Mahinda Chinthana


Book Description

On Sri Lanka ten year horizon development framework 2006-2016.




An Uneasy Hegemony


Book Description

It departs from the scholarship produced on Sri Lanka, and re-introduces the neo-Marxist approaches through the works of Antonio Gramsci.




Politics, Justice, and the Rule of Law


Book Description

This is the most controversial Book, containing complex shocking revelations, in the series of Books by the Author, wherein most difficult topics are excellently and diligently dealt with, exposing realities in politics, and non-dispensation of justice, with judiciary acting sans jurisdiction, ultra-vires the Constitution, denying natural justice, making a mockery of the `rule of law', paying scant regard to United Nations Conventions on Human Rights. The range of cases and topics dealt with is indeed amazing making exhorbing reading. Commencing with his own exposure to politics, paying high tribute to minority Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Author brings out stunning prevalent reality. Makes startling disclosures on Sri Lanka's most controversial Presidential Election of 2010, and incarceration, as a villain, a Presidential Candidate, a trusted Army General, once hailed, as the `best Army General in Asia', having led the country's armed forces to crush one of the most feared terrorists organizations, internationally banned, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam. The most difficult and delicate subject of `judicial bias and disqualification' at highest levels of the judiciary is dealt with, including the controversy which reverberated on the endeavour by the Legislature to impeach a Chief Justice, whose husband, having held high profile political office, was impleaded in a dubious share scandal, involving the country's leading Savings Bank. Author incisively delves into an important case of abduction of a Tamil businessman, and the horrendous anonymous allegations of trading in human body parts, during the war against the terrorists, allegedly with Indian and Israeli connections. Author analyses real case studies, involving foreign investments, demonstrating classic instances of dubious judicial processes, including subversion of action, vis--vis, fabricated forged documents of public officers tendered to Court, involving questionable professional conduct, and indifference by law enforcement authorities, including Attorney General, Chief Law Officer of the State.




Maritime Sri Lanka: Historical And Contemporary Perspectives


Book Description

Being an island nation, the ocean is never too far from Sri Lanka. Situated right at the center of the world's busiest sea lanes of communication, the geography connects the country with the Indian Ocean, and its destiny is linked to this strategic body of water. For centuries, the Indian Ocean has been part of Sri Lanka's strategic, security, and political narratives. However, over the years, the country's involvement in the affairs of the Indian Ocean has retracted due to domestic and regional circumstances. Its consciousness of its ocean identity declined when it took an inward orientation which gave greater visibility to its South Asian identity, and its own imagination began to pivot towards the Indian hinterland. However, with the rising importance of the Indian Ocean in geopolitics, and with the end of the civil war, Sri Lanka's consciousness of its ocean identity has grown. Successive governments have formulated policies that would have paved its way to become the hub of the Indian Ocean, making the ocean the center of its economic development, maritime security, and defense relations. Amidst this backdrop, this book explores historical and contemporary perspectives on Sri Lanka's relations with the Indian Ocean.




Historical Dictionary of Sri Lanka


Book Description

Sri Lanka has had a celebrated history, a long colonial past, and since independence in 1948 has passed through a series of crises and political experiments. It has had a remarkable record of voters turning out unpopular governments, often by sweeping margins. On 8 January 2015 voters again performed this feat when Maithripala Sirisena, representing a coalition of disparate parties, defeated Mahinda Rajapaksa for the presidency. Rajapaksa was turning the nation away from its democratic heritage towards authoritarianism and militarism. Independent Sri Lanka’s economy stagnated for decades before it began to grow in the 1980s. It has had significant economic growth since the end of the 26-year war against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009. Although reconciliation between the Sinhalese Buddhist majority and Hindu, Muslim and Christian minorities seems distant, prospects for Sri Lanka seem better than they have been for decades. The Historical Dictionary of Sri Lanka contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Sri Lanka.




The Global Emergence of Constitutional Environmental Rights


Book Description

Over the past 40 years, countries throughout the world have similarly adopted human rights related to environmental governance and protection in national constitutions. Interestingly, these countries vary widely in terms of geography, politics, history, resources, and wealth. This raises the question: why do some countries have constitutional environmental rights while others do not? Bringing together theory from law, political science, and sociology, a global statistical analysis, and a comparative study of constitutional design in South Asia, Gellers presents a comprehensive response to this important question. Moving beyond normative debates and anecdotal developments in case law, as well as efforts to describe and categorize such rights around the world, this book provides a systematic analysis of the expansion of environmental rights using social science methods and theory. The resulting theoretical framework and empirical evidence offer new insights into how domestic and international factors interact during the constitution drafting process to produce new law that is both locally relevant and globally resonant. Scholars, practitioners, and students of law, political science, and sociology interested in understanding how institutions cope with complex problems like environmental degradation and human rights violations will find this book to be essential reading.




Regional Cooperation for Sustainable Food Security in South Asia


Book Description

This volume foregrounds the importance of regional cooperation in the context of food security challenges in South Asia. South Asia holds the key to global achievement of SDG targets of ending hunger and malnutrition – it accounts for nearly one-third of food-insecure people on the planet, with every third child suffering from stunting due to malnutrition. Similar food preferences, production systems, and the transboundary nature of agrarian ecosystems call for coordinated action by South Asian countries, complementing national actions dealing with food security challenges. In this volume, leading experts discuss the perspectives of key South Asian countries in leveraging regional cooperation for addressing food security challenges and reflect on the potential of cooperative actions in different areas. The book proposes a ten-point regional policy agenda covering cooperation for combatting climate change, regional trade liberalization, operationalization of regional food reserves, leveraging technology, sharing of good practices, regional institution building, coordinated positions in multilateral trade negotiations, addressing trans-boundary outbreak of livestock diseases, strengthening food safety standards, and the management of shared natural resources. A key volume on accomplishing SDGs in the South Asian context, this book will be of immense interest to policy makers, researchers, and development practitioners. It is also essential reading for scholars and researchers in the areas of development studies, South Asia studies, food security, environment and sustainability.




Tea and Solidarity


Book Description

Beyond nostalgic tea industry ads romanticizing colonial Ceylon and the impoverished conditions that beleaguer Tamil tea workers are the stories of the women, men, and children who have built their families and lives in line houses on tea plantations since the nineteenth century. The tea industry’s economic crisis and Sri Lanka's twenty-six year long civil war have ushered in changes to life and work on the plantations, where family members now migrate from plucking tea to performing domestic work in the capital city of Colombo or farther afield in the Middle East. Using feminist ethnographic methods in research that spans the transitional time between 2008 and 2017, Mythri Jegathesan presents the lived experience of these women and men working in agricultural, migrant, and intimate labor sectors. In Tea and Solidarity, Jegathesan seeks to expand anthropological understandings of dispossession, drawing attention to the political significance of gender as a key feature in investment and place making in Sri Lanka specifically, and South Asia more broadly. This vivid and engaging ethnography sheds light on an otherwise marginalized and often invisible minority whose labor and collective heritage of dispossession as “coolies” in colonial Ceylon are central to Sri Lanka’s global recognition, economic growth, and history as a postcolonial nation.




Healing Cultures


Book Description

This book showcases the diverse range of healing cultures, and explores how government action can have an impact through determining, promoting, protecting or destroying traditional cultural aspects of healing and wellbeing, based on a case study of Sri Lanka. It argues that diverse forms of healing practices matter not only because of their value in the health and wellbeing of the community, but also because they strongly contribute towards the intangible cultural heritage of the country. Identifying the diverse forms of healing practices existing in the country and the role of the existing regulatory mechanisms determines the potential for protecting the diversity of healing. Despite Sri Lanka being historically rich in traditional knowledge and expression, very little, if anything, has been written on regulating traditional practices related to health and wellbeing in the country, a lacuna which this volume fills.




Feminist Subversion and Complicity


Book Description

Feminist Subversion and Complicity interrogates a specific form of feminist practice, that which has involved engaging with state and international institutions to insert gender knowledge in their development interventions. Bringing together contributions from eight feminists located in very different kinds of institutions and spaces from Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India, this book is the outcome of a deeply reflexive process to produce a critique from within of this present day feminist practice. An array of experiences and encounters are scrutinised - from bringing feminist perspectives to governmental projects on education, health, and legal reform to transformations in the discourses and practices of women's movements and feminisms as they encountered developmentalisms. The writers show that feminist politics is not merely assimilated in governmental projects but that it interrupts these projects even as it is assimilated; a feminist politics in which complicity is often a subversive activity, is destabilizing and contesting of meaning.