COVID-19 and the South Asian State

Content

Interviews with Dr Muttukrishna Sarvananthan on Sri Lanka’s economic crisis

During the life-time of our British Academy funded project, Sri Lanka encountered a sovereign bankruptcy. The pandemic contributed to this, although it not the root cause of this bankruptcy. BA-project participant member,  Muttukrishna Sarvananthan has addressed various media on the causes and consequences of this bankruptcy, the (largely non-violent) mass uprising therefrom by the people of Sri Lanka (ala Arab Spring) to oust the incumbent Executive President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and the government headed by his elder brother, former Executive President, and the Prime Minister (until May 09, 2022), Mahinda Rajapaksa.   

The document provides a curated set of questions and answers based on various media interventions by Muttukrishna Sarvananthan during the first seven months of 2022. They cover the causes (retrospect), consequences, and the potential way out of the sovereign bankruptcy (prospect) derived from many interviews  during this period. The author can be contacted at sarvi@pointpedro.org for further understanding of this sovereign bankruptcy.   

The list in the attached document summarised the questions with which Dr Sarvananthan engaged. Links to the various news-reports in which these interviews were reported are listed at the end of the document.

A stitch in time saved by none

BA project participant members Kanchana N Ruwanpura and Aardra Surendran recently participated in a debate organised by the Asia Floor Wage Alliance on gender-based violence during Covid-19. 

The intervention by Kanchana Ruwanpura starts at about minute 26:00 and lasts until about 1h 05 minutes.