OP-ED

By Sidhartha Thamby Somewhere in the ledgers of Sri Lanka's Cabinet Office, between the fiscal crisis minutes and the debt-restructuring files, sits a two-paragraph decision that will reshape rivers, forests, and livelihoods across Vavuniya, Mullaitivu, and the wider northern dry zone. Approved quietly in January 2026, it revived the Kivul Oya Reservoir Project — suspended only two years earlier because the country had run out of money — at a cost of Rs. 23,456 million. That figure is not a typ

Seventeen years after the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, reconciliation remains more slogan than substance. It is invoked in speeches, embedded in policy frameworks, and repeated in international forums, but for many citizens, particularly in the North and East, it has yet to translate into meaningful, lived change. The uncomfortable truth is this: Sri Lanka does not suffer from a lack of reconciliation mechanisms. It suffers from a lack of political will, consistency, and sustained execution. R

By M.R. Narayan Swamy “The fishermen issue is an unnecessary irritant that has been allowed to fester for too long,” says Yashvardhan Kumar Sinha, a former Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, hitting the nail on the head. A diplomat who has studied the dispute from close quarters, Sinha made the comment in a just-released book on India-Sri Lanka relations. Like many other Indians, Sinha is aghast that bottom trawlers from Tamil Nadu are causing enormous and lasting environmental destruction

A policy framework for agricultural revival in Sri Lanka's Northern Province — and the case for treating it not as a welfare programme, but as an economic system designed to win. By Jeevan Thiagarajah The Northern Province of Sri Lanka holds more than 100,000 hectares of paddy land, some of South Asia's most productive onion soil, and a coastline that ranks among the country's richest fishing grounds. Revitalising it is not merely a regional ambition — it is a national opportunity. This pie

Mahesh Nirmalan MD, FRCA, PhD, FFICM, University of Manchester, United Kingdom Human life is defined by a deep-seated paradox which at times may seem unsurmountable. On the one hand we are biological organisms subject to the rules of physics and chemistry and therefore subject to entropy, decay and dissolution. We get hungry, tired, we age and ultimately, we all cease to function. Yet within this fragile and time limited existence there remains a sense of ‘I’ or ‘me’ that feels constant. Despit

By M.R. Narayan Swamy When Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi prepared to fly to Colombo in July 1987, Tamil politicians and militants from Sri Lanka were invited to New Delhi to approve a proposed bilateral pact that sought to end Tamil separatism. Velupillai Prabhakaran, the founder leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and his team were put up in the five-star Hotel Ashok, no doubt because the Tigers were the most formidable force in the military arena, even if they were a