The political economy of drought
by Rajan Philips-February 18, 2017, 7:29 pm
The drought crisis in Sri Lanka is not on the same scale as the dreaded drought and famine that plagued African countries in the 1970s or the Bengal famine much earlier. Yet, the present drought is the country’s worst in 40 years and is bad enough to attract the attention of the World Food Programme (WFP), a UN initiative to identify and address food security problems worldwide. The two sides of the globalization coin cannot be more ironical. There is the fancied face of global prosperity and there is the fretting fear of food insecurity for whole communities, if not countries. Global food crisis is now a topic even at Davos, the annual gathering for sustaining conspicuous consumption. Our Prime Minister and the WFP Executive Director apparently mused about Sri Lanka’s drought when the two met at wintry Davos. The Director, Ertharin Cousin, later visited Sri Lanka to check the progress on WFP initiatives in Sri Lanka. All of this is good, and we cannot be choosy no matter where help comes from.
The political economy of drought.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd
