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SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS

Observatoire pluridisciplinaire

SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS

Magic Maids at Université Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne

https://polity.lk/nadeera-rajapakse-magic-maids-sweeping-up-a-storm-at-the-sorbonne

Magic Maids: Sweeping Up a Storm at the Sorbonne

Nadeera Rajapakse

 

Aug 14, 2025 | Labour

 
 
 

After performing in several theatres across Paris, Eisa Jocson and Venuri Perera bewitched the spectators, students, and startled passers-by at the Pantheon Centre of the University Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne in March 2025. They swept through the halls of the 18th century building, housing the second oldest university in Europe, to embody women migrant domestic workers.


Venuri Perera and Eisa Jocson at the University Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne
Photo credit: Jean-Remy Mallek

Their representation was hailed by an eager audience of economists, historians, philosophers, political scientists, anthropologists, geographers, working on and interested in various related subjects. A roundtable session among scholars and artists, bound by common themes of female labour, exploitation, and agency, was followed by a general discussion between the two dancers and guests.

Among the many compelling insights shared, one particularly resonant idea was that the deepest intellectual understanding often arises through embodied experience. In the novel Expectation, the author describes how this can happen: “suddenly the knowledge arrives, hitting her body before her mind. It spikes her blood, makes her heart race, her palms damp” (Hope 2019: 251). Accordingly, in Magic Maids, resistance is articulated through movement, the dancers physically and symbolically reclaim the figure of the domestic worker. In the following commentary, I will discuss the idea of resistance, its significance in this context, and the narrative power of the performance in reclaiming the idealised image of women.


Roundtable discussion with Emmanuel Charrier (moderator), Jules Ramage (visual artist), Muriel Gilardone (economic historian specialising in gender and economics), Mickaëlle Provost (philosopher), Elodie Bertrand (economic historian, editor of
Routledge Handbook of Commodification).
Photo credit: Jean-Remy Mallek

Firstly, resistance comes in the shape of exposing the disturbing aspects of migration for domestic work. For one, the fundamental contradiction structuring Sri Lanka’s migration economy: the systematic social devaluation of women’s domestic labour against its staggering economic contributions. The state’s reliance on 8.4 billion USD in annual remittances, of which 54% are from domestic workers (CBSL 2023), exists in violent tension with cultural imaginaries that render these workers as ‘demure’, ‘docile’, and ‘disposable’, while being remittance-sending ‘heroines’.

The aesthetic framing of domestic workers as ‘smiling, docile’ figures emerges from deep cultural constructs. The ideal female figure in religious, nationalist, and cultural tropes lacks agency, existing in submission to men or gods (Sreenivasan 1975, de Mel 2001, de Silva 2004). Added to that is a narrow version of “purity” as well as “pedagogies of respectability” (de Alwis 2022). This has translated into general media representations where most Sri Lankan newspaper articles frame migrant workers mostly as either “victims” or “heroines” (Rata Viruwo in Sinhala), denying complex subjectivity. This is just like the female ideal in certain religious representations: they are either pure, chaste, and submissive, or they are all-powerful, destructive goddesses. The Vessantara Jātaka’s ideal of female self-sacrifice finds an echo in the state rhetoric celebrating “heroines” sending remittances, making resilience and silent endurance the most acclaimed qualities in “good” maids (de Silva 2004).

In keeping with economic market logic, the supply of migrant labour is endless, coming from many South Asian nations competing with one another, whereas demand from employers (mostly in the Middle East) powerfully dictates all terms of employment. Hence, women migrant workers are disposable, easily replaceable. The dancers, Jocson and Perera, recount discovering “24 nails driven into her body, like a living voodoo doll”, referring to a real experience of a migrant worker. Again, the contradiction is made obvious: the horrific exploitation of bodies that literally constitute the nation’s economic lifeline. Sri Lanka’s 1.2 million migrant domestic workers generate about 30% of total remittances, 6.7% of GDP (World Bank 2023). And yet, the institutional recognition of the value of their labour remains an uphill struggle: only in 2020 was the promise made to upgrade domestic work to the skilled labour category (Mudugamuwa 2020), while standard employment contracts under the Foreign Employment Act, and ILO Convention 189 ratification still do not take full account of domestic work.

Venuri Perera and Eisa Jocson shedding docility, resisting purity.
Photo credit: Jean-Remy Mallek

These institutional failures mirror the “social reproduction paradox”, i.e., the simultaneous economic reliance on and symbolic annihilation of care work under financialised capitalism (Elson 2012). In the course of their performance, Jocson and Perera narrate: “even if you hit her, she may say ‘hit me baby, one more time’”, laying bare the paradox where ‘docile’ workers must be simultaneously productive enough to remit and disposable enough to replace.

Another revelation from the duo is about racialised market hierarchies. The performance’s mocking comparison between “a Filipina” and “a cheaper Sri Lankan” exposes what Bridget Anderson (2000) terms “hierarchies of servitude” in global care chains. Recruitment agencies actively cultivate this in terms of salary differentials: a Filipina worker is paid double the wage received monthly by a Sri Lankan domestic worker in many Middle Eastern countries (Esim and Smith 2004); skills framing: Most Sri Lankan agencies advertise workers as “more submissive and easier to mould” vs. Filipinas as commanding “more respect” (Jureidni and Moukarbel 2004: 6). Above all, “Sri Lankan” or “Sri Lanki” is synonymous with domestic worker, so much so that if the domestic worker is from the Philippines, the question would be “Is your Sri Lankan a Filipina?” (Jureidni and Moukarbel 2004: 5). Jocson and Perera rephrase the question for the French audience (and French employers), asking where their “Sri Lankan” is from: Algeria? Romania? The Republic of Guinea? 

Discussing embodied resistance: dancers and participants at University Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne.
Photo credit: Leonie Seince, Maya Abou Imad, Iris Chaput, Lucie Liu

The devaluation of migrant workers is seen in other disturbing institutional shortcomings and exclusions. While Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has intensified reliance on migrant earnings—remittances cover 128% of the trade deficit according to the Central Bank (CBSL 2023)—the 2023 national Budget allocated only a paltry amount to migrant welfare; only a handful of returnee workers access reintegration programs (IOM 2023) and the majority of migrant households do not use bank accounts, especially for remittances. Most have no pension contributions despite working close to a decade abroad (ILO 2021).

On the other hand, restrictive regulation is palmed more on migrants than on markets. In the SLBFE curriculum, mandatory household training encourages submission (Handapangoda 2023, Jureidni and Moukarbel 2004). There are bans on pregnancy, marriage (Ireland 2018), and unionisation (Amnesty International 2025), while non-payment of wages, non-compliance with labour laws, and non-respect of basic worker rights go unpunished.

By framing domestic work as ‘natural’ feminine traits rather than skilled labour, global labour markets exclude them from formal economic accounting. Then the idealised yet paradoxical requirements are piled on: maids need to perform docility and as a result, suppress emotions for job security. They need to channel productivity to super-human levels: An average workday in Gulf Cooperation Council countries is 17 hours (ILO 2021), which they endure stoically, leading to chronic health conditions.

Lynch documents how Sri Lankan migrant workers face “moral censure for transgressing spatial boundaries” (2007: 92), stigmatised as “fallen” women for monetising domesticity while remaining culturally obligated to perform it, unpaid, at home. These contradictions add up, with the state praising women’s economic contributions while denying them labour rights, which Jayawardena describes as “patriarchal ventriloquism” (2016: 24).

Venuri Perera, wielding the brooms wildly
(Still from video footage)
Credit: Leonie Sence, Iris Chaput, Maya Abou Imad, Lucie Liu and Theo Milon

But then, the Magic Maids strike. Jocson and Perera viscerally demonstrate that the same bodies disciplined into docility can erupt into wild, powerful dancing, symbolising the latent agency within apparent submission. This agency becomes discernible, palpable, when we shed the gendered, capitalist lenses above. Despite moral, physical, and institutional risks, which are well-documented, Sri Lankan women continue migrating at unprecedented rates.

This constitutes not merely economic pragmatism, but a strike against the gendered, spatial order. Migrant women transmit subversive “gender remittances” (Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011) that slowly corrode patriarchal ideology in sending communities. These narratives weaponise the very mobility that moralists decry. Their efforts have led to movements, like the ILO C189 campaign, which have forced recognition of domestic work as skilled labour providing potent examples of “capability metrics” (Piper 2017). In Sri Lanka, returnee workers now demand pension contributions, not as supplicants, but as creditors of a national economy that they sustain.

By migrating to take up work that challenges traditional ideals of domestic femininity, and through subtle defiance of religious or moral ideals that confine them to obedience and purity, women migrant domestic workers show resistance.

The performance epitomises the central contradiction: these women are economically indispensable, yet socially expendable. Their labour props up GDP while their contribution is undervalued, a paradox sustained by gendered architectures. Yet as the performance’s climactic shift from slow, robotic sweeping to wails, vigour, and piercing eye contact reminds us, even the most disciplined bodies harbour the capacity to disrupt the scripts written upon them. The true measure of feminist praxis lies not in lamenting oppression, but in tracing, as this commentary has attempted, the fault lines where agency erupts through the cracks of constraint. 

Venuri Perera, defying norms of docility
(Still from video footage)
Credit: Leonie Sence, Iris Chaput, Maya Abou Imad, Lucie Liu and Theo Milon


Nadeera Rajapakse
is an assistant professor at the University of Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne in the History of Economic Thought and in English for Economics. She is a member of the PHARE (Philosophy, History and the Analysis of Economic Representation) research department and her current areas of research include development and identity, women migrant domestic workers, and migration and identity.

 

References
Amnesty International. (2025). Locked In. Left out. The Hidden Lives of Kenyan Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia. London: Amnesty International. Available at https://www.amnesty.nl/content/uploads/2025/05/Amnesty-Kenya-Saudi-workers.pdf?x69908

Amnesty International. (2014). “My Sleep is My Break”: Exploitation of Migrant Domestic Workers in Qatar. Available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde22/004/2014/en/

Anderson, Bridget. (2000). Doing the Dirty Work? The global politics of domestic labour. London: Zed Books.

Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL). (2023). Annual Economic Review. Available at https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/publications/economic-and-financial-reports/annual-economic-review/annual-economic-review-2023

De Alwis, Malathi. (2022). “The Production and Embodiment of Respectability: Gendered Demeanours in Colonial Ceylon”. In Kanchana Ruwanpura, Caryll Tozer, Chulani Kodikara, Sonali Deraniyagala, Vraie Cally Balthazar (Eds.). Her Smile Lingers. Malathi de Alwis Selected Essays. Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies.

De Mel, Neloufer. (2001). Women & the Nation’s Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Sri Lanka. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

De Silva, Neluka. (2004). The Gendered Nation: Contemporary Writings from South Asia, London: Sage.

Department of Technical Education and Training. (2023). National Competency Standards (NCS) Catalogue. Colombo: DTET. Available at http://www.dtet.gov.lk/nvq_standards

Elson, Diane. (2012). “Social Reproduction in the Global Crisis: Rapid Recovery or Long-Lasting Depletion?” In Peter Utting, Shahra Razavi, and Rebecca Varghese Buchholz (Eds.). The Global Crisis and Transformative Social Change (63-80). Palgrave Macmillan

Esim, Simel, and Monica Smith (Eds). (2004). Gender and Migration in Arab States. The case of domestic workers. Beirut: International Labour Organization. Available at https://www.ilo.org/publications/gender-and-migration-arab-states-case-domestic-workers

Handapangoda, Wasana. (2023). “Migrant domestic workers in the Arabian Gulf”. Ingenere (2 February): https://www.ingenere.it/en/articles/migrant-domestic-workers-arabian-gulf

Hope, Anna. (2020). Expectation. Black Swan.

International Organization for Migration (IOM). (2023). “Chapter 5 – Migrant-facing Information Initiatives”. In IRIS Handbook for Governments on Ethical Recruitment and Migrant Worker Protection. IOM, Geneva. Available at https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/pub2023-034-l-iris-handbook-for-govt-ch5.pdf

International Labour Organization (ILO). (2021). Making Decent Work a Reality for Domestic Workers: Progress and Prospects Ten Years after the Adoption of the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189), Geneva: International Labour Organization. Available at https://www.ilo.org/publications/major-publications/making-decent-work-reality-domestic-workers-progress-and-prospects-ten

Ireland, Patrick. (2018). “The limits of sending-state power”. International Political Science Review 39 (3): 322-337.

Jayawardena, Kumari. (2016). Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. New York: Verso Books.

Jayawardena, Kumari and Rachel Kurian. (2015). Class, Patriarchy and Ethnicity on Sri Lankan Plantations: Two Centuries of Power and Protest. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.

Jureidni, Ray, and Nayla Moukarbel. (2004). “Female Sri Lankan domestic workers in Lebanon: A case of ‘contract slavery’?” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30 (4): 581-607.

Levitt, Peggy, and Deepak Lamba-Nieves. (2011). “Social Remittances Revisited.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37 (1):1-22.

Lynch, Caitrin. (2007). Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka’s Global Garment Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Piper, Nicola. (2017). “Migration and the SDGs.” Global Social Policy, 17 (2): 231-238.

Sreenivasan, M.A. (1975). “Panchakanya – An Age-old Benediction”. In Devaki Jain (Ed.). Indian Women (51-58). New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India.

Mudugamuwa, Maheesha. (2020). “Skills development for domestic workers. From Housemaid to Housekeeping assistant”. The Morning (23 September): https://www.themorning.lk/articles/98732

World Bank. (2023). “Personal remittances, received (% of GDP) – Sri Lanka”. World Bank Open Data – Sri Lanka. Available at https://data.worldbank.org/country/sri-lanka

Sri Lanka’s NPP Government: From system change to structural compliance

Article by IFRI: Institut Français des Relations Internationales

https://www.ifri.org/en/studies/sri-lankas-npp-government-system-change-structural-compliance

In September 2024, a relative outsider to Sri Lanka’s two-party-dominated political system, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, won the presidential elections. The anti-establishment, populist movement he represented, the National People’s Power (NPP), went on to receive an overwhelming mandate in the November 2024 general elections, winning 159 seats in a 225-member parliament.

Prix Émile Guimet 2025 – littérature asiatique

https://actualitte.com/article/124235/prix-litteraires/tokyo-colombo-seoul-les-laureats-du-prix-emile-guimet-2025

Le Sri-Lankais Shehan Karunatilaka remporte le prix dans la catégorie roman pour Les Sept Lunes de Maali Almeida (Calmann Lévy), tandis que le duo sud-coréen Lee Dong-Eun et Jeong Yi-Yong est primé en bande dessinée pour Hana (Éditions Ça et Là). Le prix étudiant Inalco pour le manga a été attribué à Taiyô Matsumoto pour Tokyo, ces jours-ci, Tome 1 (Kana). La remise des prix s’est tenue au musée Guimet à Paris, sous la présidence de Laure Adler.

Le roman lauréat, Les Sept Lunes de Maali Almeida, met en scène un photographe de guerre sri-lankais assassiné, revenu d’entre les morts pour élucider son propre meurtre et livrer des clichés susceptibles d’infléchir le cours de la guerre civile qui ravage Colombo en 1990. Un récit entre polar métaphysique et satire politique, salué pour sa modernité narrative et sa force littéraire, déjà reconnu par le Booker Prize 2022.

https://www.livreshebdo.fr/article/les-laureats-des-prix-emile-guimet-de-litterature-asiatique-et-etudiant-inalco-pour-le

New publication

Beyond the Binary: The Experiences of Genderqueer People in Colombo

https://www.ices.lk/publications-1/beyond-the-binary%3A-the-experiences-of-genderqueer-people-in-colombo

This paper explores the vibrant and complex landscape of genderqueer
identities in Sri Lanka, shedding light on the experiences, artistic expressions,
and cultural challenges faced by non-binary people navigating both local and
global frameworks. Through the lens of artists, activists, and community
members, the study interrogates how gender fluidity is both marginalized
and reimagined within a predominantly cisnormative Sri Lankan society.
Central to the discussion is the tension between local cultural traditions and
the increasingly visible discourse around queer identities, particularly in the
wake of contemporary legal and social changes.
Drawing primarily on interviews with local genderqueer people in
Colombo, the paper examines how many defy binary gender norms and
construct alternative personal spaces where non-binary people can belong.
Furthermore, this work illuminates the ongoing struggles within the Sri
Lankan LGBTQ+ community to recognize and embrace gender fluidity, with
younger activists advocating for more inclusive approaches to identity and
visibility. It proposes a more localized and inclusive approach to gender,
urging a shift in public awareness and attitudes. Challenging both the state’s
erasure of gender diversity and the limitations of identity politics, this
research calls for a deeper understanding of how genderqueer lives have
always existed but remain hidden in the island’s margins.

Sri Lanka – 6 months on

https://www.lse.ac.uk/south-asia-centre/events/archive/Spring-Term-2025

London School of Economics Event – Sri Lanka 6 months on

As the ‘AKD’ government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake marks 6 months, how is Sri Lanka now? This panel will discuss the country’s current economic and political situation as it recovers from a period of severe crisis and, looking ahead, what needs to be done in different sectors domestically, regionally and globally for Sri Lanka to emerge as a confident and stable power.

SPEAKERS: Harsha Amarasekera PC is a leading commerical lawyer, and Chairman, Colombo Port City Economic Commission, alongside several other leading positions in the private sector; Farzana Haniffa (@FaraFarout) is Professor of Sociology, University of Colombo, and Member, Human Rights Commission, Sri Lanka; Dr Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu (@PSaravanamuttu), an LSE alumnus, is Founder and Executive Director, Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo.

DISCUSSANT: Dr Alan Keenan (@akeenan23) is Senior Consultant for Sri Lanka, International Crisis Group, London, where he coordinates and contributes to research, advocacy and publications on Sri Lanka.    

CO-CHAIRS: Naufel Vilcassim is Director, LSE South Asia Centre (@SAsiaLSE) and Professor of Marketing at LSE; Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre (@SAsiaLSE).

Sri Lanka: from debt default to transformative growth

https://odi.org/en/publications/sri-lanka-from-debt-default-to-transformative-growth-second-edition

An expanded essay series charting Sri Lanka’s path beyond stabilisation towards lasting economic prosperity.

In 2022, Sri Lanka faced its worst economic crisis since independence, culminating in a sovereign debt default.

Building upon the insights of the acclaimed first edition, this second edition revisits Sri Lanka’s remarkable economic journey, now extending to early 2025. Following the unprecedented sovereign debt default of 2022, Sri Lanka’s stabilisation has surpassed expectations, yet the challenge remains: to transcend mere recovery and forge a path towards sustained, transformative growth. Edited by Ganeshan Wignaraja and Dirk Willem te Velde, this expanded collection offers critical analysis and actionable policy recommendations.

Featuring insights from 24 prominent Sri Lankan and international experts, this edition includes an updated introduction and a new, pivotal essay advocating for a robust growth plan to prevent future crises. The 15 essays collectively offer 27 refined and expanded policy proposals designed to propel Sri Lanka towards long-term economic resilience and prosperity.

Download the full collection of essays below to delve deeper into these critical topics and discover actionable strategies to help Sri Lanka achieve its economic potential.

 

Photo story – Malayaga Makkal Walk “Tracing our roots to win our rights”

https://express.adobe.com/page/FjB2hx6PCTXoc/?ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vikalpa.org%2Farticle%2F42592%3Ffbclid%3DIwY2xjawI5MMdleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHS2rgo8nwcT-1k41OaFp-RT7-gvqVBnDH_aOR6RDbI4zX4GQyw13-_ppIA_aem_xabt_AfK-Xva3-H4PH5rWg&embed_type=overlay&context=lightbox-expand

2023 – “Walk” from Mannar to Matale to commemorate the 200-year arrival of the Plantation community to Sri Lanka along that road. On the way, there were gatherings at Thalaimannar, Thalaimannar to Pesalai, Pesalai to Mannar Town, Mannar Town to Murunkan, Murunkan to Madhu, Madhu, Madhu Junction to Cheddikulum, Cheddikulum to Medawachchiya, Medawachchiya, Medawachchiya to Mihintale, Mihintale to Tirappane, Tirappane to Kekirawa, Kekirawa to Dambulla, Dambulla, Dambulla to Nalanda, Nalanda to Matale.

Credits:

Sampath Samarakoon/ vikalpa.org

BNF – France-South Asia, shared heritage online

https://heritage.bnf.fr/france-southasia/en/homepage

Resources on France and South Asia’s shared heritage.

Power structures and spaces / Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Ceylon was mostly known for its strategic trading position in the Indian Ocean. European powers, the Portuguese (1505-1658), the Dutch (1658-1796) and the British (1815-1948) colonized the island. The attempts by the French to establish a trading post in Ceylon began when French naval expeditions prospered during the reign of King Louis XIV.

The French crown in Ceylon

The French East Indies Company, created in 1664, soon had the monopoly of French commerce and navigation in the Indian Ocean. In 1670 the French Minister of Finance Jean Baptiste Colbert summoned a naval force under the official name of “Squadron of Persia”. This was the first military squadron sent to the Indian Ocean, entrusted to Admiral Jacob Blanquet de la Haye. A few years earlier, the French East Indies Company had recruited François Caron, who had previously served the Dutch East India Company for 30 years. Caron was French by birth and Dutch by adoption. As Commander of the Dutch East Indies (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie -VOC) forces he succeeded in capturing Negambo (on the west coast of Ceylon) in 1644 from the Portuguese. When he offered his services to the French, he declared that he knew of a suitable location for them to establish their maritime base, and suggested Trincomalee, on the east coast of Ceylon. Caron became the Director General of the French East Indies Company. 

It was thus that the squadron reached the bay of Trincomalee in March 1672. The king of Kandy, in the central highlands of Ceylon, King Rajasinghe II was engaged in getting rid of the Portuguese. He had signed the Kandyan Treaty of 1638 with the Dutch, which secured the terms under which they would cooperate in defending the Kingdom from the Portuguese. Caron knew that King Rajasinghe was at war with the Dutch and made use of this situation to gain favor with the King. He negotiated with the King, offering French help to oust the Dutch, while requesting to occupy the bay of Trincomalee in return.

French at the court of King Rajasinghe II

The French saw Trincomalee as an important target in their greater aim of controlling trade in the Indian Ocean. Also known as Koddiyar Bay, it had received high praise for its beauty and location by countless travelers and explorers of all origins. The French too were prolific in their descriptions of the bay, as the journal entries of various officials show. Logbooks from the French National Archives provide insightful accounts of their encounters in Ceylon. The French were entranced by the customs and behavior of the natives in the Kandyan court. One of them is noteworthy. Sieur de La Nérolle arrived in 1672 and left behind a living legacy. He was part of an expedition which departed from La Rochelle in 1670 and arrived at Trincomalee Bay in 1672. The expedition failed to secure control of the Bay, although the French connection with Ceylon was not entirely severed. The members of de la Haye’s delegation sent to the Kandyan King’s court remained in Ceylon and the story of Lieutenant de La Nérolle, whose descendants today belong to the 12th generation, testifies to lasting connections surpassing trade or colonial ties. It emphasizes the impact the French strategies had on Sri Lanka’s history and identity. 

King Rajasinghe II officially handed over Trincomalee Bay to the French. On the 17th of June 1672 the French flag was hoisted on the Sun Island. However, the French occupation of the bay did not last long. De la Haye’s attempt to take over Trincomalee was foiled by the Dutch.

Second French naval expedition to Ceylon

A century after this expedition, many French governors and generals serving in India brought up the importance of Trincomalee again. General de Bussy and Admiral de Suffren pointed out that it was to be regretted that the French possessed no harbor equal to Trincomalee. In 1781, a French squadron was sent to the Coromandel Coast under the command of the experienced naval officer Suffren. In August 1782, his fleet anchored in front of Trincomalee in Ceylon. The French had joined up with Hyder Ali, the leader of Mysore, to counter the British. In fact, out of the five battles fought between Suffren’s fleet and the English fleet led by Admiral Edward Hughes in the Indian Ocean, the Battle of Trincomalee of August 1782 is the most well-known.

The second French expedition was carried out not through negotiations, but through battle. It also had a different focus. It aimed to destroy the English squadron, and to seize the English establishments in India. Unlike their first expedition, the French won the second battle for Trincomalee. However, their control of Ceylon was short-lived. As a result of the 1783 Peace Treaty in Europe, they had to restore Trincomalee back to the Dutch. The political forces in Europe, once again grasped the control of Ceylon from their hands. Then in 1795 it was taken over by the British.

Published in February 2025

 

Question – poem in Tamil and English

https://polity.lk/question-cheran-rudhramoorthy-trans-anushiya-ramaswamy

Question – கேள்வி  

Cheran Rudhramoorthy (trans. Anushiya Ramaswamy)

 

The moon, shredded, hangs on
the fence; midnight.
Yama’s messengers,
who rend lives,
tread on the falling leaves.

Demons buried in the well
in the corner of the backyard
brace to emerge now.

On this night that dissolves in grief,
without losing to slumber,
I pluck my heart and
place it on the table.
The table trembles from
the loud groans dripping with blood.

The heart cools
in the external breeze.
I begin my poem from where
I had stopped.

I have never been grappled
by a poem, like today.
This poem wandered about
in the open space for a long time.

The very beginning of the
poem is a question;
A question about
friends who were murdered,
friends who disappeared.

This poem, born out of
a question,
leaves me suddenly;
As unwoven words and
passion, unstructured by the brain,
outpour,
this poem departs—

It goes around the two-storey house
that lies in the dark,
unwashed even by the full moon;
angrily slams the ancient doors
now locked,
listens intently from beside
the tightened windows.

It melts near the blood stain
smeared on the outer wall,
searches the voices of grief
still clinging to the tall trees;
in the nights,
it follows footprints
on the seashore;
gets drenched in blood
amid the Pandanus thickets.

It wanders over the waves,
prodding the overturned corpses;
Looking for eyes among the
corpses without eyes,
faces amid the corpses
without face,
it is enraged.

It stops hesitantly on a
single slipper thrown
into the street,
the glasses tossed
on the doorstep,
the overturned bike lying
on the street corner.

It is puzzled, unable to comprehend
the reflection in the marble eyes of babies,
born after their father’s death;
carrying the tears of the mothers,
it stumbles and falls down.

Under the gallows,
above the graveyards,
in the corners of camps,
on the tables,
near the pen that is open now,
like before,
in the unfinished lines of a letter,
on the pictures hanging from the wall,
clothes scattered in the room,
the flowerless Portia trees,
the wet Palmyra,
on a single flower on the hair,
it spins on like a top.

In the wind and the expanse,
the closed iron doors,
guns that leak smoke,
the poem slams and asks,
what happened to our children?

நிலவு கிழிந்து தூங்குகிறது
வேலியில்
நள் யாமம்;
உதிர்ந்து கொண்டிருக்கும் இலைகளின் மேல்
நடந்து திரிகின்றனர்
உயிர் திருகும் எமதூதர்.

அடிவளவின் கிணற்றுக்குள்
காலம் காலமாய்ப் புதையுண்டு கிடந்த
பூதங்களும்
இப்போது சிலிர்த்துக்கொண்டு
கிளம்புகின்றன.

துயிலில் தொலையாது
துயரில் கரையும் இன்றைய இரவில்
இதயத்தைப் பிடுங்கி
மேசைமீது வைத்துவிடுகிறேன்
குருதி சொட்டச் சொட்டப்
பெருகும் அதன் ஒலிக் குமுறலில்
கொஞ்ச நேரம் நகுங்குகிறது மேசை.

வெளியுலகின் காற்று வாங்கிக்
குளிர்ந்து போய்விடுகிறது இதயம்

அப்போது
விட்ட இடத்திலிருந்து என்னுடைய
கவிதையைத் தொடங்குகிறேன்

இன்றையைப் போல
என்றைக்கும் ஒரு கவிதைக்காக
நான் உழன்றது கிடையாது
வெளியில்
நெடுநாளாய் அலைந்தது இக் கவிதை

அதனுடைய ஆரம்பமே
ஒரு கேள்விதான்
கொல்லப்பட்ட நண்பர்களைப் பற்றி
காணாமல் போன நண்பர்களைப் பற்றிய
ஒரு பெரிய கேள்வி அது

கேள்வியில் பிறப்பெடுத்த
இந்தக் கவிதை
திடீரென்று என்னைவிட்டுப் பிரிந்துசெல்கிறது
நெய்யப்படாத வார்த்தைகளுடன்
அறிவால் நெறிப்படுத்தப் படாத
மிகையுணர்ச்சியும் சேர்ந்து
பிரவாகம் எடுக்க
இந்தக் கவிதை பிரிந்து செல்கிறது

பௌர்ணமி நிலவிலும்
ஒளி தோயாமல் இருளில் கிடக்கிற
அந்த மாடி வீட்டைச் சுற்றி வருகிறது
இறுகப் பூட்டப்பட்டிருக்கும்
அதனுடைய பழங்காலக் கதவின்மீது
மூர்க்கமாக மோதுகிறது
இறுகிய யன்னல்களுக்கு அருகே சென்று
உன்னிப்பாகக் கேட்கிறது

வெளிச் சுவரில் தெறித்திருக்கும்
குருதிச் சுவட்டருகில் நின்று உருகிறது
வீட்டின் வெளிப்புறம்
ஓங்கிய மரங்களில்
இன்னும் ஒட்டிக்கொண்டிருக்கும்
அவலக் குரல்களில் தேடுகிறது
இரவுகளில்
கடற்கரையில் காலடிச் சுவடுகளைப்
பின்தொடர்ந்து செல்கிறது
தாழம் புதர்களுள் ஒளிந்திருந்து
குருதியில் நனைகிறது

அலைகளுக்கு மேல் அலைகிறது
அவை புரட்டிவிடும் உடல்களைத்
திருப்பித் திருப்பித் தேடுகிறது
கண்கள் இல்லா உடல்களுக்குக்
கண்களையும்
முகம் சிதைந்த உடல்களுக்கு
முகங்களையும் தேடிச் சினக்கிறது

தெருவில் வீசப்பட்டுள்ள
ஒற்றைச் செருப்பின்மீது
வீட்டுப் படிகளில் வீசியெறியப்பட்ட
மூக்குக் கண்ணாடிமீது
தெரு முனையில் புரட்டி விடப்பட்ட
மோட்டார் சைக்கிளின்மீது
தயங்கித் தயங்கி நிற்கிறது

தகப்பன் தொலைந்த பிறகு
பிறந்த குழந்தைகளின்
பளிங்கு போன்ற விழிகளில்
எதிரொலிப்பது என்ன என்று தெரியாமல்
குழம்புகிறது
தாய்மாரின் கண்ணீர்த் துளிகளை
ஏந்திக்கொண்டு செல்கையில்
தலை குப்புற வீழ்கிறது

தூக்கு மரங்களின் கீழ்
புதைகுழிகளின் மேல்
முகாம்களின் கோடிப்புறங்களில்
மேசைமீது இப்போதும்
அப்போது போலவே கிடக்கும்
மூடப்படாத பேனையருகில்
முற்றுப் பெறாத கடித வரிகளில்

சுவரில் தூங்கும் படங்களில்
அறையில் சிந்தியிருக்கும் ஆடைகளில்
பூவாத பூவரசுகளில்
ஈரப் பனையில்
ஓரக் கூந்தலின் ஒற்றை மலரில்

நின்று பம்பரம் போலச் சுழல்கிறது

காற்றிலும் வெளியிலும்
மூடப்பட்ட எல்லா இரும்புக் கதவுகளிலும்
புகை கசியும் எல்லாத் துப்பாக்கிகளிலும்
அறைந்து கேட்கிறது
எங்கள் குழந்தைகளுக்கு என்ன நடந்தது?

1990.

 

Cheran Rudhramoorthy, professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Windsor, is an academic, poet, playwright, and journalist.

Translated from Tamil to English by Anushiya Ramaswamy, professor in English, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, USA.

Image source: https://bit.ly/4hPRvmy

 

Note

Original poem in Tamil published in: Cheran. (2000). Nee Ippozhuthu Irangum Aaru [The River You Are Now Descending Into]. Nagercoil: Kalachuvadu Publications.

Words to Kill a Man, and Free a Man

https://polity.lk/words-to-kill-a-man-and-free-a-man-kanya-d-almeida

 

Words to Kill a Man, and Free a Man

Kanya D’Almeida

 

In the early months of 2012, I inherited two troves of literature. I had been hunting for one of them for years; the other arrived unsolicited.

The first was an archive of the journalistic work of my uncle, Richard de Zoysa, during his career—cut short by his murder in 1990—as a reporter for the Rome-based Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency. 

The second was the unbound, unedited manuscript of an American political prisoner, a former Black Panther named Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz who had been incarcerated in the state of Pennsylvania for nearly four decades.

I was a news reporter myself at the time, employed by the same agency that Richard had been working for when he was killed. I had recently been transplanted from New York City to a desk at IPS’ Washington office, where my bureau chief, an exceptionally sharp, veteran journalist—whose small room on the 14th floor of the National Press Club in DC was primarily occupied by heavy metal filing cabinets jammed with news cuttings and clippings from decades past— kindly allowed me to conscript him into my search for Richard’s dossier.

All my life, Richard had twirled above me like a mobile over a baby’s crib: shifting, wonderful, shadow-casting, and always out of reach. He and my mother, first cousins, had been raised as siblings in the same home. She had witnessed, perhaps more intimately than anyone else, his evolution from a precocious child (whose mind may have bordered on genius) to a kind of cultural titan in Colombo, his presence dominating the stage, his voice crackling through radio broadcasts, his face on television screens reading the evening news—and finally, his byline on the international wire, in dispatches from Sri Lanka.

I had read his poetry and paged through dozens of photo albums documenting his acting career (which began with a very professional adaptation and home production of Hamlet’s soliloquy To Be or Not to Be when he was nine years old) and I had heard stories about stories about stories—but never actually read his journalistic work.

All these articles, I would ask my parents, his colleagues, the Internet—that he was threatened for, followed for, murdered for—where are they?

            Gone? Lost? Scrubbed out?

It was with my excellent bureau chief, both of us huddled over his archaic desktop computer one afternoon, that we managed to extract, from the depths of JSTOR, one of Richard’s pieces entitled ‘Pride Stalks Beneath a Full Moon’. The dateline read “COLOMBO, May 22, 1989”. It was locked behind security passwords and paywalls. While my boss made stern phone calls to the relevant, automated authorities of that impenetrable digital library, I hurled abuse at the screen that kept telling me I lacked the required credentials to access my uncle’s writings.

What we ultimately ended up with—a small cache of articles constructed in the signature IPS style of an inverted pyramid with a buried lede and delivered in Richard’s sparse yet polished prose—felt to me like finding the missing shard in a fragmented family heirloom.

*

A few weeks later (or was it a few weeks earlier?), I received a FedEx envelope containing a 200-page document titled, The Making of a Political Prisoner by Russell Maroon Shoatz. An accompanying note from a recent acquaintance said only that he wished me to review the draft of this autobiography with a view to using it as the basis for a screenplay. The man whose life story was contained in that bulky envelope, my friend explained, was nothing short of jaw-dropping—he’d escaped prison twice in the 1970s, spent over 22 years in solitary confinement, and was a prolific revolutionary theoretician and scholar, revered by The Movement and despised by the authorities who had sworn to preside over his slow death in the Hole. The Hole. Shorthand among prisoners and guards for solitary confinement.

The name ‘Maroon’ was an honorific, a respectful reference to the many thousands of slaves who, on almost every continent, escaped the plantations, formed liberated communities, and lived as free people. His supporters and some of his family believed that a powerful biopic would help to ignite an international campaign for his freedom bid. After all, everyone loves a good story. It would require a significant commitment on my part: to interview Maroon himself, which was complicated by his status as a maximum-security prisoner; and to meet and speak with his tribe—children, comrades, counsel, co-defendants.

I was fresh and green—25 years old, with a ready pen, steeped in American cultural mythology (particularly such vague notions as freedom of speech, or the power of the people, organised and united)—and hungry for meaningful work as a writer.

I was also afraid. The twin revelations of Richard’s past and Maroon’s imagined future—with myself strung between—felt somehow double-edged: the sweet promise that words might be powerful enough to free a man were dogged by the horror that words were dangerous enough to kill a man. 

Both men were stunning writers, in very different ways. Maroon’s chapters read like spoken word, a beautiful language of the streets fine-tuned in the depths of isolation. He grew up in a gang in West Philadelphia, became a community organiser, joined the Panther Party, and stood trial for murder before spending most of his adult life in prison. But his story had no ending, whereas Richard’s seemed to begin at the end—with his own death—and then plough its way painfully backward in time through a dismal chapter of Sri Lanka’s history.

*

All of Richard’s articles I unearthed were published roughly in the first half of 1989 and ceased abruptly on 10 August with the publication of a piece entitled, ‘SRI LANKA: Nearing a Human Rights Apocalypse’. Still, after thirteen years and dozens of reads, the prophetic flavour of that pithy 899-word bulletin sends chills down my spine. The opening paragraphs need little explanation:

Residents of the seaside suburb of Mount Lavinia, three miles from the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, were awakened at around 3:00 AM on Aug. 6 by gunshots.

As the night curfew in force throughout Sri Lanka ended one hour later, the bolder ones ventured out of doors. They found the bodies of six youths – five dead, one dying of gunshot injuries – their hands tied behind their backs, lying on the beach.

The injured boy told them he was from Ganemulla, a small town 25 miles from the capital. Mount Lavinia residents say he accused the Special Task Force (STF) – police commandos – of dragging him from his house, bringing him to Colombo and shooting him.

Killings like this happen daily in southern Sri Lanka, where the security forces are hunting down left-wing rebels from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in a major government drive to wipe out what it calls “subversion”.

This, in a nutshell, was Richard’s beat: piecing together, victim by victim, corpse by corpse, the story of the violent insurgency and still-more-violent counter-insurgency that throttled Sri Lanka in the late 80s. And it wasn’t the first time—the piece took its title from remarks delivered in Parliament on 9 August 1989 by the then-opposition leader Sirimavo Bandaranaike, demanding the creation of a parliamentary committee to look into arrests and indiscriminate killings, which had topped 1,000 just that month:

Bandaranaike, who crushed a JVP-led student insurrection when she was prime minister in 1971, yesterday chose to make a distinction between the JVP and the youth who support it in her apocalyptic statement in Parliament.

“These are our future generations. Why have they resorted to violence? Because they have no education — schools and universities are closed, they have no hope of employment, they see injustice and corruption all around them, she declared.

“If you have no answer except to meet indiscriminate killings with equally brutal reprisals . . . You will build up a monster no-one will be able to control”, Bandaranaike warned.

The article goes on to detail the particular horrors of that time, namely the lawlessness that rendered the entire population either victim or suspect, and the rest terrorised into silence:

Masked men travelling in vehicles without license plates were abducting young men from their homes. Human rights activists say most of the “secret” killings are carried out by plainclothes squads from the regular forces. The government closed down schools in Sinhalese areas in June and followed up by sending the military onto southern campuses July 11.

Members of the campus group “Students for Human Rights” say the 250 students taken into custody were the lucky ones.

“Most of those arrested on campus are still alive, although in detention”, says “Kumar”, a spokesperson for the group. “It is when the students go back to their homes that they are in the greatest danger. The local police or military come for them with a license to kill.”

The “tire treatment” is a common form of punishment meted out to suspected rebels. Villagers and townspeople alike have grown used to the sight of bodies smouldering on public roadways, charred flesh indistinguishable from burning rubber.

Other suspects were blindfolded, tied to trees or lampposts, and shot – often after being tortured.

Under Sri Lanka’s harsh emergency regulations and anti-subversion laws, police or military officers can dispose of dead bodies without autopsies and detain anyone for up to 18 months without producing them in court.

“We have filed hundreds of habeas corpus applications (calling on police to produce arrested people before magistrates) but under the law, the government need not do anything about these”, explained human rights lawyer Prins Gunesekera.

Gunesekera says he himself is in danger. He and another lawyer, Kanchana Abeypala, have been placed on an “endangered” list by the human rights organisation Amnesty International after they were warned to stop campaigning against rights abuses.

A third lawyer from the human rights lobby, Charitha Lankapura, was murdered – allegedly by the STF – in early July after returning home from a student demonstration.

Surely, no clearer prologue to his own death could have been written: abducted from his home without charge or warrant, shot, and his body dumped in the sea. No investigation, no explanations. For decades I have listened to my elders talk in circles of speculation as to the causes and culprits behind Richard’s murder—Why? On whose orders? For what?—without ever arriving at an undivided answer.

*

It is tempting to surmise that Richard’s clarity of analysis and reporting were reason enough for the government to remove him. In a dispatch from 22 May 1989, Richard notes:

Pride stalks Sri Lanka today, in a variety of guises. There is the racial pride of the Sinhalese, who make up 70 percent of the island’s 17 million people (mostly Buddhist), as well as the pride of the 1.4 million-strong Tamil minority.

There is also the pride of two fierce militant groups, one Sinhalese and one Tamil; the pride of two armies, one Sri Lankan and one Indian; and the political pride of their governments in Colombo and New Delhi.

He goes on to detail the political manoeuvres required to juggle multiple conflicts, with the government funnelling its armed forces into the “economically underprivileged southern belt” to root out the JVP while simultaneously directing a stream of soldiers to the Northern Province to wage war against the LTTE. All this, Richard notes, while the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF), by order of Rajiv Gandhi, were half-cajoling, half-strong-arming the Tigers to a negotiating table, upon which lay the highly divisive devolution plan outlined in the 1987 Indo-Lanka accords.

“The JVP and the shadowy organisation suspected of being its armed wing (known as the Patriotic People’s Movement or DJV) [are] implacably opposed to Tamil separatism or anything remotely approaching it”, he wrote, adding that on the flip side of the coin, the LTTE remained hell-bent on the creation of a wholly separate Tamil homeland, despite a strong political tide amongst more moderate Tamil forces that would have accepted an agreement for regional autonomy. Richard concluded:

A triangle of power [now governs the country]. If [President Ranasinghe] Premadasa, a shrewd self-taught professional politician, wants his presidency to get off the ground, he will have to deal swiftly with two men who, like him, have simple origins – Tamil Tiger guerilla leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and JVP supremo Rohana Wijeweera.

The actions of this trio will determine Sri Lanka’s immediate future – as well as the fate, in life or death terms, of the country’s 16.4 million people.

It was the kind of journalism I aspired to: clean, clear, concise, and contextual, with a beating heart that seemed able to keep time with the louder pulse of the nation. Nothing seditious or revolutionary. No call to arms. Nothing but a writer’s quiet plea for sanity or humanity to prevail amidst a massacre. It was not, to my mind, the kind of blazing scroll that an artist might—even for the faintest moment—think they’d die for.

The unasked question being, of course, Was it worth it, in the end? These dispatches from Sri Lanka, written in a time of terror, delivered to an international audience that could do nothing to stop the bloodshed—was it worth it? How, really, do you value a human life against the value of his or her work?

Such was the diabolic arithmetic I was being forced to work out in real time as a small team of freedom fighters working on behalf of Russell Maroon Shoatz pressed me for an answer on the proposed assignment of working with a complete stranger to tell his life’s story. I read and reread Richard’s articles, and read and reread Maroon’s letters, which had begun to arrive in my mailbox on Georgia Avenue NW Washington, DC. I observed the words of both men fusing together in unnerving ways. Notions of duty, legacy, and artistic responsibility jostled in my mind with a dull, pervasive anxiety at the prospect of committing myself to a literary work with the highest possible stakes: another person’s life and freedom, and—if I was to follow the mad logic that resulted in Richard’s murder—possibly my own.

“Let’s say I write this book, with a high-security prisoner who’s accused of murder and who calls himself a prisoner of war,” I said to my father, trying to laugh off my deepest fears. “What’s the worst they can do to me? What’s the worst that could happen?”

To which he answered, quietly and without pause, “Deportation. Incarceration. Torture.”

I grieved that response for a long time, perhaps because it was the first time I had truly confronted the fear that the survivors of Sri Lanka’s violence—my own family, myself—carry with them, in their bones. I grieved also for these two men, one who had been killed, and the other who’d been sentenced to a different kind of death, which in the twisted parlance of the American justice system is known as Life. Maroon was serving back-to-back life sentences in solitary confinement. His letters to me were composed in the laboured hand of an old man with a youthful spirit who has been made to stare into the black abyss and see right through it, to the beauty and the hope.

I shared some of Richard’s work with Maroon, and told him, briefly, the story. He wrote back at once, soulful and wise: When we speak truth to power… When we speak truth to power… When we speak truth to power. It was, in a way, an answer to the question I had not asked, that my family have prowled around all my life, that Maroon had, I later learned, been avoiding and confronting for decades in the screaming quietude of a cage measuring five by seven feet: Was it worth it, in the end?

A year later I met Maroon in person, down in the dungeon of the State Penitentiary at Mahanoy, an all-male prison in rural Pennsylvania, in a visiting room bisected by a sheet of bulletproof glass. Throughout the visit Maroon remained shackled at the ankles and at the wrists, a bright-eyed, ageing, and agile man with whom I would collaborate for 12 years on his autobiography I Am Maroon. He did not live to see its release. It was published, posthumously, on 3 September 2024, nearly three years after Maroon died of cancer.

People often ask my family how we make sense of Richard’s life and death. It was not until I met Maroon and undertook a kind of doctoral degree in American studies under his tutelage, with his supporters acting as my academic advisors and the prisons of Pennsylvania serving as my campus, that I began to understand how legacies work: they must be allowed to live. Nothing finishes a person quite like memorialising them; nostalgia and romanticising will make quick work of whatever is left. Maroon did not suffer from nostalgia—probably because, I always assumed, it’s a deadly disease for a prisoner serving a life sentence. He was a great believer in living legacies. He mentored countless young men who were thrown into the penitentiary alongside him and saw many of them off into the free world while he continued to Do His Time. Dozens have said they regard him as a father-figure, as their greatest teacher.

As for me, writing together with Maroon, through the bars and over all the hurdles thrown at us—visits cancelled and monitored, our correspondence surveilled, letters destroyed or returned to the sender, threats and lawsuits—seemed like the most sensible way to honour Richard’s legacy in my own lifetime. Mainly because it helped me to do away with that blasted question: Was it worth it, in the end?

Turns out it’s not a question at all, but a slow reckoning with language itself, with these words that are strong enough to kill a man, and free a man. And what emerges from that reckoning is not doubt or unknowing, but a certain certainty, that you have to use words to make sense of them. You have to let them play, let them remake themselves: We are worth more than the ends they devise for us. We live, and live on, because we are worthy of life.

 

Kanya D’Almeida is a writer, and winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She is the co-author of I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner, available now from Hachette Books.

Sustainable Human Development – article

Reducing inequalities for equitable, sustainable human development

Nadeera Rajapakse

Policy Tribune, Vol 1 -Issue 2/ January 2025 The Bandaranaike Academy for Leadership & Public Policy

https://balpp.com/publications/

Policy Brief

Reducing Inequalities for Sustainable, Equitable Human Development

By Professor Nadeera Rajapakse

In the context of the economic (and political) crisis and its impact on individuals, groups, and communities, recovery measures need to address existing structural inequalities for two main reasons: first, because without removing inequalities, widespread economic and social prosperity is impossible, or is at best inequitable and non-inclusive. Second, inequalities are harmful in themselves, not only as effects on economic growth. In other words, like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) highlight [1] , inequality is a standalone goal as well as a cross­cutting issue.

The brief makes policy recommendations aiming for meaningful, inclusive, sustainable economic development in Sri Lanka’s post-crisis context. By meaningful, we focus on people and not only on infrastructure; by inclusive we refer to policies that take into account plural identities, and by sustainable we target long-term goals over short-term profits. By using Amartya Sen’s concept of human development as enhancing personal and collective freedoms alongside GDP growth (1984, 1999) [2] , the recommendations made here aim to address the existing structural weaknesses and inequalities that have been exacerbated by Sri Lanka’s political and economic crisis. Interdisciplinary analysis is essential to take stock of intersecting categories of identity that influence inequalities. We focus on two areas, debt refinancing and the export of low-skilled labour, which are related concerns in Sri Lanka today, with widespread effects on human development.

Debt Refinancing

As a result of authoritarian political decisions on large-scale loss-inducing infrastructure investments and policies, the country faced severe foreign exchange shortages culminating in a debt crisis amounting to 103.8% of GDP as of March 2023 (Dias, 2023). [3] This crisis hit households at a time when many had not yet recovered from the shocks of COVID-19. After struggling through months of shortages of gas, fuel, electricity, medicine and many other essential items, the people took to the streets in protest.

With a change in leadership propelled by the people’s protests, the government’s response was to secure an International Monetary Fund bailout in 2022. In June 2024, the IMF agreed to a 48-month Extended Fund Facility providing the country with immediate access to about US $336 million, bringing the total funds disbursed to about US $1 billion (IMF executive board, 2024). These financing deals were linked to the IMF’s 2023 debt sustainability and requires debt to be paid down through high budget surplus.

Sri Lanka’s debt is held by both foreign and domestic creditors. Foreign creditors have been categorised into various groups [4] , of which we can differentiate bilateral creditors and ISB (International Sovereign Bond) holders and other commercial creditors. Negotiations are underway with bilateral creditors for debt relief, while ISB holders have suggested GDP growth-dependent debt restructuring. This means that debt repayments will be made according to GDP growth rates, with the country expected to pay higher interest rates on estimated future growth rates. Thus, the 28 percent debt concession granted at present could be reduced to 15 percent if growth rates surpass the limit set by the IMF (Kuruwita, 2024). In exchange for this emergency loan, the IMF imposed a series of conditions. Briefly, “further trade liberalization to promote exports and foreign direct investment; labor reforms to upgrade skills and increase female labor force participation; and state-owned enterprise reforms to improve efficiency and fiscal transparency, contain fiscal risks, and promote a level playing field for the private sector” (IMF, 2024).

These conditions along with the GDP-related concessions, calling for a budget surplus, which in turn requires greater inflows of foreign exchange, bring us to the second issue discussed here: Sri Lanka’s highest foreign exchange earner: low-skilled migrant workers.

Export of Low-skilled Migrant Labour

Contributing to 5.1% of GDP, low-skilled women migrant domestic workers (maids) overall remittances surpass earnings coming from tea and garment exports (World Bank blog, 2022). While, on the one hand, remittances are seen as exerting a positive effect on development, poverty alleviation and unemployment (Ratha, 2023), on the other hand, this type of gendered labour is characterised by exploitative and abusive working conditions, the lack of rights, and multiple layers of risk and vulnerabilities. The government has been unable to protect migrant workers and often use restrictions and bans as a way of addressing the dangers they face (Weeraratne, 2022). However, as Amartya Sen’s development framework shows, restrictions imposed on the women’s (and men’s) right to migrate and find employment opportunities only exacerbate the risks. Instead of effectively dissuading them from migrating, restrictions force migrants to seek irregular, informal means of mobility, thus exposing them to even greater vulnerabilities. Just as the IMF emphasises female labour force participation, the lack of alternative employment and of sustainable livelihood options are seen as push factors driving women to seek employment abroad despite the risks.

Exacerbating Structural Inequalities Prevalent in the Country

Inequalities

The IMF debt finance scheme was hailed by many with relief as the only resort for Sri Lanka to emerge from its debt crisis. However, many others spoke out against its debilitating effects on the wider population. The bail out came with austerity measures, including cuts in public spending, steep increases in utility tariffs, food and energy costs, indirect and regressive taxation, limited cash handouts as social security. While we separate inequalities into various categories for purposes of clarity, we insist that these categories overlap and need to be considered as intersecting and compounding factors.

Gender-based inequalities : Due to their unpaid caregiving roles at household level, women often shoulder responsibilities of ensuring families are fed, looked after and educated, even as they face falling wages, rising food, electricity and water bills, precarious and informal employment and lack of access to meaningful social security. Consequently, the current debt refinancing proposals, which prioritise external creditors and ensure re-entry into finance markets, bail out private finance (both local and global) by putting the burden on the workers, and especially women workers – both paid and unpaid. [5]

Domestic debt restructuring has placed the burden on public pension funds, with teachers and nurses, among others, having their pensions slashed. Cuts in public spending on education, health and social security will further aggravate the burden faced by women, but not only: income, age and ethnic origins are also categories upon which inequalities thrive.

Income inequalities: Colombo may look dazzling with its luxury hotels and malls, but the crises faced by working class families tell a different story. Research has shown that the quality of life of working-class families has deteriorated and that they are still battling with everyday expenses. Accumulated bills and shortages have put them in situations of severe debt, compounded by the increases in the prices of essential items, following VAT increases. They are at a “point of no return” (Colombo Urban Lab, 2023), taking loans to survive, rather than to navigate one-off shocks. Consequently, reducing inflation and bringing food prices down are welcome, though not sufficient to ensure long-term sustainable growth. Here too women face much of the burden of managing the daily needs of their families and face the pressure of negotiating loans. In a situation where alternative funding is absent, they turn to microfinance and moneylenders (Arambepola, 2019). Thus, understanding the complex and intersecting needs driving households to debt is essential when discussing the regulation of microfinance and informal credit markets.

Age-related inequalities: Older people are particularly at risk during the current situation as a result of underlying health conditions, social and economic disadvantages, and insufficient social protection mechanisms. In addition, the economic crisis led to greater food insecurity and inaccessible healthcare for older people. “Many older people aren’t receiving their full list of prescribed medicines and cannot afford to buy privately. Some have stopped taking their medications altogether, waiting until the drugs are available again. Others are turning to alternative medicines such as Ayurvedic or traditional methods which can only serve as a temporary measure” (Helpage International, 2022).

The domestic debt restructuring also worsens the situation for older people, who tend to either be out of paid work or earning very little and whose pensions and available savings are very quickly used up on food and healthcare. According to the Household Income and Expenditure Survey of 2019, people aged 65-years-old and above are the poorest group in Sri Lanka (Department of Census and Statistics, Multidimensional Poverty in Sri Lankan, 2019).

Minority rights-related inequalities: Crises and conflicts tend to exert disproportionate impacts on vulnerable groups, which include ethnic and religious minority groups in Sri Lanka, who have faced long-term patterns of discrimination (Hennayake, 2006). The State needs to recognise and remedy human rights violations to ensure justice, safety and security, essential capabilities for inclusive human development and growth (Sen, 1999). Justice is required to address enforced disappearances, land disputes, disenfranchised populations and environmental issues.

Harassment and discrimination on the basis of identity-related issues (gender, sexual origin, sexuality, religion, ethnic origin, etc.) not only impede productivity on labour markets, thus hampering economic growth, but also cause harm to society’s wellbeing (Ariyarathne, 2022).

“Decisions on economic policies must be guided by Sri Lanka’s international human rights obligations, including by ensuring adequate social protection. (…) Sri Lanka’s creditors should provide the Government with the fiscal space needed to realise economic, social and cultural rights” (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2024).

The failure to protect minority rights and well-being creates a big push factor propelling risky, costly emigration, borne by society at large.

 

“(…) the dominant three foreign exchange earners for the country – garments, tea exports and migrant workers to the Middle East – rest on the efforts of women workers” (Ruwanpura, 2022).

The unforgiving spiral of debt servicing without considering equitable growth: The imperatives of debt service put huge pressures on essential social spending in Sri Lanka, even before being forced into debt default and having to approach the IMF for assistance. Sri Lanka now faces massive constraints even in continuing with earlier social spending levels, much less in responding adequately to the need for greater social protection in the face of the economic crisis caused by debt distress. The lack of professional skills, which would be further widened by reduced public spending, and the lack of imagination in absorbing women gainfully into the economy, along with the pressures to tend to her dependents will not remove incentives pushing women to migrate. However, valuing her work and enabling freedoms to migrate safely and work in decent conditions are feasible policy orientations.

Recommendations

Deprivations are intersecting. Some workers face numerous compounding deprivations stemming from gender and ethnic discrimination, such as women employed in the garment industry and tea-plantation workers, especially those from minority Tamil groups. Policy conditionalities associated with debt relief have rarely shown an understanding of gender dynamics, not recognising the different ways that women and men – across intersectional identities – interact with the economy, as paid and unpaid workers, as household providers, as family members and as citizens (Ghosh, 2021).

Universal social protection “Social security is not charity but a human right of all people. Women’s groups are demanding that universal social security in this time of crisis be made binding and enforceable by law. Without meaningful expansion of social safety nets and increasing fiscal allocation, targeted schemes like Aswesuma will not benefit the millions of families hit hard by the crisis.” (Dias, 2023).

Sri Lanka must move away from targeted social welfare schemes to systems that offer universal social protection, particularly in the context of crises. Targeted poverty reduction schemes have their weaknesses and in Sri Lanka, inefficient targeting as well as outdated eligibility criteria – those for the Aswesuma welfare scheme were developed before the debt crisis – result in many vulnerable groups slipping through the net. The multidimensionality of vulnerability and poverty also needs to be considered, going beyond basic income related criteria. [6]

It should also be recognised that 66 per cent of the labour force work informally, including women who do unpaid domestic care work, so have little access to social protection schemes. Similarly, only 40 to 50 per cent of older people receive any form of benefit such as pensions, provident funds, or cash payments (Helpage International, 2022). Contradictory measures like targeting the already meagre pension funds of Sri Lanka’s wage workers, only exacerbate existing class, gender, and ethnic inequalities. In particular, any requirements of public spending cuts that reduce employment in public services or reduce wages of public workers, should be avoided.

It is unrealistic to expect specific programmes targeted to women/children to undo the damage created by broader macroeconomic policies that reduce employment and livelihoods. Therefore, as far as possible, policies should be universal so as to prevent unjustified exclusion of those already disadvantaged in other ways. [7]

Collective bargaining for women migrant workers

Commodification is a phenomenon afflicting women migrants, by which they are recognised only for the service they provide, and hence low-skilled and low valued (Rajapakse, 2023). The unlimited supply of low-skilled labour from competing sending countries in the face of asymmetric power wielded by receiving countries is a situation that facilitates commodification of migrant labour. Sri Lanka’s National Migration Policy has the protection of workers as a core policy area, which can be made more efficient if sending countries negotiate collectively for their migrant workers’ rights. Turning regional rivalries in South Asia into potential collaborative endeavours, such as the Colombo Process, is imperative (IOM, 2003). [8]

The nature of vulnerabilities as well as the exploitation and abuses that low-skilled workers from the region generally experience is similar despite the differences in their nationalities. South Asian countries need to demand better terms of employment and increased protection for their workers. Most sending countries have ratified conventions and laws aimed at protecting their migrant workers. These are nonetheless ineffectual if destination countries, especially in the Middle East, have not. Developing common solutions, strategies and facilities, such as insisting on domestic work being included in labour laws in destination countries, setting up common safe houses and transit homes in destination countries, in coordination with embassies/diplomatic missions of SAARC Member States need to be done collectively. [9]

Avoiding fiscal austerity

Imposing fiscal austerity measures should be avoided because countercyclical policies are required during the downswing and debt relief measures should be directed towards ensuring such countercyclicality. Regressive indirect taxation measures like value added tax (VAT) that increase prices of essential commodities are anti-poor and anti-women and can inhibit economic recovery. They also have a significant gender dimension for female consumers and producers, since women-run Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) are more likely to be unregistered, and therefore less able to redeem tax payments on their inputs, which are already likely to be more expensive as they are buying on a smaller scale. Instead, the structure of taxation can be changed to focus on more progressive taxation, in particular through equitable taxation of multinationals, taxes on extreme wealth, taxes on financial transactions.

Ensuring equitable labour-market participation

Since labour market participation is often at the core of IMF conditions, especially that of women, the country should take measures to ensure equal wages to men and women in both the public and private sectors. There needs to be appropriate measures for internal debt relief, especially for women-owned MSMEs in informal credit arrangements. It is important consider specific requirement of women borrowers and borrowers from previous conflict-zones who are less likely to have collateral and land titles that provide access to credit. It is also important to recognise the very specific needs of women entrepreneurs, especially with regard to access to inputs and markets. For example, facilitating childcare arrangements for working mothers and migrant mothers. Policies need to facilitate greater associations and unions of women workers, both employed, self-employed and migrant.

Considering debt cancellation

Scholars have pointed to the possibility of debts unpayable being cancelled. Debt justice movements across the developing world have urged for the cancellation of all unsustainable and illegitimate debts in a manner that is ambitious, unconditional, and without carrying repercussions for future market access. Past cases show how reducing debt stock and debt payments allow countries to increase their public financing for urgent domestic needs. The IMF’s Debt Sustainability Analysis (DSA), which measures sovereign vulnerability to sovereign debt stress, must incorporate SDG financing needs, climate vulnerabilities as well as human rights and gender equality commitments into its methodology (Ghosh, 2021). Sri Lanka is strengthening ties and membership with the BRICS and this is an opportunity to suggest greater solidarity, cooperation and stronger governance: in other words, opportunity to discuss alternatives to ultraliberal, competitive, market-based economic policies.

Strengthening Justice and Human Rights

It is essential to strengthen Sri Lanka’s Human Rights framework in order to enhance the freedoms of every person by repealing discriminatory laws (for example, 365 and 365A of the Penal Code of Sri Lanka, which criminalise same sex intimacy) and ensuring that the country move away from a military state by repealing the prevention of terrorism act. (Rajasingham Senanayake, 2011). Overall, in keeping with the goal of greater accountability and governance, stakeholders and experts need to be continuously included in participatory, deliberations on decision-making, laws, truth and reconciliation commissions and anti-corruption efforts (Orjuela, 2008).

Conclusion

We need to break the vicious spiral: because there is more power given to external creditors, maintaining investor confidence and avoiding the risk of capital flight are priorities underpinning all macroeconomic policies. As a result, public spending is further curtailed to make sure eventual capital flight can be absorbed without expanding the budget deficit. Consequently, there is lower social security and greater deprivation for many categories of people. Therefore, countries like Sri Lanka, with the greatest need of social protection for its most vulnerable categories of people, spend the least amount on it through public expenditure, which is, on the contrary directed towards debt servicing. [10]

Acknowledging that broader development depends on equitable development and considering the detrimental effects neoliberal policies have exerted in Sri Lanka, Sen’s idea of finding the middle path – combining the advantages of liberal and open economic systems with strong welfare and social protection policies and governance – offers alternative possibilities. Finally, the struggles for debt justice and overall economic justice need to be linked to the struggles for equality and freedom.

Notes

  1. SDG 10 Reduced inequalities: “Inequalities based on income, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, race, class, ethnicity, religion and opportunity continue to persist across the world. Inequality threatens long-term social and economic development, harms poverty reduction and destroys people’s sense of fulfilment and self-worth. This, in turn, can breed crime, disease and environmental degradation. We cannot achieve sustainable development and make the planet better for all if people are excluded from the chance for a better life”. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/inequality/
  2. “The Capability approach judges individual well-being not in terms of goods consumed nor in terms of utility satisfaction, but rather on the realized functions, i.e., the set of alternatives a person has”. In Sen’s words, it is a “perspective of freedom in a positive sense: who can do what” (Sen 1984, 376).
  3. Political crisis because: “This latest round of ‘odious debt’ in Sri Lanka was created by an authoritarian and corrupt government, led by a President who initially fled the country rather than take responsibility for the economic catastrophe he unleashed. If the Pandora papers are anything to go by, a former President and an entire corrupt family clearly accumulated personal wealth at the expense of Sri Lankan people. This is an economic catastrophe that was enabled and facilitated by highly paid financiers at places like Blackrock and other private investment firms, which now hold almost 35% of Sri Lankan external debt. Their windfall profits during a global pandemic indicate the extent to which they have profited at a time of human misery” (K Ruwanpura, 2022). Also, it has been termed odious debt because “much of it is odious debt used to extract funds by both global creditors and local elite, without using it in the interests of the broader citizenry” (Yukthi, 13 May 2024).
  4. “These creditor groups are the Official Creditor Committee of official bilateral lenders (co-chaired by France, India, and Japan), who hold $5.8 billion of Lankan debt; the China Exim Bank ($4.2 billion); other Official Creditors (Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan – $0.3 billion); ISB holders ($14.2 billion); China Development Bank ($3.2 billion) and other commercial creditors (under $0.2 billion)” (Kuruwita, 2024)
  5. Amartya Sen refers to the “social technology” that enables the economic system to function thanks to the invisible contribution of women performing unpaid work (1991). $10.8 trillion – the total earnings of women’s unpaid care work as reported by Oxfam (2020)
  6. “According to the UNDP report on multidimensional vulnerability of Sri Lankans, as many as 12.34 million people in Sri Lanka (55.7% of Sri Lankans) are multi-dimensionally vulnerable, and yet only 2 million households have been selected as beneficiaries under Aswesuma” (Colombo Urban Lab, 2023).
  7. “In the 2023 budget, the Government allocated LKR 539 billion for defense and public security while household cash transfers and food relief (which includes all the key social welfare programs such as Samurdhi, allowances for elders, disabled, kidney disease, school meal programs and nutrition programs for mothers and children) was allocated LKR 187 billion. Sri Lanka continues to remain one of the countries in the region that spend the least of its GDP on social welfare” (Colombo Urban Lab, 2023).
  8. “The Regional Consultative Process on Overseas Employment and Contractual Labor for Countries of Origin in Asia or the Colombo Process aims to provide a forum for Asian labor-sending countries to (…) Share experiences, lessons learned and best practices on overseas employment and contractual labor; Consult on issues faced by overseas workers, and labor sending and receiving states, and offers practical solutions for the well-being of overseas workers, particularly the vulnerable overseas workers; Optimize development benefits from organized overseas employment, and enhance dialogue with countries of destination; and review and monitor the implementation of the ministerial recommendations and identify further steps for action” (IOM, 2003)
  9. “(…) SAARC countries, including Sri Lanka, have been in a search to find broader regional groupings that are capable of meeting particularly their economic objectives in a sustainable manner. These have included joining organizations such as the BIMSTEC and the IORA. Sri Lanka has most recently sought membership of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)” (Colombopage quoted in Ariyasinha, 2023). There are increasing calls that Sri Lanka seeks the membership of the BRICS – the group of emerging economies (Ariyasinha, 2023).
  10. “(…) comparing debt service payments to core social spending (covering expenditure on education, health and social protection). In upper middle income countries, just under half of the amount of social spending was spent on debt service, but in lower middle income countries (where such spending is all the more required) the debt service payments were more than social spending. Shockingly, in the low income countries, debt service payments came to 171 per cent of social spending! These are not just the poorest countries, with significant proportions of absolutely hungry people, but also the most climate-vulnerable countries, which are already experiencing a range of climate-related shocks that affect ordinary people” (Gosh, 2023).

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