Extracts from Chapter 10:
Lanka’s ethnic discord presents
its minorities with unavoidable and painful questions about their lives and
dignity. It is impossible for them – for us! – to
run away from these questions, and yet Rajani, with
whom this book began, did not place ethnicity at the centre of the country’s
crisis. She saw political developments and ideologies of conflict primarily as
our failure to free ourselves from the shackles of neocolonialism…
The present Rajapakse regime is a conglomeration of parties that sparked off the Southern internecine violence of 1987 through belligerent opposition to the political settlement of the Indo-Lanka Accord. The assortment included the SLFP, MEP, the forerunners of the JHU, and a faction of the JVP, which then engaged its present allies in a tryst with death – purely over power. These players are bound by nothing more than their anti-minority ideology. By contrast, what remains of the Lankan left continues to try to work across ethnic lines to challenge neoliberal economic policy. On the uses of communal aggrandizement to push neoliberal reforms, an India-based commentator communicated the following:
“Narendra Modi’s ‘Gujarat model’, which he wants to foist on
the whole of India, is very much like this: Viciously neoliberal policies that favour industrialists but pauperise and dispossess large numbers of Hindus, which combined with Hindu nationalism
that gives the Hindu petit bourgeoisie and lumpen proletariat a sense of power that comes from the brutal treatment meted out to
minorities, especially Muslims; lauds him as the saviour of the Hindus from these minorities who are supposedly trying to destroy them. How
one responds to this is extremely important, and Tamil nationalism is as
self-destructive as Muslim extremism is in
The Indian Left, although better organised, faces an uphill task. The main trend associated
with neoliberalism is the transformation of the
economy and financial institutions to facilitate large inflows of foreign
capital, either as loans to the government and local banks, into shares of
formerly public companies or into investment in tourism. The only security the
country can offer the lenders, is its land and natural resources. A government
that borrows, and that to waste on its cronies, invites colonialism in a new
guise. Most loans from
10.2.1: War Against Minorities as the Tradeoff: Moves towards trade and exchange rate liberalisation in Lanka came about because people were
tired of shortages and queues and voted for change in 1977. But we have wide
choices in how we liberalise. In Lanka, the measures
were enforced in such a way as to reinforce class hierarchies that determined
privilege and existing patronage networks on which governments depended for their
survival, while those left out faced bleaker prospects. The result was the
State’s increasing reliance on coercion.
The Jayewardene government liberalised trade selectively (it freed imports on items such
as chillies and onions produced in the North but
protected from competition the Southern farmer who produced rice and potatoes).
Meanwhile, contrary to neoliberal orthodoxy, it expanded the state sector by
canvassing massive loans in the name of infrastructure development (Dunham and Jayasuriya
[1]
).
In retrospect, the outcome of this
borrowed expenditure was to flatter Sinhalese egos, and reward patronage
networks and compliant officials by creating white elephants. Thus Patrick Peebles says of Jayewardene’s
Accelerated Mahaveli Development Programme begun in 1977 (AMDP) in the Journal of Asian
Studies (Feb.1990): “[The UNP
government of President Jayewardene] consciously evoked a Buddhist past in
which the Dry Zone provided resources for a cultured civilization. Officials of
the Accelerated Mahaveli project appealed directly to
this mythical past in which Tamil Hindu Invaders were hated enemies, to
mobilize Sinhalese Buddhist support.”
The World Bank and
other donors tolerated the Government’s chauvinistic
pomp and exacerbation of social and communal cleavages for the sake of the
‘reforms’: “If there were to be some
tampering with a central aspect of the welfare state (subsidized rice), there
had to be an alternative program which caught the imagination of the people.
The accelerated Mahaweli was the centrepiece of that alternative vision. In the Government’s political judgment, if the Bank
wanted to provide effective support to the radical policy change, it needed to
support the Mahaweli (World Bank 1986, Report
6074, in R. Venugopal
[2]
).”
The World Bank later admitted diplomatically
that it was a dead loss:
“The funding of the AMDP was a very controversial issue in the Bank, particularly because it occurred ‘before the full engineering and economic studies usually required by the Bank were available’ (World Bank 1986). A 2004 review of one of the largest of the World Bank’s six Mahaweli loans downgraded the project outcome rating from ‘unsatisfactory’ to ‘highly unsatisfactory’, describing how the development effectiveness of the scheme was ‘extremely limited’, and how the incomes of resettled farmers have declined over time, with mean incomes now below the poverty level (World Bank 2004).” (Venugopal, ibid)…Nevertheless writers on Lanka have marvelled at Lanka having been a forerunner of economic liberalisation for three and a half decades and make the curious point that this course was rendered easier by the war which opened up new avenues of patronage. The question that comes to mind is what have the ‘reforms’ got to show after three and a half decades?
We have largely run down quality
free education that opens the door to newer forms of economic activity and more
equitable investment that would fit the unemployed rural youth to rise above
the level of menials. Compared with the 5.2
percent of total government expenditure on education in Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu
spends 12 percent, Kerala 14.6, Singapore 18.6 and Malaysia 21.6 (Appendix 8).
The end result is that even postwar we are hooked on to the war economy, warring with phantoms with soaring zeal, with little prospect of healthy investment to provide decent, sustainable employment. In place of demobilising a bloated Army, it has been turned virtually into an official mafia further impeding the economy.
Neo-liberal economists repeatedly told us to bear with the inconveniences of today and wait for a new dawn. After more than a generation alas, that dawn evades us. Even more bizarre is our deepening addiction to white elephant economics – a formula for enrichment of a few and to sweep potential trouble makers under a military carpet. The latter would at best become a cheap source of menial labour for cash crops.
Rajani’s political task was to break out of this
vicious cycle and to unmask hypocrisy. In the spirit of her work, this chapter
examines present trends in Lanka’s colonisation (transmigration) schemes. An influential lobby of elite actors clamours vigorously for the State to brandish its power and
repressive apparatus to Sinhalise the North-East,
which their scholarship claims was lost to invaders and interlopers (Ch.13 of Arrogance of Power). But in reality they
are pied pipers leading their followers to violence and misery.
…The ensuing civil war became a
new source of patronage by drawing unemployed rural Sinhalese youth
particularly from Amparai, Trincomalee, Polonnaruwa,
Anuradhapura, and Moneragala into the security
forces. The same areas were leading ‘beneficiaries’
of earlier colonisation schemes, where agricultural
incomes were shrinking. The 31 percent of youths in the age group 18 – 30 from
these areas who are unemployed, would have risen to 43 percent if not for jobs
in the security forces (Venugopal
[3]
).
Mrs. Bandaranaike
who succeeded Senanayake in 1970 avoided the
grandiose and concentrated rather on increasing agricultural production (which
was later undermined by Jayewardene’s open economy). Her daughter President Chandrika Kumaratunge
[4]
(1994 – 2005) reserved the Moragahakande scheme that was part of the Mahaveli Plan to top up water shortage in the neighbouring Mahaveli Systems in
Anuradhapura District – the shortage resulting from the prioritisation of hydropower in the AMDP.
There was hardly
any water to do more. But particularly after the end of the war in 2009, Rajapakse wanted to use the Moragahakande scheme to revive the abandoned
The Rajapakse government’s model to raise money was derived from
Jayewardene’s scheme. Projects became patently a pretext for massive loans to
feed his patronage networks. He unabashedly used his patriotic cover as the
vanquisher of the LTTE to advance market reforms aggressively. In terms of Sinhalese
settlement, his model was drawn from C.P. de Silva. Settlement meant the dispersal
of pauperised Sinhalese peasantry as military protégés
(to create tame new electorates!), and to hobble Tamil activism at the root.
If Moragahakande water is used as President Kumaratunge intended, to increase cropping intensity
[5]
of Mahaveli lands in Anuradhapura District, from 1.55 to 1.85, it would lead to genuine
production and some relief of distress. By overstretching the small amount of
water and establishing settlements that were bound to run dry, Rajapakse is going to produce only misery for the unwanted
Sinhalese dispersed under military supervision as a guard against the tendency
to rebellion evidenced in Gal Oya, Moneragala and Kantalai settlements
in 1971 and 1988. There is however an object lesson from C.P. de Silva’s electoral
defeat in Polonnaruwa in 1970 – a protest by those
left out or impoverished.
Unlike with
earlier dam builders where it took several years for the propaganda to wear
off, Rajapakse’s creations are naked white elephants,
starting with the harbour and international airport
in his home district of Hambantota. The problem was money.
Lanka’s position was much weaker than in the 1970s. Most funding agencies
insist on feasibility reports and the World Bank was wary, particularly after
local protest over environmental destruction and the displacement of over 200,000
people forced its pull out from the Sardar Sarovar dam project on
The Japanese came
forward around the year 2000 to fund a coal power station and the Moragahakande dam project.
China: It was at this time
that China expanded its loan commitments in Lanka as the Government’s ideal
lender.
Chinese loans, defence purchases on Chinese credit, and the astronomical defence budget in peace time are means by which patronage
is extended to the Military. A disturbing indicator of collusion between the Military
and crony businessmen is the former opening fire at Sinhalese civilians in Weliveriya protesting against the poisoning of their
drinking water by a glove factory, on 1st August 2013, killing three…
Coming to colonisation schemes themselves, one notable drawback is
the large population that is left out. Often people at the tail end of
irrigation schemes find themselves without water. The late Mahee Wickremaratne, a civil servant who worked on the Gal Oya and Mahaveli projects, felt
disturbed enough to tell this author in 1995 that the Gal Oya project concentrated its resources on the settlers to the neglect of the local
Tamil and Muslim villages and the old villages of Sinhalese who settled down
there after the Kandyan rebellion of 1818.
In
the
Pressing the poor into settlement
schemes with declining incomes and water availability has perpetuated poverty
in generational waves. The late Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake told the Tamil
leaders in 1993, as related to this writer by the late A. Thangathurai,
that colonisation was no longer a political option
because there is no more water. Even where water was available there were
costly engineering errors.
An experienced irrigation engineer sensitive to the ethnic issue told us that a key problem is to do ‘with the infamous mcms (quantities of water in mega cubic metres) that led to the failure of most of the irrigation projects the world over. The volume of water from a reservoir is easy to measure and regulate, but the problem everywhere is the totally fictitious rainfall and river flow data in rural areas.’ He added:
“If you take Uda Walawe and Lunugamwehera (Kirindi Oya) irrigation projects
in the South, you completely leave out the ethnic issue and you can easily show
how technically incompetent and socially incoherent designs created these
really sick white elephants. Mind you, these were designed by Sri Lankan
‘experts’.” The writer contended that foreign consultants brought in by the
donors simply work on the technical data provided by the Government, and being
indifferent to the politics underlying these projects ‘provided battle
drawings’ for the [ethnic] ‘chess games’ of corrupt local rulers. Their impact
on supposed beneficiaries, he described as ‘infrahuman’.
As to recent schemes,
take Moragahakande. The consultant Lahmeyer earlier estimated the inflow into the dam site at
963 mcm. Later the Melbourne-based SMEC reduced the
estimate to 700 mcm (IAR op. cit.). The difference is large and critical for the intended
beneficiaries as far away at the tail ends as Padaviya and Weli Oya. After being
settled, the people will be confronted with water scarcity. Estimates from available
rainfall data in near locations and topography are prone to large errors, and
are part of the game of engineering…
The hidden aspect of colonisation of the northern and eastern areas of Lanka, which the rulers strive to hide, marks clearly its character: the defrauding of Sinhalese peasantry after flattering them. The first Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake cast on settlers in Padaviya, the heroic aura of the ‘last bastion of the Sinhala’ – a call for defence against the proverbial Tamil invader. The Padaviya farmer has paid a high price for the unsolicited honour.
Padaviya today faces a cropping intensity (FN.7) much below 1.0, signifying dire poverty. Several governments have promised them water. However, water from the new scheme in Moragahakande is to be used only marginally to relieve distress in the Padaviya region – to raise the cropping intensity to 1.0 at best. The bulk of the water is destined for planting ideological pawns on the Line of Sinhala Defence in Weli Oya.
The manner in which the settlements have outstripped water availability would mean that within an even shorter space of time, the new Sinhalese settlers would be in the same straits as earlier Padaviya settlers. Is it merely a coincidence that Padaviya is the worst hit by the scourge of chronic kidney disease that continues to mystify?
The End Note to this chapter deals with the Iranamadu and Giant’s Tank Systems, which shows that the bogus promises behind which the Government tries to press pauperised Sinhalese into commandeered lands in the North-East, could lead to conditions of famine during years of low rainfall (see also Ch.9). The Safety Factor is a hallowed concept in Engineering. Here even engineers appear to be complicit in driving humans to extremes of want by designing political human settlements on widely flawed data and poor analysis.
The Environmental Foundation pointed out that the heavy investments the Government makes on Chinese credit are highly destructive of the environment while accomplishing little of value even for Sinhalese: For example the Yan River reservoir would destroy 4000 ha of agricultural lands, 1400 ha of forest and 240 water bodies, while purporting to open only 650 ha of new land locally for cultivation.
Fake development using Sinhalese hegemonic symbols, adversely affects all concerned. Both the Sinhalese and Tamils would eventually be pauperised. Our planners do indeed create lots of water on paper and fragile new settlements threaten to destabilise settlements as a whole. For example, water from the Moragahakande scheme, which was in 2000 promised to relieve distress in System H, is now being diverted to open up Sinhalese settlements in Manal Aru-Weli Oya…
The
problem of extending settlements is tied up with hydropower. Over-extended settlements would pressure the Government to curtail
water sent for optimum power generation at Victoria Reservoir and release it to
save a few settlements. Ironically, hydropower, which generates about 40
percent of Lanka’s electrical energy, represents one of the last vestiges of
national sovereignty. It is completely our own. The first Chinese-built coal
power station at Nuraichcholai commissioned in 2011,
had by mid-2013 to be shut down over a dozen times.
[9]
Local engineers have through the media charged the Chinese with manoeuvring to take ownership of the station in lieu of
loan repayment, giving
Like colonisation schemes, coal
power is another instance of failure to build a national consensus. The site
considered ideal by many experts was Mawella east of Matara, which provided a landing site as well as river
water. It was shifted to Nuraichcholai after protests
in Matara that coal power would turn the region into
a polluted desert. The Government lied about the purpose when it surveyed an
alternative site in Nuraichcholai, a Muslim and
Christian area, leading to police firing at protesters. The Government had its
way, but was forced to sign an agreement not to tap ground water from the
farming neighbourhood, but to use water from a
desalination plant.
Sampoor: Trincomalee with its port facilities and water from Kantalai reservoir was another option. The decision to establish a coal power station at Sampoor was made purely in the context of the Tamil civilians being shelled out in 2006. Sampoor, now a high security zone, is an agriculturally rich peninsula of 56.4 square miles. Those displaced from arable acres of watered land would at best get a tiny fraction far inferior.
To add insult to injury, the Government has leased out 97 square kilometres (37.5 sq. mi.) of land in Sampoor as a special zone for heavy industry [10] to Gateway Industries, which is closely tied to the ruling family. Such zones are normally sited on a river bank. From where it would get the vast quantities of water needed is a mystery. This has become the hallmark of Sri Lankan planning, which is guided by malice rather than rationality…
Basis for Estimates: Water requirement for paddy cultivation in an area is determined by water duty: the height of water required in cultivation for a year or season. This admits wide variation: 2.08 m a year for Huruluwewa and 3.75 m for Kalawewa RB (IAR op. cit.). It is lower in older schemes where the ground has hardened and percolation is less. In general soils which are grumusols (clayey) have lower water duty (e.g. Giant’s Tank) and soils that are alluvial (sandy, high percolation) have higher water duty (e.g. Iranamadu). More generally, we will use the water requirements in S. Arumugam (ibid.), p. 9: Winter cultivation 4 ft (1.22 m), Summer 6 ft (1.82 m).
The ongoing Moragahakande Project intends to supplement
the estimated 700 mcm flow to the dam from
After
In place of the NCP Canal, water (FN.20) is presently to be sent from Malwathu Reservoir to Kokkavil (System K). Moragahakande water, one infers, is now meant to feed the proposed Yan-Wahalkada reservoir and System L through Hurulu Reservoir. Asian Tribune announced on 4th November 2011 that the Chinese Company CAMA was undertaking the Yan Oya Project (formally launched in August 2012) under which a large reservoir will be constructed at Angurugasweva across the lower side of the Yan River, water from which is to be diverted to another major reservoir in Padaviya, and from this source to Weli Oya for irrigation of 9496 hectares.
As early as 2009, the Mahaveli Authority used its draconian powers over land to fell forests illegally in the Kokkilai Reserve. The Green Movement of Lanka forced state officials to stop the felling and filed a fundamental rights action in the Supreme Court against the Mahaveli Authority, Environment Ministry, Forest Department and Timber Corporation for destroying 3,920 acres of forest in the Kokkilai Forest Reserve. [14]
The official state mouthpiece, Daily News (
Resettlement was just a blind for the pursuit of the ‘Line of Sinhala Defence’. The land being cleared was on the boundary of Trincomalee and Mullaitivu Districts. Other actions under ‘resettlement’ conformed to this pattern. Displaced Tamils said, in a petition to the President (see Uthayan 11 Apr.2012), that 656 owner-families who farmed 2,540 acres of land in Kokkilai, Kokkutoduwai and Karnattukerni have been denied access by Sinhalese with the backing of the Sri Lankan Army (see Ch. 9).
Notwithstanding the court ruling, Director General Mahaveli Authority, Gamini Rajakaruna, requested the
Conservator General of Forests to release 12,900 hectares from the Padaviya Forest Reserve for a resettlement drive and
development work by a letter of
The government plan is to complete
what was left uncertain in 1984 – clear the Tamils out and militarise the area. The plan as appears is to clear the forest in the Ma River basin all
the way to Kokkilai Lagoon. As in 1984, following the
planting of prisoners in System L, life for Tamils in their remaining villages
of Kokkilai, Amarivayal, Thennamaravady and Kokkutoduwai would become impossible, if it has not already.
Launching
the Chinese funded Yan River project (USD 210 million) on 17th August 2012, President Rajapakse promised relief to
farmers coping with cultivation intensities well below 1.0 (one season’s
cultivation), particularly in the NCP areas of Kebitigollewa, Padaviya, Weli Oya and Madawchchiya. The promise
was utterly misleading.
The
plan is to dam Yan River about halfway between Horowapotana (50 percent reliable flow at 115 mcm) and the sea
(215 mcm outflow) making available about 135 mcm of water for the reservoir, after allowing a modest 30 mcm for continued river flow. According to the 1969 Master
Plan (IAR), the land to be developed in the
The
water available from the Moragahakande scheme, also
under the Chinese, is realistically about 650 mcm (see above). What remains from local demands (Matale and environs) was to be conveyed to Hurulu Tank along
the first 21 miles of the original
If
the old Master Plan were to be followed in land development, the water
available for Padaviya (including Padavi Sripura in Trincomalee),
System L, Kebitigollawa, and Madawachchi is at best = 650 (from Moragahakande) – 210 (Yan Oya Scheme) – 200 (local demand) – 45 (Hurulu Scheme) = 195 mcm p.a.
The
water requirement for System L in IAR is 985 mcm to
upgrade 8100 ha of existing cultivated lands and open up 30,900 ha of new
lands. To raise the cropping intensity in 8100 ha of old lands in Padaviya where the present cropping intensity is about 0.5
or so to a respectable 1.85 would require 197 mcm.
That is what the old NCP canal project proposed doing besides developing 31,000
ha of new lands for round-the-year cultivation. The demands above would leave
nothing for new lands in System L.
The Mahaveli Authority wanting 12,900 ha of forests
cleared suggests more extensive settlement than the 9,496 ha reported in late
2011. 9,496 ha would require at least 290 mcm of
water annually. The water demands above would not permit this – demands
dictated by the golden rule to firm up existing settlements before embarking on
new.
As
disclosed by the Irrigation Ministry’s additional secretary P.U. Wickremaratne
[15]
, the old
scheme in the Master Plan sketched above is ruled out. What the new plan which prioritises the ideological Weli Oya settlement proposes is no more than to increase
cropping intensity of old settlements in the region from 0.75 to 1.0. Ivan de
Silva, Secretary to the Ministry of Irrigation, admitted that the current
situation was even worse: “With this project,
the people in the Padaviya area can cultivate
3,000-4,000 hectares of existing paddy lands. For the past 20-30 years, these
people could only cultivate 50 percent of existing paddy lands (The Nation 9 Jun.2013).” Besides, what a
leader of the Padaviya farmers said along the same
lines in 2007, suggests is severe environmental degradation underlined
presently by chronic kidney disease.
[16]
The current plan involving
massive deforestation is further bound to degrade the environment and provide
merely marginal relief for the distress of low cropping intensities in Yan Oya and Padaviya. Raising the
cropping intensity of 8100 ha in Padaviya from 0.5 to
1.0 requires 49 mcm annually. This means all other
claims on the water from Moragahakande, including
water theft, the claims from farmers in Matale,
System H, Huruluweva etc need to be met with 650
(water from Moragahakande) – 290 (Weli Oya) – 49 (Padaviya) = 311 mcm of water annually.
Expectations
from Moragahakande, far exceed capacity. Environmental degradation adds to the demand
for water that cannot be met. The
Unstable as Water: The case of Huruluwewa: Huruluwewa that was restored in 1953
irrigated 4300 ha of paddy with 79 mcm of water
annually from Yan River.
[17]
Given
the local water duty as 1.26 m for summer and 0.82 m for winter (IAR Table
2.6), the scheme attained a cultivation intensity of 1.81. Under the Mahaveli Scheme, an additional 75 mcm of water was given for Huruluwewa (Table 2.5 of FN.14)
and a few smaller schemes, and the cultivation area was increased to 6560 ha.
The water was ample for the requirement of 136 mcm to
cover two full seasons. Then farmers along the route of the canal, who were
left out, began siphoning off water towards the downward slope of the
embankment. The cropping intensity for Huruluwewa lands dropped frequently to 1.0 or less (IAR op.cit. Table 2.5). This meant that most of the 75 mcm of Mahaveli water channelled went missing. After negotiations with local
farmers in the late 1990s, The Mahaveli Authority
provided more water for Huruluwewa: up to 35 mcm, as indicated by the rising of
cropping intensity by 0.4 to 1.43, during 2004/5. The solution was only
temporary. A. Abeynayaka et al.
[18]
tell us
how the best laid plans go awry:
“When [Mahaveli]
officers removed the siphons [from unauthorised tapping], local politicians forced them to put the siphons back.”
D.L.O. Mendis has pointed out that water from Moragahakande that would flow along a double banked canal
for 21 miles is ideal for tapping.
[19]
As
freely as the Mahaveli Authority takes liberties with
the lands of war-affected Tamils, it dare not use force against Sinhalese
peasants stealing water meant for distant Weli Oya. The Government could only hope that the Sinhalese it
planted in the North would stay on when the water runs out. The greater
likelihood is captured by the newspaper headline ‘Mahaveli Authority turns forest lands into bare lands’ (The Sunday Leader 14.Apr.2013).
It all points to what we said
at the beginning. The Government is intent on Sinhalese settlement in the
North-East at any cost. Promises of water to older settlements, though
regularly made, would not be kept. Against rival demands for water, any water
that could be conjured up on paper would be used for Sinhalese settlement in
the North. Even if a settlement is established the durability would be short in
the face of overstretching of limited resources, theft or political pressure
for reallocation of resources by those left out. Most settlements will
eventually follow Padaviya whose cropping intensity
dropped disastrously below 1.0. The farmers in the North who survived the war would
increasingly find their water and land resources robbed for fragile
military-backed Sinhalese settlements. Neither Tamils nor Sinhalese can profit
from such a situation…
The Line of Sinhala Defence project was from the start fraught with mass
murder. We give below an extract from a document given to us by Mr. R. Sampanthan MP around 2000, for the writing of ‘The Arrogance of Power’. The information
was documented accurately by a network of organisations in which the late Mr. K. Kanthasamy played a pivotal
role. Mr. Kanthasamy facilitated the presentation of
evidence before the Sansoni Commission, which had
been charged with inquiring into the communal violence of August 1977. But the
incident below took place in ‘Weli-Oya’ – System L –
on
“On the contrary all those killed were Tamil farmers [and their family
members from Kokkilai, Kokkuthoduvai, Karnatukerni, Nayaru, Chemmalai, Kumulamunai and Alampil]. On
This was but one among several
massacres of hundreds of Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan forces from December
1984 to the following May in Mullaitivu, Vavuniya and Mannar, areas
singled out for demographic transformation and now given a fresh spurt by the Rajapakse regime. These murders had the further consequence
of enabling the LTTE to push its claims as the sole champion of the Tamils –
and their avengers, when in Anuradhapura they massacred 120 Sinhalese civilians
in May 1985.
To break the legacy taking us on
the road to genocide, these relationships must be documented and understood by
the Sinhalese. Instead, we are treated to discussions based on self-serving
accounts by ex-military men mixed up in mass murder. This history makes it hard
for Tamils to trust Sinhalese in the armed forces or in official positions, and
renders reconciliation a Promethean task.
[1]
David
Dunham and Sisira Jayasuriya, Liberalisation
and Political Decay: Sri Lanka’s Journey from Welfare State to a Brutalised
Society, http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/19097/wp352.pdf , October 2001
[3]
Rajesh Venugopal, The Politics of Market
Reform at a Time of Civil War: Military Fiscalism in Sri Lanka, Economic &
Political Weekly, 3rd December, 2011 vol. xlvi, no. 49
[4] Kanishika Goonesekera, “Moragahakanda at what cost?,” Daily Mirror, 2 Jun.2007
[5] A piece of land usually allows two seasons of cultivation. If x percent of the land is cultivated in winter and y percent in summer, the cropping intensity would be (x + y)/100.
[6]
Initial Assessment Report – Updated
Mahaweli Water Resources Development Plan, SMEC International Pty Ltd. in
association with DHI Water and Environment (
[7]
The Government has
awarded several contracts to Chinese firms on ‘unsolicited proposals’, which
lack transparency and did not pass through normal tender procedure and
competitive bidding. The bulk of the costs are loaned by Exim Bank of
[8]
R. Sakthivadivel, C.R. Panabokke, C.M.
Wijeratna, Nihal Fernando, K. Jinapala, R.B. Bandula Sirimal; Pre-Project
Technical Assistance Study for Proposed Area Development Project of North
Central Province, Prepared for RH&H Consultant/ ADB, 1995
[9] http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2013/08/18/norochcholai-shut-down/ , dailymirror.lk of 9 Oct.2013 reported that the plant scheduled to open on 22 Mar.2011 was delayed by an outbreak of fire on 24.Oct.2010 and faced further shutdowns from fires in Aug.2011 and 18 Jan.2012.
[11] C.M. Madduma Bandara, University of Peradeniya, in ‘Issues in Environmental Impact Assessment of Large Scale Reservoir Projects in the Humid Tropics: The Case of Kalu Ganga at Laggala Pallegama in Sri Lanka’, Kandy, Dec. 2006, International Conference of Water in the Tropics http://www.docstoc.com/docs/23552801/Issues-in-Environmental-Impact-Assessment-of-Large-Scale-Reserv
[12]
Minister
Sirisena: As it is, 725 million cubic metres of water [from
[13]
The Minister for Irrigation Mr. N.S. de
Silva told The Sunday Observer (
[16]
http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2007/03/04/fea03.asp : “Although there were heavy rains in other parts of the country during the
monsoonal seasons, [Padaviya] received only short spells of rain throughout the
past 50 years. As a result, out of 17,000 acres of paddy land only 6,000 acres
of land were cultivated annually in Maha (Winter) Season.”
[17] Sakthivadivel et. al. 2.3.6: It was observed that after the construction of Huruluwewa Reservoir, the average annual flow at Horawapotana reduced from 197 mcm to 118 mcm.
[18]
Issues arising from water encroachments along
[19] “Another danger of the proposed NCP canal is that there will be theft of water from both sides all along its northerly course from Moragahakande reservoir. Conflict over water will add an east-west dimension to the existing north-south ethnic conflict. ” (Daily News 31.12.2001)
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