Category: Opinion

Every time the telecom sector goes through a growth spurt in Sri Lanka, congestion becomes a topic of conversation. People begin to grouse that the companies are cheating the customers by giving them telephones but not the ability to make calls. Every time the telecom sector goes through a growth spurt in Sri Lanka, congestion […]

Beginning of December, I was invited to speak at Softexpo, a major software industry event in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The organizers transported me to the seminar location, the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre (their equivalent of the BMICH), in an ambulance. No, I was not sick. That day had been declared a general strike or hartal, by […]

R&D or housemaids? On December 8, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft will spend US$ 850 million on research and development in India over the next four years. A few days earlier, Intel, whose Chairman is also visiting the region (including Sri Lanka), announced plans to spend US$ 1 billion in R&D in India. Things are […]

The Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow famously proclaimed that “you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” Along the same lines, one may say that the information age is present everywhere except in the political discourse of our time. There is no debate that productivity matters. Countries, regions within countries and […]

Jul 11, 2005 (LBO) – Water is free in Sri Lanka.  Anyone who says different will be pilloried.  I say different.  I say that we will pay in lives and devastation if we do not start charging the real costs of water. The lifetime of modern dams that use cement is between 50 to 100 years, […]

Ridding Year 1 school admissions of corruption and influence 1.0 Introduction Getting a child into Year 1 of school, government or private, has become a traumatic and unpleasant event. Principals are being arrested for taking bribes, court cases are being launched, parents stand in line through the night, and children are being coached to lie […]

April 20, 2005 (LBO) – Policy analysis must begin from a realistic assessment of where we are and what we are. We are a small island nation located within the region with the world’s largest concentration of poor people, South Asia. We are about the size of greater Mumbai, one city in India, in population and […]