Ten bodies found in dinghy off Libyan coast as 2,200 migrants rescued

Pope Francis calls situation of migrants 'shameful' and 'bankrupcy of humanity'

Topaz Responder ship run by Maltese NGO Moas and Italian Red Cross with rescuers, migrants aboard during operation on Saturday (AFP)

AFP-Saturday 5 November 2016

Ten bodies were recovered on Saturday from a rubber dinghy off the Libyan coast, the Italian coastguard said, adding that 2,200 other migrants were rescued during the day.

Sixteen rescue operations were conducted on Saturday - almost twice as many as on Friday when 1,200 people were rescued.

An AFP correspondent aboard the Topaz Responder, a search and rescue ship chartered by Maltese NGO MOAS and the Italian Red Cross, saw several hundred people, including children, being rescued on Friday and Saturday.

Migrants shrouded in foil survival blankets crowded onto the deck of the vessel after rescue efforts in which at least one baby was saved during the early hours of Saturday.

The Red Cross tweeted that 707 people were on board the vessel on Saturday.

Pope Francis on Saturday called the situation of migrants "shameful" and "a bankrupcy of humanity".

"The Mediterranean has become a graveyard, and not just the Mediterranean," he said, adding that there were also "many graveyards near walls, walls stained with the blood of innocents".

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Meanwhile, the Libyan Red Crescent said it recovered the bodies of another six migrants on a beach west of Tripoli on Saturday, taking to 40 the number of drowned migrants found along the North African country's coast since Sunday.

People smugglers have exploited the chaos gripping Libya since the 2011 uprising that overthrew dictator Muammar Gaddafi to traffic migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe.

As many as 4,220 migrants have died trying to cross the Mediterranean so far this year, a higher number than the full-year totals for 2014, 2015 or any other year on record, according to the International Organization for Migration.

To deal with climate change we need a new financial system

Abolishing debt-based currency isn’t a new idea, but it could hold the secret to ending our economies’ environmentally damaging addiction to growth

Bank notes are checked in 1929 at the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Photograph: FPG/Getty Images

Jason Hickel-Saturday 5 November 2016 

When it comes to global warming, we know that the real problem is not just fossil fuels – it is the logic of endless growth that is built into our economic system. If we don’t keep the global economy growing by at least 3% per year, it plunges into crisis. That means we have to double the size of the economy every 20 years, just to stay afloat. It doesn’t take much to realise that this imperative for exponential growth makes little sense given the limits of our finite planet.

Rapid climate change is the most obvious symptom of this contradiction, but we’re also seeing it in the form of deforestation, desertification and mass extinction, with species dying at an alarming rate as our consumption of the natural world causes their habitats to collapse. It was unthinkable to say this even 10 years ago, but today, as we become increasingly aware of these crises, it seems all too clear: our economic system is incompatible with life on this planet.

Indonesian officials set fire to a stockpile of illegal items made from endangered animals, including tigers, sun bears and the Javan gibbon. Photograph: Jefta Images/Barcroft Images

The question is what to do about it. How can we redesign the global economy to bring it in line with the principles of ecology? The most obvious answer is to stop using GDP to measure economic progress and replace it with a more thoughtful measure – one that accounts for the ecological and social impact of economic activity. Prominent economists like Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz have been calling for such changes for years and it’s time we listened.

But replacing GDP is only a first step. While it might help refocus economic policies on what really matters, it doesn’t address the main driver of growth: debt. Debt is the reason the economy has to grow in the first place. Because debt always comes with interest, it grows exponentially – so if a person, a business, or a country wants to pay down debt over the long term, they have to grow enough to at least match the growth of their debt. Without growth, debt piles up and eventually triggers an economic crisis.

One way to relieve the pressure for endless growth might be to cancel some of the debt – a kind of debt jubilee. But this would only provide a short-term fix; it wouldn’t get to the real root of the problem: that the global economic system runs on money that is itself debt.

This might sound a bit odd, but it’s quite simple. When you walk into a bank to take out a loan, you assume that the bank is lending you money it has in reserve – money that it stores somewhere in a vault, for example, collected from other people’s deposits. But that’s not how it works. Banks only hold reserves worth about 10% of the money they lend out. In other words, banks lend out 10 times more money than they actually have. This is known as fractional reserve banking.

So where does all that additional money come from? Banks create it out of thin air when they make loans – they loan it into existence. This accounts for about 90% of the money circulating in our economy right now. It’s not created by the government, as most people assume: it is created by commercial banks in the form of loans. In other words, almost every dollar that passes through our hands represents somebody’s debt. And every dollar of debt has to be paid back with interest. Because our money system is based on debt, it has a growth imperative baked into it. In other words, our money system is heating up the planet.

Once we realise this, the solution comes into view: we need banks to keep a bigger fraction of reserves behind the loans they make. This would go a long way toward diminishing the amount of debt sloshing around in our economy, helping reduce the pressure for economic growth. 

But there’s an even more exciting solution we might consider. We could abolish debt-based currency altogether and invent a new money system completely free of intrinsic debt. Instead of letting commercial banks create money by lending it into existence, we could have the state create the money and then spend it into existence. New money would get pumped into the real economy instead of just going straight into financial speculation where it inflates huge asset bubbles that only benefit the mega-rich.

The responsibility for money creation would be placed with an independent agency that – unlike our banks – would be democratic, accountable, and transparent, so money would become a truly public good. Commercial banks would still be able to lend money at interest, but they would have to back it dollar for dollar with their own reserves. In other words, there would be a 100% reserve requirement.

This is not a fringe proposal. It has been around since at least the 1930s, when a group of economists in Chicago proposed it as a way of curbing the reckless lending that led to the Great Depression. The Chicago Plan, as it was called, made headlines again in 2012 when progressive IMF economists put it forward as a strategy for preventing the global financial crisis from recurring. They pointed out that such a system would dramatically reduce both public and private debt and make the world economy more stable.

What they didn’t notice is that abolishing debt-based currency also holds the secret to getting our system off its addiction to growth, and therefore to arresting climate change. As it turns out, reinventing our money system is crucial to our survival in the Anthropocene – at least as important as getting off fossil fuels. And this idea is already beginning to gain traction: in the UK, the campaigning group Positive Money has generated momentum around it, building on a series of excellent explanatory videos.

The idea has its enemies, of course. If we shift to a positive money system, big banks will no longer have the power to literally make money out of nothing and the rich will no longer reap millions from asset bubbles. Unsurprisingly, neither of these groups would be pleased by this prospect. But if we want to build a fairer, more ecologically sound economy, that’s a battle that we can’t be afraid to fight.

Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. 

Follow@GuardianGDP on Twitter. Join the conversation with the hashtag #Dev2030.

Worried well 'might boost heart risk'

SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

4 November 2016

Being one of the "worried well" might actually increase heart-disease risk, a study has suggested.

Norwegian researchers looked at health anxiety levels in 7,000 people who were followed for at least a decade.

The BMJ Open paper suggests that, while general anxiety is already recognised as a risk, health anxiety might also be an issue.

Heart experts said anyone who felt they were experiencing 'health anxiety' should speak to their doctor.

Health anxiety describes when people have a "persistent preoccupation" with having or acquiring a serious illness, and seeking prompt medical advice, without any symptoms of an actual disease.

Participants in this study were taking part in the Norwegian Hordaland Health Study (HUSK).

Dilemma

All were born between 1953 and 1957.

They completed questionnaires about health, lifestyle, and education and had blood tests, and their weight, height, and blood pressure measured regularly between 1997 and 1999.

They used a recognised scale called the Whiteley Index to assess anxiety levels.

The researchers also used national data to track hospital treatment and deaths in the group up to 2009.

And of the 7,000, 234 (3.3%) had a heart attack or bout of acute angina during the monitoring period.

Even after known risk factors were taken into account, the proportion of those succumbing to heart disease (just over 6%) was more than twice as high among the 710 considered to have health anxiety.

And the higher their anxiety score, the greater the risk of developing heart disease.

'Natural to worry'

Writing in BMJ Open, the researchers, led by Dr Line Iden Berge, said: "[Our research] further indicates that characteristic behaviour among persons with health anxiety, such as monitoring and frequent check-ups of symptoms, does not reduce the risk of [coronary heart disease] events.

"These findings illustrate the dilemma for clinicians between reassuring the patient that current physical symptoms of anxiety do not represent heart disease, contrasted against the emerging knowledge on how anxiety, over time, may be causally associated with increased risk of [coronary artery disease]."

Emily Reeve, a senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: "It's natural for people to worry if they feel they might be unwell.

"But anxiety and stress can trigger unhealthy habits, such as smoking or eating badly, which put you at greater risk of heart disease.

"While we don't know if the 'worried well' are directly putting themselves at risk of a heart attack, it's clear that reducing unnecessary anxiety can have health benefits.

"If you are experiencing health anxiety, speak to your doctor."

From Rajapaksa to Bond Scam; Clean up Political Parties First

Let’s be honest and be bold enough to own up that we keep voting political parties to power that are wholly corrupt and undemocratic without ever questioning their bona fide. Let’s face the truth, we keep changing governments between political parties that can never be democratic and clean. No leader is interested in having clean and independent men and women in their party organisations.

by Kusal Perera

( November 5, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Much is written about Arjuna Mahendran and the “Bond scam”. This is only the first Bond scam that is talked of while the second needs investigations. In any other decent, democratic society, that would have demanded for a “Ranexit”. Not here in this “most noble country” on planet earth. In fact Bond deals are not the only shady deals taking place under “Yahapalanaya” and Arjuna Mahendran is not the only man under the clouds to be in the dock, IF, let me stress, if investigations are carried out impartially, efficiently and effectively.

Most other mega corruptions tend to go unnoticed or quietly dropped, as “Yahapalana hurrah boys” in Colombo circles don’t wish to make it “uneasy” for Wickramasinghe, they are comfortable with. That was precisely the logic with three respectable good governance activists who went to the Supreme Court in March, 2015 with a fundamental rights petition on the February 2015 Bond deal, the first of the two. They refrained from petitioning the SC on a fraud in the bond deal. Instead petitioned the SC to direct the Monetary Board to have stricter procedures, rules and regulations in place, for transparency and good governance. Their reluctance to call the spade a spade in order to avoid embarrassing their government, saw the FR petition being rejected. Worst, it gave Arjuna Mahendran and the Wickramasinghe government a chance to say, the SC has ruled him as “clean”. Far worse, it gave the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank enough confidence to go for another Bond deal in March this year that too needs to be investigated.

With that, if one dares to compare the first 02 years of Rajapaksa rule with this “Yahapalana” government’s 22 months since January 2015, everything stinks to the bones. The first 02 to 03 years or even up to the conclusion of the war in 2009 May, Rajapaksa corruption was in line with that under Chandrika Kumaratunge’s presidency. Chandrika era was no clean and there were serious allegations, some proved and some not that prompted editor/journalist Victor Ivan to chronicle her as a “Bandit Queen”. That was corruption that kept growing since the “open” economy was introduced in 1978. Premadasa era had more allegations on corruptions than in the Jayawardne era. Kumaratunge era that began by promising a “human face” to the free market economy surpassed the Premadasa era in terms of big corruption. Rajapaksa continued with that in the first few years. The only mega deal reported during the first 02 years was that on Mig air craft purchases, which Lasantha Wickramatunge investigated and perhaps fell victim to. Taking over from Rajapaksa, this Wickramasinghe led “Yahapalana” government has a long list that goes without attention and with no loud cry for investigations.

A week ago, a letter written by Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake to the Central Bank (CB) Governor Coomaraswamy went viral. He had requested a special favour for Minister Sarath Fonseka’s son in law in granting the security contract advertised by the CB. That drove a chill deep down the Colombo middle class. It provoked the loud retort “OMG! When will this stop?” by a well respected legal expert who had a copy of that letter in her “in-box”. Yes, when will it stop? For sure, it will NOT stop, unless it is made to stop with determination, by the society. The question is, where and how could it begin?

Let’s be honest and be bold enough to own up that we keep voting political parties to power that are wholly corrupt and undemocratic without ever questioning their bona fide. Let’s face the truth, we keep changing governments between political parties that can never be democratic and clean. No leader is interested in having clean and independent men and women in their party organisations. Political parties are run with State patronage if in power, or with funding from wheeler dealers when in opposition. Irrespective of political colour and rhetoric, all political leaders and their selected henchmen use political power in bargaining stakes from all State sponsored projects when in government. This free and open market economy is run on such greasy deals and cannot be run in any other way, whoever comes to power.

Instead of holding political leaders responsible for corruption, Colombo ‘pundits’ argued the “preference” vote in the PR election system is what corrupted politics. In the old “first past the post” (FPP) electoral system, they argued, the elected MP was held responsible to the constituency and therefore was not easily induced to corruption. Indian parliamentary and State government elections since opening up the economy prove this argument totally wrong. India still continues with the FPP system. At the last parliamentary elections held in 2014 when BJP was elected to power with Modi as PM, the Indians elected a Lok Sabha with 186 MPs having criminal cases against them says a New Delhi based research cum lobby group, “Association for Democratic Reforms” (ADR). This is an increase from 154 elected MPs with criminal cases in the previous parliament. Of the present lot in Lok Sabha, 112 have serious crimes with charges for murder, attempted murder, abductions, extortions and crimes against women. 16 of them are booked for crimes on racial hatred and incitement. From among the elected ruling party BJP number, 63 MPs have cases against them for crimes committed. These crimes are all within an extremely corrupt political party system.

That speaks enough for the FPP electoral system. That also says, it is not the electoral system which actually leads to heavy corruptions and crimes. It is the unrestricted market economy which allows unlimited accumulation of wealth no matter how they are accrued, that leads to heavy corruption often tied to crimes.

In this free market economy, it is common knowledge but goes without any questioning how political parties spend billions of rupees for their election campaigning even when in the opposition. There were also public statements that claimed some candidates at the last parliamentary elections spent over 02 billion rupees for election campaigning. Numbers being true or not, there was nevertheless huge unaccounted for money spent for election campaigning. Fact remains, these campaign funds go without any public accounting and scrutiny.

It must therefore be stressed, the free market economy is a vulgar adaptation for unaccounted for mega profits earned by any means. In all countries it carries with it the duality of doing business with public funds and pocketing profits privately. This requires government patronage for investments in private business within a free market defined as “development”. All heavy construction earmarked as projects for development are thus State funded. Governments borrow big money through bi lateral and multi lateral agreements signed with foreign funding agencies and foreign governments to invest in mega “construction centric” development. They are given out to the private sector with ballooned profits on sharing basis. For the private sector to gain such profits, they cultivate political patronage. That is the basis of “mega corruption”. The requirement of “political decisions” and the ability to “buy” those decisions.

This dynamics of the free market economy, over the decades since 1978 have turned out “political businessmen” who now control party politics either from inside or from outside. All that has changed the social value system too. Mega corruption now works through political parties and go without questioning. We therefore now have a different politician who needs more power and more access to funds and unlimited material wealth. To be that s/he as candidates spend massive amounts of money during elections the voter knows not, from where they come. In fact now, political party leaders pitching in for State power prefers to cultivate men and women who can spend big money at elections as candidates to win enough numbers to form a government.

We have thus reached a state of affairs, where corruption cannot be checked through mechanisms that do not bring political parties and politicians to account publicly for their election funds. We need to demand from the Election Commission to propose necessary amendments without ambiguity to the Assets & Liabilities Act to have annual declaration of assets of all elected politicians mandatory. A new unambiguous law to compel all political parties to publicly declare their election funds with details of sources too, at all elections. Or else, COPE would only be a one off publicity issue, with unending mega corruption continuing unabated under “Yahapalanaya” too. In short, no government would be clean when political parties are heaped with garbage.

Exposing The unpublicised victim of war and armed conflicts


2016-11-05

The international day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict will be observed worldwide tomorrow, with the theme being of special significance to Sri Lanka in the aftermath of a devastating 30-year civil war. 

 In a statement to mark the occasion, the United Nations points out that though the world has generally counted its war casualties in terms of dead and wounded soldiers and civilians, destroyed cities and livelihoods, the environment has often remained the unpublicised victim of war. Water wells have been polluted, crops torched, forests cut down, soils poisoned, and animals killed to gain military advantage.

  Furthermore, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has found that over the past 60 years, at least 40 per cent of internal conflicts have been linked to the exploitation of natural resources, whether high-value resources such as timber, diamonds, gold and oil, or scarce resources such as fertile land and water. Conflicts involving natural resources have also been found to be twice as likely to relapse. 

 After the General Assembly declared the observance of this day in 2001, the UN says it gives much importance to ensuring that action on the environment is part of conflict prevention, peacekeeping and peace building strategies - because there can be no durable peace if the natural resources that sustain livelihoods and ecosystems are destroyed. 

 On May 27 this year, the United Nations Environment Assembly adopted a resolution which recognised the role of healthy ecosystems and sustainably-managed resources in reducing the risk of armed conflict, and reaffirmed its strong commitment to the full implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals listed in General Assembly resolution entitled “transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.” 

 The UN’s outgoing Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in a message says that to achieve the vision of the 2030 sustainable goals for a healthy planet, we need to recognise that we have a duty of care towards the environment in peacetime and during war. Poor governance of the environment and natural resources can contribute to the outbreak of conflict. It can fuel and finance existing conflicts and it can increase the risk of relapse. Conversely, there are many examples of natural resources serving as catalysts for peaceful cooperation, confidence-building and poverty reduction.

  In Sri Lanka, it is significant that President Maithripala Sirisena who is the Minister of Defence and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces is also the Minister in-charge of environmental affairs. At the Presidential election on January 8 last year, Mr. Sirisena was the common candidate of some 40 political parties or civic action groups, while it is widely recognised that he received about 90 per cent of the votes of the minority communities. Fully aware that his mandate was mainly for reconciliation and lasting peace through interracial and inter-religious dialogue and unity in diversity, the President has pledged the national government would ensure that never again would there be a war or armed conflict because of religious or racial divisions.  

The President and the national government during the past two years have given top priority to environmental issues and an equitable distribution of natural resources including water. Recently, the Moragahakanda project was streamlined to take Mahaweli water to the North and East also. Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in the latest five-year sustainable and eco-friendly development strategy outlined recently, pledged that equal facilities for good healthcare, quality education and productive or creative job opportunities would be provided to all provinces including the North and East, this will be part of a broader strategy not just for the devolution of power which is mainly for politicians but also for the devolution of essential resources which will go directly to the people in the grassroots. 

Working with the second or third best option – in education and everything 

Wednesday, 2 November 2016

January 9th of 2015 dawned with much hope but with much baggage too, it turns out. As events since then show, moving forward will be a tough balancing act for the President and the Prime Minister. Sri Lanka achieved independence without bloodshed, we like to say, but much blood has been shed since then. Born as a promising child of the Commonwealth at independence, we have watched Singapore and Malaysia overtake us by leaps and bounds. Smitten with socialism then, now we want to be social-democrats like the Europeans, but without their level of productivity or the high taxes.

This phenomenon is most evident in education. We have been striving for equality long before the economy or the society was ready for it. The fifty two original set of central schools crumbled along with the rest of the educational system with the weight of increasing demand for central schools in every town in a slow growth environment. In South Korea, by design or otherwise, their initial focus was on primary education, preparing a workforce for the factory floor. Then came investments in secondary and then tertiary. In Sri Lanka, we wanted it all then and we want it all now.

During the 2012 to 2013 period, I worked intensively in a school zone in the Ampara District with a group of idealists led by the former Education Minister for the Eastern Province, Wimalaweera Dissanayake and Upali Chandrasiri, an activist. I tried to read and appreciate their bible, the book ‘Guru Geethaya’ or ‘First Teacher’ by Chinghiz Aitmatov, but, I had a hard time being inspired by the Soviet-era heroism of individuals who fought against all odds. I believe in setting up systems that will make ordinary people behave well enough. Yet, along with the team I dreamed of a holistic education that valued achievements beyond exam success, and my role, defined by myself, was essentially to document that process as an action research project and adjust strategy as I went along. The project fizzled due to a change in the leadership and other factors, one of which was our efforts to implement the best option under sub-optimal conditions. The action research report is available, ready for another opportunity, but with less idealism next time.

I thought I was cured of idealism, but was again drawn to apply the best option in another environment which was sub optimal. This time the inspiration was an enthusiastic principal from a failing school in Colombo 5 who would not take no for an answer. This school has inherited space and facilities which any popular school would envy, but the middle-class parents have long fled, leaving it for children from low-income ghettos in the area. Colombo abounds with these kinds of schools, but we easily miss them as we fight traffic jams around popular school. The idea for the second school too fizzled, but the idea is on the same website, to be rejuvenated as needed.

Reeling from the reality checks of the past and hoping to recover from the bad taste of the bond scandal of recent, I welcomed the opportunity to attend the celebration of the 200-year birthday of Katunayake Methodist High School last Sunday. The school had been a beacon of hope then and now a failing one. This time I was determined to look beyond the best option to the second best or third best options and look for a strategy that might work under sub-optimal conditions.

Neighborhood school is the best school – the first best option

The neighborhood school is the best school, is the slogan of the Ministry of Education. This is what I would call the ‘best of the best’ options, for emphasis. Last week, I wrote about the struggles in UK to maintain their ideals from 1960s where they tried to move away from the selective grammar school concept and democratise education to give every child what they call a secondary modern school.

The old Grammar school idea was broad-based by conservative governments of the late 1940s by introducing the eleven-plus examination (the Sri Lanka equivalent of which is the Grade V scholarship examination). Grammar schools were intended to teach an academic curriculum to the most intellectually-able percent of the school population as selected by the eleven-plus. In 1964, the Labour Party brought in the egalitarian concept of the secondary modern school or the concept that neighborhood schools shall be the best schools and those would be open to all.

As Theresa May, the new PM noted, the secondary modern system has failed everybody except those who can afford to send their children to elite private schools, or parents who can coach their children to ace the eleven plus exam to get access to the remaining few grammar schools. Strangely, in Sri Lanka, we seem to have marched lockstep with our old mother country. If the Education Act of 1947 in the UK sought to spread the academic ethos of the existing grammar schools with the eleven-plus exam, during 1943-47, Dr. C.W.W. Kannagara sought to establish 52 central schools across the country with the Scholarship exam as the entry point.

Meanwhile, the 1964 manifesto of the Labour Party promised to abolish selectivity in admissions to schools and the policy was gradually implemented. Notions of equality found a match in the economic might of the UK at that time. In our part of the world, the 1956 transformation brought the aspirations of equality but economic policies were not conducive. Since then, we have been struggling along speaking of equality but delivering little, while in UK too visions of equality are disappearing under a changing economic landscape. Interestingly, both countries are in a somewhat similar situation. Giving a selective school to every aspiring parent is a question vexing policymakers in both countries. A selective school for every child is an oxymoron but try explaining that to parents.

In Sri Lanka we have come up with the ultimate cynical solution. Give the hope of a selective school to every parent by making a media spectacle of the Grade V scholarship exam. The exam indeed gives the impression of equality of access. The first ten children this year, ranked according to their total marks, scored 194 or more out of 200. It is worth putting on record, the locations of no-name schools that they hailed form – namely, Urugamuwa, Matara; Asssadduma, Kuliyapitiya; Rambekulam, Vavuniya; Dedigama, Kegalle; Asssadduma, Kuliyapitiyaagain; Ibbagamuwa; Trincomalee; Giriulla; Vennapauwa;Horana, Bomiriya and Jaffna. Next year, the top ten will form another random set of schools, showing that the examination indeed helps uncover cognitively gifted children wherever they happen to be. The sad truth is that the cut-off marks for popular schools seem to be set up to so that only some of the places in Grade six in popular schools are open for these and other gifted children. The elite have captured the majority of places already through Grade 1 admissions. Perhaps these schools are popular because of the presence of elites, but that is another story.

In the UK, entry to grammar schools is merit based, but the inadequacy of places for these schools is a problem in both countries. PM Theresa May proposes a not-so-ideal but a practical path to expand the number of quality schools. Learn to live with inequity, but give the people more tools with which to cope, is her argument. She proposes to expand the number of quality schools through several means.

Addressing inequity, in partnership – Second best option in education

There are many things wrong with the current concept of popular schools as practiced in Sri Lanka. Yet, the popular schools are here to stay. No sane politician would try to dismantle them. We have to look for ways to work with the system.

To expand quality school, Theresa May’s government proposes to mandate better endowed schools of public, private or civil society ownership to adopt failing schools. She also wants to extend a hand to religious schools or independent private schools to expand if they extend a hand to the disadvantaged families in the vicinity. Universities as leaders in such endeavors are also an idea in her proposal, but in Sri Lanka our universities will have to fix themselves first.

As the Pastor of the Katunayake Methodist Church, Reverend Surnagika Fernando noted, even past pupils  living in the Katunayake Methodist school neighborhood send their children to Colombo or Negomo or choose the newly-established private school, leaving only the most disadvantaged families to attend the neighborhood school. The Methodist Church is ready to share responsibility with the Government to uplift the school, and that is an option that should be explored. Olcott Buddhists – an identification now used disparagingly for Buddhists who deviate from Bodhi Pooja Buddhist majority –may take the lead in Buddhist-group-led schools and so on. Private schools can be incentivised to make places available for promising children from failing schools, giving gifted or keen children in those schools the opportunity to move on. Committed school leaders can create niche areas for excellence for the remaining children. Professional organisations like the GMOA can experiment with one or more model schools near teaching hospitals in remote areas, to attract children of professionals serving in those areas. Many possibilities exist, but none involves a Government going it alone.

Ministry of education should take heed

With its slogan, the neighborhood school is the best school, the Ministry of Education in Sri Lanka has set itself up for failure. New brooms will not sweep away socioeconomic issuesunderlying the failure of previous attempts. The ministry can keep the slogan, but they have to realize that they cannot do it alone.

Are Religious Conversions Taking Place In Sri Lanka?

By Muttukrishna Sarvananthan –November 4, 2016

Dr. Muttukrishna Sarvananthan

The ascendance of polarising faith-based organisations, ostensibly to protect their respective religions from poaching by other religions, in Sri Lanka after the end of the civil war in May 2009 adds to the complexity of peace building and nation building. The Bodu Bala Sena (Buddhist Power Force in English) in Sri Lanka was established in 2012 following the footsteps of the anti-Muslim campaign of the 969 movement in Myanmar. The founder of the 969 movement, Ashin Wirathu, visited Sri Lanka on the invitation of the BBS in 2014; the BBS was close to the then President Rajapaksa who is suspected to have instigated its establishment. The Siva Senai (Shiva’s Force in English) was established in October 2016 following the footsteps of Shiv Sena of Mumbai / Maharashtra in India. Though Siva Senai denies any formal affiliation to Shiv Sena, the choice of similar name for the new organisation in Sri Lanka casts doubt on such denial. In the same way as Shiv Sena doubles-up as a Hindu cum Marathi nationalist organisation, the Siva Senai also appears to be a Hindu cum Tamil nationalist organisation. The founder of the Siva Senai had told the The Hindu and New Indian Express newspapers of India that they are concerned about “Sinhala-Buddhist colonisation” and religious “conversion” taking place in the country.  The key objective of both the BBS and Siva Senai faith-based organisations is to clamour for the enactment of an anti-conversion law in Sri Lanka.

The common complaint or grievance of both the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) and Siva Senai (SS) is that Buddhists and Hindus are being converted to Christianity through material and spiritual inducements. It has been alleged that the mushrooming of western-funded Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in Sri Lanka during the course of the civil war has intensified such religious conversions both in the conflict-affected Eastern and Northern Provinces as well as elsewhere. The BBS also carries-out a hate campaign against the people of Islamic faith due to their relatively higher birth rate, among other reasons. While the birth rates of Buddhist, Christian, and Hindu Sri Lankans have declined to the levels of developed countries in the past three decades, the birth rate of Sri Lankans following the Islamic faith remains significantly higher. The BBS has instigated violence against Muslims in Aluthgama town in June 2014, which resulted in the death of two young Muslim men and burning down of an up-market clothing store owned by a Muslim in Panadura (a suburb of Colombo), and was probably behind scores of attacks on Churches and Mosques in various parts of the country.

However, the BBS has negligible public support among the Buddhist population in the country. The BBS is a registered political party, which contested the parliamentary elections in few districts in August 2015 and secured just 135 votes in the Colombo District (if I remember correctly). This should be a lesson to the Siva Senai if at all it has any political aspirations in the future.

The objective of this op-ed is to find out whether there have been religious conversions taking place in Sri Lanka during the course of the civil war. There are four major religions practiced in Sri Lanka, viz. Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam (in alphabetical order).

After the Census of 1981, the latest Census of 2012 was the only one which covered the entire country. Between 1981 and 2012 Census could not be undertaken in all parts of the country due to the civil wars in the southern as well as the eastern and northern parts of the country. The 1991 Census was cancelled by the then government because the country was undergoing two insurgencies during the 1980s; the southern insurgency between 1987 and 1989 and the eastern and northern insurgency from 1983 onwards. The 2001 Census was undertaken in seventeen out of twenty-five districts, except the eight districts in the Eastern and Northern Provinces. Therefore, after 1981, only the 2012 Census has comparable data for the entire country. It is important to be aware that the Census 2012 was in fact undertaken only in March 2013 because of printing errors in the original Census form; probably because of other political reason/s as well.

The growth rate of the population following the Islamic faith in the country has been the highest between 1981 and 2012, followed by Buddhists, Christians, and the Hindus in descending order. The growth rate of the Buddhist population was 38.72% from 10,288,328 in 1981 to 14,272,056 in 2012; the growth rate of Christian population was 37.29% from 1,130,567 in 1981 to 1,552,161 in 2012; the growth rate of Hindu population was just 11.47% from 2,297,806 in 1981 to 2,561,299 in 2012; and the growth rate of Islamic population was the highest 75.41% from 1,121,715 in 1981 to 1,967,523 in 2012. (See Table 1)

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REPORT: ALL PROVINCIAL COUNCILS WANT THE POWERS OF THE GOVERNOR TO BE REDUCED SUBSTANTIALLY

Image: Reginald Cooray takes oaths as new governor of Northern Province.

04/11/2016

Concluding text of agreed outcomes of the Conference of Provincial Councils of SriLanka held on 7th August 2016 says that The powers of the Governor must be substantially reduced. Except in clearly identified emergency or other exceptional situations. The report of conference, which  was organised by the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) in Colombo has now been published. The report has been edited by Dr. Asanga Welikala, an expert on constitutional making.  Among other important agreements are the proposals to  abolish the Concurrent List of the Provincial Council Act, to establish a provincial police service,  to establish a  National Land Commission and a Provincial Land Commission, to formalize the Chief Ministers’ Conference.

Although the conference had  extensive discussion during the plenary and breakout sessions about such matters as the nature of the Sri Lankan state, in particular the question of its self-description as a unitary or federal state there has not been a consensus position on the subject .  “However, there was broad acceptance that Sri Lanka’s unity and territorial integrity must be safeguarded by the constitution while providing for the maximum possible devolution within that framework.” says the report:

The section of the agreed outcomes of the Conference are given below:

Book.pdf by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Fiscal challenges ahead of Budget 2017

 

Saturday, 5 November 2016

The forthcoming Budget 2017 is to be presented in the midst of many macroeconomic vulnerabilities manifested by persistent fiscal deficits. Revenue generation is constrained by the limitations in mobilising direct taxes which have led to a continuous rise in the indirect tax burden making the tax system more regressive hurting the poor and further widening income inequality.

Meanwhile, the slowing down of GDP growth inhibits any autonomous increase in revenue collection. The debt stock continues to rise reflecting a high level of fiscal sustainability risks in the medium term. Given the revenue constraints and the unlikely expenditure cuts, bringing down the budget deficit as envisaged in the IMF-supported program seems a daunting task.

Fiscal consolidation agenda

The Budget 2017 needs to be framed in conjunction with the fiscal target contained in the three-year Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement agreed with the IMF in last June (Table).  With the anticipated increase in tax revenue of about 1.2% of GDP annually during 2017-18, the budget deficit is expected to decline from 5.4% of GDP in 2016 to 4.0 percent of GDP by 2018. A corresponding decline in the primary deficit (program’s fiscal anchor, which excludes interest payments) to near-zero levels is expected for the coming years.

Indirect tax burden on the rise

The total Government expenditure for 2017 is projected to be 18.8% of GDP as against the total revenue of 14.0% leaving a budget deficit of 4.8% of GDP. Around four fifths of the total revenue is generated from taxes. Dependence on indirect taxes has risen while the direct tax component remained stagnant over the last decade (Figure 1). The revenue generated from income taxes is less than 20% of the total tax revenue, and hence, the balance 80% of total tax revenue has to be collected through indirect taxes. Sri Lanka’s income tax component is one of the lowest in the world (Figure 2).

The burden of indirect taxes is usually passed on to individuals who consume the goods and services subject to such taxes irrespective of their income levels. Indirect taxes are considered as a regressive form of taxation since the low-income earners are overburdened by indirect taxes imposed on essential consumer goods and services such as food, medical care, clothing and public utilities. Given the difficulties in collecting income taxes which are a direct form of taxation, the goods and services consumed by masses have been increasingly subject to various forms of indirect taxes, thus, exerting enormous pressures on the cost of living of the poor. As a result, the equity objective of taxation has been significantly undermined over the years.

VAT takes the brunt 

An immediate challenge faced by the fiscal authorities is to bring down the budget deficit to 4.7% of GDP in 2017 from 5.4% this year in compliance with the EFF arrangement. This is to be achieved by raising the tax revenue from 11.8 % of GDP this year to 12.9% of GDP in 2017. For this purpose, broadening the tax base for income tax and VAT, and tax administration reforms are planned. The Government has already taken action to raise the VAT rate and to broaden its base while the other envisaged tax reforms are yet to see the light of day. This move contrasts with the Government’s declared policy stance to reduce the indirect to direct tax ratio from the present level of 80:20 to 60:40.

The Value Added Tax (VAT) rate has been raised from 11% to 15% effective from 1 November. The VAT base has been broadened to cover certain previously exempted items including milk powder, electric and electronic items, cigarettes, liquor, perfumes, jewellery and coal. Lease or rent of residential accommodation, telecommunication services and health care services will also be subject to VAT. These tax changes will have ripple effects on the cost of living of the ordinary people.

The Government anticipates that the VAT revisions will bring about a revenue boost of around Rs. 100 billion from the present level of Rs. 280 billion to Rs. 380 billion by next year. However, it is not easy to generate VAT revenue as expected due to its complexities in the refunding process and other administrative challenges. A significant number of businessmen and manufacturers evade paying VAT and Nation Building Tax (NBT). There are only 15,000 VAT payers and 23,000 NBT payers, according to the Inland Revenue Department. Sri Lanka also has experience in huge VAT refunding frauds in the past.

Revenue loss from tax incentives

The Government has granted various forms of tax incentives with a view to attract Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) over the last several decades. They include corporate tax holidays, import duty exemptions and tax concessions for dividends. Both the Board of Investment (BOI) and the Inland Revenue Department grant such concessions. The revenue loss on account of tax incentives is estimated to be around 1.35% of GDP in 2012-13 which is approximately equal to corporate tax collection. This is a major factor that has led to reduce the direct tax component of the country.

The effectiveness of these tax incentives is questionable in the context of low FDI inflows which are still less than $ 1 billion per annum. There is no mechanism to assess the benefits of the tax incentives or to estimate the foregone revenue losses. The low mobilisation of corporate taxes reflects that the incentive receiving sectors do not contribute sufficiently to Government coffers to offset the revenue losses.  

Expenditure cuts unlikely

The space for cutting down expenditure is extremely limited as most of such outlays are already committed or cannot be curtailed for social and economic implications. The Government will have to spend almost the entirety of its revenue for interest payments and amortisation payments on public debt in 2017. Hence, it is compelled to borrow to meet other recurrent and capital expenditure.

The major current expenditure items include salaries and subsidies, apart from interest payments which account for around one third of recurrent expenditure. The expansion of the public sector staff mostly for political reasons has become a severe burden on the budget costing the Government one fifths of its current expenditure for paying salaries. The transfers made to loss-making public enterprises year after year too balloons expenditure without generating adequate returns.

Fiscal sustainability risks imminent

The projected fiscal outlook for 2017 onwards reflects vulnerabilities in the areas of financing needs and debt sustainability.  The envisaged fiscal consolidation to overcome the sustainability risks entirely depends on increased revenue mobilisation as no expenditure cuts are earmarked. In the background of the lack of an effective program to raise income tax collection or to rationalise the widespread income tax incentives, the total burden of revenue increase falls on indirect taxes, mainly on VAT.  This leads to make the tax system further regressive hurting the poor. The downward effect of the tax revisions on GDP growth is inevitable further restraining revenue mobilisation. 

(The writer, an economist, academic and former central banker can be contacted at sscolom@gmail.com.)