponed</a> indefinitely. Rajapaksa’s successor, Ranil Wickremesinghe, warned parliament that holding an election during the economic crisis could be disastrous. Opposition MPs criticised the move, accusing the president of using the economic crisis as an excuse to hold onto power and “sabotage democracy”. </p>
<p>But in November Wickremesinghe <a href="https://english.newsfirst.lk/2023/11/22/presidential-parliamentary-elections-next-year-ranil">announced</a> that presidential and parliamentary elections will finally be held in 2024 and 2025. Could this year be one of actual change that free and fair elections can bring? Or will they be used to tighten the grip of authoritarianism that was established by the Rajapaksa family over almost 15 years in power, and has worsened under Wickremesinghe?</p>
<p>Five elections will take place in South Asian countries this year, and most will likely return incumbent parties to power. It is not yet clear if Sri Lanka will follow suit.</p>
<h2>Unpopular candidate</h2>
<p>Wickremesinghe, who has already been Sri Lankan prime minister five times, is widely <a href="https://www.dailymirror.lk/breaking-news/For-me-to-be-back-I-must-contest-President-on-Presidential-election/108-276755">tipped</a> to run for presidency. But he faces vast criticism on the grounds that he came to power without being elected by the people. He won a parliamentary vote to replace Rajapaksa but has no popular mandate. </p>
<p>It is expected that he will capitalise on the “stability” he has brought to Sri Lanka since reaching an <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/03/20/pr2379-imf-executive-board-approves-under-the-new-eff-arrangement-for-sri-lanka">agreement</a> with the International Monetary Fund to approve a US$2.9 billion (£2.3 billion) loan to help the country through its financial crisis. </p>
<p>This stability, however, is a myth and the situation remains dire. More than <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/sri-lanka/sri-lanka-household-food-security-survey-preliminary-findings-december-2023#:%7E:text=In%202023%2C%20WFP%20and%20FAO,estimated%20to%20be%20food%20insecure.">17% of Sri Lankans</a> are suffering from food insecurity and are in need of humanitarian assistance.</p>
<p>The loan was granted on the condition that Sri Lanka reduce its domestic debt. But Wickremesinghe’s plans to restructure domestic debt have come at the expense of the working population. </p>
<p>The government plans to <a href="https://frontline.thehindu.com/columns/economic-perspectives-c-p-chandrasekhar-sri-lankan-debt-crisis-to-get-worse-if-imf-prescription-is-heeded/article67045396.ece">decrease interest rates</a> on sovereign bonds held by major pension funds – a cut that would amount to a loss of <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/sri-lanka/daily-mirror-sri-lanka/20230703/281698324193687">close to 30%</a> of the value of retirement funds over the next decade. </p>
<p>Militarisation is also at an <a href="https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/we-are-among-top-10-countries-militarisation-admits-sri-lankan-mp#:%7E:text=Sorry!-,%27We%20are%20among%20top%2010%20countries%27%20for,militarisation%20admits%20Sri%20Lankan%20MP&text=A%20Sri%20Lankan%20lawmaker%20has,sector%20despite%20an%20economic%20crisis.">all-time high</a>. And efforts are being made to restrict the rights of minorities living in the north and east of the country through surveillance, harassment and unlawful arrests. His victory will only ensure continuity of all this, and more. </p>
<h2>How not to hold elections</h2>
<p>For Wickremesinghe to maintain his power, he has to honour his promise of holding elections. Local government elections were initially scheduled for March 9 2023, but they were repeatedly postponed due to a <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/sri-lankas-local-body-polls-postponed-indefinitely-due-to-lack-of-funds/article66725596.ece">shortage of funds</a>.</p>
<p>Their cancellation led to a spate of protests. Police used force to disperse crowds, resulting in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-sri-lanka-colombo-cb7ad21a28ad9fac237144cb9e90ca4d">15 injuries</a>. Shortly afterwards, the election commission postponed the elections indefinitely, <a href="https://www.newsfirst.lk/2023/03/03/supreme-court-issues-interim-order-on-funding-local-government-election-2023">defying</a> a Supreme Court order. </p>
<p>Wickremesinghe then pursued constitutional amendments and <a href="https://www.sundaytimes.lk/231022/columns/president-appoints-special-commission-to-drastically-change-election-laws-536547.html">appointed a commission</a> to explore changes to the electoral system. So, when the announcement that elections would be held was finally made, it was unsurprisingly received with apprehension by the electorate.</p>
<p>The act of delaying elections is an undemocratic move. But these delay tactics appear to be a smokescreen, giving Wickremesinghe time to gather support for his presidential nomination. </p>
<p>It looks as if he is aiming to secure support from the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party, which is led by Mahinda Rajapaksa – a former president and the brother of Gotabaya Rajapaksa. This is a calculated move as it is unlikely that Rajapaksa would have any public backing to make a reappearance as president himself. </p>
<p>In November 2023, a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/15/sri-lanka-top-court-finds-rajapaksa-brothers-guilty-of-economic-crisis">landmark ruling</a> by the Supreme Court determined that the Rajapaksa brothers, alongside former governors of the central bank and other senior treasury officials, were responsible for Sri Lanka’s economic crisis.</p>
<p>Wickremesinghe is using this extra time as a political ploy too. He has promised to implement the 13th Amendment – a provision of the 1987 <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/the-hindu-explains-what-is-the-13th-amendment-to-the-sri-lankan-constitution-and-why-is-it-contentious/article32531844.ece">Indo-Lanka Accord</a> that guarantees a measure of devolution to the country’s nine provinces. This is most definitely an attempt to appease minorities and use power sharing as a political tool to garner support.</p>
<p>But it could also have been a deliberate move to appease India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, before his visit to Colombo in January. During Jaishankar’s visit, he <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/india-pledges-strong-support-sri-lankas-debt-restructuring-plan-letter-imf-2023-01-18/">supported</a> the government’s debt restructuring plans.</p>
<p>Wickremesinghe has used the delay to rush the passing of the <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/01/sri-lanka-online-safety-act-major-blow-to-freedom-of-expression/">Online Safety Act</a> through parliament. Created to provide protection against online harassment, abuse and fraud, this highly repressive law could threaten the right to freedom of expression that is crucial for free and fair elections.</p>
<h2>The elusive winds of change</h2>
<p>Elections are only as good as their contestants. So who are Wickremesinghe and his allies afraid of? Informal surveys reveal the rising popularity of Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the leader of the leftist National People’s Power alliance. Dissanayake could pose a serious threat to the leadership of Wickremesinghe. </p>
<p>Dissanayake, who also ran for presidency in 2019, has <a href="https://www.lankaenews.com/news/3634/en">pledged</a> to eradicate corruption, hold dishonest politicians and officials accountable, and establish a fresh system of governance. These pledges resonate with the kind of political party Sri Lanka wants and needs to lift itself out of the mess it is currently in.</p>
<p>Wickremesinghe originally <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/world/sri-lanka-delays-first-vote-since-new-president-12203902.html">claimed</a> that elections would be held when Sri Lanka had achieved greater stability. But the real reason for the delay could have more to do with the simple fact that holding elections could potentially create a more legitimate and credible government – a prospect that Sri Lanka’s entrenched ruling elite may not welcome. </p>
<p>Demanding they take place is thus of utmost importance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223049/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thiruni Kelegama does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After months of indefinite postponement, presidential and parliamentary elections will finally be held over the next two years.Thiruni Kelegama, Lecturer in Modern South Asian Studies, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies., University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209022024-01-17T19:24:20Z2024-01-17T19:24:20ZIndia seeks stronger ties with South Asian governments, snubbing ethnic minorities again<p>India’s regional politics are shifting. It is seeking to strengthen ties with South Asian ruling elites, including in Nepal and Sri Lanka, while ignoring ongoing ethnic uprisings in those countries in the hopes of securing its geopolitical interests. </p>
<p>The Indian government’s opposition to ethnic rights within its own borders is well-documented. In 2019, for example, Narendra Modi’s government decided to revoke Jammu and Kashmir’s special status as an autonomous region, a move <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/11/whats-article-370-what-to-know-about-india-top-court-verdict-on-kashmir">recently upheld by India’s Supreme Court</a>.</p>
<p>Jammu and Kashmir lost their constitution, flag and criminal code, and has been turned into <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/india/what-led-kashmir-decision-by-indias-top-court-2023-12-11/">two federally administered territories</a>. India <a href="https://minorityrights.org/2006/12/14/india-has-failed-to-replicate-success-in-tamil-nadu-to-halt-other-ethnic-conflicts/">has also failed</a> to manage ethnic conflicts in other territories, including Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Nagaland. </p>
<h2>Indian hypocrisy</h2>
<p>Ironically, the Indian government backs ethnic movements in other South Asian countries. It supports or has supported the <a href="https://elibrary.tucl.edu.np/handle/123456789/19418">Madheshi movement</a> in Nepal, the <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA624018">Bengali liberation war</a> in Pakistan and <a href="https://www.firstpost.com/world/indira-gandhi-helped-train-tamil-rebels-and-reaped-whirlwind-13913.html">Tamils in Sri Lanka</a>.</p>
<p>Because of its <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/india/us-report-lists-significant-human-rights-abuses-india-2023-03-20/">domestic record on ethnic rights</a>, however, India lacks any moral authority to support them elsewhere. Instead, it’s now pursuing a policy of pleasing the ruling elites in its neighbourhood, which it hopes will serve its national aspirations to become a regional powerhouse like China.</p>
<p>So far, that policy has had a limited payoff.</p>
<p>India has been making amends to Nepal since 2015, when it imposed a blockade and obstructed the transportation of petroleum products to Nepal. It wanted to force the Nepalese government to incorporate Madheshi demands in the Nepali constitution. </p>
<p>Nepal refused and, instead, tabled its constitution without addressing Madheshi concerns. It also signed trade and transit agreements with China to minimize Nepal’s dependence on India. </p>
<p>In response, India quietly withdrew its sanctions, and has <a href="https://thewire.in/external-affairs/madhes-violence-nepal-india">since
refrained</a> from pressuring Nepalese authorities. The ruling elites and Madheshi leaders <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2011.576099">were critical</a> of India’s interference.</p>
<p>In short, India paid a high <a href="https://elibrary.tucl.edu.np/handle/123456789/11340">strategic price</a> for the blockade.</p>
<h2>Past Indian missteps</h2>
<p>India has had similar missteps in the past. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1163/15718060120849189">It involved itself</a> in the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka in the early 1980s, irritating both government officials and insurgents. India ultimately stepped aside, and Sri Lanka overcame its ethnic strife with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0009445514523646">Chinese military and financial assistance</a>. </p>
<p>In 1971, India intervened in the ethnic conflict in Pakistan when Bengali Muslims pursued <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909609340062">independent statehood</a> to become modern-day Bangladesh. This support escalated already tense Indian-Pakistani relations. </p>
<p>Even after Bangladesh’s independence, ethnic tensions persisted. Jumma peoples fought against the Bangladesh government’s decision <a href="https://jnu.ac.bd/journal/assets/pdf/3_2_34.pdf">to transfer</a> Bengali Muslims to the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the contested homeland of Indigenous minorities. India supported their struggle by <a href="https://peaceaccords.nd.edu/provision/refugees-chittagong-hill-tracts-peace-accord-cht#:%7E:text=Approximately%2070%2C000%20indigenous%20people%20fled,internally%20displaced%20persons%20within%20Bangladesh.">providing refuge</a> to the displaced Jumma people in its Tripura state. </p>
<p>All of these efforts — past and present — to support ethnic movements in neighbouring countries have failed to help India achieve major player status in the region. Instead, they resulted in tense relations with ruling governments for years.</p>
<h2>Appeasement efforts</h2>
<p>That’s why India is in the process of mending ties with the ruling elites in South Asia. Its support for the governments of Sri Lanka and Nepal gives some hints about its future direction. </p>
<p>Sri Lanka has been facing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887119000182">global criticism</a> for failing to prosecute war crimes and human rights violations that occurred during 25 years of ethnic conflict. <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2023-0217/#:%7E:text=A%20report%20of%20the%20United,%2C%20reconciliation%20and%20human%20rights%E2%80%9D.">The United Nations Human Rights Council demanded</a> in 2023 that the government act promptly to address gross human rights violations. </p>
<p>While India supported previous UN resolutions on this issue in 2012 and 2013, it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/09749284211068161">consecutively abstained</a> from supporting the last two resolutions, indicating a shift in the Indian approach towards Sri Lanka’s ethnic tensions.</p>
<p>Likewise, India has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968221135943">stayed silent</a> about the Madheshi demands in Nepal since 2015, and <a href="https://thewire.in/diplomacy/india-nepal-kalapani-dialogue-ultra-nationalism">Indian parliament has passed resolutions that focus on mending ties with Nepal</a>. </p>
<p>These gestures are part of an Indian policy to <a href="https://ecfr.eu/special/what_does_india_think/analysis/modis_approach_to_india_and_pakistan">prioritize the neighbourhood</a> in its foreign relations. Based on this policy, India can be expected to seek stronger ties with other neighbouring countries too.</p>
<h2>India’s gains, minorities’ losses?</h2>
<p>These initiatives may help India minimize China’s influence in the region, but minorities will lose global backing.</p>
<p>South Asian ethnic movements have not received significant international attention and support. </p>
<p>In the past, most of the support was coming from India. In the absence of Indian backing, ethnic minorities lack substantive global allies, which their governments can capitalize upon to further ignore or oppress them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hari Har Jnawali does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>India is pursuing a policy of pleasing the ruling elites in its neighbourhood, which it hopes will serve its national aspirations to become a regional powerhouse like China.Hari Har Jnawali, Instructor, Global Governance, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2178072023-12-28T20:38:22Z2023-12-28T20:38:22ZWill the world see more wars or unrest in 2024? Here are 5 hotspots to watch<p>Sadly, 2023 has been a violent one on the global stage. War broke out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, leading to the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and hundreds of Israelis, including many children on both sides. And the bitter war between Russia and Ukraine continued with no end in sight. </p>
<p>As a result of the focus on these two conflicts, other countries have dropped off the radar for many people. Some of these nations have been dealing with simmering unrest, however, which could erupt in 2024 and seize the global spotlight. </p>
<p>So, where should we be watching in the coming year? Here are five places where I believe civil conflicts or unrest could worsen and potentially lead to violence.</p>
<h2>Myanmar</h2>
<p>Myanmar descended into chaos in 2021 when a military coup overthrew the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi and sparked widespread civil protests that eventually morphed into an armed resistance. </p>
<p>The country, home to <a href="https://www.embassyofmyanmar.be/ABOUT/ethnicgroups.htm">135 ethnic groups</a>, has rarely known peace. For years before the coup, there was a ongoing, low-grade civil conflict between the military and several minority ethnic groups who have long sought control over natural resources in their regions and independence from the state.</p>
<p>This exploded after the coup as ethnic militia groups joined forces with pro-democracy fighters from the Bamar majority protesting the junta.</p>
<p>Their resistance <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2023/11/the-myanmar-military-is-facing-death-by-a-thousand-cuts/">escalated in late 2023</a> with a coordinated northern offensive dealing the military its most significant losses in many years. </p>
<p>Insurgents won control of towns and villages on the northeastern border with China, including control over key trade routes. This led to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/22/myanmar-fighting-at-its-worst-since-2021-coup-says-united-nations">renewed fighting</a> in western Rakhine state, as well as in other areas.</p>
<p>The tenacity of the resistance of these minority groups, paired with the refusal of the military to compromise, suggests the country’s civil war may worsen considerably in 2024 and regain international attention. </p>
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<h2>Mali</h2>
<p>In Mali, a nation in the turbulent Sahel region of Africa, <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/sahel/mali/nord-du-mali-une-confrontation-dont-personne-ne-sortira-vainqueur">tensions escalated throughout 2023</a> and now threaten to erupt into full-scale civil war. </p>
<p>Mali has long battled insurgent activity. In 2012, Mali’s government <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/world/africa/mali-coup-france-calls-for-elections.html">fell in a coup</a> and Tuareg rebels, backed by Islamist militants, seized power in the north. </p>
<p>A United Nations peacekeeping mission was established in 2013 to bring stability to Mali. Then, in 2015, key rebel groups <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20150620-rebels-mali-tuareg-peace-deal-algiers-accord">signed a peace agreement</a> with the Mali government. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mali-crisis-un-peacekeepers-are-leaving-after-10-years-whats-needed-for-a-smooth-transition-210210">Mali crisis: UN peacekeepers are leaving after 10 years – what's needed for a smooth transition</a>
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<p>After two more coups in 2020 and 2021, military officers consolidated their power and said they would restore the state’s full territorial control over all of Mali. The regime insisted the UN peacekeeping mission <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/july-2023/un-mali-we-respect-government%E2%80%99s-decision-mission-withdrawal">withdraw</a> from the country, which it did in June 2023. Subsequently, violence broke out between the military and rebel forces over future use of the UN bases. </p>
<p>In November, the military, reportedly backed by Russia’s Wagner Group, took control of the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/mali-tuareg-rebels-kidal-azawad-d1184c497265601de5d18d306fc398e3">strategic northern town of Kidal</a> which had been held by Tuareg forces since 2012. This undermines the fragile peace that has held since 2015. </p>
<p>It is unlikely the military will regain complete control over all rebel-held areas in the north. At the same time, insurgents are emboldened. With the 2015 peace agreement now all but dead, we can expect increased volatility in 2024. </p>
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<h2>Lebanon</h2>
<p>In 2019, widespread civil protest broke out in Lebanon against leaders who were perceived not to be addressing the day-to-day needs of the population. </p>
<p>The situation <a href="https://theconversation.com/lebanons-crisis-has-gone-from-bad-to-worse-but-is-anyone-listening-169645">continued to deteriorate</a>, with a reshuffled government, escalating economic crisis and a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/lebanon-port-blast-beirut-blocked-investigation-d4606d6f28e3eb56510eac923611a03c">massive port explosion</a> that exposed corrupt practices. </p>
<p>The International Monetary Fund <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/09/14/pr23315-lebanon-imf-staff-concludes-visit-to-lebanon">criticised Lebanon in September</a> for a lack of economic reform. The Lebanese government has also failed to reach agreement on appointing a president, a post that has been vacant for <a href="https://www.state.gov/one-year-anniversary-of-lebanons-presidential-vacancy/">more than a year</a>. </p>
<p>This risks undermining the fragile power-sharing arrangement in Lebanon in which the key political posts of prime minister, speaker and president are allocated to a Sunni-Muslim, Shia-Muslim and Christian Maronite, respectively. </p>
<p>Most recently, the war between Israel and Hamas has threatened to spill over to Lebanon, home to the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67307858">Hezbollah</a> militant group, which claims to have an army of 100,000 fighters. Importantly, this jeopardises tourism as a key hope for Lebanon’s economic recovery. </p>
<p>These factors may precipitate a more serious economic and political collapse in 2024. </p>
<h2>Pakistan</h2>
<p>Since Pakistan’s independence in 1947, the military has played an <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-a-historical-trail-of-pakistans-powerful-military-enterprise-205749">interventionist role in politics</a>. Though Pakistani leaders are popularly elected, military officials have at times removed them from power. </p>
<p>In 2022, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan fell out of favour with Pakistan’s militant leaders. He was subsequently <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/09/asia/imran-khan-voted-out-pakistan-prime-minister-intl-hnk/index.html">ousted from power</a> in a parliament vote and later arrested on charges that his supporters claim are politically motivated. </p>
<p>Violent demonstrations <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/09/world/asia/imran-khan-arrest-pakistan.html">broke out</a> nationwide after his arrest – a display of anger against the military that was once unthinkable. </p>
<p>Pakistan also faces spillover from instability in neighbouring Afghanistan and <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/09/1141712">increased terror attacks</a>. These security challenges have been compounded by a struggling economy and ongoing costs from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/aug/05/a-year-on-the-devastating-long-term-effects-of-pakistans-floods-are-revealed">devastating 2022 floods</a>.</p>
<p>Pakistan is expected to hold <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/2/pakistan-to-hold-delayed-elections-on-february-8-electoral-commission-says">parliamentary elections</a> in February 2024, after which the current military caretaker government is expected to transfer power back to civilian rule. Many are watching the military closely. If this transfer of power does not take place, or there are delays, civil unrest may result.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-imran-khans-populism-has-divided-pakistan-and-put-it-on-a-knifes-edge-205392">How Imran Khan's populism has divided Pakistan and put it on a knife's edge</a>
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<h2>Sri Lanka</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-did-sri-lanka-run-out-of-money-5-graphs-that-explain-its-economic-crisis-187352">Sri Lanka faced a debilitating economic crisis in 2022</a> that led to critical fuel, food and medical shortages. Civil protests caused then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country. He was quickly replaced by current President Ranil Wickremesingh. </p>
<p>Stability returned in 2023 as Sri Lanka began implementing economic reforms as part of a bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund. However, widespread dissatisfaction with political elites and the underlying drivers of the country’s economic hardship have not been addressed. </p>
<p>Elections are also due in Sri Lanka by late 2024. While Wickremesingh, the incumbent, is likely to run for a second term, he has <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/unpopular-sri-lankan-president-consolidates-power-after-victory">low trust</a> with the public. He is viewed as too close to corrupt political elites. </p>
<p>This dissatisfaction could lead to renewed protests – particularly if the economy stumbles again – in a repeat of the situation that led to Rajapaksa’s ousting in 2022.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217807/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Genauer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From Myanmar to Pakistan, these countries have long-simmering conflicts or increasingly dissatisfied publics that could worsen in the new year.Jessica Genauer, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2105392023-12-05T13:17:24Z2023-12-05T13:17:24ZHow sacred images in many Asian cultures incorporate divine presence and make them come ‘alive’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559865/original/file-20231116-23-care6q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C19%2C3264%2C2423&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A gilded statue of the Buddha at Wat Phanan Choeng Temple in Thailand.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/wat-phanan-choeng-temple-this-highly-respected-royalty-free-image/1217280251?phrase=eye-opening+Buddhist+ritual&searchscope=image%2Cfilm&adppopup=true">Kittipong Chararoj/ iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Walking into a favorite restaurant here in Knoxville, Tennessee, I was immediately greeted by a golden statue of Buddha, its sparkling gemstone eyes meeting my own as I made my way through the door. The aromas of Thai curries beckoned, but as I was led to a table, I kept thinking about those glinting eyes.</p>
<p>Sacred objects are everywhere: Statues and paintings of gods fill museum galleries and catalog pages alike. You might also see them gracing a neighbor’s yard or upon an altar in your friend’s home.</p>
<p>Some dazzle in bejeweled splendor. Others may appear more humble, their luster softened through generations of hands passing them down. Oftentimes, it can feel as though sacred images are looking back.</p>
<p>I <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/michael-naparstek-1457307">research the ways in which objects express the power of divine presence</a> in Asian religious contexts. Studying different perspectives on sacred objects helps us think beyond religious contexts and allows us to rethink how objects and images play an active role in our lives.</p>
<h2>Sacred visual culture</h2>
<p>Hindu practice is defined by “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/darshan">darśan” – a ritual act of interacting with the divine</a> through the visual experience. Scholar <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/dianaeck/home">Diana Eck</a> describes this interaction in her seminal study of Indian visual culture, “<a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/darsan/9780231112659">Darśan</a>,” in the following way: “to stand in the presence of the deity and to behold the image with one’s own eyes, to see and be seen by the deity.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559867/original/file-20231116-17-nxv3h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A couple, with a young child in the woman's lap, sitting before the Hindu God Ganesha, with folded hands." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559867/original/file-20231116-17-nxv3h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559867/original/file-20231116-17-nxv3h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559867/original/file-20231116-17-nxv3h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559867/original/file-20231116-17-nxv3h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559867/original/file-20231116-17-nxv3h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559867/original/file-20231116-17-nxv3h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559867/original/file-20231116-17-nxv3h6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A family prays to the Hindu god Ganesha.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/family-praying-royalty-free-image/548295807?phrase=hindu+worship&adppopup=true">IndiaPix/IndiaPicture via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-theravada-buddhism-a-scholar-of-asian-religions-explains-205737">Theravada Buddhist</a> rituals in Southeast Asia include all-night chanting sessions to recharge statues’ power. As scholar of Theravada Buddhism <a href="https://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/dsweare1/">Donald Swearer</a> notes in “<a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691114354/becoming-the-buddha">Becoming the Buddha</a>,” monastics and laypeople in northern Thailand will gather to recite Buddhist sutras while holding cords attached to an image of the Buddha, forming an intricate web of connection between the image and the Buddhist community. </p>
<p>The benefits gained from these chants is understood to enter the statue, recharging its karmic power and reanimating it to once again interact with the community.</p>
<p><a href="https://asiasociety.org/education/buddhism-japan">Japanese Buddhist</a> statues <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fellows-book/behold-the-buddha-religious-meanings-of-japanese-buddhist-icons/">contain multiple items ritually placed</a> within their wooden cavities: bones of saints, robes from eminent monastics and even silk-fashioned replicas of visceral organs like lungs and kidneys. As art historian <a href="https://oberlin.academia.edu/JamesDobbins">James Dobbins</a> notes, certain Buddhist rituals are performed in order to transform the body of a statue into a living body. </p>
<p>In cases like this, inanimate objects are believed to transform into not only sacred things, but also active, living beings who can see, hear, taste and respond to the concerns of those who worship them.</p>
<h2>‘Eye-opening’ ritual</h2>
<p>There are many different ways to enliven an image, and each ritual tradition carries its own unique process. However, the most well-known across Asia is commonly referred to as the “<a href="https://pluralism.org/news/eye-opening-ceremony-buddhist-statues-draws-hundreds-connecticut">eye-opening” ceremony</a>. The term “eye-opening” gets its name from the culmination of an intense ritual process wherein the monk paints in the pupils of the image, thus opening its eye to see. </p>
<p>In Sri Lanka, Buddhist monks perform a version known as the netra-pinkama, which loosely translates to “meritorious action of the eyes.” </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gt5jY93AD2w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The netra-pinkama ritual.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.ox.ac.uk/research/research-in-conversation/how-live-happy-life/professor-richard-gombrich#:%7E:text=Richard%20Gombrich%20is%20the%20Emeritus,of%20the%20Clay%20Sanskrit%20Library.">Richard Gombrich</a>, a scholar of Buddhism and Sanskrit, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/2051829">noted in his study of Buddhism in Sri Lanka</a> that “Before consecration, a statue is treated with no more respect than one would give the materials of which it is composed. … The very act of consecration indicates that a statue is being brought to life.” </p>
<p>Enlivening an image is not a task undertaken lightly, as it is believed in some cases that any demonic spirits loitering around could interrupt the process, thereby resulting in an ineffective ritual or even a malevolent icon. Both the temple grounds and the ritual specialists must undergo purification rites before beginning. The whole process is filled with strict procedures and avoidance of taboos – a common theme among consecration rituals across Asian religious traditions. </p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, the monk must refrain from looking directly into the icon’s eyes, and thus uses a mirror to look over their shoulder in order to paint in the icon’s pupils.</p>
<p>In Taiwan, statues and paintings of Buddhist, Daoist and local gods will undergo a similar kind of practice known as “kaiguang,” meaning “<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674504363">opening the radiance</a>.” Monks, Daoist masters and even the artists who carve the statues may perform the rite on behalf of the individuals or temple communities that commission the image.</p>
<p>Once completed, shops will wrap a piece of red paper around to cover the statue’s eyes to ensure that the first thing that the image sees is the face of the one who requested it. The power of sacred vision is such that it must literally be kept under wraps.</p>
<h2>Living images</h2>
<p>Once its eyes have been opened, the image becomes a living thing capable of performing powerful deeds. As such, people may behave much differently – making offerings of incense and taking pains to follow social etiquette lest they offend. The care with which these objects are treated once they have been “activated” suggests that there is a lot more here than meets the eye. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/darsan/9780231112659">Eck’s observation attests</a>, being seen is critical to understanding what images do. By seemingly looking back at us, sacred images remind us that we are not alone in this world. In so doing, they also send a message that the world is not there for our eyes only, but that other viewpoints are just as powerful as our own.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210539/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Naparstek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Through the power of rituals, inanimate objects can be understood to transform into agents who can see, hear, taste and respond to the concerns of those who worship them.Michael Naparstek, Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of TennesseeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173902023-11-15T09:05:21Z2023-11-15T09:05:21ZHow governments use IMF bailouts to hurt political opponents – new research<p>Sri Lanka <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/10/19/pr23357-sri-lanka-imf-reaches-sla-on-the-review-of-sri-lanka-extended-fund-facility-arrangement">received a bailout</a> from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in March amid soaring inflation, debt and a sovereign default. </p>
<p>In exchange for US$3 billion (£2.4 billion), the government committed to spending cuts and tax and financial sector reforms. These have prevented Sri Lankan wages from recovering after they fell <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sri-lanka-government-imf-austerity-deal-will-exacerbate-debt-crisis-by-jayati-ghosh-and-kanchana-n-ruwanpura-2023-09">by almost half</a> in real terms during the preceding financial crisis, leading to protests in the streets of Colombo. </p>
<p>Sri Lankans’ experience of these measures has been far from uniform. Emerging evidence indicates that the government — led by Ranil Wickremesinghe, part of the Buddhist Sinhalese majority — has concentrated the burdens primarily on ethnic minorities, <a href="https://borgenproject.org/tamil-poverty-in-sri-lanka/#:%7E:text=Poverty%20in%20Sri%20Lanka%20affects,lower%20access%20to%20essential%20services.">who are the poorest</a> in Sri Lanka and typically support the opposition. </p>
<p>The government has sought to protect the elite, which is primarily Buddhist Sinhalese, by avoiding imposing wealth taxes and only making small increases in corporation tax. It has placed the costs of austerity on low-income people by doubling the value-added tax rate to 15%. </p>
<p>It has also doubled the tax that people pay on pension-fund returns. Again, this hits poor ethnic minorities hardest because <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sri-lanka-government-imf-austerity-deal-will-exacerbate-debt-crisis-by-jayati-ghosh-and-kanchana-n-ruwanpura-2023-09">they frequently earn</a> too little to pay income tax. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this experience is part of a worldwide pattern. Our new book, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/imf-lending/14E6106B4EF6D335C1C7404E4C7E5313">IMF Lending: Partisanship, Punishment and Protest</a>, shows how governments lump the burden of adjustment on opposition supporters while shielding their own backers – in other words, using IMF programmes for political gain.</p>
<h2>IMF programmes and past research</h2>
<p>Scholars have long noted that IMF restructuring programmes create winners and losers, but always in relation to different sectors of the economy. For example, the fact that programmes attempt to strengthen exports <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381613000078">has been shown</a> to favour farmers and business owners over urban middle-class state employees like civil servants. </p>
<p>The problem with purely comparing sectors is highlighted when you look at citizens’ experiences. One segment of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/imf-lending/14E6106B4EF6D335C1C7404E4C7E5313">the survey data</a> we used in our research, covering nine countries in Africa, showed that three out of ten civil servants actually thought IMF reforms made their lives better, while a similar proportion observed no difference. </p>
<p>Admittedly this data is from 1999-2001, since none of the more recent surveys that we used asked this question, but it raises an important point: if IMF reforms are entirely bad for the civil service, why are so many civil servants upbeat about the effects? Politics is likely to be the missing piece of the puzzle.</p>
<p><strong>Citizens’ views of IMF programmes in their countries</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558596/original/file-20231109-23-r1i95d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Chart showing how citizens viewed IMF programmes in their countries" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558596/original/file-20231109-23-r1i95d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/558596/original/file-20231109-23-r1i95d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558596/original/file-20231109-23-r1i95d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558596/original/file-20231109-23-r1i95d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558596/original/file-20231109-23-r1i95d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558596/original/file-20231109-23-r1i95d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/558596/original/file-20231109-23-r1i95d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Based on 659 civil servants from Afrobarometer (1999-2001), covering Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/survey-resource/merged-round-1-data-12-countries-1999-2001">Afrobarometer</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>An extensive academic literature already shows that governments often use their discretion to play politics over development loans. For example, a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2019.04.003">recent study</a> found that projects funded by Chinese money are more likely to be undertaken in the birth region of a political leader. </p>
<p>With IMF programmes, it’s commonly assumed that they narrow borrowing governments’ policy options, but that is an oversimplification. Borrowers certainly have less overall freedom over economic policy, but they maintain broad discretion in how they implement loan conditions. Our study is the first to quantify how they use this discretion and examine the consequences for protests within the countries in question.</p>
<h2>Our study</h2>
<p>We collected individual survey data from over 100 countries from four widely used sources: <a href="https://www.afrobarometer.org/">Afrobarometer</a>, <a href="https://www.asianbarometer.org/">Asian Barometer</a>, <a href="https://www.latinobarometro.org/lat.jsp">Latinobarómetro</a> and the <a href="https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp">World Values Surveys</a>. It covers a 40-year timespan up to the late 2010s, with periods varying from region to region. </p>
<p>We first examined whether opposition supporters had different experiences of reforms than government supporters. Sure enough, these were indeed more negative. </p>
<p>We worried this might be because these people are more critical of their governments in general. So we compared countries which had just experienced a restructuring programme with others which had not, and found that sentiment among opposition supporters was much more negative in borrower countries. </p>
<p>The following graph provides an explanation, showing that opposition supporters in countries on IMF programmes suffer relatively more deprivation than government supporters compared to countries not in programmes. </p>
<p><strong>Partisan deprivation in IMF v non-IMF countries</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559292/original/file-20231114-15-d5i0ol.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graph showing how opposition supporters are affected by IMF programmes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559292/original/file-20231114-15-d5i0ol.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559292/original/file-20231114-15-d5i0ol.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559292/original/file-20231114-15-d5i0ol.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559292/original/file-20231114-15-d5i0ol.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559292/original/file-20231114-15-d5i0ol.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559292/original/file-20231114-15-d5i0ol.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559292/original/file-20231114-15-d5i0ol.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Based on 101,055 individuals from 46 countries surveyed in 2011-18.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp">World Values Survey</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This “partisan gap” was also wider in countries who went through a more burdensome recent IMF adjustment, which points to the same conclusion. </p>
<p><strong>Partisan deprivation by severity of IMF restructuring</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559293/original/file-20231114-6026-o19zre.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graph showing deprivation of opposition supporters in less and more severe IMF programmes" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559293/original/file-20231114-6026-o19zre.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/559293/original/file-20231114-6026-o19zre.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559293/original/file-20231114-6026-o19zre.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559293/original/file-20231114-6026-o19zre.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559293/original/file-20231114-6026-o19zre.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559293/original/file-20231114-6026-o19zre.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/559293/original/file-20231114-6026-o19zre.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Based on 101,055 individuals from 46 countries surveyed in 2011-18.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp">World Values Survey</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The effect on protest</h2>
<p>We expected that this highly unequal treatment would increase the chances of protest – especially when stoked by opposition politicians. This too was robustly supported across the surveys. </p>
<p>In Africa, people who reported being worse off due to the structural adjustment programme were more likely to protest. Opposition supporters as a whole were also more likely to protest, especially if the country had just experienced a more severe IMF programme. </p>
<p>Again, this data was from 1999-2001. Nonetheless, the other surveys also showed that protest was more likely among opposition supporters, especially during times of high pressure for adjustment.</p>
<h2>What can be done</h2>
<p>Scholars normally blame the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11558-020-09405-x">increase in inequality</a> caused by IMF programmes on the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0049089X18300802?via%3Dihub">loan conditions</a>, but the effects are clearly amplified by governments’ policy choices. How could this situation be improved? The IMF could require borrower countries to impose loan conditions in a non-partisan way, but would probably argue that its mandate prohibits considering domestic politics. Policing this would also be very difficult and time-consuming. </p>
<p>An alternative would be for the IMF to tame its demands on borrower countries. This would reduce the burdens that could be inflicted on opposition supporters. Economists might warn that this could encourage countries to be more financially irresponsible. Equally, however, it ought to make it more likely that adjustment programmes will be completed, thereby making the borrowing country more economically resilient for the future. It would also avoid any <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/rego.12422">adverse reaction</a> from the financial markets against a country breaking conditions. </p>
<p>Another potential avenue is to let opposition parties and civil society organisations participate in bailout negotiations. This would ensure everyone “owns” the bailout, and might even make it harder for incumbent governments to exploit policy conditions for political gain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217390/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sri Lanka is just one of a number of countries in which IMF loan conditions appear to be mainly burdening supporters of the opposition.M. Rodwan Abouharb, Associate Professor in International Relations, UCLBernhard Reinsberg, Reader in Politics, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2102542023-07-25T08:48:05Z2023-07-25T08:48:05ZShankari Chandran wins the Miles Franklin with a sophisticated take on racism, cultural erasure and what it means to belong<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539129/original/file-20230725-29-4euho7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=177%2C5%2C1020%2C670&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shankari Chandran</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ultimo Press</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Race and racial identity and what it means to be Australian and who gets to decide that … that has been a part of my life here, for my entire life …,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AmkO2iQ8dak">says</a> Western Sydney author Shankari Chandran. “I’ve thought about it a lot but never had the courage to write about it.” </p>
<p>Chandran’s third book, <a href="https://ultimopress.com.au/collections/shankari-chandran/products/chai-time-at-cinnamon-gardens-b">Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens</a>, is the project with which she’s found her courage – and the move has paid off. </p>
<p>Chandran has been awarded $60,000 as winner of this year’s prestigious Miles Franklin Award. She joins a select list of Australian authors, including Melissa Lucashenko, Amanda Lohrey, Kim Scott and Tim Winton – all the way back to Patrick White, who was <a href="https://www.gale.com/intl/databases-explored/literature/miles-franklin">the inaugural winner</a> in 1957. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/queer-disobedience-and-uncomfortable-truths-your-guide-to-the-2023-miles-franklin-shortlist-208007">Queer disobedience and uncomfortable truths: your guide to the 2023 Miles Franklin shortlist</a>
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<h2>Australian racism and Sri Lanka’s civil war</h2>
<p>The Miles Franklin judges are not the first to recognise Chandran’s literary talent. </p>
<p>Her debut novel, <a href="https://ultimopress.com.au/collections/shankari-chandran/products/song-of-the-sun-god">Song of the Sun God</a>, was <a href="https://dublinliteraryaward.ie/the-library/books/song-of-the-sun-god/">longlisted</a> for the international Dublin Literary Award, <a href="https://fairwaytalk.lk/the-fairway-national-literary-awards-2017/">shortlisted</a> for Sri Lanka’s Fairway National Literary Awards and is <a href="https://if.com.au/charithra-chandran-boards-synchronicity-and-photoplays-song-of-the-sun-god/">currently being adapted</a> for a television series. Her second novel, <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781925481174/">The Barrier</a>, was <a href="https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2018/04/30/106694/norma-k-hemming-award-2018-shortlists-announced/">shortlisted</a> for the Norma K. Hemming Award for Speculative Fiction.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539155/original/file-20230725-15-qc020l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539155/original/file-20230725-15-qc020l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539155/original/file-20230725-15-qc020l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539155/original/file-20230725-15-qc020l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539155/original/file-20230725-15-qc020l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539155/original/file-20230725-15-qc020l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539155/original/file-20230725-15-qc020l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539155/original/file-20230725-15-qc020l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>A lawyer, Chandran spent two decades working in social justice reform. As a writer, her interests lie in dispossession, genocide and the ongoing impacts of colonialism.</p>
<p>“Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens follows the lives of residents and staff at a nursing home in Western Sydney,” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AmkO2iQ8dak">explains Chandran</a>. “It’s set against the backdrop of rising racism in contemporary Australia, but it also flashes back to the residents’ ancestral homeland of Sri Lanka, decades before, during the country’s civil war.” </p>
<p>The novel was inspired by Chandran’s observations of rising tensions around race and racism in contemporary Australia’s culture and politics. It’s also informed by the author’s memories of her grandmother, whose experiences of migration and a childhood spent in Sri Lanka were relayed during Chandran’s regular visits to a nursing home not unlike the one in the novel. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shehan-karunatilaka-wins-booker-prize-for-sri-lankan-political-satire-the-seven-moons-of-maali-almeida-192722">Shehan Karunatilaka wins Booker prize for Sri Lankan political satire, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida</a>
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</em>
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<p>Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is one of a number of recent books set in or inspired by life in Western Sydney to be widely and deservedly celebrated. Among them is Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/michael-mohammed-ahmad/the-lebs-miles-franklin-literary-award-finalist">The Lebs</a>, which was a finalist for the 2019 Miles Franklin Award. </p>
<p>Ahmad is the founding director of the indefatigable Sweatshop Literacy Movement, based in Western Sydney, which is committed to empowering culturally and linguistically diverse communities through literature. Chandran has contributed to two of their anthologies: most recently, <a href="https://affirmpress.com.au/publishing/another-australia/">Another Australia</a>, edited by Sweatshop’s general manager <a href="https://www.sweatshop.ws/staff">Winnie Dunn</a>.</p>
<p>Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens is a deserving winner of the Miles Franklin. It does not shy away from violence or controversy. </p>
<p>Nor does the author hold back on representing and ruminating on racism, its origins, the systems and assumptions that sustain it, and its impact on individuals, families and communities. Chandran’s characters are complex and often conflicted, their backstories moving and plausible.</p>
<h2>Vessel for uneasy truths</h2>
<p>Many of us with migrant backgrounds will be grateful for the author’s frank take on the way experiences of trauma in the country of origin can reverberate through a family in the adopted country, for years to come. This is not easy material and fiction sometimes gives us just the right vessel for carrying uneasy truths.</p>
<p>My chief criticism of the book is that there’s a lot going on – sometimes too much at once. The privileging of fast-moving plot complications over opportunities for deeper contemplation and attention to sensory detail is particularly difficult to navigate in the first quarter. There, we follow five distinct perspectives – plus an omniscient narrator, multiple flashbacks and a dizzying mix of scenes, including extreme race-based violence. </p>
<p>My message to potential readers is: keep going. The novel’s project is consistent, the author’s attention to plot pays off in spades and by the time you reach the end, you are in awe of Chandran’s skills at both plot design and the handling of complex themes. The book is impeccably researched and ultimately hopeful. Heavily action and dialogue based, it would make great television.</p>
<p>Book club members of Australia, it’s time to talk frankly and at length about race and racism in our own neighbourhoods. </p>
<p>Shankari Chandran has plucked up the courage to deliver us this extraordinary book, right on song. And the Miles Franklin judges have applauded her for it. </p>
<p>Our job comes next: read and discuss widely.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210254/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julienne van Loon has received funding from the Australia Council for the Arts and Creative Victoria. She is a member of the Australian Society of Authors and the Australasian Association of Writing Programs.</span></em></p>Shankari Chandran’s Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, which explores Australian racism and the Sri Lankan civil war, is ‘extraordinary’.Julienne van Loon, Associate Professor in Creative Writing, School of Culture & Communication, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2080072023-07-24T13:05:43Z2023-07-24T13:05:43ZQueer disobedience and uncomfortable truths: your guide to the 2023 Miles Franklin shortlist<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538676/original/file-20230721-27-zzrvqd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C17%2C3976%2C1976&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>This year’s Miles Franklin shortlist takes us from Sydney’s criminal underclass in the 1930s and the quiet waters of rural Tasmania in the 1940s to shopping for design objects in contemporary Japan. </p>
<p>Its styles range from the sparse, economical prose of the experimental novella to an intricately plotted page-turner. </p>
<p>And the six shortlisted writers include a debut novelist and a Miles Franklin veteran; just one is male-identifying.</p>
<h2>Iris by Fiona Kelly McGregor</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/in-iris-fiona-kelly-mcgregor-recreates-the-criminal-underworld-of-depression-era-sydney-190426">Iris</a> is an impeccably researched biographical novel that brings to life Sydney’s inner-city Darlinghurst and Surry Hills, circa 1930s, in a way reminiscent of <a href="https://theconversation.com/playing-beatie-bow-is-brought-to-thundering-life-in-a-joyous-stage-production-154647">Ruth Park</a>. McGregor is the most experienced writer on the shortlist: Iris is her eighth book and her accolades include a <a href="https://www.slq.qld.gov.au/university-southern-queensland-steele-rudd-award-short-story-collection">Steele Rudd Award</a> and an Age Book of the Year (<a href="https://scribepublications.com.au/books-authors/books/indelible-ink-9781922070623">Indelible Ink</a>). </p>
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<p>McGregor knows Sydney well – especially its convoluted history of colonialism, repression and disobedience. Her inspired decision to fictionalise the real-life <a href="https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/webber_iris">Iris Webber</a> (1906-1953) was no doubt influenced by the extraordinary archives of the Sydney Police photographs (1912-1948).</p>
<p>Webber’s daily struggle against the dark forces of law and order, the patriarchy, the heteronormative presents as a poetic victory for the queer, the poor and the lawless. The criminal hero is no stranger to Australian readers: mostly men. But McGregor’s Webber, as “bad” and unforgiving as they come, is a welcome turn.</p>
<p>Iris is a sophisticated queering of the archives. It’s also an extraordinary recuperation of lower-working-class Sydney’s Depression-era vernacular, with much of its sexist, racist, homophobic implications intact. This is a novel full of sex, music, drugs, drink and laughter. I loved that about it. </p>
<p>A lengthy book, there are some slow points in the long middle, and a vast cast of characters to keep in check. But its strengths are myriad. McGregor is a writer with vision, intellect, commitment and flair. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-iris-fiona-kelly-mcgregor-recreates-the-criminal-underworld-of-depression-era-sydney-190426">In Iris, Fiona Kelly McGregor recreates the criminal underworld of Depression-era Sydney</a>
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</p>
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<h2>Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-responsibilities-of-being-jessica-aus-precise-poetic-meditation-on-mothers-and-daughters-175632">Jessica Au’s novel</a> was much anticipated: its manuscript won the inaugural international $US10,000 <a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/novelprize/">The Novel Prize</a>, trumping 1500 entries. It since won the Victorian Premier’s Award for Fiction, The Victorian Prize for Literature and the Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction.</p>
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<p>Au’s mastery of the novella feels like a long, nourishing drink at the best kind of literary waterhole. Influenced by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-autofiction-turns-the-personal-into-the-political-192180">autofiction</a> of Rachel Cusk, Ben Lerner and <a href="https://theconversation.com/elizabeth-strouts-lucy-by-the-sea-a-claustrophobic-portrait-of-a-terrible-pandemic-year-191073">Elizabeth Strout</a>, it’s not a plot-driven book.</p>
<p>The Melbourne-based narrator and her ageing mother take a holiday to Japan: it’s that simple. The setting is contemporary. The narrator’s observations of the everyday aspects of the journey – negotiating transport, admiring design objects in speciality shops, a long walk through an unfamiliar landscape – accumulate with a hypnotic persistence. </p>
<p>There is a subtle search for meaning, particularly regarding the nature of intergenerational relationships. But Au also nudges us to contemplate the personal impact of tourism, art, migration, settlement and resettlement – and some of the more subtle aspects of cultural difference. </p>
<p>Ultimately, we’re left with a slightly discomforting sense of the unknowability of the other, and light existential distress. It’s a credit to Au that she lets the reader sit with this at the conclusion: nothing feels artificially resolved.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-responsibilities-of-being-jessica-aus-precise-poetic-meditation-on-mothers-and-daughters-175632">The responsibilities of being: Jessica Au's precise, poetic meditation on mothers and daughters</a>
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<h2>Limberlost by Robbie Arnott</h2>
<p>Robbie Arnott is the only one of these authors to have been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin before – for his second novel, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/the-rain-heron">The Rain Heron</a> (2020), which won The Age Book of the Year award. Arnott is also the only male-identifying author on this shortlist and masculinity is a central theme. </p>
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<p>Ned, 14, the youngest of four children, lives on the family orchard on the banks of Tasmania’s Tamar river, during the second world war. His mother is dead, his emotionally distant World War I veteran father suffers <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-11135">PTSD</a>, and his older brothers have enlisted. When Ned’s older sister returns home – suddenly and heartbroken – he does his best to win her approval. </p>
<p>Set over a single summer, the plot is simple but satisfying. Arnott’s capacity to bring the setting and characters vividly to life makes for a fully immersive reading experience. It’s inspired in part by Arnott’s grandfather, who grew up where the book is set. The book would make a good screenplay.</p>
<p>I was slightly irritated by an overreliance on flashbacks to a particular childhood experience, its full details gradually drip-fed to the reader. Arnott’s talent for plot and extraordinary skill for verisimilitude make the novel compelling enough on their own. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robbie-arnotts-eco-fiction-uses-myth-and-metaphor-to-depict-a-wounded-world-191348">Robbie Arnott's eco-fiction uses myth and metaphor to depict a wounded world</a>
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<h2>Hopeless Kingdom by Kgshak Akec</h2>
<p>Kgshak Akec, a creative writing student at Deakin University, is the youngest writer on this shortlist, at 26. Super excited, she says she’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JkHNLCvTfA">“still processing”</a> the news. </p>
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<p>Akec’s debut is inspired by her family’s migration from South Sudan to Australia via Egypt, during the early 2000s. It’s told interchangeably from the perspective of Akita, aged six and in her first year of school when we meet her, and her mother Taresai in Cairo. The novel opens with Taresai, sole proprieter of a successful bootleg liquor business, making hospital visits to sit with her premature fourth child.</p>
<p>This manuscript won the <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/pages/dorothy-hewett-award-for-an-unpublished-manuscript">Dorothy Hewett Award</a> in 2021, following inaugural winner <a href="https://theconversation.com/grief-loss-and-a-glimmer-of-hope-josephine-wilson-wins-the-2017-miles-franklin-prize-for-extinctions-83635">Josephine Wilson</a> (2015) – who then swept up the Miles Franklin for <a href="https://uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/extinctions-josephine-wilson">Extinctions</a>.</p>
<p>One of Akec’s strengths is in rendering accomplished scenes that are active, tense, crowded and fast-moving. The book brims with authentic, memorable characters and relationships between family and friends that are complex and subtly complicated. </p>
<p>Akito’s big brother Santo, older by two years, will live on in readers’ memories: many will recognise this heartbreakingly fun risk-taker, who takes all who know him on the wildest of rides.</p>
<p>The novel is a bit lopsided at times. Akito’s point of view is consistently vivid, while Taresai’s often lacks immersive sensory detail. I wish Akec’s editors had worked harder to help correct this imbalance. But hers is a vivid, exciting new voice.</p>
<h2>The Lovers by Yumna Kassab</h2>
<p><a href="https://ultimopress.com.au/products/the-lovers-b">The Lovers</a> is this shortlist’s most experimental work. Told through short vignettes that switch from one lover’s point of view to the other, Kassab’s technique allows plenty of space for the reader to fill in the gaps, and the freedom to imagine the fuller setting and its attendant complications. </p>
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<p>This novella’s limited dramatic narrative scale permits the author a sophisticated attention to the poetics of representation: perhaps the book’s key achievement. It’s an accomplished, deeply feminist exploration of contemporary romance.</p>
<p>Amir and Jamila, the lovers of the title, unite almost exclusively at nighttime. In Jamila’s rented room, in a city foreign to her, their mutual desire ignites and deepens. </p>
<p>Amir has a failed marriage behind him, but remains committed to the institution. His means are limited by poverty and a government that can’t be trusted; his choices reduced by a conservative, patriarchal culture. Jamila’s privileges of class and foreign citizenship free her to come and go as she pleases. </p>
<p>Marriage is a trap Jamila neither wants nor needs. She’s seen what it does to other women. A tourist in her father’s birth country, she stays longer than intended – partly to explore what her love affair might become. The lovers keenly feel their differences. Their possible futures are much contemplated: in the privacy of their bedroom and the seclusion of their own thoughts. A great deal hinges on what might happen next. </p>
<p>The Lovers is Kassab’s third novel. She artfully employs stories within stories: tiny parables that frame or commentate on the larger story of the lovers and their fate. Even the author’s notes are unconventionally playful and poetic. I loved this honest, clever, powerful work.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/colonial-and-nationalist-myths-are-recast-in-yumna-kassabs-australiana-178881">Colonial and nationalist myths are recast in Yumna Kassab's Australiana</a>
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<h2>Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran</h2>
<p><a href="https://ultimopress.com.au/collections/shankari-chandran/products/chai-time-at-cinnamon-gardens-b">Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens</a> is mostly set in a Western Sydney nursing home, run by and for a Sri Lankan Tamil community. Shankari Chandran <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AmkO2iQ8dak">says</a> the novel was inspired and informed by regular visits to her grandmother. “As she was walking, she’d be talking, and telling us stories about her life, of her childhood, of her marriage, her migration.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538715/original/file-20230721-24-560h0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538715/original/file-20230721-24-560h0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538715/original/file-20230721-24-560h0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538715/original/file-20230721-24-560h0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538715/original/file-20230721-24-560h0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538715/original/file-20230721-24-560h0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538715/original/file-20230721-24-560h0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538715/original/file-20230721-24-560h0y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Chandran is a mid-career author whose achievements are gradually accumulating. Her debut novel, <a href="https://ultimopress.com.au/products/song-of-the-sun-god">Song of the Sun God</a>, was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for Sri Lanka’s <a href="https://fairwayholdings.com/corporate-social-responsibility">Fairway National Literary Award</a>. A lawyer, her interests lie in dispossession, erasure and connection. Accordingly, this novel reflects on racial violence, xenophobia, cultural erasure and truth-telling. </p>
<p>The outer-suburban nursing home of the book’s title at first conjures an idyllic suburban utopia, a “new” Sri Lanka for Tamil residents in their final days. But uncomfortable truths about ethnic and race-based violence, xenophobia and misplaced investments in the myth of nationhood soon rupture the idyll. </p>
<p>The struggle to peacefully co-exist in a multi-ethnic community is the focus: both in contemporary Australia and the Sri Lanka many key characters have fled. Chandran gives us complex interiorities and a racing plot, relayed through multiple perspectives – bringing the emotional, physical and intergenerational impact of deliberate mass cultural erasure sharply into view. </p>
<p>But I sometimes wished for a slower, simpler, less performative approach to plot, to give me more time to sit with the book’s extraordinary characters and properly absorb its ideas. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Correction: the original version of this article stated that Jessica Au won $US100,000 for the Novel Prize; it was $US10,000. It also stated that Cold Enough for Snow was her debut, but it was her second novel. And that Josephine Wilson’s Extinctions won the Dorothy Hewett Award in 2020 and the Miles the next year; it won the Dorothy Hewitt in 2015 and the Miles in 2017. The article has been amended accordingly.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208007/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julienne van Loon receives funding from Creative Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts.
</span></em></p>The six books on this year’s Miles Franklin shortlist vary in style, themes and the writers’ experience, with veteran novelists and debuts – including an international prize-winner and a 26-year-old.Julienne van Loon, Associate Professor in Creative Writing, School of Culture & Communication, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2041062023-05-03T07:14:38Z2023-05-03T07:14:38ZIndonesia should reject China’s request to put state budget as collateral for Jakarta-Bandung high-speed train project<p>Indonesia’s high-speed train project connecting the country’s capital Jakarta and West Java’s capital, Bandung, has encountered another stumble. Following <a href="https://theconversation.com/accidents-on-chinese-projects-are-rampant-but-why-does-indonesias-economy-still-depend-on-china-197798">accidents</a>, including one in December that claimed two lives, the China-backed project has hit <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Transportation/Indonesia-high-speed-railway-still-beset-by-problems">financial problems</a>. As a result, the cost of the project has swelled by <a href="https://www.benarnews.org/english/news/indonesian/train-update-04102023132029.html">US$ 1.2 billion</a> from the original forecast of $6 billion.</p>
<p>China has <a href="https://indonesiabusinesspost.com/insider/china-demands-indonesian-state-budget-guarantee-on-high-speed-train-raises-debt-trap-concerns/">asked</a> Indonesia to guarantee to cover the swelling budget. </p>
<p>As researchers focusing on China-Indonesia relations, we suggest the Indonesian government reject the request to avoid detrimental consequences for the country’s economy. Indonesia must learn from Malaysia’s success story in renegotiating project debts financed by China in 2016. </p>
<h2>Lessons from Sri Lanka and Uganda</h2>
<p>This cost overrun is very similar to Sri Lanka’s <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2022/05/china-becomes-wild-card-in-sri-lankas-debt-crisis/">failed</a> Hambantota Port development. </p>
<p>Sri Lanka received a $1.3 billion loan from China to modernise the port on the condition that the Chinese Communications Construction Company execute the project. </p>
<p>But Sri Lanka was unable to pay off its debt, which had grown to $8 billion, due to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2022/4/30/23050242/sri-lanka-50-billion-debt-protests-loan-default-china-india-imf">massive levels of corruption</a>. As a result, Sri Lanka <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tryBWGs_gJgJ:https://thediplomat.com/2020/01/the-hambantota-port-deal-myths-and-realities/&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=kr">leased</a> a 70%-stake in the port to the China Merchant Port company for 99 years to earn $1.12 billion to help fund <a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tryBWGs_gJgJ:https://thediplomat.com/2020/01/the-hambantota-port-deal-myths-and-realities/&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=kr">the country’s balance of payment</a>.</p>
<p>So, in addition to the loan that Sri Lanka had to pay for the Hambantota project, Sri Lanka no longer had the dominant ownership of the project. The majority of profits will go to China Merchant Port, instead. </p>
<p>Another debt issue arose in <a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/china-reportedly-takes-over-ugandas-airport-on-account-of-loan-default/articleshow/87957646.cms?from=mdr">Uganda’s Entebbe International airport expansion project</a> in 2021. The project <a href="https://docs.aiddata.org/ad4/pdfs/Uganda-Entebbe-Airport-China-Eximbank.pdf">received</a> a loan from the Export-Import Bank (EXIM) of China worth $207 million. This loan has a term of 20 years. However, efforts to pay off the debt have faltered. </p>
<p>The financial agreement <a href="https://docs.aiddata.org/ad4/pdfs/Uganda-Entebbe-Airport-China-Eximbank.pdf">states</a> that Uganda is required to provide a fully liquid source of collateral in the form of cash deposit that China can unilaterally seize if Uganda is unable to pay off the loan.</p>
<p>In addition, China also <a href="https://docs.aiddata.org/ad4/pdfs/Uganda-Entebbe-Airport-China-Eximbank.pdf">demanded</a> all revenues generated from Entebbe International Airport be used to repay the loan on a priority basis. Uganda managed to refuse this request and renegotiate under <a href="https://docs.aiddata.org/ad4/pdfs/Uganda-Entebbe-Airport-China-Eximbank.pdf">a less intrusive arrangement</a>, which grants the lender the right to monitor but not control the spending decisions. </p>
<p>Indonesian economists have <a href="https://www.bbc.com/indonesia/articles/c72vg2v5732o">warned</a> that Indonesia could suffer financially from paying China’s increasing debts for the high-speed train project. If Indonesia doesn’t want to end up with debt problems to those encountered elsewhere, it needs a strategy and it could do worse that take a look at Malaysia’s successful strategy in renegotiating with China.</p>
<h2>Malaysia’s renegotiation</h2>
<p>Malaysia launched the <a href="https://www.gatra.com/news-410620--malaysia-renegosiasi-proyek-rel-kereta-api-dengan-tiongkok.html">East Coast Rail Line (ECRL)</a> under Najib Razak’s administration in 2016 at a cost of 65.5 billion ringgit (US$19.6 billion).</p>
<p>The current leadership under Mahathir Mohamad deems the project too expensive, and has contended that it is unclear why many of the cost overruns have occurred. After nine months of repeated negotiations, China <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/660ce336-5f38-11e9-b285-3acd5d43599e">agreed</a> to lower the project cost by one-third to 44 billion ringgit. </p>
<p>Malaysia had been using its connections with the United States, Japan and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) during its negotiation with China. Malaysia strengthening bargaining power with this strategy. </p>
<p>Indonesia should use its strategic position as ASEAN’s founding country and this year’s chair to renegotiate with China to reduce the risk of being entangled in debt defaults and suffer from deeper losses.</p>
<h2>Recommendations</h2>
<p>It is crucial to note that when it comes to Chinese-funded projects, recipient countries are not hapless victims. Rather they actively shape how the projects are implemented and their outcomes.</p>
<p>The wise option for Indonesia is to refuse China’s request to use its state budget as collateral, because it is too risky. Putting the state budget as collateral may result in losses that will eventually put the burden of debt to Indonesian citizens. </p>
<p>We recommend Indonesia to be careful in this project partnership with China and to diversify its country partners in infrastructure projects in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204106/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Para penulis tidak bekerja, menjadi konsultan, memiliki saham atau menerima dana dari perusahaan atau organisasi mana pun yang akan mengambil untung dari artikel ini, dan telah mengungkapkan bahwa ia tidak memiliki afiliasi di luar afiliasi akademis yang telah disebut di atas.</span></em></p>Using the state budget as collateral it is too risky a move when it comes to dealing with Beijing.Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat, Researcher, Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS)Yeta Purnama, Researcher, Center of Economic and Law Studies (CELIOS)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2029202023-04-27T15:07:05Z2023-04-27T15:07:05ZHuman activities in Asia have reduced elephant habitat by nearly two-thirds since 1700, dividing what remains into ever-smaller patches<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522859/original/file-20230425-26-oskryk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C0%2C2492%2C1511&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Habitat loss has driven Asian elephants, like these foraging at a garbage dump in Sri Lanka, into human areas.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/in-this-photograph-taken-on-may-11-wild-elephants-rummage-news-photo/958346764">Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite their iconic status and long association with humans, Asian elephants are one of the most endangered large mammals. Believed to number between 45,000 and 50,000 individuals worldwide, they are at risk throughout Asia due to human activities such as deforestation, mining, dam building and road construction, which have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.1624">damaged numerous ecosystems</a>. </p>
<p>My colleagues and I wanted to know when human actions started to fragment wildlife habitats and populations to the degree seen today. We quantified these impacts by considering them through the needs of this species. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-30650-8">newly published study</a>, we examined the centuries-long history of Asian landscapes that once were suitable elephant habitat and often were managed by local communities prior to the colonial era. In our view, understanding this history and restoring some of these relationships may be the key to living with elephants and other large wild animals in the future. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522847/original/file-20230425-14-twwigb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Several elephants walk along a path parallel to a road with cars on it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522847/original/file-20230425-14-twwigb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522847/original/file-20230425-14-twwigb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522847/original/file-20230425-14-twwigb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522847/original/file-20230425-14-twwigb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522847/original/file-20230425-14-twwigb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522847/original/file-20230425-14-twwigb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522847/original/file-20230425-14-twwigb.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Although elephants can cross roads and other infrastructure, elephant habitats across Asia are increasingly hemmed in, with firm boundaries between human and wildlife spaces. These elephants are in Sri Lanka.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shermin de Silva</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How have humans affected wildlife?</h2>
<p>It isn’t easy to measure human impacts on wildlife across a region as large and diverse as Asia and more than a century ago. Historical data for many species is sparse. Museums, for instance, only contain specimens collected from certain locations. </p>
<p>Many animals also have very specific ecological requirements, and there often isn’t sufficient data on these features at a fine scale going far into the past. For instance, a species might prefer particular microclimates or vegetation types that occur only at particular elevations.</p>
<p>For nearly two decades <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wPzBt-EAAAAJ&hl=en">I’ve been studying Asian elephants</a>. As a species, these animals are breathtakingly adaptable: They can live in seasonally dry forests, grasslands or the densest of rain forests. If we could match the habitat requirements of elephants to data sets showing how these habitats changed over time, we knew that we could understand how land-use changes have affected elephants and other wildlife in these environments.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5GmzakE1yRc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Fewer than 50,000 Asian elephants remain in the wild across 13 countries. Habitat loss is one of the main reasons for their decline.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Defining elephant ecosystems</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/7140/45818198">home-range sizes</a> of Asian elephants can vary anywhere from a few hundred square miles to a few thousand. But since we couldn’t know exactly where elephants would have been centuries ago, we had to model the possibilities based on where they occur today. </p>
<p>By identifying the environmental features that correspond to locations where wild elephants live now, we can distinguish places where they could potentially have lived in the past. In principle, this should represent “good” habitat.</p>
<p>Today many scientists are using this kind of model to identify particular species’ climatic requirements and predict how areas suitable for those species might shift under future climate change scenarios. We applied the same logic retrospectively, using land-use and land-cover types instead of climate change projections. </p>
<p>We drew this information from the <a href="https://luh.umd.edu/">Land-Use Harmonization (LUH2)</a> data set, released by a research group at the University of Maryland. The group mapped historical land-use categories by type, starting in the year 850 – long before the advent of nations as we know them today, with fewer large population centers – and extending up to 2015.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522857/original/file-20230425-18-9z1dzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map showing active, possible and potential elephant range across Asia." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522857/original/file-20230425-18-9z1dzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522857/original/file-20230425-18-9z1dzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522857/original/file-20230425-18-9z1dzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522857/original/file-20230425-18-9z1dzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522857/original/file-20230425-18-9z1dzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522857/original/file-20230425-18-9z1dzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522857/original/file-20230425-18-9z1dzq.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Asian elephants live in countries with large human populations, and their range has been shrunk and fragmented. Their future depends on human attitudes toward elephants and their conservation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.trunksnleaves.org/status-threats.html">Hedges et al., 2008, via Trunks & Leaves</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>My co-authors and I first compiled records of where Asian elephants have been observed in the recent past. We limited our study to the 13 countries that today still contain wild elephants: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. </p>
<p>We excluded areas where elephant populations are prone to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/20/asia/human-elephant-conflict-india-krithi-karanth-c2e-spc-intl-hnk/index.html">clashing with people</a>, such as intensively farmed landscapes and plantations, in order to avoid classifying these zones as “good” elephant habitat. We included areas with lighter human influence, such as selectively logged forests, because they actually contain great food for elephants.</p>
<p>Next, we used a machine-learning algorithm to determine what types of land use and land cover existed at our remaining locations. This allowed us to map out where elephants could potentially live as of the year 2000. By applying our model to earlier and later years, we were able to generate maps of areas that contained suitable habitat for elephants and to see how those areas had changed over the centuries.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522862/original/file-20230425-24-dz2yar.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A line of elephants drinking at a reservoir." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522862/original/file-20230425-24-dz2yar.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522862/original/file-20230425-24-dz2yar.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522862/original/file-20230425-24-dz2yar.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522862/original/file-20230425-24-dz2yar.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=282&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522862/original/file-20230425-24-dz2yar.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522862/original/file-20230425-24-dz2yar.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522862/original/file-20230425-24-dz2yar.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some human-made features, like this reservoir in Sri Lanka, can also be resources for wildlife.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shermin de Silva</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dramatic declines</h2>
<p>Land-use patterns <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1466-8238.2010.00540.x">changed significantly on every continent</a> starting with the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s and extending through the colonial era into the mid-20th century. Asia was no exception. </p>
<p>For most areas, we found that suitable elephant habitat took a steep dive around this time. We estimated that from 1700 through 2015 the total amount of suitable habitat decreased by 64%. More than 1.2 million square miles (3 million square kilometers) of land were converted for plantations, industry and urban development. With respect to potential elephant habitat, most of the change occurred in India and China, each of which saw conversion in more than 80% of these landscapes.</p>
<p>In other areas of Southeast Asia – such as a large hot spot of elephant habitat in central Thailand, which was never colonized – habitat loss happened more recently, in the mid-20th century. This timing corresponds to logging concurrent with the so-called <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/green-revolution">Green Revolution</a>, which introduced industrial agriculture to many parts of the world. </p>
<h2>Could the past be the key to the future?</h2>
<p>Looking back at land-use change over centuries makes it clear just how drastically human actions have reduced habitat for Asian elephants. The losses that we measured greatly exceed estimates of “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.08.049">catastrophic” human impacts on so-called wilderness</a> or forests within recent decades.</p>
<p>Our analysis shows that if you were an elephant in the 1700s, you might have been able to range across 40% of the available habitat in Asia with no problem, because it was one large, contiguous area that contained many ecosystems where you could live. This enabled gene flow among many elephant populations. But by 2015, human activities had so drastically fragmented the total suitable area for elephants that the largest patch of good habitat represented less than 7% of it.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka and peninsular Malaysia have a disproportionately high share of Asia’s wild elephant population, relative to available elephant habitat area. Thailand and Myanmar have smaller populations relative to area. Interestingly, the latter are countries known for their large captive or semi-captive elephant populations.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1649084703272517636"}"></div></p>
<p>Less than half of the areas that contain wild elephants today have adequate habitat for them. Elephants’ resulting use of increasingly human-dominated landscapes leads to <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/25165/human-elephant-conflict-and-coexistence-in-asia">confrontations that are harmful</a> for both elephants and people. </p>
<p>However, this long view of history reminds us that protected areas alone are not the answer, since they simply <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-22989-1">cannot be large enough</a> to support elephant populations. Indeed, human societies have <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023483118">shaped these very landscapes for millennia</a>. </p>
<p>Today there is a pressing challenge to balance human subsistence and livelihood requirements with the needs of wildlife. Restoring <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/gch2.202200051">traditional forms of land management</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-021-00815-2">local stewardship</a> of these landscapes can be an essential part of protecting and recovering ecosystems that serve both people and wildlife in the future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shermin de Silva receives funding from the US Fish & Wildlife Asian Elephant Conservation Funds. She is president and founder of Trunks & Leaves Inc. a non-profit organization that works to facilitate evidence-based conservation of Asian elephants and their habitats. de Silva also directs the Udawalawe Elephant Research Project in Sri Lanka, which she initiated in 2005, and is a member of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of the IUCN Species Survival Commission. </span></em></p>A new study looks back into history to assess human impacts on the range of Asian elephants and finds sharp decline starting several centuries ago.Shermin de Silva, Assistant Professor of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution, University of California, San DiegoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1954332023-01-09T04:35:33Z2023-01-09T04:35:33ZMad world: global flashpoints to watch in 2023 in the era of ‘polycrisis’<p>When 2022 began, there was <a href="https://conflicts2022.crisisgroup.org/">trepidation</a> about what might happen in at least ten regions. Topping most lists were concerns about tensions in Ukraine, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.</p>
<p>What actually transpired in 2022 were some of the most shocking humanitarian scenes in modern history – with a backdrop of the continuing pandemic and extreme weather events exacerbated by climate change.</p>
<p>This has prompted experts to speak of an era of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/polycrisis-may-be-a-buzzword-but-it-could-help-us-tackle-the-worlds-woes-195280">polycrisis</a>”, where countries are dealing with cascading and interconnected crises. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/polycrisis-may-be-a-buzzword-but-it-could-help-us-tackle-the-worlds-woes-195280">'Polycrisis' may be a buzzword, but it could help us tackle the world's woes</a>
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<p>The World Bank <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2022/03/07/remarks-by-world-bank-group-president-david-malpass-at-fragility-forum-2022-development-and-peace-in-uncertain-times#:%7E:text=We%20estimate%20that%2023%20countries,has%20triggered%20massive%20refugee%20flows.">estimates</a> 23 countries – with a combined population of 850 million people – currently face high or medium intensity conflict. The number of conflict-affected countries has doubled over the past decade. </p>
<p>This has triggered massive refugee flows. As of May 2022, a global <a href="https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2022/Goal-16/">record</a> of 100 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide.</p>
<p>With the backdrop of last year’s bitter legacy, what crises are most concerning as we head into 2023? </p>
<p>There are a range of new flashpoints and ongoing deadly conflicts the world has largely ignored due to the focus on Ukraine.</p>
<h2>2022’s bitter legacy</h2>
<p>Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been seared into our memories of 2022. It has been one of the fastest and largest <a href="https://reporting.unhcr.org/ukraine-situation">displacement crises</a> in decades.</p>
<p>Also making headlines last year was continuing violence in <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/war-afghanistan">Afghanistan</a>, where six million people were on the brink of famine by August 2022 according to the UN refugee agency, and the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1127361">mayhem</a> in Myanmar following the military’s February 2021 coup.</p>
<p>The opening days of 2023 look bleak. Those in Ukraine and Afghanistan are now facing winter without access to food, water, health care and other essential supplies.</p>
<p>The situation in Myanmar is only worsening, especially for ethnic minority regions and in Rohingya refugee camps. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/war-in-ukraine-is-pushing-global-acute-hunger-to-the-highest-level-in-this-century-181414">War in Ukraine is pushing global acute hunger to the highest level in this century</a>
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<h2>New flashpoint: Iran</h2>
<p>In Iran, 22-year-old Mahsa (Jina) Amini was arrested at a metro station by the morality police who enforce the dress code, and she died after being held in their custody on September 16 last year.</p>
<p>Her death set off a sustained uprising in more than 150 cities and 140 universities in all 31 provinces of Iran, <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/11/1131022">according</a> to UN human rights chief Volker Türk.</p>
<p>More than 15,000 people, including children, have been arrested in connection with the protests and are threatened with execution. At least <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-64196635">26 of them currently face the death penalty</a>, and at least four have <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/01/07/1147669424/iran-executes-two-men-protests">reportedly</a> already been executed. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps say the average age of arrested protesters is <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2022/10/iran-says-average-age-arrested-protesters-15">as young as 15</a>.</p>
<p>The prospects of a peaceful resolution of this crisis in 2023 are low and require strong global intervention.</p>
<p>Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong has made firm <a href="https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/media-release/joint-statement-foreign-ministers-australia-canada-and-new-zealand-execution-protesters-iran">statements</a> against the death penalty and this “dark chapter” in Iran’s history with her Canadian and New Zealand counterparts, and she should continue this rhetoric.</p>
<h2>Tensions in the Asia-Pacific</h2>
<p>In our region, Sri Lanka faced economic collapse and a mostly peaceful uprising in mid-2022, and remains in a precarious position.</p>
<p>North Korea remains an aggressive actor. Military tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen sharply this year as Pyongyang has carried out an unprecedented blitz of weapons tests, including the launch of one of its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles in November.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1589460539369029633"}"></div></p>
<p>From Australia’s perspective, our primary national security risk remains developments in the South China Sea and Taiwan.</p>
<p>More aggressive <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/25/xi-jinping-party-purge-china-taiwan-invasion-risk">language</a> on Taiwan emerged from the Chinese Communist Party Congress, and statements by President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/19/joe-biden-repeats-claim-that-us-forces-would-defend-taiwan-if-china-attacked">indicated</a> the United States would not stand by if China invaded Taiwan.</p>
<p>Current Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/confrontation-over-taiwan">pledged</a> to double Japan’s defence spending in response to these tensions.</p>
<p>There’s a high risk of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-says-china-has-been-simulating-attacks-us-navy-ships-2022-09-01/">miscalculation</a> on this issue from all sides, and there’s the growing threat of grey zone tactics – coercive measures which don’t qualify as conventional military battle. </p>
<h2>We must avoid tunnel vision</h2>
<p>What we also witnessed in 2022 was that the world’s gaze and assistance was so firmly focused on events in Ukraine that many other long-running conflicts producing extreme human suffering were ignored or receded into the background. </p>
<p>For example, it’s hard to overstate the severity of the crises in East Africa of food, shelter and health systems – though comparably this has received little media attention.</p>
<p>What’s more, the UN Human Rights Office estimates <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/06/un-human-rights-office-estimates-more-306000-civilians-were-killed-over-10">more than 306,000 civilians were killed over ten years</a> in the Syrian conflict, and any peaceful resolution is still “<a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/10/1129857">elusive</a>” according to UN Special Envoy Geir Pedersen.</p>
<p>There are deep structural conflicts in Haiti, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo threatening people, species and the environment. The global community must pay attention.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/permacrisis-what-it-means-and-why-its-word-of-the-year-for-2022-194306">Permacrisis: what it means and why it's word of the year for 2022</a>
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<h2>Dealing with ‘polycrisis’</h2>
<p>Nations, civil society movements and the UN must be nimble enough to deal with the state of “polycrisis” or “permacrisis” the globe is enduring – where armed conflicts combine with and exacerbate issues such as inflation, cyber threats, geo-politics and the energy crisis.</p>
<p>World leaders are dealing with a host of pressing issues: </p>
<ul>
<li><p>the climate emergency</p></li>
<li><p>the socio-economic repercussions of the COVID pandemic, by no means over</p></li>
<li><p>100 million displaced people</p></li>
<li><p>the increasing global population, now over eight billion</p></li>
<li><p>the rising cost of living.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>All this means 2023 is likely to be another turbulent year.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195433/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Harris Rimmer receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Queensland Public Service Commission and ONI. </span></em></p>There are a range of new flashpoints and ongoing deadly conflicts the world has largely ignored due to the focus on Ukraine.Susan Harris Rimmer, Professor and Director of the Policy Innovation Hub, Griffith Business School, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1940442022-11-18T03:23:03Z2022-11-18T03:23:03ZThe Jungle and the Sea reminds us war is profoundly local, with the intimate negotiation of human relationships<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496078/original/file-20221118-26-q8i2pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C7%2C4721%2C3145&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sriram Jeyaraman/Belvoir</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Jungle and the Sea, directed by Eamon Flack and S. Shakthidharan, Belvoir.</em></p>
<p>After the roaring success of their debut collaboration, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/aug/10/counting-and-cracking-review-royal-lyceum-edinburgh">Counting and Cracking</a>, S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack have produced another play that will captivate audiences.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka was in a civil war from 1983 to 2009, about a Tamil national liberation struggle for independence in the north and east. This followed decades of discrimination by the Sri Lankan state against Tamils. </p>
<p>The Jungle and the Sea revolves around the story of one Tamil family who are separated after church bombings in 1995, following them through to 2009.</p>
<p>The Jungle and the Sea is an expression of the many stories of Tamils that remain untold. This play will hold immense value for the Tamil community in Australia, not least because there is very little in the way of Australian public acknowledgement about their war histories.</p>
<p>As The Jungle and the Sea reminds us, war is never only about nationalist politics. It is also profoundly local, intimate and involves negotiation of human relationships that can challenge political boundaries. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496075/original/file-20221118-24-q8i2pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496075/original/file-20221118-24-q8i2pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496075/original/file-20221118-24-q8i2pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496075/original/file-20221118-24-q8i2pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496075/original/file-20221118-24-q8i2pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496075/original/file-20221118-24-q8i2pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496075/original/file-20221118-24-q8i2pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496075/original/file-20221118-24-q8i2pt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">There is a constant sense of movement.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sriram Jeyaraman/Belvoir</span></span>
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<p>We are taken along the multiple trajectories of the members of one Tamil family. </p>
<p>A revolving floor symbolises the constant movement of the Tamil community, which endured 26 years of intense armed conflict. Accompanied by musicians Indu Balachandran and Arjunan Puveendran, the music takes the audience through constantly revolving worlds of loss and survival. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sri-lankas-crisis-is-not-just-about-the-economy-but-a-long-history-of-discrimination-against-minority-groups-186747">Sri Lanka's crisis is not just about the economy, but a long history of discrimination against minority groups</a>
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<h2>Into the chaos of war</h2>
<p>On July 9 1995, the Sri Lankan government <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navaly_church_bombing">bombed</a> St Peter’s Church in Navaly, following the collapse of peace talks between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, and the resumption of fighting.</p>
<p>Just days before, the government had dropped leaflets across the Jaffna peninsula instructing civilians to seek shelter in churches and temples ahead of the military’s new mission to capture Jaffna.</p>
<p>The opening scenes of The Jungle and the Sea reimagine this horrific moment. </p>
<p>Children go from playing a game of cricket to suddenly reorganising their lives to ensure their survival and the survival of those around them. The scenes foreshadow the rest of the play, which traces entanglements of violence, loss, joy and compassion.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496076/original/file-20221118-14-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496076/original/file-20221118-14-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496076/original/file-20221118-14-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496076/original/file-20221118-14-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496076/original/file-20221118-14-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496076/original/file-20221118-14-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496076/original/file-20221118-14-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496076/original/file-20221118-14-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The mother Gowie puts on a blindfold until she can be reunited with her children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sriram Jeyaraman/Belvoir</span></span>
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<p>The Jungle and the Sea is about the vulnerabilities and agency of people navigating the chaos of war. </p>
<p>After the bombing, father Siva (Prakash Belawadi) and daughter Lakshmi (Emma Harvie) seek refuge in Sydney. The son Ahilan (Biman Wimalaratne) is recruited into the Tamil Tigers. The mother Gowrie (Anandavalli) and two more daughters – Abi (Kalieaswari Srinivasan) and Madhu (Nadie Kammallaweera) – remain in the war zones foregoing the chance to escape. </p>
<p>In agony after the family’s separation, the mother decides to blindfold herself and refuses to leave her homeland until she can be reunited with all her children. </p>
<p>Shakthidharan gives us the diverse experiences of war: those of liberation fighters, civilians and refugees. We are given multifaceted identities, as the actors take us into their kaleidoscopic worlds. </p>
<p>In one of several comedic scenes, Lakshmi, the only child who flees Sri Lanka, celebrates her university graduation by taking her father to a candle-lit dinner by the Sydney Harbour Bridge. There, she comes out to him as a lesbian. </p>
<p>The father’s response to her being Tamil, atheist and lesbian highlights intergenerational tensions in a humorous and humbling manner. </p>
<p>Survivors of war are more than the traumas of war they carry with them.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496077/original/file-20221118-12-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496077/original/file-20221118-12-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496077/original/file-20221118-12-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496077/original/file-20221118-12-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496077/original/file-20221118-12-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496077/original/file-20221118-12-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496077/original/file-20221118-12-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/496077/original/file-20221118-12-4hli4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The play also has moments of humour and levity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sriram Jeyaraman/Belvoir</span></span>
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<h2>Truth-telling in the aftermath of war</h2>
<p>In the final act, the cast takes up the contested terrain of remembering the atrocities against Tamils in the aftermath of the war. </p>
<p>Gowrie finally removes her blindfold when she is reunited with her family – those who survived, and those who died. Gowrie’s determination to continue searching for her children renders the war an internal fight to keep alive hope and resistance. </p>
<p>Played by Anandavalli, a renowned <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/dance/fifty-years-on-and-anandavalli-is-still-dancing-20200914-p55vh4.html">bharatanatyam dancer</a>, Gowrie’s dance is a fitting close to the story and an ode to the genre of theatre as a creative medium through which stories about war can be used to reflect, mourn, and educate.</p>
<p>Gowrie captures the particular plight of <a href="https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/continuing-protest-by-elederly-mothers-of-the-disappeared/">Tamil mothers</a>. Some 13 years after the war ended, those mothers whose children were forcibly disappeared in the final days of the war continue to make visible through protesting that there can be no peace or reconciliation without justice. </p>
<p>History in the aftermath of the war is contested, especially for Tamils whose losses are beyond measure. The Jungle and the Sea is one story among many about a history that breathes in the present, serving as a reminder that there are hundreds of Tamil refugees in Australia without permanent protection, each of them carrying stories like this one. </p>
<p><em>The Jungle and the Sea is at Belvoir, Sydney, until December 18.</em></p>
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<p>
<em>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-tamil-asylum-seekers-need-protection-and-why-does-the-australian-government-say-they-dont-162609">Why do Tamil asylum seekers need protection — and why does the Australian government say they don't?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194044/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Niro Kandasamy is affiliated with the Tamil Refugee Council. </span></em></p>After the roaring success of Counting and Cracking, S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack have produced another play that will captivate audiences.Niro Kandasamy, Lecturer in History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1927222022-10-18T05:51:48Z2022-10-18T05:51:48ZShehan Karunatilaka wins Booker prize for Sri Lankan political satire, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490241/original/file-20221017-12084-svn2ht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C0%2C6000%2C3934&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alberto Pezzali/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sri Lankan novelist Shehan Karunatilaka has won the 2022 Booker Prize for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.</p>
<p>The win couldn’t come at a better time for Sri Lanka, a country once more engaged in <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/10/06/sri-lanka-economic-crisis-protests-imf/">political and economic instability</a>, as it suffers through one of the world’s worst economic crises, with soaring inflation, food and fuel shortages, and low supplies of foreign reserves. And of course, the government was overthrown in July, after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled following mass protests.</p>
<p>Karunatilaka said in his acceptance speech: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>My hope for Seven Moons is this; that in the not-too-distant future, 10 years, as long as it takes, Sri Lanka […] has understood that these ideas of corruption and race-baiting and cronyism have not worked and will never work.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Political black comedy</h2>
<p>Karunatilaka’s novel is extraordinary – and hard to pin down. It is at once a black comedy about the afterlife, a murder mystery whodunit, and a political satire set against the violent backdrop of the late-1980s Sri Lankan civil war. It is also a story of love and redemption. </p>
<p>Malinda “Maali” Kabalana, a closeted war photographer, wakes up dead in what seems to be a celestial waiting room. The setting will be familiar to many who’ve spent time in Colombo (as I have – it’s where my husband’s family is from). We open in a busy, bureaucratic office, filled with confusion, noise, a propensity against queuing – and a healthy dose of “gallows” humour. In other words, Maali is in some sort of purgatory.</p>
<p>Maali soon discovers he has seven days – seven moons – to solve his own murder. This isn’t easy – he is interrupted by sardonic ghosts (often with grudges, questionable motives, and a tendency towards extreme chattiness), the violent reality of war-torn Colombo, and piecing together his memories of who he was. </p>
<p>He also has seven moons to lead his official girlfriend and his secret boyfriend to a cache of photographs, taken over time, which document the horror of the war – and incriminate local and foreign governments. </p>
<p>Karunatilaka’s subject matter and plot highlight, question and explore Sri Lanka’s legacy – and its continued, difficult relationship with its civil war, which spanned 1983 to 2009, though the reverberations continue. And his novel’s provocative, intimate, second-person style implicates us – the readers. </p>
<p>Karunatilaka has mastered his craft as a novelist. He never once wavers from a second-person perspective that might be unwieldy (perhaps even gimmicky) in a lesser writer’s hands. The novel tells us, “Don’t try and look for the good guys, ‘cause there ain’t none”.</p>
<p>It realises a combined responsibility for the tragedy of that 25-year civil war, in which the country’s colonial history is also implicated. British colonialists brought Tamil workers from South India to Sri Lanka, to work as indentured labourers on their coffee, tea and rubber plantations. Their descendants’ fight for an independent Tamil state was a strong component of the civil war.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/swimming-in-the-presidents-pool-palaces-and-power-in-times-of-crisis-186833">Swimming in the president’s pool – palaces and power in times of crisis</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Diffusing violence with humour</h2>
<p>As a novelist and lover of second-person narration and a long-time follower of Karuntailaka’s accomplished work, I couldn’t be more delighted by this Booker win. </p>
<p>I first came across Karunatilaka through his debut novel, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/chinaman-9780099555681">Chinaman</a>, which was handed to me by my sister-in-law several years ago on a family visit to Colombo. That book taught me about cricket, but it also taught me the sardonic brilliance of Sri Lankan humour. </p>
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<p>Karunatilaka once again uses humour to great effect in The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida – to diffuse confronting moments of violence, to engage his reader, and for pure enjoyment. This novel follows a murder victim through a bloody civil war – and it’s laugh-out-loud funny. </p>
<p>It’s also a tighter, more focused book than Chinaman: here is an author in control of his craft and what he wants to say with it. The Booker judges, too, praised the “scope and the skill, the daring, the audacity and hilarity” of the book. </p>
<p>Karunatilaka’s winning novel took time to write. Ten years have passed since Chinaman. His skilful use of craft to tell this complicated story is testament to the idea that good books take the time they need: something that all authors know but publishers are not always willing to accept. However, Karunatilaka has been busy in that ten years, not just writing literary fiction, but writing for children – and having a family. The 47-year-old is now married with two kids.</p>
<p>Karunatilaka is only the second Sri Lankan novelist to have won the Booker Prize. (The first was Michael Ondaatje in 1992 for The English Patient.) But last year, his countryman Anuk Arudpragasam was also <a href="https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-library/authors/anuk-arudpragasam">shortlisted</a>, for <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Anuk-Arudpragasam-Passage-North-9781783786961">A Passage North</a>, another accomplished novel set in the aftermath of the civil war. </p>
<p>I’m excited by what this means for Sri Lankan authors and the Sri Lankan publishing scene. Here is a country with stories to tell and enormous skill to tell them with: let’s hope this leads to more Sri Lankan novels achieving wide readership, success and deserved acclaim.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192722/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy Christopher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Shehan Karunatilaka’s Booker winning novel is a black comedy about the afterlife, a murder mystery, and a political satire set against the violent backdrop of the late-1980s Sri Lankan civil war.Lucy Christopher, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of TasmaniaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1877242022-09-06T20:06:33Z2022-09-06T20:06:33ZSophie Cunningham’s pandemic novel admits literature can’t save us – but treasures it for trying<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/480283/original/file-20220822-64444-bsomj.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>“How good are novels!” So thinks protagonist Alice Fox in <a href="https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/book/this-devastating-fever-by-sophie-cunningham/9781761150937">This Devastating Fever</a>, the third novel from former publisher Sophie Cunningham. Alice is preparing to chair a panel at a writers’ festival, just as <a href="https://theconversation.com/4-ways-we-can-recover-from-the-loneliness-of-the-covid-pandemic-187856">Covid-19</a> hits the headlines in March 2020. </p>
<p>The exclamation is slightly hysterical: do books and stories really matter when a deadly disease is sweeping the globe? Months later, in the grim, dark days of 2021, Alice’s worries are buttressed by a prize-winning author, who muses “maybe novel writing won’t even exist after the pandemic”.</p>
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<p><em>Review: This Devastating Fever – Sophie Cunningham (Ultimo)</em></p>
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<p>This Devastating Fever, Cunningham’s first novel since <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6112061-bird">Bird</a> (2008), is ostensibly about Leonard Woolf – the author, publisher and would-be politician most famous for being Virginia’s husband – and Alice, the writer who is attempting to craft a novel about him. Most importantly, though, it is a novel about novels, about their weight and worth in a complicated world.</p>
<h2>Big ideas, but not a polemic</h2>
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<p>In recent years, the novel form has been forced to fight for legitimacy on multiple fronts. Against attention spans hobbled by (take your pick) social media, eco-anxiety or long Covid. Against the systematic defunding of the arts and humanities departments. Against suspicion that writing and reading fiction are particularly frivolous pursuits at a time of (take your pick) ecological collapse, economic downturn, war, pandemic and the decline of democracy. To all these concerns, This Devastating Fever is a powerful but finely drawn riposte.</p>
<p>I spend a significant portion of my time reading, teaching and thinking about novels. But I don’t think I’ve read a creative work quite this aware of so many contemporary conversations about what the form can and should be. </p>
<p>This Devastating Fever engages with the tricky relationship between fiction and non-fiction and the question of how literature engages with climate change. It also asks what it means to represent the past ethically, and what historical fiction might offer the future.</p>
<p>But for all its big ideas, This Devastating Fever is not a polemic or a tract: it is wry and clever and earnest – and yes, devastating when it needs to be. If the novel slips occasionally into a more essayistic mode, Cunningham is such an accomplished stylist that it is easy to forgive these lapses. </p>
<p>Cunningham proves that novels of ideas don’t need to be dour. This Devastating Fever is often very funny, as when Alice, irritated by her agent Sarah’s demand for more scintillating details of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/painting-in-circles-and-loving-in-triangles-the-bloomsbury-groups-queer-ways-of-seeing-75438">Bloomsbury group’s infamous couplings</a>, composes a dot point “SEX LIST or Who Fucked Who”, to which Sarah responds, via email, “it would be more grammatically correct to ask who fucked whom”.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/painting-in-circles-and-loving-in-triangles-the-bloomsbury-groups-queer-ways-of-seeing-75438">Painting in circles and loving in triangles: the Bloomsbury Group's queer ways of seeing</a>
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<h2>An era of disasters</h2>
<p>The novel is anchored by two interwoven narratives, neither told chronologically. It follows Leonard from 1904, the year he went as a very young man to then-Ceylon as a colonial administrator, to 1969 and his death. And it follows Alice, from when she begins the novel in 2004 (when Sri Lanka was devastated by <a href="https://theconversation.com/aid-responses-to-typhoon-haiyan-lessons-from-the-indian-ocean-tsunami-20100">the Indian Ocean tsunami</a>) to her attempt to finish it in 2021, at the height of the pandemic. </p>
<p>Despite their many differences, Leonard and Alice are united in their sense that they are living, as Cunningham wrote in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/30/murray-darling-mismanagement-floods-water-theft-and-burke-and-willss-camels">2020 essay</a>, in an “era of disasters”, and a belief – sometimes faint but never fully surrendered – that there is meaning to be made by writing about, and in spite of, catastrophe.</p>
<p>Since 2016, when <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo22265507.html">Amitav Ghosh declared</a> the modern novel incapable of properly representing climate change, a wave of fiction has attempted to prove him wrong. This Devastating Fever joins a small but significant body of renovated historical fictions that range non-chronologically across time to show humans’ far-reaching impact on the earth. </p>
<p>Richard Powers won commercial and critical success with the form in <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-overstory-9781784708245">The Overstory</a> (2018). Bestselling writers Anthony Doerr (in <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cloud-Cuckoo-Land/Anthony-Doerr/9781982168438">Cloud Cuckoo Land</a>, 2021) and Hanya Yanagihara (<a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781529077483/">To Paradise</a>, 2022) have attempted it. What makes Cunningham’s iteration different is that through Alice, who never stops feeling anxious about the legitimacy of her project and her capacity as a novelist, Cunningham lets us behind the curtain to see how the fiction gets made.</p>
<h2>Autofiction and blurred lines</h2>
<p>It is tempting to characterise the part of the novel focused on Alice – who is similar, but pointedly not identical to Cunningham – as <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/pw-select/article/85269-autofiction-what-it-is-and-what-it-isn-t.html">autofiction</a>, a term coined in the 1970s to describe certain French works that combined autobiographical and fictional elements. Today, autofiction sells well, while regularly attracting <a href="https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2018/08/more-life-on-contemporary-autofiction-and-the-scourge-of-relatability/">dissent</a>. </p>
<p>Cunningham playfully evokes and denies the label. Readers are told that during her novel’s long gestation, Alice debates whether “Alice, who was, in one iteration of the manuscript, called ‘The Author’ should and could exist”. Cunningham reminds us that writers have always blurred the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction: Leonard Woolf’s <a href="https://www.lyndallgordon.net/essays/wisevirgins.html">The Wise Virgins</a> (1914), a memoir masquerading as a novel, caused some distress to the friends and family he fictionalised.</p>
<p>Through Alice, Cunningham comments on the precariousness that comes of trying to live a creative life within our fragile arts ecosystem. But writing and reading remain as vital to Alice in the 2000s as they were to Leonard more than a century earlier. </p>
<p>This Devastating Fever is a love letter to the global writing fraternity – quotations from writers pepper the text – and to the archive; to the slow, good work of research, which becomes a way for Alice to (literally) speak with the dead. She is regularly visited by “Imaginary Leonard” and “Ghost Virginia”, who comment on the manuscript in progress.</p>
<p>The phenomenon of contemporary writers reanimating modernism’s major figures, methods and concerns (though few as playfully as Cunningham’s apparitions) is widespread enough for critics, including David James and Urmila Seshagiri, to call it “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24769423">metamodernism</a>”. Virginia Woolf in particular has generated experimental, hybrid fictions, like Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250239358/thehours">The Hours</a> (1998) and Olivia Laing’s environmental memoir/biography <a href="https://www.olivialaing.com/to-the-river">To The River</a> (2011).</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Hours.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Contemporary writers and artists of colour have returned to Woolf’s work, alert to the complexities of race and class it often omitted. Between 2009 and 2014, artist Kabe Wilson rearranged the 37,971 words of Woolf’s proto-feminist tract <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/A-Room-of-Ones-Own">A Room of One’s Own</a> (1929) to create “<a href="https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk/news/kabe-2019">Of One Woman or So by Olivia N’Gowfri</a>” (both the title and author name are anagrams of the originals). In this novella, a young, mixed-race Cambridge University student grapples with the invisibility of race and class in institutional and canonical literary studies. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, Michelle Cahill returned to <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mrs-Dalloway-novel-by-Woolf">Mrs Dalloway</a> (1925) in <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-daisy-and-woolf-michelle-cahill-revisits-a-modernist-classic-to-write-a-story-of-her-own-181236">Daisy and Woolf</a>, exploring the undercurrents of race and imperialism in Woolf’s novel. Like Cunningham, she considers what it means to write and read ethically in contemporary life.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-empathy-or-division-on-the-science-and-politics-of-storytelling-176679">Friday essay: empathy or division? On the science and politics of storytelling</a>
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<h2>The Woolfs</h2>
<p>Virginia Woolf is a forceful presence in This Devastating Fever. Cunningham captures her racism and her snobbery, her trauma and her genius – and her dependence on the man who sometimes clumsily, but always valiantly nursed her and nurtured her creativity. It is this man, Leonard, who is the beating heart of the novel.</p>
<p>Cunningham works hard to neither romanticise nor demonise a man who “disliked fascists, gave apples to children, and liked leopards”, but also “once almost beat a horse to death and who tenaciously argued and truth-told until all around him were beaten or bored into submission”. </p>
<p>When we meet him, young Leonard is just realising the terrible absurdity of his role as a cog in the colonial machine. The novel neither forgives nor excuses his complicity. Cunningham connects the imperial project Leonard was involved in to the 1-in-6 inland vertebrates at risk of extinction in contemporary Sri Lanka, and with Australia’s detainment of the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-06/the-nadesalingam-very-happy-life-in-biloela/101308040">Nadesalingam family</a>, which has only just come to an end.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481536/original/file-20220829-27-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481536/original/file-20220829-27-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481536/original/file-20220829-27-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481536/original/file-20220829-27-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481536/original/file-20220829-27-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481536/original/file-20220829-27-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481536/original/file-20220829-27-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481536/original/file-20220829-27-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Virginia and Leonard Woolf.</span>
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<p>One of my favourite pieces of recent non-fiction writing is Cunningham’s essay “The Age of Loneliness”, from her collection <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/city-of-trees-essays-on-life-death-and-the-need-for-a-forest">City of Trees</a> (2019). It is about Ranee, the first elephant in Australia, and her long walk from Port Melbourne to the Royal Park Zoo in 1883. Even as Cunningham builds a larger theme about cruelty and loss in the Anthropocene, her portrait of Ranee is deeply felt and essentially true. </p>
<p>This Devastating Fever is full of similarly well-drawn animals: cats and a pandemic kitten, Bogong moths gathered around a light bulb, Leonard’s series of much-loved spaniels, a Marmoset named Mitz at whose death I shed actual tears. These animals are there to show the debt we owe to the non-human creatures whose planet we are destroying. In one scene, a diminishing number of flamingos rising from a lake take us forward from 1910 to 2005, their “flight feathers cutting through time” – but there is nothing instrumental about how they are written. </p>
<p>It is not always easy to write non-human beings into the very-human form of the novel, but Cunningham fits animals into her narrative like they fit in everyday life: with the rightness and naturalness of a pet curling up at one’s feet, or bees clustering around flowers in the front garden.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481541/original/file-20220829-13-lf1vg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A kitten playing with a flower growing between pavers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481541/original/file-20220829-13-lf1vg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481541/original/file-20220829-13-lf1vg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481541/original/file-20220829-13-lf1vg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481541/original/file-20220829-13-lf1vg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481541/original/file-20220829-13-lf1vg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481541/original/file-20220829-13-lf1vg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481541/original/file-20220829-13-lf1vg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Cunningham fits animals into her narrative like they fit into everyday life, from Bogong moths to a pandemic kitten.</span>
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<p>In many ways, Alice Fox and Leonard Wo(o)lf are of the same genus: they are both writers attempting to do their best by others, in the midst of what seems like the end of the world. Leonard’s role as a carer for Virginia is well-trodden but often misunderstood territory, which Cunningham writes with originality. It’s mirrored by the relationship between Alice and Hen, a beloved friend who unwillingly enters a nursing home with <a href="https://theconversation.com/six-things-you-can-do-to-reduce-your-risk-of-dementia-93061">dementia</a>.</p>
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<p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-animals-could-speak-would-we-understand-them-178883">If animals could speak, would we understand them?</a>
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<hr>
<h2>Caring and what we owe</h2>
<p>Caring, ultimately, is what this novel is about. It asks what caring means and explores how hard it can be to act with care in complicated circumstances. This Devastating Fever contains the joy and pain and terror of caring deeply for another living thing: whether a loved one whose mind is failing, or cicadas destined to be incinerated in the Black Summer fires. It is also about the need to read carefully, write carefully, and think carefully – about the past and how we respond to it, and about what we owe the dead, the living, and the future.</p>
<p>Leonard Woolf always claimed to live by the motto “nothing matters”, because in the great warp and weft of cosmological time, human beings are only a tiny blip. “It doesn’t matter,” his imaginary avatar says to Alice, about her novel. “We don’t matter. Nothing really does.” </p>
<p>In line with this sentiment, Alice never really reconciles the anxiety she feels over her project, and Cunningham offers no grand affirmation of the power and purpose of the novel form. But a good novel – and This Devastating Fever is a very good novel – doesn’t need to justify its existence so directly. The reader already knows.</p>
<p>“We can’t save them, can we?” Alice asks Imaginary Leonard at one point. Her question is ostensibly about Virginia and Hen, but could just as feasibly be about animals, reading and writing, the earth. Leonard doesn’t reply, but Cunningham’s novel answers for him: maybe not, but there is infinite grace in the trying.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187724/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meg Brayshaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sophie Cunningham’s novel about Leonard Woolf and the contemporary writer attempting to tell his story is wry and earnest – and yes, devastating when it needs to be.Meg Brayshaw, John Rowe Lecturer in Australian Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1882782022-08-17T18:33:43Z2022-08-17T18:33:43ZWar, peace and security: The pandemic’s impact on women and girls in Nepal and Sri Lanka<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478791/original/file-20220811-14487-vr0mgb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4313%2C2877&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nepalese girls rest for observation after receiving the Moderna vaccine for COVID-19 in Kathmandu, Nepal.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Attention to the pandemic’s impacts on women <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tracybrower/2021/04/18/women-and-the-pandemic-serious-damage-to-work-health-and-home-demands-response">has largely focused on the Global North</a>, ignoring countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka, which continue to deal with prolonged effects of war. While the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2008/4/8/timeline-of-nepals-civil-war-2">Nepalese Civil War</a> concluded in 2006 and the <a href="https://hir.harvard.edu/sri-lankan-civil-war/">Sri Lankan Civil War concluded in 2009</a>, internal conflicts continue.</p>
<p>As scholars of gender and war, our work focuses on the <a href="https://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/wps/">United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325</a> on women, peace and security. And our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksac036">recently published paper</a> examines COVID-19’s impacts on women and girls in Nepal and Sri Lanka, looking at policy responses and their repercussions on the women, peace and security agenda.</p>
<p>COVID-19 has <a href="https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/report/policy-brief-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-women/policy-brief-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-women-en-1.pdf">disproportionately and negatively impacted women</a> in part because <a href="https://www.oecd.org/dev/development-gender/Unpaid_care_work.pdf">most are the primary family caregivers</a> and the pandemic has <a href="https://data.unwomen.org/publications/whose-time-care-unpaid-care-and-domestic-work-during-covid-19">increased women’s caring duties</a>. </p>
<p>This pattern is even more pronounced in war-affected countries where <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/12/17/conflict-zones-in-time-of-coronavirus-war-and-war-by-other-means-pub-83462">the compounding factors of war and the pandemic</a> <a href="https://beijing20.unwomen.org/en/in-focus/armed-conflict">leave women generally</a> <a href="https://www.usip.org/blog/2020/06/covid-19-and-conflict-women-peace-and-security">more vulnerable</a>. These nations exist at the margins of the international system and suffer from what the World Bank terms “<a href="https://ida.worldbank.org/en/topics/theme/conflict-and-fragility">fragility, conflict and violence</a>.”</p>
<h2>Women, labour and gender-based violence</h2>
<p>Gendered labour precarity is not new to <a href="https://blogs.worldbank.org/jobs/job-quality-nepal-improving-women-lag-behind">Nepal</a> or <a href="https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/---ilo-colombo/documents/publication/wcms_551675.pdf">Sri Lanka</a> and <a href="https://development.asia/insight/reducing-womens-employment-vulnerability-sri-lanka-beyond-pandemic">the pandemic has only eroded women’s already poor economic prospects</a>.</p>
<p>Prior to COVID-19, <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2021/2/feature-women-overcoming-covid-19-economic-toll-in-sri-lanka">Tharshani (pseudonym), a Sri Lankan mother of three and head of her household</a>, was able to make ends meet. But when the pandemic hit, lockdowns prevented Tharshani from selling the chickens she raises for market. She was forced to take loans from her neighbours and her family had to skip meals. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.statistics.gov.lk/LabourForce/StaticalInformation/AnnualReports/2019">Some 1.7 million women in Sri Lanka work in the informal sector</a>, where no state employment protections exist and not working means no wages. COVID-19 is exacerbating women’s struggles with poverty and forcing them to take on debilitating debts. </p>
<p>Although Sri Lankan men also face increased labour precarity, due to gender discrimination and sexism in the job market, women are forced into the informal sector — the <a href="https://www.ips.lk/talkingeconomics/2021/09/07/sri-lankas-gender-based-employment-segregation-does-it-increase-womens-vulnerability-amidst-covid-19">jobs hardest hit by the pandemic</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two women sit in chairs, wearing face masks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478798/original/file-20220811-11215-g7jrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478798/original/file-20220811-11215-g7jrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478798/original/file-20220811-11215-g7jrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478798/original/file-20220811-11215-g7jrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478798/original/file-20220811-11215-g7jrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478798/original/file-20220811-11215-g7jrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478798/original/file-20220811-11215-g7jrpu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=490&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sri Lankan women chat after getting inoculated against the coronavirus in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in August 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The pandemic has also led to women and girls facing <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/hq-complex-page/covid-19-rebuilding-for-resilience/gender-based-violence">increased gender-based violence</a>.</p>
<p>In Nepal, between March 2020 and June 2021, there was <a href="https://asiafoundation.org/2021/07/21/covid-19-violence-dashboard-shows-nepals-shadow-pandemic">an increase in cases of gender-based violence</a>. Over 1,750 incidents were reported in the media, of which rape and sexual assault represented 82 per cent. Pandemic lockdowns also led to new vulnerabilities for women who sought out quarantine shelters — in Lamkichuha, Nepal, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-nepal-rape-idUSKBN23M2CB">a woman was allegedly gang-raped at a quarantine facility</a>. </p>
<p>Gender-based violence is more prevalent <a href="https://english.onlinekhabar.com/aint-we-women-multiple-marginalisations-of-dalit-women-in-nepal.html">among women and girls of low caste in Nepal</a> and the pandemic has made it worse. The Samata Foundation reported 90 cases of gender-based violence faced by women and girls of low caste within the first six months of the pandemic.</p>
<h2>What’s next?</h2>
<p>While COVID-19 recovery efforts are generally focused on <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/who-manifesto-for-a-healthy-recovery-from-covid-19">preparing for future pandemics</a> and <a href="https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/communication-resources/un-research-roadmap-covid-19-recovery">economic recovery</a>, the women, peace and security agenda can also address the needs of some of those most marginalized when it comes to COVID-19 recovery. </p>
<p>The women, peace and security agenda <a href="https://www.usip.org/blog/2020/06/covid-19-and-conflict-women-peace-and-security">promotes women’s participation in peace and security matters with a focus on helping women facing violent conflict</a>. By incorporating women’s perspectives, issues and concerns in the context of COVID-19 recovery, policies and activities can help address issues that disproportionately impact most women in war-affected countries.</p>
<p>These issues are: <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2020/09/gender-equality-in-the-wake-of-covid-19">precarious gendered labor market, a surge in care work, the rising feminization of poverty</a> and <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/in-focus-gender-equality-in-covid-19-response/violence-against-women-during-covid-19">increased gender-based violence</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A girl in a face mask stares out a window" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478800/original/file-20220811-17809-y4twb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478800/original/file-20220811-17809-y4twb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478800/original/file-20220811-17809-y4twb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478800/original/file-20220811-17809-y4twb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478800/original/file-20220811-17809-y4twb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478800/original/file-20220811-17809-y4twb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478800/original/file-20220811-17809-y4twb4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The women, peace and security agenda can help address the needs of some of those most marginalized.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Policies could include efforts to create living-wage jobs for women that come with state benefits, emergency funding for women heads of household (so they can avoid taking out predatory loans) and increasing the number of resources (like shelters and legal services) for women experiencing domestic gender-based violence.</p>
<p>The impacts of COVID-19 must be incorporated into women, peace and security planning in order to achieve the agenda’s aims of improving the lives of women and girls in postwar countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188278/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luna KC is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Research Network-Women Peace Security, McGill University. This project is funded by the Government of Canada Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security (MINDS) program.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Crystal Whetstone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The impacts of COVID-19 must be incorporated into women, peace and security planning in order to improve the lives of women and girls in postwar countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka.Luna K.C., Postdoctoral Researcher, Research Network on Women, Peace and Security, McGill UniversityCrystal Whetstone, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Sam Houston State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1834402022-07-27T04:56:21Z2022-07-27T04:56:21Z3 reasons why women leaders actually matter for women<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475772/original/file-20220725-55319-7pex47.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=83%2C2%2C1856%2C1155&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indonesia's first and only female president Megawati Sukarnoputri at a campaign rally in 1999.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jonathan Perugia/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are currently just 30 female presidents and prime ministers worldwide. Moldova and Barbados are the only two countries where women occupy both the positions of president and prime minister, while Bangladesh is the only nation where a woman has led for more years than a man over the last half century.</p>
<p>Clearly, women leaders matter as a question of gender equity, but as my <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-woman-president-9780192848918?facet_narrowbypubdate_facet=Next%203%20months&lang=en&cc=al">research</a> shows, they may also matter to women in other ways.</p>
<p>I looked at four different female presidents in three different political systems: the Philippines’ first female president, Corazon Aquino (1986–1992) and its second female leader, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (2001–2010); Indonesia’s first and only female president, Megawati Sukarnoputri (2001–2004); and Sri Lanka’s Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (CBK).</p>
<p>CBK, who was Sri Lanka’s fifth president from 1994 to 2005, followed in the footsteps of her mother, Sirimavo Bandarnaike, the world’s first female elected head of government in 1960.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475773/original/file-20220725-17170-cz2435.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475773/original/file-20220725-17170-cz2435.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475773/original/file-20220725-17170-cz2435.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475773/original/file-20220725-17170-cz2435.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475773/original/file-20220725-17170-cz2435.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475773/original/file-20220725-17170-cz2435.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475773/original/file-20220725-17170-cz2435.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475773/original/file-20220725-17170-cz2435.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga meets South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela at the Commonweath Heads of Government meeting in 1997.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Max Nash/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I was interested in the difference these women leaders made on women’s lives through the law. However, I did not want to blindly place a positive spin on the impact women have as presidents. </p>
<p>My research used the <a href="https://www.genderlawindex.org/">Gender Legislative Index</a>, which relies on human evaluators and machine learning to determine how well laws advance women’s rights. The index indicated whether the laws enacted during these leaders’ tenures were “good” for women. </p>
<p>Of course, “women” are not a monolithic category with the same interests and needs. And nor are women leaders all the same. But there are three reasons why women leaders may matter more to women.</p>
<h2>1. Bringing women up the ladder</h2>
<p>Appointment powers are central to presidential leadership. President Macapagal Arroyo herself acknowledged to me that President Aquino had “paved the way” for her, in multiple ways. </p>
<p>Aquino had invited Macapagal-Arroyo to join her government as Assistant Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475770/original/file-20220725-40530-odxn32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475770/original/file-20220725-40530-odxn32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475770/original/file-20220725-40530-odxn32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475770/original/file-20220725-40530-odxn32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475770/original/file-20220725-40530-odxn32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475770/original/file-20220725-40530-odxn32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475770/original/file-20220725-40530-odxn32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475770/original/file-20220725-40530-odxn32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=527&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The then Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, right, is greeted by former president Fidel Ramos, as former president Corazon Aquino, centre, looks on in 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bullit Marquez/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cabinet members directly influence what bills are introduced into the national legislature. Yet women have traditionally held fewer ministerial posts. Those held were often positions with discernible “feminine” characteristics or “low-prestige” portfolios, such as ageing, children and the family.</p>
<p>Of the four women I studied, like female leaders in Latin America, three appointed more women to their cabinets than the male leaders who preceded them. President Megawati, whose female appointees matched her predecessor, was the exception. </p>
<p>Aquino was known for appointing empowered political women to her administration such as <a href="https://www.usc.edu.ph/lourdes-reynes-quisumbing-1921-2017#:%7E:text=In%201986%2C%20Lourdes%20joined%20the,Education%2C%20Culture%2C%20and%20Sports.">Dr Lourdes Reynes Quisumbing, the country’s first female Secretary of Education</a> and Miriam Defensor-Santiago, appointed head of the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation. Defensor-Santiago later ran for president (unsuccessfully) and was the first Southeast Asian <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/passing-senator-miriam-defensor-santiago">elected to the International Criminal Court</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475777/original/file-20220725-55319-i88qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475777/original/file-20220725-55319-i88qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475777/original/file-20220725-55319-i88qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475777/original/file-20220725-55319-i88qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475777/original/file-20220725-55319-i88qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=411&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475777/original/file-20220725-55319-i88qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475777/original/file-20220725-55319-i88qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475777/original/file-20220725-55319-i88qc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=517&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Miriam Defensor Santiago pictured in 2016.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark R. Cristino/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among Kumaratunga’s seven female appointees, one was responsible for housing, construction and development, a significant portfolio in Sri Lanka. </p>
<p>Arroyo appointed a remarkable 12 women cabinet members (compared to two under her predecessor). Such female appointees potentially (although not necessarily) open the door to better representation of women’s interests.</p>
<h2>2. Legislating for women</h2>
<p>Few women leaders in history have been acknowledged as advocates for women. Yet in certain fields, laws may be enacted at a faster pace when women’s groups mobilise more resources to exploit a window of opportunity. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476234/original/file-20220727-21-ejyizd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476234/original/file-20220727-21-ejyizd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476234/original/file-20220727-21-ejyizd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476234/original/file-20220727-21-ejyizd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476234/original/file-20220727-21-ejyizd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476234/original/file-20220727-21-ejyizd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476234/original/file-20220727-21-ejyizd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476234/original/file-20220727-21-ejyizd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Indonesia’s <a href="https://evaw-global-database.unwomen.org/en/countries/asia/indonesia/2004/law-no-23-of-2004-regarding-elimination-of-household-violence">Elimination of Violence in the Household Act</a>, signed into law by President Megawati in 2004, took seven years to enact. As a point of contrast, Indonesia’s Marriage Law (Law No. 1/1974), which regulated polygamy and forced marriage and better protected women’s assets, was debated for 75 years before passing. </p>
<p>In Sri Lanka, CBK managed the Asian tsunami at the tail-end of her tenure. In the post-tsunami recovery, she focused on widows, livelihood assistance for women and the appointment of women in disaster management committees at all levels.</p>
<p>President Macapagal-Arroyo was a senator when she authored a bill to combat violence against women. It was eventually re-tabled and expanded into the Philippines’ Anti-Violence against Women and their Children Act, which she signed into law in 2004. Yet Macapagal-Arroyo’s role in the law’s enactment is often brushed over by women’s groups.</p>
<h2>3. The significance of ‘Madam’ President</h2>
<p>The role model effect is hard to prove but everywhere I turned, informants noted the significance of having a woman lead. As the first female presidents of their nations, Aquino, Kumaratunga and Megawati shifted norms around politics, which had been seen as a place exclusively for men and inappropriate for women. </p>
<p>The utterance of “She” or “Madam” means far more than a simple shift in gender pronoun. Sri Lanka’s “mother-daughter duo” as president and prime minister was a stark contrast to Sri Lanka today. Male leader, President Rajapaksa, recently fled the country after severe economic mismanagement, only to be replaced by another man, the former prime minister (Ranil Wickramasinghe) – hardly a new beginning.</p>
<p>While comparisons have their limitations, the 11 years of leadership under CBK were a period of relative stability for a nation that has been plagued by increasingly repressive (male) leaders in recent years.</p>
<p>But the role mode effect of a female leader can only last so long. For women leaders to be part of a nation’s future and not just its history, parties need to invest in enabling women currently engaged in politics to rise and successfully contest for the top job.</p>
<h2>Not just a question of gender</h2>
<p>There is something distinct about women’s leadership. Yet, in the words of one of Sri Lanka’s leading female Muslim activists, “the choice of leaders, their capacity and their leadership, depends on many qualities which are more human than women or men”.</p>
<p>It is important to acknowledge that there were setbacks for Filipino women’s reproductive health under Presidents Aquino and Macapagal Arroyo, such as the latter promoting <a href="https://arrow.org.my/publication/srr-monitoring-report-for-the-philippines/">non-scientific natural family planning</a>. </p>
<p>In Indonesia meanwhile, a <a href="https://publicofficialsfinancialdisclosure.worldbank.org/sites/fdl/files/assets/law-library-files/Indonesia_President%20and%20VP%20Electoral%20Law_2003_en.pdf">gender equality quota </a> – whereby 30% of a party’s candidates must be women – was described as the most important law introduced during President Megawati’s tenure. However, she was its primary opponent and only signed the bill into law when she feared the loss of the “women’s vote” in 2004. (An election which she did, in fact, lose.) </p>
<p>It remains to be seen what the current crop of female leaders will mean for millions of women. </p>
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<span class="caption">Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Heikki Saukkomaa/AP</span></span>
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<p>Finland’s Sanna Marin, who leads a five-party coalition all headed by women, has called for more <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/gender-equality-finnish-pm/">gender-responsive laws</a>. Meanwhile Barbados’ Mia Mottley shifted the parameters of debate in her nation with a recent powerful <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhlcN3_9tvw">climate change speech</a>. </p>
<p>Mottley’s question, “when will leaders lead?” might just inspire the current cohort of female leaders to do more and to do better for fellow women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183440/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ramona Vijeyarasa receives funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Development Leadership Program.</span></em></p>Four different female presidents led three Asian nations in recent decades. What does their legislative record tell us about the impact women leaders can have on women’s lives?Ramona Vijeyarasa, Senior Lecturer and Juris Doctor Program Head, University of Technology Sydney and Women's Leadership Institute Australia Research Fellow, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1873522022-07-25T20:02:24Z2022-07-25T20:02:24ZHow did Sri Lanka run out of money? 5 graphs that explain its economic crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475540/original/file-20220722-13056-lytgji.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C341%2C5991%2C2982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eranga Jayawardena/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sri Lanka is facing its worst economic crisis in modern history. Its 22 million strong population is struggling with huge price increases for food, power, medicines and other necessities. That’s if they can get them at all, with private motorists spending hours queuing for their fuel quota. </p>
<p>This is why Sri Lankans have been protesting on the streets and stormed the President’s House.</p>
<p>How did it come to this? </p>
<p>The immediate cause of the crisis is straightforward: Sri Lanka ran out of foreign reserves, the currencies its government and citizens need to pay for imports. </p>
<p>How it got into this situation requires more explanation. It’s a story of fiscal imprudence, unsustainable exchange rate policy and chronic mismanagement.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/behind-the-crisis-in-sri-lanka-how-political-and-economic-mismanagement-combined-to-plunge-nation-into-turmoil-187137">Behind the crisis in Sri Lanka – how political and economic mismanagement combined to plunge nation into turmoil</a>
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<h2>Running out of foreign currency</h2>
<p>Since the beginning of 2020 Sri Lanka’s demand for foreign currency has increased while its ability to earn foreign currency – through exports, loans and other capital inflows – has declined. </p>
<p>This is reflected in the steady decline in official foreign reserves held by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, falling from about US$8 billion to less than $U2 billion. The Sri Lankan currency is “closed”, meaning it isn’t traded outside the country, so foreign exchange transactions have to go through the central bank.</p>
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<p>As bad these figures are, the reality is worse. </p>
<p>Gross reserves aren’t the same as money in a bank account that can be used for payments. They include, for example, currency already committed to payments, and loans with conditions that limit imports from certain countries. </p>
<p>The actual amount of “usable” foreign currency is less. By early May it was barely <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/sri-lanka-foreign-reserves-record-low-politics-crisis-84488970">US$50 million</a> – a miniscule level for an economy that by the end of 2021 needed about US$75 million a day to pay for imports. This led to Sri Lanka’s government <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61505842">defaulting</a> on a US$78 million interest payment in late May. </p>
<h2>Declining currency inflows</h2>
<p>Sri Lanka’s declining foreign currency inflows and increasing outflows are due to imports outpacing exports, Sri Lankans overseas sending less money home, the devastation of the tourism sector and higher debt repayments. </p>
<p>In two years Sri Lanka’s annual trade deficit has climbed from about US$6 billion to US$8 billion.</p>
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<p>Two other key sources of foreign currency, money sent home by Sri Lankans living abroad and international tourism, were also hit hard. </p>
<p>At their peak, they more than offset the trade deficit for goods.</p>
<p>But since 2019 the value of remittances has fallen more than 20%. Income from tourism, devastated by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Sri-Lanka-bombings-of-2019">2019 Easter bombings</a> in which 269 were killed, has dropped almost 90% from its 2018 peak. </p>
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<h2>Propping up the exchange rate</h2>
<p>Ordinarily a nation can avoid running out of foreign currency in two ways. </p>
<p>One way is to borrow money. Sri Lanka, however, was already heavily in debt before this crisis. Successive governments borrowed to finance infrastructure projects and prop up loss-making public utilities. With estimated annual debt service costs of US$10 billion, Sri Lanka is now a bad bet for lenders.</p>
<p>The second, and better, way is a floating exchange rate along the lines of those in Australia, Britain, Japan and the United States.</p>
<p>A floating rate helps to balance trade value because the currency’s value changes according to demand. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sri-lankas-crisis-is-not-just-about-the-economy-but-a-long-history-of-discrimination-against-minority-groups-186747">Sri Lanka's crisis is not just about the economy, but a long history of discrimination against minority groups</a>
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<p>Technically Sri Lanka has a floating currency, but it is a “managed float” – with the government, primarily through the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, pegging and <a href="https://island.lk/fixing-the-dollar-exchange-rate-a-major-mistake">repegging</a> the rupee’s value to the US dollar. </p>
<p>A government can do a number of things to maintain the value its currencies, but the main way is buy the currency itself, using foreign reserves. This is what Sri Lanka’s central bank did.</p>
<p>As foreign reserves ran down, the government adopted other riskier policies. Particularly disastrous was the April 2021 decision to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-decimates-sri-lankan-crops-government-popularity-ebbs-2022-03-03/">ban fertiliser imports</a>.</p>
<p>This was marketed as a policy to promote organic farming, but really it was about cutting demand for foreign currency. </p>
<p>The subsequent drop in agricultural production has only compounded the economic crisis.</p>
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<img alt="Deepthika Rupasinghe works in her garden in Colombo on June 24 2022. All government workers now get Fridays off to spend time growing vegetables to prevent looming food shortages." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475790/original/file-20220725-55680-5ooafj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475790/original/file-20220725-55680-5ooafj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475790/original/file-20220725-55680-5ooafj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475790/original/file-20220725-55680-5ooafj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475790/original/file-20220725-55680-5ooafj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475790/original/file-20220725-55680-5ooafj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475790/original/file-20220725-55680-5ooafj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Deepthika Rupasinghe works in her garden in Colombo on June 24 2022. All government workers now get Fridays off to spend time growing vegetables to prevent looming food shortages.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chamila Karunarathne/EPA</span></span>
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<h2>Rising prices</h2>
<p>Just as short-term solutions can create longer-term problems, so too can long-term solutions mean short-term pain. </p>
<p>Allowing the (pegged) rupee to depreciate more than 40% against the US dollar has pushed up inflation to 54%.</p>
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<p>The help the Sri Lankan government is seeking from the International Monetary Fund is likely to hit people hard, at least initially. </p>
<p>Based on past experience, the IMF will want major commitments on government expenditure and other economic indicators before bailing out Sri Lanka. </p>
<p>But without action, life in Sri Lanka looks even more grim. </p>
<p>With shortages of imported raw materials, industrial output will shrink, creating a downward spiral of low output, low investment, and resultant low economic growth. </p>
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<p>On the other hand, Sri Lanka has some natural advantages – from its natural beauty to <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.ADT.1524.LT.ZS?locations=8S">the most literate population</a> in South Asia. What it needs now is principled political leadership, competent economic management and the right policies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thilak Mallawaarachchi is president-elect of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. He works closely with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, which has funded his research on developing countries.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Quiggin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How Sri Lanka ran out of foreign currency to pay for imports is a story of fiscal imprudence, unsustainable exchange rate policy and chronic mismanagement.Thilak Mallawaarachchi, Honorary Associate Professor, Risk and Sustainable Management Group, The University of QueenslandJohn Quiggin, Professor, School of Economics, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1872282022-07-22T20:42:08Z2022-07-22T20:42:08ZSri Lanka’s crisis: Can the South Asian economy break from the past and find a route to stability?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475513/original/file-20220721-13056-ehhhix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4309%2C2864&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The writing was on the wall in Sri Lanka.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/man-rides-a-bicycle-walk-past-slogans-painted-on-a-wall-news-photo/1242028894?adppopup=true">Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sri Lanka <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sri-lanka-could-tip-back-chaos-if-six-time-pm-voted-president-2022-07-20/">has a new president</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/07/22/1112873020/rajapaksa-ally-named-prime-minister-sri-lanka">prime minister</a> – but a change in who leads the crisis-hit South Asian nation alone will not solve the country’s severe economic problems.</p>
<p>Ranil Wickremesinghe – who on July 20, 2022, was voted in by lawmakers to replace fleeing former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa – and his appointed premier Dinesh Gunawardena inherit an economy grappling with <a href="https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/news/inflation-in-june-2022-ncpi">record inflation as high as 59%</a>, a currency that <a href="https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=LKR&to=USD">has lost almost half its value</a> since March 2022 and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/09/world/asia/sri-lanka-fuel-shortage-food.html">severe shortages of daily necessities</a> such as food and fuel. Nearly all economic activity in the country <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/sri-lanka-needs-to-do-more-on-debt-restructuring-before-a-bailout-package-is-finalised-says-imf/article65585692.ece">has ground to a halt</a>.</p>
<p>The government’s deficit <a href="https://www.newscutter.lk/sri-lanka-news/no-money-to-pay-government-salaries-money-to-be-printed-14052022-35982/">is so large it can’t afford</a> to pay public workers, and the central bank has almost no foreign currency – needed to finance imports and pay back foreign debt. </p>
<p>In short, Sri Lanka <a href="https://theconversation.com/sri-lanka-teeters-on-economic-edge-from-pandemic-fueled-financial-crisis-and-ukraine-war-spillovers-179741">is facing an unprecedented economic crisis</a>, placing tremendous pressure on the new leaders to act fast to fix things. </p>
<p>As an <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jxC8cesAAAAJ&hl=en">economist and former official at the Central Bank of Sri Lanka</a>, I believe the path forward will be difficult. The country will need to break with past <a href="https://theconversation.com/behind-the-crisis-in-sri-lanka-how-political-and-economic-mismanagement-combined-to-plunge-nation-into-turmoil-187137">policies and practices that put it in a financial hole</a> while putting in place reforms to get the economy back on track. In particular, there are four key economic challenges the new government will have to address, though they’re all interconnected. </p>
<h2>Addressing Sri Lankans’ immediate needs</h2>
<p>To avoid the fate of his <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/self-exiled-former-sri-lankan-125541354.html">now exiled predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa</a>, President Wickremesinghe will have to address the immediate needs of his people.</p>
<p>After being sworn in, <a href="https://www.newscutter.lk/sri-lanka-news/no-money-to-pay-government-salaries-money-to-be-printed-14052022-35982">Wickremesinghe said his priority</a> was to ensure that people are able to eat three meals a day.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in an orange cap stands in a smoky street surrounded by strewn bits of paper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475703/original/file-20220722-3516-k8a7la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475703/original/file-20220722-3516-k8a7la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475703/original/file-20220722-3516-k8a7la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475703/original/file-20220722-3516-k8a7la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475703/original/file-20220722-3516-k8a7la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475703/original/file-20220722-3516-k8a7la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475703/original/file-20220722-3516-k8a7la.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A supporter of Ranil Wickremesinghe celebrates the announcement of his election as Sri Lankan president.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/supporter-of-ranil-wickremesinghe-celebrates-the-news-photo/1409897243?adppopup=true">Abhishek Chinnappa/Getty Image</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>While food inflation has reached 76%, prices of many basic food items have increased by a higher margin – <a href="http://www.statistics.gov.lk/InflationAndPrices/StaticalInformation/retail/DCSB-WRP-2022-07-W2">rice by 160%, wheat flour by 200% and sugar by 164%</a>. To put that in context, a preschool teacher earning <a href="http://www.labourdept.gov.lk/images/PDF_upload/ExtraGazettes/2138-03_e.pdf">minimum wage</a> would need more than a day’s wages to purchase a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of sugar and a kilogram of wheat flour or rice. A cylinder of <a href="http://www.colombopage.com/archive_22A/Jun05_1654443342CH.php">cooking gas</a>, if they were lucky to find one, would cost more than a half-month’s salary. </p>
<p>Cost of living ranks alongside other pressing issues. Reopening the <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2022-07-03/with-no-fuel-and-no-cash-sri-lanka-keeps-schools-closed">shuttered schools</a> and universities is another priority. The other urgent need is restoring transportation services. With no fuel to purchase, <a href="https://www.newsfirst.lk/2022/07/20/fuel-crisis-private-bus-services-in-limbo/">private bus services are in limbo</a> and <a href="https://newsable.asianetnews.com/weird-news/watch-amidst-fuel-shortage-in-sri-lanka-people-hang-from-loaded-bus-gps-rea66d">public transportation has become an adventure ride</a>, with passengers <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_F05Mv0d7I">dangling from the door and windows</a> and even sitting inside the luggage box. </p>
<p>Restoring transportation and electricity services requires foreign currency to import fuel, but support from the International Monetary Fund, which provides financial help to struggling economies through loan packages, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-20/sri-lanka-seeks-bridge-loans-as-imf-aid-may-need-six-months">is months away</a>. Unless the new president can persuade its regional powerhouses – India and China – to provide more help, economic hardships will continue and life in Sri Lanka will not be normal. </p>
<p>In the past, Sri Lanka has been able to rely on tourism to help bring revenue to the island nation. But this will be impossible while social unrest continues and shortages of essentials limit the country’s ability to serve visitors. Meanwhile, remittances from overseas Sri Lankans have also suffered because of a lack of confidence in the national currency, known as the rupee.</p>
<p>As Wickremesinghe has noted, <a href="https://www.newscutter.lk/sri-lanka-news/no-money-to-pay-government-salaries-money-to-be-printed-14052022-35982">things will get worse</a> before they get better. </p>
<h2>Balancing the budget</h2>
<p>The next item on the president’s to-do list will likely be finding a way to bring the budget deficit down. Last year, <a href="https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/statistics/statistical-tables/fiscal-sector">expenses were 240% of revenue, and 91% more was needed to repay debt</a>. Money printing covered a large portion of this gap but only exacerbated inflation.</p>
<p>The primary reason for Sri Lanka’s current crisis <a href="https://theconversation.com/sri-lanka-teeters-on-economic-edge-from-pandemic-fueled-financial-crisis-and-ukraine-war-spillovers-179741">is decades of fiscal mismanagement</a>, with too much spending and too little revenue. </p>
<p>Fixing this problem will require a combination of higher taxes and significant budget cuts. But the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/blog/sri-lankas-crisis-likely-wont-be-resolved-soon">budget gap is too wide</a> to eliminate completely the need for money printing. The best that can be hoped for is an aggressive reduction.</p>
<h2>Restructuring Sri Lanka’s huge debt</h2>
<p>Such budgetary reforms will likely be necessary to solve another challenge Sri Lanka faces: overseas debt. </p>
<p>Sri Lanka has amassed about <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/yellen-says-its-chinas-interest-restructure-sri-lankas-debt-2022-07-14/">US$51 billion in foreign debt</a> over the past decades but has virtually no foreign currency with which to pay it back. The government <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sri-lanka-temporarily-suspend-foreign-debt-payments-c-bank-governor-2022-04-12">suspended payments on foreign debt</a> in April, sending it into default. </p>
<p>At the end of 2021, <a href="https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/publications/economic-and-financial-reports/annual-reports/annual-report-2021">about 45% of the debt was owed to private investors</a>, while the rest belonged to countries and multinational institutions. The Asian Development Bank owned the biggest share, at 16%, while Japan, China and the World Bank held 10% apiece. </p>
<p>For Sri Lanka to emerge from its crisis, it will need significant help from the IMF. But the IMF requires assurances that <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/06/30/pr22242-imf-staff-concludes-visit-to-sri-lanka">Sri Lanka’s debt sustainability be restored</a> before lending it money. </p>
<p>And other international organizations, such as the World Bank, will not be willing to lend Sri Lanka more <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/statement/2022/05/24/world-bank-statement-on-sri-lanka">until the country signs an agreement with the IMF</a>. And U.S. lawmakers <a href="https://twitter.com/SFRCdems/status/1542979994892357633">have recently suggested</a> IMF support will be contingent on Sri Lanka’s increasing the independence of its central bank, fighting corruption and doing more to promote the rule of law.</p>
<p>While <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/g7.asp">G-7 countries</a>, the group of leading economies, including Japan, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-61028138">appear willing to help Sri Lanka</a> in its effort to restructure its debt, some bondholders – such as Caribbean-based Hamilton Reserve Bank, which <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/sri-lanka-sued-by-us-bondholder-after-island-nation-s-historic-default-122062300224_1.html">holds just $250 million worth</a> – <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-21/sri-lanka-sued-by-bondholder-in-us-following-historic-default#xj4y7vzkg">have already taken legal action</a> to claim their dues. </p>
<p>In May, <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/sri-lanka-picks-lazard-clifford-chance-as-advisers-for-debt-restructuring-122052400610_1.html">Sri Lanka took a first step</a> toward restructuring its debt, but <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62161350">it may take several months</a> before the country is able to successfully negotiate with its creditors to ensure debt sustainability.</p>
<h2>Garnering public support for reforms</h2>
<p>Wickremesinghe’s biggest and most unenviable challenge, however, is less about the economy and more about the politics of fixing it. </p>
<p>He won’t be able to do much about Sri Lanka’s economy until he’s able to bring about political stability. And right now, Sri Lanka <a href="https://apnews.com/article/elections-asia-presidential-race-and-ethnicity-9f43a592bd31eea614a25c35438d920b">remains in turmoil</a>. </p>
<p>Wickremesinghe, who previously served as prime minister appointed by his toppled predecessor, will need a wide mandate and support from opposition politicians if he is to drastically change Sri Lanka’s policies. Upon election, <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/protests-economic-and-humanitarian-crises-sri-lankas-new-president-faces-an-uphill-battle/3qze8th7x">he immediately urged his rivals</a> to join him and “work together to bring the country out of the crisis,” adding, “Our divisions are now over.”</p>
<p>He will also need to address <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/rajapaksas-resignation-what-are-the-demands-of-sri-lankan-protesters-101657370420588.html">protesters’ demands</a> over reducing executive powers while bringing in strong anti-corruption measures and strengthening democratic institutions.</p>
<p>Yet <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61429791">many doubt Wickremesinghe’s ability to unite Sri Lanka</a> and question his mandate to serve out the remaining term of the presidency. <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sri-lanka-news-protests-colombo-president-ranil-wickremesinghe/">He has been a target of protesters</a> since being appointed president. And a <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/south-asia/sri-lanka-crisis-news-live-updates-july-22/liveblog/93037932.cms">confrontation between armed forces and protesters</a> soon after Wickremesinghe took power doesn’t bode well.</p>
<p>Turning around an economy so deep in crisis will take time. Inflation in Sri Lanka is <a href="https://apnews.com/article/inflation-asia-south-prices-93a4cc1c829e4cd53aaaf6afacb06a26">not believed to have peaked yet</a>, and people will continue to face economic hardships for some time. </p>
<p>But political stability will be needed before Sri Lanka can get out of its economic mess. The fiscal reforms expected by the IMF will be painful and will be viable only with public support, and that of all major political parties in Sri Lanka’s Parliament.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187228/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vidhura S Tennekoon was a former employee of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.</span></em></p>An expert on Sri Lanka’s economy identifies and explains three key challenges that Ranil Wickremesinghe will have to overcome if he hopes to steer the country out of its crisis.Vidhura S. Tennekoon, Assistant Professor of Economics, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1871372022-07-18T17:42:25Z2022-07-18T17:42:25ZBehind the crisis in Sri Lanka – how political and economic mismanagement combined to plunge nation into turmoil<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474442/original/file-20220717-26-6pn18l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C107%2C5489%2C3549&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The sun sets on Sri Lanka's protest movement (for now).</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protestors-gather-at-presidential-secretariat-in-colombo-on-news-photo/1241898185?adppopup=true">Arun Sankar/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/asia/sri-lanka-gotabaya-rajapksa-thursday-intl-hnk/index.html">formally resigned</a> on July 15, 2022, having earlier fled the country amid widespread protests in the Southern Asian nation.</em></p>
<p><em>The man who replaced him, Prime Minister and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62176758">now interim President Ranil Wickremesinghe</a>, is <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/76f232c0-cac2-48be-819a-d81b883fa1ca">likewise facing calls to go</a> amid political and economic turmoil.</em></p>
<p><em>Although the drama escalated over a matter of days – during which the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/sri-lankan-protesters-cook-swim-sleep-in-idUSRTS9KFY5">presidential palace</a> and the <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/sri-lanka-president-flees-as-thousands-of-protesters-storm-official-residence-12648619">prime minister’s residence were both occupied</a> by demonstrators – the crisis is years in the making, argues Neil DeVotta, <a href="https://politics.wfu.edu/faculty-and-staff/neil-devotta/">professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation U.S. asked DeVotta, who grew up in Sri Lanka and specializes in South Asian politics, to explain what brought about the crisis and where the nation of 22 million goes from here.</em></p>
<h2>Can you talk us through the latest events?</h2>
<p>What happened in Sri Lanka was really quite revolutionary. For the first time in the country’s history, you had a president resign – and in the most humiliating manner.</p>
<p>Gotabaya Rajapaksa had earlier announced his intention to step down but did not do so immediately, because once he did that he would lose <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-62132271">his presidential immunity</a> from prosecution. Instead he fled the country, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sri-lanka-president-rajapaksa-set-fly-singapore-via-maldives-government-source-2022-07-13/">first going to the Maldives</a> and then to Singapore. Some claim he <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/sri-lanka-rajapaksa-saudi-arabia-safe-haven-ousted-leaders">may now be looking to get to Saudi Arabia</a> – all of which is somewhat ironic given that Dubai, the Maldives and Saudi Arabia are Muslim states, and during his tenure in power Rajapaksa stood accused of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/11/21/sri-lankas-muslims-have-reason-to-fear-the-new-rajapaksa-era">encouraging Islamophobia to bolster his lock on power</a>.</p>
<p>The catalyst behind all this was a protest movement. Demonstrators have since left the president’s and the prime minister’s official residence, but the protest movement has only partly succeeded. They wanted <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/12/sri-lanka-crisis-no-to-all-party-govt-say-protest-leaders">Rajapaksa and his brothers</a> gone. But many <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/12/sri-lanka-crisis-no-to-all-party-govt-say-protest-leaders">also wanted the ouster of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man washes graffiti saying 'Go Home Gota' from a wall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474620/original/file-20220718-22-m4yifv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/474620/original/file-20220718-22-m4yifv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474620/original/file-20220718-22-m4yifv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474620/original/file-20220718-22-m4yifv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474620/original/file-20220718-22-m4yifv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474620/original/file-20220718-22-m4yifv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/474620/original/file-20220718-22-m4yifv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A staff member washes graffiti left behind by protesters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/staff-member-washes-graffiti-left-behind-by-protestors-from-news-photo/1409431290?adppopup=true">Abhishek Chinnappa/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, Wickremesinghe, who was not elected to Parliament and got a seat only through a national list that tops up the legislature, has now been sworn in as interim president. So a man with no mandate – his party got only a <a href="https://anfrel.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Sri-Lanka-Report-2020-FINAL-ol.pdf">small fraction of the 11.5 million</a> valid votes cast in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/world/asia/sri-lanka-elections-rajapaksa.html">2020 election</a> – is now acting president and may end up with the job full time once the <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/sri-lanka-crisis-live-updates-july-15-2022/article65642747.ece">Sri Lankan Parliament holds a secret ballot</a> on July 20, 2022.</p>
<h2>What was the spark to the crisis?</h2>
<p>The spark was really set off in April 2021 when Rajapaksa announced a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/fertiliser-ban-decimates-sri-lankan-crops-government-popularity-ebbs-2022-03-03/">ban on fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides</a>.</p>
<p>Successive Sri Lankan governments have long been <a href="https://theconversation.com/sri-lanka-teeters-on-economic-edge-from-pandemic-fueled-financial-crisis-and-ukraine-war-spillovers-179741">living beyond their means</a> and employing a debt rollover strategy to keep the country afloat – in short, the country was relying on new loans, alongside revenue from tourism and international remittance, to pay down its debt.</p>
<p>But then came COVID-19, which <a href="https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/economics/article/3181671/can-sri-lanka-tourism-recover-triple-whammy-terrorism-covid-19">severely affected tourism</a> and contributed to what economists call a “<a href="https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/nft/op/186/index.htm">balance of payments crisis</a>.” In other words, the country was unable to pay for essential imports or service its debt. This pushed the government to abruptly announce a ban on herbicides and fertilizers – something they <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/7/15/23218969/sri-lanka-organic-fertilizer-pesticide-agriculture-farming">hoped would save the country US$400 million dollars</a> on imports annually. The president had previously indicated that the move to organic agriculture would take place over 10 years. Instead, it was implemented abruptly despite warnings over the <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/environment/article/2022/06/14/in-sri-lanka-the-sabotage-of-an-organic-revolution_5986670_114.html#:%7E:text=It%20was%20April%2027%2C%202021,nation%20the%20first%20country%20in">impact it would have on agriculture yields</a>.</p>
<p>That led to <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/lanka-s-agri-minister-forced-to-flee-as-farmers-protest-his-visit-report-122061800859_1.html">farmers’ protesting</a>. They were soon joined by sympathetic unions. The balance of payments crisis went far beyond farming. It got to the point when the government couldn’t pay for almost anything it was hoping to import, leading to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-asia-south-5217195484ef4c8d858d86bbfb79d35c">shortages in medicines</a> and milk powder. And that led to people from other sectors also protesting.</p>
<p>On top of this, the government was <a href="https://www.timesnownews.com/world/sri-lanka-is-printing-money-to-pay-salaries-but-this-could-cause-a-further-economic-implosion-article-91612814">printing money</a> to pay for goods. This inevitably led to inflation – which is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-05/sri-lanka-aims-to-stop-money-printing-as-inflation-nears-60">running above 50%</a>.</p>
<p>The tipping point came when people found that they could no longer pay for cooking gas and fuel. A few weeks ago, the government announced that it would <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/27/asia/sri-lanka-fuel-non-essential-services-intl-hnk/index.html">provide fuel for essential services only</a>, shuttering schools and ordering workers to stay at home.</p>
<h2>So this was a purely economic crisis?</h2>
<p>Not quite. While the spark was a balance of payments crisis, I believe that underpinning the mess is a <a href="https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/cleansing-sri-lanka-of-ethnonationalism/">deep-rooted ethnonationalism</a> that has allowed and encouraged <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Sri-Lanka-crisis/Nepotism-bad-policy-push-Sri-Lanka-to-brink-of-economic-ruin">corruption, nepotism and short-termism</a>.</p>
<p>Since at least the 1950s, Sri Lanka has been in the grips of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/when-politics-are-sacralized/genesis-consolidation-and-consequences-of-sinhalese-buddhist-nationalism/D4627144C3A7090A32F13E1DC4288E63">Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism</a>. The Sinhalese make up around 75% of the population, with Tamils at around 15% and Muslims at 10%. </p>
<p>Sinhalese Sri Lankans have <a href="https://www.eastwestcenter.org/publications/sinhalese-buddhist-nationalist-ideology-implications-politics-and-conflict-resolution-s">long been favored when it comes to access to universities and government positions</a>. This has been to the detriment of not only the country’s minorities but also its governance. It has <a href="https://theconversation.com/sri-lankas-crisis-is-not-just-about-the-economy-but-a-long-history-of-discrimination-against-minority-groups-186747">led to a decay in how the state functions</a>. Sri Lanka has ended up with a system that disregards merit and is instead rooted in enthnocracy – rule by one dominant group. And that has <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/12/sri-lanka-crisis-politics-economics-rajapaksa-protest/">helped spread nepotism and corruption</a>.</p>
<p>The fact that the Rajapaksa brothers helped <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/17/the-terminator-how-gotabaya-rajapaksas-ruthless-streak-led-him-to-power-sri-lanka">brutally suppressed and defeated</a> a three-decade Tamil insurgency bolstered their credentials among Sinhalese Buddhist nationalists and consolidated their grip on power.</p>
<p>That <a href="https://hir.harvard.edu/sri-lankan-civil-war/">civil war</a>, which ended in 2009, also contributed to the current crisis. Through the conflict, the Sri Lankan government ran national deficits to finance the counterinsurgency.</p>
<p>After the war, the Rajapaksas looked to develop the country by <a href="https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/china-s-infrastructure-projects-have-worsened-sri-lanka-s-economic-woes-992445.html">building up its infrastructure</a>. What the country instead got was “blingfrastructure” – vanity projects, often financed by China, that were <a href="https://srilankabrief.org/sri-lanka-massive-kickbacks-in-unsolicited-projects-with-china/">dogged by corruption and graft</a>. One such project is an airport that sees <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/05/28/the-story-behind-the-worlds-emptiest-international-airport-sri-lankas-mattala-rajapaksa/">very few planes land or take off</a>. I visited the Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport in 2015, and the only other people there were a coachload of students from a school on a field trip. Nothing has changed since then.</p>
<p>Other such wasteful projects include a conference center and cricket ground – called the <a href="https://www.espncricinfo.com/srilanka/content/ground/434210.html">Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium</a> – not far from the Mattala airport that hosts next to nothing. And then there is the Lotus Tower, the tallest communications tower in South Asia, which was supposed to contain other facilities and was ceremonially opened in 2019 but <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-tower/opening-of-sri-lankas-tallest-tower-marred-by-corruption-allegation-idUSKBN1W123I">remains out of operation</a>.</p>
<p>The construction of such projects has been <a href="https://srilankabrief.org/sri-lanka-massive-kickbacks-in-unsolicited-projects-with-china/">dogged by suggestions of corruption</a>. Such projects largely <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/12/13/784084567/in-sri-lanka-chinas-building-spree-is-raising-questions-about-sovereignty">involved Chinese construction firms</a>, often using Chinese laborers – <a href="https://www.sundaytimes.lk/091206/BusinessTimes/bt18.html">including the reported use of Chinese prisoners</a>, in the case of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html">the Hambantota Port</a>, now leased to China for 99 years because Sri Lanka could not pay its debts. Sri Lankans themselves have benefited only little.</p>
<p>On paper it looked like the <a href="https://opecfund.org/news/accelerating-economic-growth-in-post-conflict-sri-lanka">country was developing and GDP was rising</a>. But the growth was from external money rather than goods and services generated in Sri Lanka.</p>
<p>Chinese loans with short terms and high interest played no small role in quickening Sri Lanka’s debt problem. As a result, the country currently owes <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/yellen-says-its-chinas-interest-restructure-sri-lankas-debt-2022-07-14/">between $5 billion and $10 billion to China</a>, and its overall debt stands at <a href="https://gulfnews.com/business/sri-lanka-defaults-on-entire-51-billion-external-debt-1.1649748538720">$51 billion dollars</a>.</p>
<h2>What happen next?</h2>
<p>The most important thing that Sri Lanka needs going forward is political stability. Without that, you will not get the help required from the international community.</p>
<p>And Sri Lanka is not going to get out of its economic mess without help from international actors, such as the <a href="https://fortune.com/2022/07/15/sri-lanka-imf-bailout-protest-gotabaya-rajapaksa-flee-singapore/">International Monetary Fund</a>, the <a href="https://www.adb.org/countries/sri-lanka/main">Asian Development Bank</a> and <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/srilanka">the World Bank</a>. It also needs help from partners like India, Japan, China and the U.S.</p>
<p>As it is, Wickremesinghe, the interim president, has said the country will <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/sri-lanka-admits-bankruptcy-crisis-to-drag-through-2023-wickremesinghe-122070600054_1.html">suffer shortages in goods until the end of 2023</a>.</p>
<p>Sri Lanka needs large-scale, long-term economic restructuring. And for that to happen, the government will have to restructure its bilateral debt – the IMF will not give Sri Lanka money simply so that it can pay off its debt to China or any other entity.</p>
<p>But China knows that <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-15/china-will-agree-to-aid-at-some-point-sri-lanka-envoy-says">cutting any debt deal with Sri Lanka</a> will mean that other countries that hold large Chinese debt – like Pakistan and some African countries – will expect the same. And Beijing doesn’t want to set that precedent. On the other hand, China will most likely have to work with Sri Lanka and other bilateral donors, especially now that the Rajapaksas are out of power. It needs to cultivate goodwill to maintain influence in the island and will not want to be seen as exacerbating Sri Lanka’s woes. </p>
<p>The IMF will also likely expect painful measures to tamp down costs if it is to come to Sri Lanka’s aid. It will most likely insist that Sri Lanka free float its currency rather than peg it to the dollar, since right now Sri Lankans abroad are <a href="https://www.themorning.lk/the-war-against-the-undial-system/">using unofficial channels</a> – and not the banking system – to remit foreign currency. So it will likely have to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/sri-lanka-allow-rupee-weaken-230-per-dollar-2022-03-07/">devalue its currency beyond what it already has</a>. The IMF will also likely expect that the government cut back on the number of state employees – which <a href="https://island.lk/only-traitors-wont-accept-urgent-economic-reform-agenda-acceptable-to-imf/">currently stands at around 1.5 million people</a>.</p>
<p>This will be a very painful process, and it will take some time. And it will likely worsen the country’s turmoil in the days ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187137/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neil DeVotta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Protests over shortages forced the ouster of Sri Lanka’s president, but the crisis has deep-set roots in ethnonationalism, which has encouraged corruption, argues an expert on the country’s politics.Neil DeVotta, Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Wake Forest UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1867472022-07-14T07:55:00Z2022-07-14T07:55:00ZSri Lanka’s crisis is not just about the economy, but a long history of discrimination against minority groups<p>Sri Lanka is in the grip of an economic, political and humanitarian crisis. </p>
<p>In a remarkable display of anger on Saturday, thousands of protesters disregarded government curfews, rampant military and police presence to storm the presidential palace and the prime minister’s residence, demanding their resignations. </p>
<p>It came as the Rajapaksa government halted the sale of fuel to ordinary people. It is the first country to do so since the global oil crisis in 1979. </p>
<p>For several months, Sri Lankans have suffered shortages of food, fuel and other critical supplies. Schools have been closed for several weeks. Other services are operating at critically reduced capacity. </p>
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<p>Hours before the protest, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country without resigning. Instead, he appointed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, from the opposition United National Party (UNP), as the interim president. It’s a move that has further angered protesters. </p>
<p>In his first actions as president, Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency across the island. He ordered the military to “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/13/sri-lanka-crisis-live-news-updates">do whatever is necessary to restore order</a>”. Protesters are being met with tear gas by the police and shots are being fired by the military, yet they continue to occupy his residence and the streets. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/sri-lanka-scrambles-for-aid-but-australia-still-seems-preoccupied-by-boats-186293">Sri Lanka scrambles for aid – but Australia still seems preoccupied by boats</a>
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<h2>Who is Ranil Wickremesinghe?</h2>
<p>Wickremesinghe is deeply despised by protesters, with many of them critical of his close relationship with the Rajapaksa family. But he also has a long history of discrimination and militarisation against the Tamils. </p>
<p>Wickremesinghe was first elected to parliament in 1977. He was prime minister from 1993 to 1996 and has held senior positions within the United National Party (UNP), including further terms as PM, ever since. </p>
<p>A centre-right party, the UNP has fanned ethnic tensions, overseeing numerous attacks against the Tamils – in 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983. The party also orchestrated the colonisation of the north and east of the island, altering the ethnic composition and forcibly evicting Tamils from their homes. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-tamil-asylum-seekers-need-protection-and-why-does-the-australian-government-say-they-dont-162609">Why do Tamil asylum seekers need protection — and why does the Australian government say they don't?</a>
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<p>Like Rajapaksa, Wickremesinghe has close ties to the military. This includes its current chief, Shavendra Silva, who is barred from entering the US due to his role in the massacre of Tamils in 2009. Wickremesinghe rejected the <a href="https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/737299?ln=en">UN Expert Panel report</a> that outlined Sri Lankan government atrocities against the Tamils. </p>
<p>As prime minister during the 2019 Easter bombings, Wickremesinghe admitted he and his government had failed to act on intelligence communicated by India. This lapse resulted in the deaths of over 250 people in bomb blasts across the island. He <a href="https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/ranil-admits-failure-government-ensure-security">stated</a>: “India gave us the intelligence but there has been a lapse in how we acted on that.”</p>
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<span class="caption">Ranil Wickremesinghe has been appointed Sri Lankan prime minister, outraging protesters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Eranga Jayawardena/AP/AAP</span></span>
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<h2>The damage caused by Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism</h2>
<p>Politicians like Wickremesinghe and Rajapaksa have been put in positions of political power by the majority Sinhalese people due to their Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology, which has resulted in a long history of discrimination and rioting against minorities on the island. This position of power has allowed these leaders to grow their personal wealth, while mismanaging the economy and ultimately bankrupting the country. </p>
<p>Within the Sinhalese Buddhist ideology, anyone who is not Sinhalese-Buddhist is excluded. Since the country’s long <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Lankan_Civil_War">civil war</a> ended, all major Sri Lankan parties have rejected criticisms of the Sri Lankan state, including international calls for investigations into human rights violations and war crimes committed against the Tamils. </p>
<p>Rajapaksa’s refusal to resign, despite mass protests, is an indictment of his authoritarianism, which can also be attributed to Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism.</p>
<p>In fact, the Sri Lankan constitution grants Buddhism foremost power, paving the way for ongoing discrimination against marginalised groups. This discrimination began in 1956, when Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike implemented the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Sinhala-Only-Bill">Sinhala Only Act</a>, making Sinhalese the official language of the island and forcing Tamils out of key employment sectors. </p>
<p>As political expert Neil DeVotta <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/12/sri-lanka-crisis-politics-economics-rajapaksa-protest/">explains</a> of Sri Lanka’s road to political ruin:</p>
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<p>It was nationalism that enabled governance rooted in meritocracy to be supplanted by ethnocracy, which over time has led to kakistocracy – governance by a country’s worst citizens.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-happening-in-sri-lanka-and-how-did-the-economic-crisis-start-181060">What's happening in Sri Lanka and how did the economic crisis start?</a>
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<h2>A bleak outlook</h2>
<p>Anti-government protesters will continue to express their fury on the streets. But if they are going to push for meaningful political change, their demands must be representative of everyone on the island, especially those who have been historically marginalised by successive Sri Lankan governments. </p>
<p>An impassioned plea from a young Tamil protester urged the majority Sinhalese community to pay attention to the patterns of the past:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1547197099938398208"}"></div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186747/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Niro is a volunteer at the Tamil Refugee Council </span></em></p>Protestors are occupying the presidential palace and Sri Lankans are suffering shortages of food, petrol and other supplies. The country is in chaos- and it isn’t just because of the economy.Niro Kandasamy, Lecturer in History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1868682022-07-13T14:44:41Z2022-07-13T14:44:41ZSri Lanka riots: how the tiny Indian Ocean island nation got into such a mess<p>The chaos in Sri Lanka has deepened after the country’s president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/13/sri-lanka-protesters-unrest-president-gatabaya-rajapaksa-flees-quit-economy-unrest">fled to the Maldives</a>. The president and his family left Colombo on a military jet just hours before he was due to resign in the face of massive popular protests which culminated on July 9 with crowds of demonstrators storming the presidential palace. </p>
<p>Rajapaksa is believed to be headed for the United Arab Emirates where it is thought he will resign his office. Ranil Wickremesinghe, the country’s prime minister, has taken over as acting president and has <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/abaebbe1-146b-469d-9167-440ef35b95d5">declared a state of emergency</a>. It is thought likely he will also resign under pressure from the Sri Lankan people who are blaming the country’s deep economic crisis on mismanagement and corruption among Sri Lanka’s political elites.</p>
<p>Over the past three months, the tiny Indian Ocean nation has sunk deep into <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-61028138">economic malaise</a>. Inflation is running at more than 50% and is expected to continue to rise. There are shortages of food and fuel and the country <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61505842">defaulted on its foreign debt</a> in May.</p>
<p>There is also political turmoil. In this situation, the role of the army will come into sharp focus. There have been reports that troops fired on protesters as they stormed the presidential palace, but army chiefs insisted they had only fired in the air in an effort to maintain order. But many are asking whether the army will step in to run the government, at least until order can be restored and a new government formed. </p>
<h2>Will the army take over?</h2>
<p>But while military intervention might restore order to the streets, it’s unlikely army chiefs will want to take a direct hand in government. </p>
<p>There are two reasons for this. The first is cultural. There have been occasions when the country could have buckled to the rule by the military. These were the ethnic civil war years between 1983 and 2009. Many hold the view that it was the army which kept the nation from breaking up during this period before winning a decisive albeit controversial victory against the separatists. </p>
<p>Yet, despite the oversized role played by the country’s military establishment, years of hardship, war and human rights abuses, Sri Lankans have steadfastly held on to their democratic civilian government. There were coup attempts in <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/sri-lankas-president-refuses-stand-rumours-swirl-military-coup/">1962 and 1966 and again in 1991</a>, but these were all thwarted by the civilian government.</p>
<p>The other reason is economic. The main problems facing Sri Lanka are a result of economic mismanagement and corruption. A new administration will need to quickly secure international loans or some other form of support to stabilise the economy and resume the importation of food and fuel. This can only be possible with a civilian leader at the helm of such negotiations. </p>
<p>The problem a military government would face is that the army is still discredited in the eyes of the international community as a result of <a href="https://gsdrc.org/document-library/war-on-the-displaced-sri-lankan-army-and-ltte-abuses-against-civilians-in-the-vanni/">mass human rights abuses</a> committed during the civil war against the country’s Tamil separatists. If an army general were to take power now, Sri Lanka will become a pariah – and would find it almost impossible to raise the foreign investment it so desperately needs.</p>
<p>The importance of choosing someone who is able to negotiate loans from international institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the ADB was underlined when Rajapaksa appointed Wickremesinghe, the prime minister, to the <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/sri-lanka-pm-ranil-wickremesinghe-appointed-finance-minister-by-president-gotabaya-rajapaksa/article65459383.ece">finance portfolio</a>. Wickremesinghe had already announced a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sri-lanka-prime-minister-retains-finance-minister-portfolio-2022-05-25/">package of reforms</a> designed to stabilise the economy and planned to present a <a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/sl-to-present-debt-restructuring-plan-to-imf-by-august-pm-wickremesinghe-122070500900_1.html">debt restructuring plan</a> to the IMF by August.</p>
<h2>In hock to Beijing</h2>
<p>Sri Lanka’s economic woe can largely be blamed on <a href="https://www.ganintegrity.com/portal/country-profiles/sri-lanka/">corruption among the country’s political elites</a> as well as government mismanagement: unaffordable tax cuts and <a href="https://www.cnbctv18.com/world/politically-motivated-infrastructure-projects-part-of-the-reason-for-sri-lankas-economic-crisis-13217782.htm">grandiose infrastructure projects</a> have emptied the treasury, while an enormous <a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/LKA/sri-lanka/trade-balance-deficit#:%7E:text=Sri%20Lanka%20trade%20balance%20for,a%203.49%25%20increase%20from%202017.">trade imbalance</a> has drained the country’s foreign reserves.</p>
<p>The problem has been made worse by the decision to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61505842">repay debts rather than restructuring</a>. China has been one of Sri Lanka’s biggest creditors and has baulked at any concessions, because it fears that cutting Sri Lanka’s debt – racked up mainly as a result of Belt and Road projects – would prompt other debtor nations to do the same and put the Belt and Road programme into jeopardy.</p>
<p>In 2017, when Sri Lanka failed on its loan repayment for the US$1.1 billion (£920 million) <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/world/asia/sri-lanka-china-port.html">Hambantota port development</a> on Sri Lanka’s southern coast, it was forced to sign the port – and thousands of acres of land around it – over on a 99-year lease. China already owns 43% of the massive Colombo Port City development on another 99-year-lease. </p>
<p>Delhi-based think-tank, Red Lantern Analytica, said on July 9 that China had “employed its devious ‘<a href="https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/china-used-debt-trap-diplomacy-to-gain-control-over-sri-lanka-think-tank-122071000019_1.html">Debt Trap Diplomacy</a>’ to gain a strategic edge over the nation and hold its economy hostage”. This should be a wake-up call to any other non-western countries who have borrowed heavily from China. Beijing should also take some responsibility for Sri Lanka’s dire financial straits. But there is little sign, so far, that it will.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186868/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amalendu Misra has received funding from the British Academy.</span></em></p>Corruption, mismanagement and financial pressure from China all contributed to Sri Lanka’s economic turmoil.Amalendu Misra, Professor, Department: Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1868332022-07-13T05:23:43Z2022-07-13T05:23:43ZSwimming in the president’s pool – palaces and power in times of crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473732/original/file-20220713-26-psoor.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6709%2C4466&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People taking photos inside the president's palace, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 12 July 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Chamila Karunarathne/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Footage flashed across television and smartphone screens this week showing rowdy crowds of Sri Lankan protesters mobbing the official presidential palace in Colombo.</p>
<p>Cameras panned across the compound’s lush gardens as jubilant young men jumped into the swimming pool and splashed in its blue waters. </p>
<p>Men clad in sandals, shorts, and t-shirts roamed through the building’s luxurious living quarters, including the bedroom, where the besieged president Gotabaya Rajapaksa had been sleeping until just a few days ago. This is a world turned upside down.</p>
<p>For the global historian, however, the Sri Lankan protesters splashing in the palace pool is a familiar scene. And one that could signal major political change is underway. Sri Lanka’s palace joins a long list of royal and presidential residences occupied by protesters during political revolts and revolutions. </p>
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<span class="caption">A man takes a selfie at the official residence of president Gotabaya Rajapaksa after it was stormed by anti-government protesters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rafiq Maqbool/AP</span></span>
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<h2>Symbols of authority</h2>
<p>The homes of monarchs and presidents are important symbols of authority in nation states. </p>
<p>Such buildings are opulent by design. The excessive wealth they display projects the power of the leaders who occupy them. Their perceived authority is a function of their size, their expensive furnishings, and the priceless art works that hang on their walls.</p>
<p>Access to the buildings are strictly controlled, in recognition of their special, almost sacred status. They represent the authority of the rulers, elected or otherwise, who live inside their walls. </p>
<p>Sri Lanka was a British colony until 1948; it officially became a republic in 1972. Under colonial rule, the presidential palace was known as the King’s House or the Queen’s House. It served as the residence of British governors, until they were replaced by presidents. </p>
<p>The president’s pool and living quarters are spaces normally only accessible to a select few. These are spaces from which most poor Sri Lankans are excluded. </p>
<p>Swimming in the presidential pool is thus a rebellious collective act that sends a potent message that whatever laws and policing that have kept angry citizens out of the palace no longer have teeth. </p>
<p>A range of factors led to the palace occupation. The national government is bankrupt, as are many of its people. Critical shortages of food and petrol have sent prices of essential goods soaring. People cannot work, and they cannot feed their children. </p>
<p>In response to the crisis, hundreds of thousands of people mobilised, pouring onto the streets, demanding urgent change. </p>
<p>The protesters vowed to stay in the palace until the president resigned.
Gotabaya Rajapaksa eventually conceded. On 13 July 2022, he announced he would be resigning, then he fled the country.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-happening-in-sri-lanka-and-how-did-the-economic-crisis-start-181060">What's happening in Sri Lanka and how did the economic crisis start?</a>
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<h2>Historical precedents</h2>
<p>Global precedents underscore how palace occupations have coincided with major shifts in global history.</p>
<p>In colonial Mexico, Spanish viceroys lived in the opulent palace on the edge of the Mexico City’s huge central plaza, adjacent a towering cathedral. Conquistadors constructed the palace above the ruins of the Aztec <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Templo_Mayor/">Templo Mayor</a>. </p>
<p>When the multi-ethnic working class rose up in rebellion against the government in 1692, a mob forced its way into the palace’s forbidden rooms and set the building on fire. Cristóbal de Villalpando’s 1695 painting shows the palacio’s burned-out wing.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473729/original/file-20220712-31570-bn8rei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473729/original/file-20220712-31570-bn8rei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473729/original/file-20220712-31570-bn8rei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473729/original/file-20220712-31570-bn8rei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473729/original/file-20220712-31570-bn8rei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473729/original/file-20220712-31570-bn8rei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473729/original/file-20220712-31570-bn8rei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473729/original/file-20220712-31570-bn8rei.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=578&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Vista de la Plaza Mayor de la Ciudad de Mexico – Cristobal de Villalpando (1695).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
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<p>The Viceroy’s palace continued to play a central role in Mexican history. After Mexicans revolted against the Spanish again in a fierce war for independence in the 1810s, the new national government installed a Mexican president in the palace. </p>
<p>In the 1930s, the government commissioned Diego Rivera to paint a massive <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Mexico_(mural)">mural</a> in its central staircase. The mural visually narrates the long history of popular struggle against colonial rule, transforming the palace into an anti-colonial monument. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473770/original/file-20220713-12-prkevj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473770/original/file-20220713-12-prkevj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473770/original/file-20220713-12-prkevj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473770/original/file-20220713-12-prkevj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473770/original/file-20220713-12-prkevj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473770/original/file-20220713-12-prkevj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473770/original/file-20220713-12-prkevj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473770/original/file-20220713-12-prkevj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The History of Mexico – Diego Rivera (1935).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
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<p>In Europe, the royal palace of Versailles was the stage for dramatic events in the French Revolution. When France was plunged into a financial crisis in the late 18th century, the sumptuous palace became a symbol of royal indulgence and excess at a time when much of the population was suffering from extreme poverty. </p>
<p>On 5 October 1789, a riot in Paris over the sky-rocketing price of bread exploded into a much bigger protest. An angry mob, in which women featured prominently, raided weapons from the city’s armories and marched to the palace, forcing their way inside and demanding an audience with King Louis XVI. They made the royal family return with them to Paris the next day. </p>
<p>After the King was executed in 1793, the palace’s riches were shipped to the Louvre or auctioned off.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-what-is-it-about-versailles-69559">Friday essay: what is it about Versailles?</a>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473746/original/file-20220713-22-9mgwfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473746/original/file-20220713-22-9mgwfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473746/original/file-20220713-22-9mgwfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473746/original/file-20220713-22-9mgwfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473746/original/file-20220713-22-9mgwfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=353&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473746/original/file-20220713-22-9mgwfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473746/original/file-20220713-22-9mgwfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473746/original/file-20220713-22-9mgwfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=444&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The women’s march on Versailles (1789) – artist unknown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Public domain</span></span>
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<p>Palaces also featured prominently in 20th century revolutions. In 1917, the Bolsheviks’ capture of the Russian Tzar’s Winter Palace in St Petersburg marked the beginning of seven decades of communist rule. </p>
<p>The new communist government considered this event so important that they staged a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Storming_of_the_Winter_Palace">spectacular reenactment</a> of the storming of the palace in a mass public extravaganza in 1920. Over 2,500 actors participated in this event, including the entire cast of the former Imperial Ballet. More than 100,000 spectators turned out to watch.</p>
<p>The palace was repurposed as the Hermitage Museum, where nationalised royal art collections were put on display for citizen visitors. The state symbolically democratised the space, signalling their communist values.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-russian-revolution-100669">World politics explainer: the Russian revolution</a>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473777/original/file-20220713-12-7p7h1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473777/original/file-20220713-12-7p7h1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/473777/original/file-20220713-12-7p7h1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473777/original/file-20220713-12-7p7h1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473777/original/file-20220713-12-7p7h1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473777/original/file-20220713-12-7p7h1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473777/original/file-20220713-12-7p7h1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/473777/original/file-20220713-12-7p7h1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Meridian Gate, the Forbidden City, Beijing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons</span></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Forbidden-City">The Forbidden City</a> in Beijing is the world’s largest palace. Built in the 15th century, it was home to generations of Ming and Qing emperors. In 1949, Mao Zedong chose the palace as the site for the public celebration of the communist victory in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Civil_War">Chinese Civil War</a>. </p>
<p>Mao’s portrait now hangs over the Gate of Heavenly Peace, where he formally declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. The fact the palace serves as backdrop to Tiananmen Square has made this a place where national politics have been forged and contested. </p>
<p>These examples from the past suggest those interested in the future path of the current Sri Lankan unrest would be wise to keep an eye on the fate of the presidential palace. The building’s creative use and remodelling in coming weeks and months could shed light on the nation’s evolving politics. </p>
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<p><em>Correction: An earlier version of this article referred to the presidential palace as Temple Trees, which is the name of the prime minister’s official residence.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186833/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kristie Patricia Flannery does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The storming of the presidential palace in Sri Lanka is a moment of powerful symbolism – one with many historical precedents.Kristie Patricia Flannery, Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1862932022-07-04T20:00:19Z2022-07-04T20:00:19ZSri Lanka scrambles for aid – but Australia still seems preoccupied by boats<p>When Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/23/sri-lanka-prime-minister-economy-completely-collapsed">conceded</a> ten days ago that the Sri Lankan economy has “completely collapsed”, his words would have come as no surprise to the island’s 22 million people. </p>
<p>With the country enduring its worst economic crisis since independence, authorities continue to scramble for aid from the international community. Families have been forced to skip meals and limit portion sizes. “If we don’t act now,” the United Nations has <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/06/1120032">warned</a>, “many families will be unable to meet their basic food needs.” </p>
<p>In a move to curb dire food shortages, authorities have <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/14/crisis-hit-sri-lanka-allows-govt-workers-4-day-week-to-grow-food">approved</a> a four-day working week for public sector workers so they can “engage in agricultural activities in their backyards or elsewhere as a solution to the food shortage that is expected”. </p>
<p>Tamil fishers in the north of the island are facing starvation because they <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/22/sri-lanka-tamils-protests-economic-crisis">lack paraffin</a> to power their boats. Women whose livelihoods depend on occasional work on the boats face even grimmer circumstances. One of them, a 59-year-old Tamil woman who lost five of her children in the civil war, is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/22/sri-lanka-tamils-protests-economic-crisis">living off</a> donations, leftover fish and the vegetables she picks from the side of the road. </p>
<p>From July 10, the government will no longer sell fuel to ordinary people because it won’t have enough currency to pay for it. Frustration is palpable across the island. The deployment of the military is only adding to the distress. In one case, Sri Lankan troops <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/19/sri-lanka-troops-open-fire-to-contain-fuel-riots">opened fire</a> on people queuing for petrol after motorists clashed with troops; four civilians and three soldiers were wounded. </p>
<h2>Aid over geopolitical strategy</h2>
<p>Sri Lankan authorities are turning to the international community for assistance. An official visit to Russia this week will attempt to secure discounted oil. Much of the world might be slamming Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, but Sri Lanka is no longer in a position to be choosy about who it deals with. </p>
<p>So far this year, India has been Sri Lanka’s main source of assistance. The Indian government has <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/23/india-says-ready-to-help-sri-lanka-in-quick-economic-recovery">signalled</a> a willingness to go beyond the US$4 billion in loans, swaps and aid to support its neighbour. The political winds seem to be swaying away from China and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/sri-lanka-crisis-india-chance-gain-sway-china-85979868">in India’s favour</a>. </p>
<p>At the Future of Asia conference in Tokyo in May, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa pleaded for medical, food and fuel donations. But his appeal came at a <a href="https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/rajapaksa-turns-tokyo-aid-relations-remain-tense">low point</a> in Sri Lanka–Japanese relations. </p>
<p>Earlier in his presidency, Rajapaksa had cancelled key Japanese-funded infrastructure projects, including a US$1.5 billion light rail project for Colombo and the US$700 million-plus East Container Terminal project at the country’s main port, which Japan, India and Sri Lanka had agreed on before Rajapaksa came to power. </p>
<p>At the Tokyo conference Japan agreed to provide <a href="https://www.wfp.org/news/japan-contributes-usd-15-million-help-sri-lanka-provide-food-assistance-people-affected">US$1.5 million</a> through the World Food Program for three months’ essential food supplies, but remained tight-lipped about other support.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-happening-in-sri-lanka-and-how-did-the-economic-crisis-start-181060">What's happening in Sri Lanka and how did the economic crisis start?</a>
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<p>The United States has announced a series of assistance measures since the crisis set in, including US$120 million in <a href="https://lk.usembassy.gov/u-s-embassy-announces-dfc-approval-for-120m-in-new-loans-and-investments-from-the-united-states/">loans to small and medium businesses</a> – which risks adding to the country’s debt crisis – US$27 million to Sri Lanka’s dairy industry and US$5.75 million in humanitarian assistance. At the G7 summit in Madrid last Tuesday, President Joe Biden pledged a further $20 million to feed 800,000 children through a school nutrition program. </p>
<p>A team from the International Monetary Fund, meanwhile, was in Sri Lanka last week to discuss a $3 billion bailout under the fund’s <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/Sheets/2016/08/01/20/56/Extended-Fund-Facility">Extended Fund Facility</a>. The scheme is designed to assist countries experiencing serious payment imbalances. While the team said it expected negotiations about the terms of the bailout to reach agreement in the “near term”, it <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/06/30/pr22242-imf-staff-concludes-visit-to-sri-lanka">concluded</a> Sri Lanka’s economy “is expected to contract significantly in 2022”. </p>
<p>Sri Lanka also plans to hold a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/crisis-hit-sri-lanka-plans-donor-conference-with-china-india-japan-2022-06-22/">donor conference</a> with India, China and Japan. Around US$5 billion is needed over the next six months to cover the basic needs of its people. </p>
<h2>Australia needs to reconsider how it supports its Indian Ocean neighbour</h2>
<p>Australia will provide A$50 million to Sri Lanka to meet urgent food and healthcare needs. “Not only do we want to help the people of Sri Lanka in its time of need,” Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said on June 20, “there are also deeper consequences for the region if this crisis continues.” </p>
<p>But Australia’s priorities are quite different from the concerns of ordinary Sri Lankans. A new Fisheries Monitoring Centre, jointly launched by the Australian and Sri Lankan governments, will install tracking devices on more than 4,000 Sri Lankan fishing vessels, which can be used in the “early identification” of “irregular vessel movements”. </p>
<p>Australia’s priority is “supporting Sri Lanka’s efforts to strengthen its border management capacity”, according to a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/22/australia-funds-gps-trackers-on-sri-lanken-fishing-boats-partially-to-deter-people-smugglers">statement</a> from the Australian high commission in Colombo. The centre continues Australia’s historical disregard for the plight of people seeking asylum outside Sri Lanka. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-temporary-visa-system-is-unfair-expensive-impractical-and-inconsistent-heres-how-the-new-government-could-fix-it-185870">Australia's temporary visa system is unfair, expensive, impractical and inconsistent. Here's how the new government could fix it</a>
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<p>These are some of the poorest and most persecuted people in the country, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/26/screened-out-before-arrival-questions-over-legality-of-australias-at-sea-asylum-seeker-rulings">fleeing</a> from Vavuniya, Kilinochi, Mullaithivu and Trincomalee and other Tamil-majority areas ravaged by the civil war. </p>
<p>In recent weeks, people escaping Sri Lanka by boat have been intercepted at sea by Australian authorities and returned without adequate assessments of their asylum claims. The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has previously <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/briefing/2014/1/52cfe2a0fcf/unhcr-seeking-details-reports-boats-forced-australia.html">said</a> that Australia’s “enhanced assessments”, which don’t properly consider individual needs for protection, “potentially place Australia in breach of its obligations under the Refugee Convention and other international law obligations”. </p>
<p>The federal opposition claims boats are arriving in Australia because of the change of government. But people have also been fleeing to other destinations, such as India and the Middle East. Some have relatives in Indian refugee camps; others have family contacts in Tamil Nadu. </p>
<p>As one Tamil activist <a href="https://www.tamilguardian.com/content/fleeing-genocide-torture-and-now-economic-crisis-tamil-refugees-arrive-india">explains</a>: “There is panic and anxiety about tomorrow.” The exodus could continue for quite some time yet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186293/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Niro Kandasamy is a volunteer at the Tamil Refugee Council. </span></em></p>As authorities desperately seek aid, the Sri Lankan crisis continues.Niro Kandasamy, Lecturer in History, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1857642022-06-24T02:49:51Z2022-06-24T02:49:51ZVIDEO: Federal government brings COVID back onto the agenda<p>University of Canberra Professorial Fellow Michelle Grattan and Professor Chris Wallace discuss the week in politics.</p>
<p>They canvass the Albanese government’s reaction to Sri Lankan people smugglers trying to reactivate their trade. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister is heading overseas again, at attend the NATO summit in Madrid. He will also visit Paris to meet Emmanual Macron, and is expected to go to Ukraine to meet with President Zelenskyy, who has warmly welcomed Australia military aid.</p>
<p>Chris and Michelle also discuss this week’s public service shakeup, and the government stepping up its messaging on COVID, which is still costing many lives every week. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Michelle Grattan discusses the political week that was with Chris Wallace, Professor at the University of Canberra.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.