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Perahera elephants and working elephants

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  I have been watching the Perahera, year after year as a child.  It was the highlight of the August holidays when we went to see our grandparents in Kandy.  Anglophile, Christian and Central Bankers, my family used to secure seats at the Hatton National Bank where us kids watched the perahera from the balcony with wondrous eyes while the adults made it a social event with buffet,  alcohol and the company of the others.  Coloniality at its best. For us it was the spectacle, the dancers, the drummers, the fire lanterns, the smell, the noise, the colour.. and the elephants, always the elephants…Later I watched the Perahera as a Peradeniya undergraduate sitting with batchmates on the street, a very different view.  The embarrassing coloniality was shed, and it was all about being part of the crowd, belonging….Not till anthropological and historical curiosity got the better of me  many years later did I know anything about the significance of the Perahera beyond the carrying of the relic,
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Going back in time: small enterprise development project for rural women, Moneragala

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] photo by PANAP   The article by Buddhima Padmasiri -Structural Adjustment of Women’s Labour in Agriculture in Sri Lanka in Polity, January 17, 2023 unearthed some very early memories.  Buddhima uses a case study from the Moneragala District  to illustrate the exploitation and commodification of women’s labour in agriculture.    I was working for the Lanka Mahila Samiti in the early 1980s as a Project Coordinator for their Small Enterprise Development Programme for Rural Women (SEDP) funded by USAID, and was charged with developing revolving fund schemes in all of the districts in which we were working, and encouraging the women members of the Samiti to use the funds to engage in income generating projects. With hindsight, I can see the many, many shortcomings of that project, but it was my first ever ‘development’ job and I was terribly keen and  learning by doing (reading, attending conferences, talking to people etc).  To our credit we were not into promoting enterprises that ster
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Making change happen - how can the SIGI help?

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  I really couldn’t understand in the first reading what was so extraordinarily remarkable about the Social Institutions and Gender Index (SIGI) of the OECD.  The website   tells us that it is one of official data sources for monitoring SDG Indicator 5.1.1 on “Whether or not legal frameworks are in place to promote, enforce and monitor gender equality and women’s empowerment”, together with UN Women and the World Bank Group’s Women Business and the Law .  Well and good.  As an advocate for human rights in general, and women’s human rights in particular, I welcome the increase in  the body of quantitative data available in areas that are key to holding states accountable for fulfilling their obligations under CEDAW (especially) and other treaty bodies .  It’s exciting too to learn that SIGI's second dimension, related to #physicalintegrity of women, has spurred the development of mechanisms to enable access to justice for victims of sexual abuse, promoting the prevention and compre
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SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS ON THAT OTHER ARAGALAYA: a small Palm Sunday sermon!

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  (above) Daily Mirror photo; (below)  https://liturgy.co.nz/passion-palm-sunday-holy-week-2023 In the midst of a flood of social media messaging about a false prophet and a fallen angel a deep conversation with Shantha Premawardene helped me regain my sanity and restore some clear thinking.  Part of our conversation focused on Holy Week and that other Aragalaya, Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode in on a donkey to Jerusalem along with the masses, challenging the oppressive Roman government.  In 2022 Galle Face, they shouted #GoHomeGota, expressing Sri Lankans’ desire to be free of an incompetent and corrupt leader, elected no doubt, but who had driven the country to bankruptcy.  Palestinians chant Allahu Akbar! invoking the greatness of their God to free them from oppressive Israeli occupation; the masses that gathered round Jesus,  waved palm branches and shouted Hosanna! meaning Help!, help to be liberated from the rule of Caesar.    Capitalism and the cooption of the Christian message
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Not on track: the 2030 agenda at half time

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  User manual accessible here Had the opportunity yesterday to remotely address the Opening Ceremony of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Summit.   The result of a rather last-minute invitation from the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation, IWRAW APs core funder, we would have rather had our community partners do the talking, but it was too short a window to mobilise grassroots voices, and too short a time slot to show a video, even if we had one that was appropriate. The concept note for the session describes it as The 2030 Agenda at Half-time  (FIFA World Cup terminology???) and the phrase used repeatedly was that “we are not on track for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals”.   The line-up on the podium was heavy with Presidents and VIPs. -   Ignazio Cassis, the President of the Swiss Federation, Paul Kagame, President of Uganda, Maia Sandu, President of Moldova, Amina J Mohamed Deputy Secretary General of the UN and Vitalice Heja the Executive Director o
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Food Sovereignty: putting farmers back in control

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harvesting in the Jaffna Peninsular, photo by Priyanthi Fernando Colombo’s Mayor, Rosy Senanayake, has cautioned that Colombo might run out of food by September.  The Prime Minister has warned that we Sri Lankans will not be able to eat three meals a day for too long. Meanwhile Colombo clubs continue their invites for Special Mongolian dinner nights, traditional yellow rice Sunday lunches and weekend starter breakfasts and  a leading local cosmetic firm launches a skin care product for all women in Sri Lanka using our heirloom rice as their main ingredient!     Thinking about these contradictions, the impending food shortages, attendant malnutrition and starvation possibly for the first time in Sri Lanka, I am struck by a global news item that says that Africa could also be facing the spectre of famine, not because of droughts, or failed harvests or conflicts or bad national policy decisions within the continent, but because of the Russia-Ukraine war.   The threat is so real that the h
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The Spectre of Structural Violence

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photo from: https://lankacgossip.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Beira-vehicles.jpg There has been a lot of violence and also a lot of talk about violence in this last month.   It shouldn’t come as a surprise because violence has underlined our Sri Lankan existence at least throughout my life time.   From the time our band-playing triforces were transformed into killing machines in 1971,   guns   military technology, poles, molotov cocktails and bombs   have been used by the forces, the vigilantes and the so called ‘terrorist groups’   to wage destruction   on the LTTE,   on the JVP and against many local, minority groups, the most recent being the Easter Sunday massacre of innocent civilians.   We have assassinated a cohort of leaders, starting with the much maligned SWRD Bandaranaike in 1956,   and more recently Lalith Athulathmudali, Gamini Dissanayake, Vijaya Kumaranatunga, Ranasinghe Premadasa, Neelan Thiruchelvam, Nadaraja Raviraj, Lakshman Kadirigama, to name a few of the others.
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