International Conference on Sri Lanka Studies (ICSLS)
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Item Negotiating Peace in Sri Lanka: Dynamics and Implications(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Singh, K.Peace in any society is primarily a contractual peace, which becomes durable with the social capital formation. The diminishing social capital generates the unrest and, thus negotiations for peace starts for revitalizing the process of social capital formation. The negotiation may take place, if the negotiating parties perceive the cost-effectiveness of the negotiating process in their favour. However, unanticipated consequences occur in the course of time before the final negotiation is reached. The parties, which are outside the negotiating process, get involved when they perceive the implications and consequences of the final outcome affect their interest and, thus they may get involved as the negotiating process advances. Negotiations for durable peace in the island-society have been initiated four times during the last two decades of unrest and ethnic conflict. Several rounds of peace talks took place every time but the efforts for negotiation could not succeed due to skepticism and suspicions which gripped the negotiating parties as well as the parties/groups which are not directly committed to negotiating the peace. The latest peace process was started with the active role of the Norwegian facilitators and changing political dispensation in the last parliamentary elections in 2001. There is a Sri Lankan think tank, which perceives Norwegian facilitation as a colonial intrusion, government’s policy as appeasement before the LTTE’s extremism. Such parties though peripheral but become an actor outside the formal process and affect or sometimes determine the whole process. Parties committed are the LTTE,the Government of Sri Lanka and the Norwegian facilitators. The parties involved are the political parties not directly committed to the peace process, non-LTTE Tamil groups, Sinhalese groups, countries like India, international donors of financial support to Sri Lanka, underworld and military establishment and so on. All such parties generate and strengthen the skepticism and suspicion, which contribute to form a public opinion against credibility of the peace process and thereby jeopardizing the whole peace process. The cumulative effect of all is that the recent hold on of the peace process. The assertions of the constitutional authority of the President, political power of the Prime Minister and, presentation of the counter-proposal by the LTTE, have aggravated the whole peace process. The parties committed for negotiating the peace are on tactical withdrawal. The efforts are on for reconciliation at various levels to resume the peace process but the situation is really complex and the final negotiation seems a distant goal.Item Environmental Management: A Lesson from Giants of the Corporate Sector in Sri Lanka(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Rajapakse, B.Sri Lanka is an agricultural economy base country. Ancient people protected the environment since their economy (farming activities) was totally depended on the healthy environment. Therefore, people themselves voluntarily contributed to protect the physical environment of the country. However, this situation was adversely affected by the commercialization of agriculture activities, basically tea, rubber and coconut plantations introduced after the colonialisation. In addition, increasing trend of population and the continuing effort to improve their living have created a tremendous pressure on the natural environment of the country. Therefore, relazing this adverse impact, even the colonial government imposed various acts/ordinances in order to protect physical environment of the country. However, provisions of these acts were not enough to control declining trend of the physical environmental of the country. Later on, this situation was further accelerated with the liberalization of economic activities in late 1970s. Then, the major challenge faced by the country was the imperative of harmonizing economic and social development with environmental management. Government and public concern on conservations of natural resources and physical environmental issues have been dramatically increased during the last few years. As a result, the government has taken various steps to minimize such environmental pollution, which resulted mainly from industrial activities. Meanwhile, some leading business organizations have voluntarily introduced their own environmental management polices to achieve sustainable development through the protection of the physical environment of the country. The study is designed to assess the environmental management practices and contribution of leading business organizations as a lesson to other entrepreneurs. This study is based on two leading business entities in the country and it is found that both those entities have introduced excellent environmental practices. If other entities follow such type of environmental management practices it will be easy to overcome environmental problems in future.Item Graduate Unemployability: Values and Perspectives(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Karunathilake, K.The Higher educational reformers has been critically discussed the quality and the values of graduates in Sri Lankan universities. The reason for this is many of graduates could not get a job mainly in private sector while the government sector had been following strict policy on reform the state service. Under these circumstances, the graduates faced severe employability problems or they have been waiting for a job more than two years. The authorities have taken many attempts to work out of this problem. First; the government has introduced educational reforms to the university sector in terms of improve the quality of education and modify the course structures that matching with the international standard where it has given priority to English medium education and IT. Second; it has made platform to gaze on their students in different ways mainly teachers have realized that the students are important component in both teaching and administration work. Thirdly; the educational reforms have made a competition within the departments in universities by competing additional funds to develop the quality of education. Fourthly; these reforms have been widening the gap between branded and non-branded courses in the university sector in Sri Lanka. Relating to the International University standards that quality of our universities are at very poor level. There are no favorable academic and research atmosphere in many departments including physical resources. There is no job satisfaction among the academics. There are pessimistic ideas than the optimistic ideas among both students and academics. Many of them do not have use the library or electronic media to acquire and up grade the new knowledge. This study monitoring that the roots causes behind this scenario and to identify the possible alternative solution for this issue. The qualitative and quantitative techniques were used within the survey method in this study. The graduates and undergraduates in sociology were the focused group and all of them represent the University of Kelaniya.Item The Government Policy Implication on Coastal Poverty in Fishing Communities in Sri Lanka (with reference to Colombo and Gampaha Coastal Belt)(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Nawarathna Banda, H.M.Poverty is blessed with a rich vocabulary, in all cultures and through history. From an analytical perspective, thinking about poverty can be traced back at least to the codification of poor laws in medieval England, through to the pioneering empirical studies, at the turn of the century, by Booth in London and by Rowntree in York. Rowntree’s study, published in 1901, was the first to develop a poverty standard for individual families, based on estimates of nutritional and other requirements. Sri Lanka has a coastline of 1585 km and a land area of 64,000 km2. There are 20 million people live in Sri Lanka. Poverty has been a major economic problem in Sri Lanka, despite various poverty alleviation programmes implemented since independence in 1948. About 7% of the Sri Lanka’s population is poor according to the lower poverty line (one US$ per day), and about 45% according to the higher poverty line (US$ two per day). Poverty in rural areas is 31.3%, which is more than three times the poverty prevails in the urban areas, is 8.6%. Over 90% of the poor live in rural areas. The objectives of this study are to identify the various sectors of poverty, the sources of poverty, the policy implication on coastal poverty in fishing communities and to find out various policy measures to overcome or to mitigate the coastal poverty in fishing communities in Sri Lanka. This study is based on both primary and secondary data. Primary data was collected from five hundred fishing families. Secondary data was collected from relevant documents, books, magazines and so on. It has been estimated a function using the dependent variable as the person who uses natural resources, independent variables as demographic characteristics, socio-economic characteristics of the fishermen and policy implication as a dummy variable. It has been revealed that there are four sectors where poverty is prevailed in Sri Lanka: Rural, Coastal, Urban and Plantation sector. There is less implication of government policies on coastal poverty as a tool for reducing coastal poverty in fishing communities due to political, social and cultural influences. Therefore, taken necessary steps should be taken to reduce these influences to implement government policies properly and it will help to overcome or at least mitigate the coastal poverty in fishing communities in Sri Lanka.Item Fiscal Policy and Aid in Sri Lanka(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Rahman, A.The main objective of this paper is to investigate the controversial issue - how government fiscal policy can be designed to ensure the efficient use of aid money. This matter is of high importance mainly for three reasons. Firstly, foreign aid flows are the main source of external finance in many developing countries and thus a key element in fiscal policy. According to the recent evidence, foreign aid has more significant impact than borrowing in the economy of the least developed or low-income countries. Secondly, aid is limited. Therefore in order to maximise the benefit the recipient country not only should establish affective management aid system avoiding corruption and mismanagement, but also should design aggregate fiscal policy by taking into account the macroeconomic implication of aid financed spending. Both these will also help convince donors that their money is well-spent. Thirdly, and more significantly, the recent criticism among the recipient economies about the ‘good governance and leadership’ requirement imposed by the donor agencies such as IMF and World Bank has made the topic more sensitive and debatable. The paper investigates all these highly contentious issues, besides suggesting the most efficient fiscal policy model for aid-effectiveness with special attention to fungibility and fiscal response studies. The empirical case study is based on Sri Lanka - one of the highest aid recipient countries in the world. Before embarking on econometric analysis, the paper discusses the movements in the fiscal aggregates of Sri Lanka in recent years and the political economy background of the fiscal policy. Broadly, it reflects that Sri Lanka found itself in the midst of the increasing debt burden and faltering growth and worsening macroeconomic management, despite a fairly good period of economic stability in the late 80s and early 90s. The econometric results are obtained using PC Give, Microfit and E-Views on time series data from Sri Lanka 1970-2001. The results show that effects of fiscal policy are complex and varied, but aid tends to be associated with a rise in government spending and increases welfare. Aid does increase total expenditure. Tax revenue seems to fall as aid increases. Even though this finding is not so desirable for Sri Lanka, since expanding the tax base is the effective way of financing expenditure and reduce debt. There is high positive correlation between aid and capital expenditure. The findings of the paper reflects that for a sustained fiscal policy that ensures the best channel for aid money, Sri Lanka needs to reduce government expenditure and expand tax base. Another crucial issue is that achieving peace would obviously be beneficial as defence spending would fall, aid may be increased and it would spur growth and therefore, expand tax baseItem The Role of Transnational Corporations (TNCs) in the Context of Developing Countries(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Pathirage, J.M.P.The globalization and the resulting rapid growth of economic interdependence are the recent phenomena with the inflow of foreign direct investment and the worldwide operation of transnational corporations. Private foreign investment is made mostly by multinational corporations, which are also referred to as Transnational Corporations (TNCs). Their role in the world economy has changed the volume and the direction of international business since 1980s. TNCs have played a leading role as investors, traders and disseminators of technology. Beyond that the distinguishing role of TNCs is that they organize the production process internationally by placing their affiliates worldwide under the common governance system. Their economic impact can be measured in different ways. In 2002, foreign affiliates accounted for about 54 million employees compared to 24 million in 1990. Their sales were about $ 18 trillion in 2002. Compared to 1990, the stock of outward FDI increased from $1.7 trillion to 6.8 trillion in 2002. Foreign affiliates now account for one tenth of world GDP and one third of world exports. However, there are some critical views on TNCs and their activities in developing countries. For examples, it is argued that TNCs using their branding and marketing practices to create heavy competition on domestic production and drive out the local firms in developing countries. When the government of the host country is in a weak and ineffective position, TNCs can evade the laws, abuse its market power and try to neglect their social responsibilities and business ethics which are harmful to developing countries. TNCs are also blamed of eroding the national culture of the host countries and thereby blurring national identity. Further, some argue that sales promotion and advertising methods of TNCs undermine the local cultural standards and value systems. Besides, TNCs can move production and operation from a country to another country due to changes in the environment and perception of risk and also their automation, mergers and acquisition, downsizing and relocation of industries that lead to create and increase unemployment and lower wages, especially in developing countries. TNCs are also criticized in relation to their production system, which tend to environmental destruction and depletion of local resources in host economies. Under the circumstances, policy response of the government is very essential in minimizing the unfavourable effects of FDI and TNCs in developing countries including Sri Lanka. At the same time, development coalitions need to be pursued not only at the national level, but also at the global level.Item Ocean Resources and Maritime Strategy for Sri Lanka(University of Kelaniya, 2005) Colombage, J.S.K.This paper traces the geographical and strategical importance of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean with special emphasis on early trade in Sri Lanka before the arrival of colonial powers in the 17th century. This paper also consider the ocean resources in the exclusive Economic Zone of Sri Lanka and the further extension of the EEZ by delineation of the outer edge of the continental shelf by the year 2009 under the UNCLOSE. This new area is supposed to be rich of hydrocarbons, millions of years. Sri Lanka Maritime strategy should not be limited only be limited only to curb LTTE activities at sea and the coastal areas. The role of the Sri Lanka Navy should be limited only to costal surveillance. We should be able to guard our off shore resources specially so with acquiring more off shore sea area and possibility of detecting oil in our sea area. With the implementation of the Seethe Samudram ship canal project by the government of India the maritime environment has taken a turn in trade, marine environment and defense related issues. Sri Lanka s Maritime strategy has to cater for this new development as well. The future of our country could depend heavily on exploitation of ocean resources, renewable as well as non renewable. Therefore, our maritime strategy should be capable of protecting those agencies exploiting such resources and assisting in collecting scientific data which would assist in such exploitation projects. Being the guarding of the sea, Sri Lanka Navy has to playa major role in the Maritime strategy of Sri Lanka. This paper examines and suggests a development of a maritime strategy commensurate with our future maritime objectives and the role of the Sri Lankan Navy.Item The LTTE Air Asset(University of Kelaniya, 2005) de Silva, G.Y.U.The LTTE's Acquisition of Air Assets means that it has acquired Strategic Depth and capabilities that would not only bolster its Military, that mainly comprises guerrilla fighters, but also bring VPs, Air Assets and High Security Zones of Sri Lanka and India within its target range. The constituents and dimensions of this Air Threat are: a) airstrip of about 1250 meters in Iranamadu allowing light to medium size aircraft to operate with a payload of 1.5 to 2 tons. (A fuel load adjustment could provide for a payload enhancement, however the range will be reduced and vice versa). b) The airfield has been provided with surveillance and self-protection means - radar, other electronic means and the support facilities to enable safe operations. The hard kill options are expected to be the Close Range Anti Aircraft weapons and Surface to Air Missiles and c) The type of aircraft in possession of the LTTE is the Czech Aircraft ZLIN Z-143. The biggest aircraft in the 143L range can carry four passengers with a payload of about 500kgs. The ZLIN Z-143 can be used for training, cross-country flying, reconnaissance, communication duties and limited air offensive missions. Purchasing and shipping an aircraft requires adherence to end user licenses and other stringent regulations. Yet the LTTE has been able to buy their air inventory despite being branded a terrorist organization. Any aircraft is required internationally to be registered (even applicable to the Military), have identification marks/symbols and tail number, and to be flown as per both International Civil Aviation Organization Regulations and the relevant laws of the land. The aircrews and the maintainers need clearance from a competent authority. The skies over Sri Lanka are under the sovereign control of the Government of Sri Lanka, aircraft flying in the Sri Lankan airspace should have express authorization of the SL Government. International airspace is controlled by International Agreements. Flying by an unrecognized group like the LTTE, is therefore a gross violation of both Sri Lankan and International Law. The need of the hour is to nip the bud otherwise it would be just a matter of time before the LTTE scouts for more potent air platforms and weapon systems. The Sri Lankan authorities should at the minimum trace the documentation trail - the commercial transaction, details of importer, import license and where it was obtained, contractual agreements etc.