Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development…. (https://www.jeffsachs.org/).
Category Archives: commoditification
Roadside Scenery: British Ceylon in the Early 20th Century
Several of these old photographs cropped up in the course of my work on Leonard Woolf for presentation in Thuppahi. They give us some understanding of the contexts serving as backdrop to daily life in the daytime. …. since nightitme life is more veiled and obdurate in a world without mobile telephone cameras.
Hambantota: Multi-Purpose Port of the Year for 2021
The Hambantota International Port was named “Multi-Purpose Port /Terminal of The Year 2021 & Port Infrastructure Development of the Year 2021,” at the recently concluded Global Port Forum (GPF) awards earlier this week.The Awards ceremony, held at the Shangri-La, Dubai, brought together organisations and professionals from across the world’s Ports & Terminals industry, to a gala event, where the highest contributors of 2021 were recognised.
HIP won two of the most coveted awards, ‘Multi-Purpose Port / Terminal of The Year 2021’ and ‘Port Infrastructure Development of the Year 2021,’ after a stringent process conducted by the forum to select the most deserving in each of the categories. Global Ports Customers and Senior Port Experts from the Global Ports Council made up the prestigious panel of judges who were involved in the shortlisting and selection process.
Sri Lanka is Near Extinction
Chandrasena Maliyadde
Sri Lanka was a model economy at the time of gaining independence 75 years back. It was ahead of many of its peers and neighbours on many fronts. Today it has become an import-led, debt-ridden, faltering economy. It is far behind all its neighbours. Intellectuals have sought to explain the reasons behind this pathetic state. Maliyadde, who was in public service for nearly 50 years and spent most of his career in the Ministry of Planning and Plan Implementation, takes a view different to that pressed by the majority. His views are presented in an interview with HIGH TV.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=rm&ogbl#inbox/FMfcgzGmvpHLpHdbTFqDspxGnvPkwvbV?projector=1
….. Jamila Husain with Maliyadde & Indika Sakalasooriya
Filed under accountability, commoditification, disparagement, economic processes, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes
Why Sri Lanka is Sinking – Prithi’s Prognosis
In Response to the THUPPAHI Item bringing Imran Khan’s ‘fate’ into juxtaposition with that of Sri Lanka, viz. https://thuppahis.com/2022/04/11/kota-uda-imran-khan-and-sri-lanka/ …….. Prithi Perera has fashioned an “Address to Sri Lankan Aussies” …. And, thus, to Thuppahi @@
Dear Sri Lankan Aussies, Unfortunately, this post does not reflect any of the issues mentioned in my email of 30 March 2022 that explained the real reasons for the present foreign debt and foreign exchange crises facing Sri Lanka today. As per that post where the statistics from the World Bank were quoted, it was clearly shown how the External Debt grew and the years that had the biggest increases with the External Debt growing in double digit increases from 2009 to 2014 with 2012 showing the highest annual increase in External Debt as compared to 2012. viz; 38.54 %. The growths in External Debt which involves foreign currency was highest during the periods 2009 to 2014, recording a growth from USD Billion 19,504,201 in 2009 to USD Billion 42,262,755, an increase of 117%. The External Borrowings from 2015 to 2019 have shown only single digit annual changes and the growth in External Debt has been from USD Billion 43,925,371 in 2015 to USD Billion 56,095,469, thus an increase of USD Billion 12,170,098 or 27% increase during the five-year period ending 2019, as compared to the 117% increase during the five-year period ending 2014.
Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, commoditification, economic processes, governance, historical interpretation, island economy, land policies, landscape wondrous, legal issues, life stories, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, taking the piss, transport and communications, travelogue, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, working class conditions, world events & processes
Beckoning: Emma Thompson’s Sri Lankan Pictorials
The photographs adorning Emma Thompson’s travel tale … at …………………………………. https://thuppahis.com/2022/02/21/british-tourists-commence-return-to-sri-lankas-touring-delights/ .….. have been sent to me by Amal Abeywardena of London — circumventing the Sunday Times requirement of a subscription!
Filed under architects & architecture, Buddhism, commoditification, cultural transmission, elephant tales, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, photography, pilgrimages, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, transport and communications, travelogue, world events & processes
The Pearls and Pearl Divers of Ceylon
Tamara Fernando: “Seeing Like the Sea: A Multispecies History of the Ceylon Pearl Fishery 1800–1925″* Past & Present, Volume 254, Issue 1, February 2022, Pages 127–60, ……………………………………………. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtab002
ABSTRACT of the Article: The pearl fishery of Ceylon was a lucrative source of pearls as well as a theatre of colonial power. But instead of narrating a story of abstracted governmentality, this paper dives below the waves, braiding Tamil poetry with scientific material relating to the oyster and state sources concerning fishery administration. Taken together, these unearth a multi-species history of the human relationship to the seas. In the same way that pearl divers’ labour was a mode of knowing nature, so too, natural processes and marine creatures shaped, in turn, the economic, social and cultural worlds at the fishery. This nacreous, layered approach combines natural history, maritime labour and historical ecology to explore the fragile and interlocking balance below the waves which extended beyond humans to the molluscs, sharks, boring sponges and parasitic tapeworms of the Gulf of Mannar. The archive around the pearl fishery advances the animal and ecological histories of the Indian Ocean and also points towards ways of suturing the gulf between Indian and Sri Lankan scholarship.
Filed under British colonialism, commoditification, economic processes, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, marine life, population, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, trauma, travelogue, unusual people, working class conditions, world events & processes
Hambantota Port in Expansive Paths
News Item in The Island, 11 February 2022, with this title “Hambantota International Port broke new ground in 2021”
2021 was a watershed year for HIP with the port’s activities spreading in several new directions, which has created a unique ecosystem for economic prosperity for Sri Lanka. The port worked to provide opportunities for maritime trade and investment on the East-West routes of the Indian ocean. HIP which is slated to become a topnotch multipurpose port is uniquely positioned to be a catalyst for the industrial development of the south of Sri Lanka through its industrial park situated within the port and adjacent development activities earmarked by the government of Sri Lanka.
Filed under accountability, architects & architecture, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, China and Chinese influences, commoditification, cultural transmission, economic processes, elephant tales, export issues, foreign policy, governance, growth pole, historical interpretation, island economy, legal issues, modernity & modernization, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, transport and communications, working class conditions, world events & processes
The Pioneering Planters of Maskeliya
Hugh Karunanayake, with highlighting and spacing imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
The economy of Sri Lanka or Ceylon as it was then known, was basically a peasant economy which through the nineteenth century transformed into a plantation economy. The change commenced with the introduction of the first commercial crop, coffee. Commercial cultivation of coffee as a crop was introduced and encouraged during Governor Sir Edward Barnes’ tenure in the 1830s and by the 1860s had covered most of the upcountry areas. Maskeliya District opened up in the late 1860s, the first estate to be cleared and planted upon in the district being Bunyan Estate.
View of Adam’s Peak (Sri Pada, Sri Paadaya) from Maskeliya, Central Province, Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Date: circa 1910
Filed under accountability, architects & architecture, commoditification, communal relations, demography, economic processes, heritage, historical interpretation, land policies, landscape wondrous, life stories, performance, plantations, politIcal discourse, power politics, sri lankan society, transport and communications, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes
The Black Fort and the Many Gems within Galle Fort
Juliet Coombe, in Daily News, 28 January 2022, where the title reads thus “Santa Cruz – The Portuguese Black Fort Of Galle”
Walking along the ancient walls it is easy to distinguish the black smoke covered walls of the Portuguese from the lower walls with the cannon positions built by the Dutch and later added to by the English.
Filed under ancient civilisations, architects & architecture, art & allure bewitching, commoditification, cultural transmission, economic processes, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, nature's wonders, photography, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, transport and communications, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes
