On 19 April, Indians will begin choosing a new parliament for the next five years, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a third consecutive term. Opinion polls put his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies ahead. They are up against the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (India), which groups more than two dozen opposition […]

By Shamindra Ferdinando One-time Foreign Secretary Kshenuka Senewiratne and Admiral Ravindra Chandrasiri Wijegunaratne (Rtd.) on Dec 04, 2023 assumed duties at the Sri Lankan High Commission in New Delhi and Islamabad, respectively. It would be pertinent to mention that Wijegunaratne previously served as the First Secretary/Defence Advisor of Sri Lanka High Commission in New Delhi […]

This week, China is throwing a huge party to celebrate one of its biggest experiments in engaging with the world: its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Officials and leaders from all over the globe are in Beijing to attend a high-level summit marking the BRI’s 10th anniversary. Participants expected to show up range from Vladimir […]

Can clothes, fashion accessories and makeup make a country look democratic?Dictators have begun to dress up their autocratic regimes in the manner of democracies with all the mod cons that help to pass off a system of government, which is for all purposes a dictatorship, as a five-star democracy. This in the manner that a ...

Benito Mussolini, the fascist ruler of Italy, during World War II, said that his brand of fascism ‘should be more appropriately called Corporatism, because it is a merger of state and corporate power’. Compare this with the dictionary definition of capitalism: ‘A system in which a country’s business and industry are controlled and run for ...

The Visible Hand of the government ‘The Visible Hand’ was the title which the famed London-based economics weekly, The Economist, used when it published a special report in its issue on 21 January 2012 on the rise of state capitalism in the modern era. The title has a pun: The governments do not care to ...

Establishing a landmark in Sri Lanka’s aviation history, SriLankan Airlines’ makes its maiden flight to the historic city of Moscow, commencing a twice-weekly scheduled service between Colombo’s Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) and Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport on 17 September 2011. Religious observances by dignitaries of the four religions in Sri Lanka will invoke bl...

By an Independent Analyst The State Assembly of Tamil Nadu (TN) passed a resolution on 8 June 2011, requesting the Indian Central Government to push the international community against Sri Lanka towards imposition of ‘economic sanctions’.  The resolution at the TN assembly moved by Jayalalitha as the Chief Minister passed unanimously with the ruling party ...

By Malathi De Alwis On 18 May 2009, Sri Lanka officially declared the end of a 30-year civil war fought between. Sri Lankan government forces (GoSL) and Tamil militants, namely the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). Such a sea...

by Ranil Wickremesinghe By the 4th century BC, Asia had begun its first cycle of economic growth and power. This was the reason why Alexander the Great decided to travel eastward to establish an empire. At that time there was...

By D.B.S.Jeyaraj The  tragic history of post-independence records that the Tamils of Sri Lanka have been subjected to mass-scale mob violence in the years 1956, 1958, 1977, 1981 and 1983. The anti-Tamil violence of July 1983 was the most terrible and horrible of them all. It remains etched in memory even after 27 years. Twenty ...