Sri Lanka's Ministry of Higher Education has brought in new measures to make universities responsible for ensuring their graduates can be 'guaranteed' to get jobs anywhere in the world.

See report here.

“If they cannot accomplish this what is the use of having such universities?" Secretary to the ministry Sunil Jayantha Navaratne argues.

Needing to spell out the obvious, Dinidu Hennayake, convenor of the Joint Union of Unemployed Graduates, says:

"Nowhere in the world has a university's academic staff been held responsible for its graduates being unemployed. We see this as a move to palm off the blame to university administration. The government can now say they are no longer responsible."

The problem? Sri Lanka’s governments make outlandish pledges of graduates jobs, but the country’s economy cannot produce them. As Hennayake points out,

"[President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s] 2005 election manifesto promised that 10,000 unemployed graduates would be given jobs under the Tharuna Aruna (Dawn for Youth) programme while also taking measures to fill 23,000 vacancies in the public sector.

"As they failed to honour their promises, by 2011 the number of unemployed graduates has increased to 36,000."

“The [Sri Lankan] authorities continue to execute policies in line with the IMF programme's goals”

- Brian Aitken, head of IMF review mission, Feb 18.

See reports by LBO, The Island and the state-owned Daily News.

Interestingly, the IMF said again this week that there was no “demand driven” inflation of food prices in Sri Lanka.

But see this analysis by LBO of Sri Lanka's food insecurity.

See also our earlier posts,

'Sri Lanka taking its medicine - IMF' (Dec 2010)

'Food for Thought' (Nov 2010)

Sri Lanka swapped a Chinese-made train for the Indian ones to be used on the service when the Galle-Matara high-speed line was inaugurated Wednesday.

The track, destroyed in the 2004 tsunami, has been rebuilt by Indian firm IRCON, and was entirely funded by Indian credit.

The Indian-made locomotives to service the route have arrived in Sri Lanka, but railway officials said they were “not ready”.

So Indian High Commissioner Ashok Kantha and the other dignitaries traveled in a Chinese-made train on the maiden run.

The train hit 100km/h - but started and arrived late.

See LBO’s report here

Photo: R.K.Radhakrishnan/The Hindu

Senior police officers in Tamil Nadu this week dismissed claims that LTTE cadres would attack top political leaders during the forthcoming state Assembly elections

On Sunday The Hindu newspaper quoted Indian intelligence sources as saying the Ministry of Home Affairs had sent alerts about possible attacks.

However, in response to the reports, Director General of Police Letika Saran told reporters Wednesday that the police have confirmed that there were no LTTE elements in Tamil Nadu.

(See the Times of India report here)

Meanwhile, another senior police officer told The Hindu:

“Sri Lankan Tamils staying at [refugee camps] should not be mistaken as LTTE cadre.

“The Government of Sri Lanka wants them to return to their homeland…but the refugees don't want to go back.”

The official added that Sri Lankan Tamils wanting to go to Canada or Australia were not being given exit visas.

Indian engineers are beginning work on three railway track projects in Sri Lanka’s north funded by loans from India.

The three lines are Omanthai-Pallai, Madhu Church-Tallaimannar and Medawachchiya-Mannar (via Madhu). See map here.

IRCON International Limited, a company of the Ministry of Railways in India, has been given the contract.

See the Daily Mirror’s report here.

More than 200 engineers, technicians and supervisors from India would eventually be employed on the three projects. A similar number of local staff would be employed, and the labourers will all be Sri Lankan.

100 Indian stafff are already in the country, having worked on tracks in Galle-Matara link in the south, also funded through Indian loans.

Meanwhile, the first batch of Indian-manufactured engines have arrived in Sri Lanka, PTI reports.

The Export-Import bank of India (Exim) has signed an agreement with Sri Lanka to provide a line of credit worth $416.39 million for the three projects.

See Business Standard’s report here.

Against the many crises the Tamil people in Sri Lanka face today, perhaps the most grievous is lack of effective representation. The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) continues to claim, implicitly and explicitly, the role of chief advocate, but in practice has instead left it to other Tamil and international actors, including those in the Diaspora, to articulate the Tamils’ urgent needs and difficulties.

The TNA’s reluctance to vigorously articulate Tamil grievances on a range of self-evident contemporary issues inevitably raises serious questions regarding their ability, indeed their willingness, to accurately and effectively represent the Tamil nation’s interests and aspirations in any wider discussion on a political settlement.

Since the end of the armed conflict, the Tamil people in Sri Lanka continue to suffer humanitarian deprivation and political and economic marginalisation in their homeland. The Tamils expected nothing else from the Sinhala-dominated state, but any electoral mandate granted the TNA was linked solely to expectations the party would speak for them on the global stage.

The TNA was the formed in 2001 as the result of a growing consensus amongst the larger Tamil parties that there was a need for a united voice to articulate Tamil interests and aspirations. It is worth recalling that in the late nineties some of its key constituent parties were partners with President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s government – even as she unleashed another catastrophic military campaign on the Tamils in Jaffna, first, and then Vanni.

The Tamil people nonetheless embraced the TNA on the basis of its new principled position on the Tamil nation’s struggle  – set out clearly in their manifestos of 2001 and 2004, for example. Moreover, it was their preparedness to faithfully project the views of the Tamil people on the international stage that lent them their legitimacy – proved not only in general elections but in local ones too. Popular support did not come from securing crumbs from the Sinhala state, but from forcefully advocating Tamil grievances and aspirations on the international stage.

Yet since the end of the war, the TNA - except for some of its (more junior) MPs - has either been muted or feeble in its protests over the deprivations continuing to be visited by the Sinhala state on the Tamil people. Instead, the TNA is leaving it international human rights groups, Diaspora organisations and other local actors, such as religious figures and even some Sinhala voices, to keep the Tamils’ difficulties alive in the global conscience.

The on-going detention of Tamils held without charge, the state’s arbitrary restrictions on economic and social activity and the military’s continued refusal to allow resettlement of hundreds of thousands of Tamils in their properties are amongst issues on which the TNA was once forcefully vocal, but is now largely silent on. These are nonetheless being taken up by others, but the TNA seems content to limit itself to vague ‘discussions’ with the Sri Lankan state – something they know full well will ultimately prove futile.

Even amid the recent wave of paramilitary terror unleashed in the Jaffna peninsula, the TNA became active only after the main Sinhala opposition party, the UNP, had taken up the issue. Crucially, after the mass slaughter of Tamil civilians in 2009, what ought to be a key issue for Tamil representatives – accountability for war crimes – is explicitly being avoided.

There is no denying that Sri Lanka is dangerous place for those calling for accountability on war crimes, and TNA leaders have explained their silence on these terms, as the Wikileaked US cable of January 2010 shows. But if this issue, which is receiving growing global attention, is a no go area, it is difficult to comprehend how the TNA would effectively take up the political aspirations of the Tamil nation – the subject of over 60 years of strife in Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, the TNA is largely silent on the myriad day-to-day deprivations which the US cable quotes it as saying the Tamils in the Northeast are more concerned about.

Fear is understandable, but it cannot be an excuse for silence. Those who put themselves forward to speak for an oppressed people do so wilfully – aware not only of the risks, but the magnitude of responsibility such a role carries. The political history of the Tamil nation, and those of struggles across the world, is marked by those who have risen to that challenge. Amid repression, courage is sine qua non for legitimacy. The dangers of having no representation, meanwhile, are greatly surpassed by the consequences of having a passively submissive one.

'Thulli Thulli' is a great number from the Kollywood box office smash hit starring Kamal Hassan and Radhika. Sung by the illustrious S.P. Balasubramaniam and S. Janaki, it is a loving lullaby intended for the heroine of the film.

Notably, this song was composed by Ilaiyaraaja purely in Madhyamavathi raagam, a raaga which he has very commonly used for his hypnotic lullabies in other films.

The song starts with a humming and a short aalapanai session between S.P.B. and S. Janaki.

That vocal introduction, roughly a minute and a half, is perhaps the best crash course for this particular raaga as it provides you with all you need in order to understand the flavour of it. Once you listen to it ten to fifteen times, you will most probably be able to recognize Madhyamavathi easily in the future.

Listening to this song does spur the listener on to get their hands on this film in order to find out more, which is every film director's dream - Kamal Hassan's superb acting certainly makes it worth the while!

Who needs heaven when it is right here, right now, in your own space, where you can tune into Raaja's music.

Watch the song below:

The film 'Mouna Ragam' by hit filmmaker Mani Ratnam was a massive blockbuster in the 80's.

Often described as Mani Ratnam's breakthrough film, it depicts Revathi as a carefree spirit who unwillingly marries Mohan in order to satisfy her parents. Mohan is forced to face up to Revathi's past and the pitfalls that come with it.

Watch a classic scene from the movie:

When Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS) called upon literary figures to boycott this year’s Galle Literary Festival, they were undoubtedly prepared to face the ire of the Sri Lankan state. What they would not have anticipated was the angry response provoked from event organisers and a small but prominent group of liberal advocates in Sri Lanka. What was particularly striking about the backlash was the hypocrisy inherent to the arguments about free speech and inter-ethnic harmony marshalled in defence of the GLF.

Sri Lanka’s unabashedly repressive government is desperately trying to feign a situation of normalcy whilst ruthlessly suppressing criticism and dissent (quite apart from its continued visitation of deprivations on the island’s Tamils). The torching of the Lanka-e-News office is but the latest in several years of attacks on critical media.

As such, any internationally promoted event on the island – entertainment, sports or, in this case, literary celebration – undoubtedly directly serve the regime’s interests. Quite apart from furnishing it with international legitimacy, they help the cash-strapped state attract foreign tourists.

The claim that "the government has nothing to do with [such events]" could have been made in the case of every repressive state (remember the international boycott of sports events in Apartheid South Africa?) and turns on denying the wider contribution of such events towards the state's international image. (See also senior government official Rajiva Wijesingha's comment here). As RSF chief editor Gilles Lordet pointed out, "Galle is one of the main tourist towns and [from here] you could imagine there that everything is fine in the country, but that's not the reality."

Ironically, whilst actually having said almost nothing about Sri Lanka’s repression either during orafter the war, the GLF’s organisers and its supporters didn’t respond to the logic of the RSF-JDS petition. Instead they attacked the boycott call as itself an attempt to stifle free speech. It was, of course, nothing of the sort: the petition was simply a principled appeal – it was up to the festival’s participants to either respond or ignore.

As it happens, some leading literary figures did not turn up. Nobel laureate Turkish-born Orhan Pamuk and Kiran Desai pulled out first, and later so did South African novelist Damon Galgut, who explicitly linked his no-show to both the RSF-JDS appeal and Sri Lanka’s conduct. These developments, however, neither provoked a rethink by the organisers, nor any support for these actions.

Instead, the GLF’s defenders focussed on ridiculing and downplaying the RSF-JDS petition. In doing so, their efforts became a de-facto defence of the Sri Lankan state and its conduct, and have thus served to add force to Colombo’s repression and limit its victims’ ability to resist.

Moreover, while defending the GLF, festival co-curator Shyam Selvadurai allowed himself to be exploited as a poster boy for a fictional inter-racial harmony in Sri Lanka. His assertion that the GLF is the “voice of plurality, tolerance and multiculturalism” read like a government pamphlet. His protest that the event is “not a carnival for the rich” (some tickets cost $50) did nothing to address the wider implications of staging an international event in a country where state-led majoritarianism is fast deepening.

The claim the GLF is a rare bastion of free speech in Sri Lanka is itself simply disingenuous. Since its inception in 2007, the GLF has focused on the celebration of literary works and writers. The festival, which began amidst the resumption of Sri Lanka’s military campaign and an unfolding humanitarian crisis in the Northeast, has never been a forum for rebellion against Sri Lanka’s suppression of free speech. Instead such issues are sidelined into fringe meetings on human rights and the occasional speech, such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s this year. (See pictures from the event here.)

Adichie's view is that "the way to deal with bad speech is to talk about it."  But the GLF’s is only marginally concern with defending free speech. Indeed, nothing exemplifies this more than the case of Prageeth Eknaligoda, a cartoonist critical of the government. The anniversary of his ‘disappearance’ in 2010 coincides with the GLF. It was even suggested his wife could use the event to publicise his case. She was reduced to wandering about the venue with her sixteen year old son, handing out leaflets. As she later told the BBC: "I'm not 100% satisfied with our trip to Galle as I expected to speak to the whole crowd, at least for five minutes."

The assertion that the RSF-JDS boycott call would prevent international media coverage of such supposed resistance to Sri Lanka’s repression could not be more false. International media reports about the boycott call – and the exit of key speakers - raised far more attention about Sri Lanka’s conduct than those covering the festival itself – indeed, the latter usually only touched briefly on it.

Meanwhile, another suggestion, that the GLF is about literature, rather than the controversial pursuit of media, again missed the point of the boycott call: it was against the event’s legitimising the Sri Lankan regime’s wider repression, not literature per se.

The distinction between media and literature is not one shared by the Sri lankan state anyway – as exemplified by the police’s torching of the Tamil literary works and historic manuscripts in the Jaffna library in 1981. Consider also Sri Lanka’s Sinhala-Buddhist ideological policing of history textbooks and other works. As British writer Juliet Coombes told the AFP, ""Sri Lankans like to talk about their loss of freedom in private, but not through literary works or in newspaper columns."

Until the Sri Lankan state ends its repression, any international event in the island to celebrate literature or anything else contributes to the veil of legitimacy for it to continue. As such, it is the deeply symbolic value of such events that serves the regime’s interests. One attack on the RSF-JDS petition admonished them saying: 'Events like GLF are sadly rare. Let us enjoy them in peace’. This argument encapsulates the contempt for the past and ongoing suffering and persecution of the Tamils in the island that celebrations like the GLF embody. 

Bosnian Serbs denied the Red Cross access to the eastern town of Srebrenica in July 1995 to hide the ongoing massacre of some 8,000 Muslim civilians, a witness said this week.

See report on the trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic here.

In 2009, Sri Lanka also blocked the Red Cross (ICRC) from accessing the northern enclave in Tamil civilians were being massacred by shelling by its forces.

See the BBC's report (Jan 16) here, and CNN's report (Jan 27) here.

On March 1, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee appealed for Sri Lanka to allow the civilians to escape the killing zone. This is what he said:

“The Sri Lankan government should use the ceasefire offer by the LTTE to evacuate all civilians caught in the crisis. Seventy thousand or more more civilians are trapped there ... [Also] Colombo should allow international organisations like the ICRC to work there."

However, Sri Lanka refused both requests.

This is what Pierre Krähenbühl, ICRC director of operations said in mid-April:

"The situation is nothing short of catastrophic. I cannot remember ... as much concentrated pain and exposure to violence with very, very minimal possibilities to reach anywhere that could be called safe."

See AP's report here.

This is what Krähenbühl said on May 15, 2009:

"Our staff are witnessing an unimaginable humanitarian catastrophe [in Mullaitivu]”

See the ICRC’s statement here.

For a chronology of the bloodbath, see a selection of TamilNet reports from January - May 2009 here.

The President of India’s BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), Nitin Gadkari, said last week that his party would take up the miseries of Sri Lanka’s Tamils at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR).

The BJP would also raise the issue in India’s Parliament, where it has 165 seats, he told a party event in Tamil Nadu on Saturday January 30.

Arguing that the Sri Lankan Tamils’ plight is not an issue for Tamil Nadu alone, Mr. Gadkari said:

"We always support the demand of Sri Lankan Tamils for getting fundamental rights. They are part of our family."

Saying that India’s former BJP-led government had adopted the “correct approach” towards the Sri Lankan Tamil question, Mr. Gadkari criticized the present Congress-led government, in which Tamil Nadu’s DMK is a partner, for “furthering their selfish interests” in this regard.

The BJP-led NDA coalition governed India from 1998 till 2004, when it lost power to the Congress-led UPA alliance.

Sri Lanka's peace process began with a Norwegian-brokered ceasefire agreement in 2002. Colombo resumed its war against the LTTE in 2006, with the support of India and the United States.

See Indian Express’s reports here and here.

"[Sri Lanka’s] export earnings, as a percentage of GDP, have been falling for years. So the first thing for Sri Lanka is to boost its exports to where it was 10 years ago.”

- IMF Asia Pacific Director Anoop Singh. (See The Island’s report here.)

Interestingly, ten years ago Sri Lanka was gripped by high-intensity armed conflict.

And, as the IMF’s chart (click more below) shows, Sri Lanka’s export/GDP ratio today is the same as in 1987 - when the JVP’s second insurgency erupted, and the IPKF intervention began.

While Sri Lanka’s Central Bank says export earnings would grow strongly in 2011, the National Chamber of Exporters recently said it would not be able to deliver half of the Central Bank’s expectations.

The exporters blame growing energy costs (for their production) and the strengthening rupee (making their products expensive in the global market).

See ‘Why Sri Lanka’s exporters are gloomy’

Meanwhile, what exactly does the IMF want Sri Lanka to do? Diversify export destinations (to Asia from US and EU), and export products (from garments and tea to more sophisticated ones).

(i) Diversifying products

The IMF wants Sri Lanka to move away from primary exports (agriculture) and simple manufactures (garments) to more sophisticated ones.

The IMF’s chart is on the right.

But interestingly, this is what President Mahinda Rajapaksa said in his Independence Day address about his Sinhala-nationalist economic doctrine, ‘Mahina Chintana’:

“Mahinda Chintana shows the way to a strong, self-sufficient economy. What we expect from such an economy is not only to produce a successful business community but also paddy farmers with a good earning capacity.

“We also look towards agriculturists who will get the best prices in the world market by supplying vegetables and fruits, as well as tea, rubber and coconut, and also to industrialists who supply goods that are suited to international standards.

“We look forward to a productive economy that will add value to the produce of our own soil.”

(ii) Diversifying markets

Despite some analysts making much of Colombo’s ‘turn to Asia’, Sri Lanka’s exports continue to go mainly (almost 60%) to the United States and European Union.

Exports to China, India and developing Asian counties are a small proportion.

The IMF’s chart is on the right.

Although Sri Lanka has entered into several bi-lateral and multi-lateral trade agreements with the region, many of them are heavily under utilized, The Island quotes economists – for many years.

The IMF believes that

"Greater regional integration will help Sri Lanka capitalise on Asia’s growth while [product] diversification and sophistication would give scope and lift market share."

But that turns on Sri Lanka's government and exporters responding - and their products winning over consumers in Asia.

Meanwhile, this is the IMF's chart on Sri Lanka's exports as a percentage of GDP. In other words, a measure of how much an export-led economy Sri Lanka's is.

A rough guide to Sri Lankan regimes' approaches to liberalisation since 1970:

1970-1977: Prime Minister Srimavo Bandaranaike’s (SLFP) autarkic regime.

1977-1989: President J.R. Jaywardene’s (UNP) ‘pro-market’ regime. Massive economic liberalisation from 1977 (the regime is a poster-child for the IMF's policies), but the results are shortlived.

(1983: armed conflict begins. But export/GDP ratio has already been falling)

1989-1994: UNP governments of Presidents R. Premedasa and D. B. Wijetunga continue economic liberalization.

1994-2001: So does President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s SLFP government

2001-2004: Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s UNP government. Liberalization expands with renewed force

2005-date: Liberalisation slowed, and reversed, by President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s governments