Sri Lanka Spotlight
Over the past few years Sri Lanka has experienced its worst ever economic crisis - fuel shortages, daily power cuts, no medicines, schools having to close, inflation running at 50 per cent, mass protests. In May 2022 for the first time in its history Sri Lanka failed to make an interest payment on its external debt. It’s now under an IMF austerity programme. Ahilan Kadirgamar, a sociology lecturer from Sri Lanka, provides the wider historical context and consequences. And Prathibha Fernando, a woman who lives just outside of the capital Colombo, shares her moving story about the personal costs of such economic hardships - including on her child’s education.
From the International Development Economics Associates - a network of progressive economists who centre the perspectives and needs of the Global South.
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Transcript
Hi there, welcome to Economics from the South where we rethink economics, give a voice to
Julians Amboko:marginalized communities, and come up with lasting solutions to ensure a fairer, more sustainable future for all of us.
Julians Amboko:I'm your host, Julians Amboko.
Julians Amboko:A Kenyan business journalist.
Julians Amboko:It's great to have you on board this series from Ideas, the International Development Economics Associates, a
Julians Amboko:network of progressive economists who challenge the way the world is run and put forward viable alternatives that
Julians Amboko:center the perspectives and needs of the global south.
Julians Amboko:I'll be speaking to economists and academics about breaking the endless cycle of debt distress and
Julians Amboko:rethinking the global financial architecture.
Julians Amboko:And we'll also hear the experiences of people on the economic front lines in the global south.
Julians Amboko:Episode 3.
Julians Amboko:Our focus this time is on Sri Lanka, which over the past few years has experienced its worst ever.
Julians Amboko:Economic crisis, fuel shortages, daily power cuts, no medicines, schools having to close, inflation running at 50%, mass protests.
Julians Amboko:And then in 2022, for the first time in its history, Sri Lanka failed to make an interest payment on its external debt.
Julians Amboko:So let's get to grips with the wider context and the consequences of all this with a member of the Ideas Executive Committee.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:I'm Ahilan Kadirgamar.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:I teach sociology at the University of Jaffna.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:A lot of my research is on both rural indebtedness and sovereign debt.
Julians Amboko:Dr.
Julians Amboko:Ahilan, let's look at a historical view.
Julians Amboko:How did Sri Lanka get to this point?
Ahilan Kadirgamar:I think Sri Lanka, like much of the world that was colonized at independence,
Ahilan Kadirgamar:there was the hope for development, for progress.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And actually, Sri Lanka, compared to other countries, went ahead with a robust social welfare program, free education,
Ahilan Kadirgamar:free healthcare, a food subsidy that by the 1970s, Sri Lanka, along with Cuba and the Indian state of Kerala, were considered
Ahilan Kadirgamar:development models, because even though our per capita income was very low, we had very high human development indicators.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But that started to change, like with many of the countries in Africa, with the structural adjustment programs that came about.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So Sri Lanka was the first country in South Asia to go through liberalization.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And then, um, they got rid of the food subsidy and our allocations for education and healthcare started to decline.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But the reason why Sri Lankan society has been vibrant to some extent, even though we went through a long
Ahilan Kadirgamar:civil war, was because of such social welfare programs.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And that is what is worrying now, you know, what would be the future of all of that now that Sri Lanka has not only defaulted
Ahilan Kadirgamar:on its debt, they are going through a very harsh IMF program with severe austerity measures and a debt restructuring process.
Julians Amboko:Give us a little more context into the present situation from an indebtedness,
Julians Amboko:the restructuring, the default perspective.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So, Sri Lanka, you know, started to ramp up its debt, particularly borrowing in
Ahilan Kadirgamar:the commercial markets over the last 15 years.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:I mean, that's, I think, true of Ghana, of Zambia, so many countries going to the capital markets.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And even many of us started to write about a decade ago that this is not sustainable.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:We are headed towards a crisis, and what we were really worried about was the social cost of it.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So as the COVID pandemic hit and, uh, economic situation began to decline and we defaulted on our external debt
Ahilan Kadirgamar:in April 2022, suddenly they have a large fuel queues, electricity supply was disrupted, even some basic essentials
Ahilan Kadirgamar:like milk powder, which we import was in very bad shape.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:short supply.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So that led to massive protests.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:You might have seen on the television, you know, people in their hundreds of thousands and then capturing the presidential
Ahilan Kadirgamar:palace and even swimming in the presidential swimming pool.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But there was one demand that that president had to go and the people won.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:In a sense, then the president's, uh, family and supporters were still the majority in
Ahilan Kadirgamar:parliament and there was a counter revolution.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:They put forward another president and tremendous repression along with the support of the military.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And this is what has led for severe austerity measures on the part of the IMF program to be implemented.
Julians Amboko:When you talk about severe austerity measures, what is austerity and why
Julians Amboko:would you classify it as severe austerity?
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Austerity basically means a huge reduction in government spending because two years ago,
Ahilan Kadirgamar:there was a policy shift in terms of our government where they decided to go for an IMF program and as part of
Ahilan Kadirgamar:it, they started implementing the IMF's recommendations.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Right, which is cutting all subsidies.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So for example, if you take fuel, for a country like Sri Lanka, fuel costs have to be
Ahilan Kadirgamar:maintained at a level that people can afford it.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:It might be fuel for transport.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So suddenly, bus fares tripled.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Small scale farmers.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Fisher folk, they use kerosene oil for irrigation or for their small boats.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Suddenly the price of kerosene went fourfold.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So then they could not fish, for example.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Or the cost of electricity tripled or even quadrupled.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So Sri Lanka is a unique country in South Asia where 99 percent of our people have access to the electricity grid.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And they were paying, you know, on the order of maybe two US dollars a month for the electricity bill, but suddenly
Ahilan Kadirgamar:when that increases, what we've seen is that out of a population of, say, around five, six million households
Ahilan Kadirgamar:in Sri Lanka, one million households have lost their electricity connection over the last year and a half.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The price of bread during the economic crisis went down.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:threefold increase.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So people couldn't afford bread, then they tried to substitute for something else.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And all of this because the government had resigned from its responsibility to protect
Ahilan Kadirgamar:the people in terms of their very basic needs.
Julians Amboko:Wow.
Julians Amboko:So in a sense, what you're telling us is that there's been a rollback, significant rollback in
Julians Amboko:the social protection infrastructure in the country.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:That's right.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So there is the broader social welfare in terms of education, health, and food.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And when it comes to healthcare, for example, again, Sri Lanka had a very long history of a strong healthcare
Ahilan Kadirgamar:system, including a preventive healthcare system, which is what helped us during the COVID crisis.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But now, when people go to the hospital, they are asked to go and buy their medicines outside, they may
Ahilan Kadirgamar:not be able to afford it, to go and do their tests in private So the public health system is now in jeopardy.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Education, again, now children are not having enough meals.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Sometimes they're going to school and even fainting.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:School dropouts are on the rise.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Parents can't afford the bus fare to send their children to school.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So all of this is on the one hand collapsing.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And then there's what we call the Um, social protection and the, and the IMF and the World Bank define it a bit
Ahilan Kadirgamar:more narrowly in terms of those who are in most need.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Like I mentioned, in the 1970s, there was a universal food subsidy.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Every individual was entitled to two kilograms of rice.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:per week.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So that ensured that there was no starvation.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:With the structural adjustment programs, they changed it into a cash transfer and then a targeted cash transfer.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And with inflation, it had become very minimal.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Now, with the economic crisis and the new IMF program that Sri Lanka is in over the last year, the whole promise was
Ahilan Kadirgamar:that, okay, austerity measures are going to be harsh, but there will be a new social protection system that would at
Ahilan Kadirgamar:least make sure it safeguards those who are most affected.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But in reality, what happened with this IMF program is that only 0.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:6 percent of GDP is allocated for this new social protection scheme.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And then they justified it by saying, they're going to target better.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:They're going to find the people who are most affected.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But how do you target during an economic crisis?
Ahilan Kadirgamar:One season, the farmers are out.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The next season, the fisher folk are out.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Then the urban workers, a country like Sri Lanka, like much of Africa, the majority of our people, somewhere between
Ahilan Kadirgamar:60 to 70 percent of the people work in the informal sector.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:They don't have a regular income.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So then you have to target the entire 70%.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So it just does not it.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Makes sense.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So this new social protection program, which is part of the IMF program, which was designed
Ahilan Kadirgamar:by the World Bank, has been an utter failure.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And what we are seeing is the rise in poverty.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Poverty, according to the World Bank, has doubled.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:I think it's much higher.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The data will only come, come out later.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:According to the UNDP, around 55 percent of our population are vulnerable in terms of access
Ahilan Kadirgamar:to education, health, and so on and so forth.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:It's been a disaster.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Right.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And there's been many protests, particularly by women who this is the only way in which they engage with the state.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Right.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:It's through the social protection mechanism that they can go to their local in Sri Lanka, we call the Samudhi
Ahilan Kadirgamar:officer in their village to say, these are my needs.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And if there's any additional help, I can get that.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But all that is being changed overnight.
Julians Amboko:What happens to the social and economic fabric of a country in debt distress?
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Thanks.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:What I'm really concerned about the next generations, even in Southern Europe, we saw what happened in Greece, the lost decade.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And if you just look at even the growth figures for Sri Lanka, it's going to be 2028 before we
Ahilan Kadirgamar:are GDP returns to the level that it was in 2018.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So we've Definitely lost a decade, but it's more like two decades that we're looking at because
Ahilan Kadirgamar:there was no growth during that whole decade.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Now the social impact of that is that there is increasing unemployment, livelihoods have been disrupted,
Ahilan Kadirgamar:youth have no future other than to maybe migrate.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:abroad.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And what we learned from the civil war, and I think, you know, so many countries around the world have gone through such
Ahilan Kadirgamar:conflicts, is that when one generation is affected, when women are displaced during a war or their education is disrupted during an
Ahilan Kadirgamar:economic crisis, it also affects the next generation's education.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So how can we protect our society.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:One idea that many scholars and activists have been proposing in Sri Lanka, which might be relevant for other
Ahilan Kadirgamar:countries, is that we need universal social protection.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:It's always criticized that freeloaders will gain.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:It's not about freeloaders because at that basic level, it's only people who really need those
Ahilan Kadirgamar:services would come forward and, uh, get them.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And I work with cooperatives in Northern Sri Lanka, and we actually.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Piloted for six months, a universal food subsidy scheme, and we found that only about 40 percent of the people
Ahilan Kadirgamar:came for it, even though we offered it to everyone.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:We provided, uh, one kilogram of rice per person at 50 rupees less.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So, this kind of universal social protection schemes.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:are important.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And how would we fund it?
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So we need to really have redistribution.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:In Sri Lanka, we are talking about wealth taxes.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The IMF is quick to move on everything.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But when it comes to wealth taxes, it's pushed out to 2025.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And they're saying we need the data, we need the proper mechanisms to be able to do it.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So redistribution
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But what's happened, if you're thinking about the future in Sri Lanka, and I think Zambia and maybe Ghana again, were confronted
Ahilan Kadirgamar:with this question of what is called domestic debt restructuring.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Even though Sri Lanka defaulted on its external debt, these powerful bondholders put a lot of pressure on Sri Lanka, and even
Ahilan Kadirgamar:the IMF's parameters pushed us into domestic debt restructuring.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:What did the Sri Lankan government do?
Ahilan Kadirgamar:They did not go after the banks.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:They did not go after the finance companies.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:They did not even go after wealthy individual investors.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:They targeted the retirement funds of our working people.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:They were the tea pluckers, the garment sector workers, mainly women, and many of them even earned below poverty.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:level wages.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:They would not even fall into any tax bracket.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:That retirement fund we call the Employee Provident Fund is controlled by the central bank.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The central bank proposed domestic debt restructuring and then they implemented it with
Ahilan Kadirgamar:the support of an illegitimate parliament, in my view, where over the next 16 years, every year, 0.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:5 percent of our GDP is going to be saved by cutting the interest to be paid to this retirement funds.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:You know, I mentioned earlier only 0.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:6 percent of GDP for social protection.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Now they're going to, with the other hand, take away 0.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:5 percent of GDP from our Working people.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Yeah.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The consequence over 16 years is that that retirement fund is going to be 47 percent less more or less our working people over
Ahilan Kadirgamar:the next 16 years are going to lose half their retirement fund.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So this is how during a crisis inequality works.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The rich get richer and the poor get poor and the entire burden of debt restructuring is passed on to our working people.
Julians Amboko:If you could give us a little more detail around some of the proposals which
Julians Amboko:are being put on the table around wealth taxation.
Julians Amboko:And given that you've spoken about Sri Lanka having a predominantly informal economy, how do we go about the headache?
Julians Amboko:Like any other frontier market of domestic resource mobilization, because the informal economy might
Julians Amboko:not be within the radar of the authorities.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Yeah, when it comes to wealth taxes, definitely property taxes, vehicle taxes, because what happened
Ahilan Kadirgamar:over the last 15 years when Sri Lanka, like so many other countries in the global south, were floating these sovereign
Ahilan Kadirgamar:bonds, huge amount of capital coming in to a country as debt.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:What did we do with that?
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Suddenly you saw Colombo, the capital city of Sri Lanka, change overnight.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:They have a high rise buildings, condominiums, the number of BMWs and Mercedes Benzes on the streets increased.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So who gained from all that debt and who's.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:paying for it.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So a wealth tax in a sense is this idea that there should be payback by the wealthy who actually made
Ahilan Kadirgamar:a killing during this binge with the debt crisis.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So when you're thinking of alternatives, how do we strengthen our society and particularly a society of very small producers?
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Sri Lanka is unique in that we don't have, like in other parts of South Asia, these large zamindars or large landholders.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:It's mainly a smallholding agriculture and even fisheries, it's fishermen go on these fiberglass boats
Ahilan Kadirgamar:that are 17 foot long, just a couple of them, and they are hardly able to earn their living for that day.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:This debt restructuring process and the IMF program is all about repaying.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The powerful creditors and safeguarding our elite who have already gained from this.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So we need a very different process.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:In my view, we have to take agrarian change and the rural economy front on in terms of addressing the economic crisis.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Whatever investment possible should be going in that, because we're also suffering from a food crisis.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:It's about survival, and if we can produce more food, if we can support our small producers, that
Ahilan Kadirgamar:would at least ensure that people don't starve.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And then there's been the experiment in the 1960s and 70s around self sufficiency.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And I really draw inspiration from, you know, some of the powerful leaders and thinkers in Africa.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The Arusha Declaration, which talked about self reliance and self sufficiency, the Lagos Plan in the early 1980s, where again, they
Ahilan Kadirgamar:talked about the importance of the food system and agriculture.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Even if you take at the United Nations, the new international economic order, which was, uh, published as a very powerful
Ahilan Kadirgamar:document developed by UNCTAD, Raúl Prebisch, and then the secretary general who actually delivered it happened to be a
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Sri Lankan, Gamani Corea, they understood this very unequal order, but they also want to safeguard the third world countries
Ahilan Kadirgamar:at that time with better terms of trade, proper investment.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So we need global solutions at that level, but we also need solutions nationally and locally.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And I think our leaders and our countries also have to take responsibility to address these problems.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And I think it has to start with redistribution, and it has to focus on the most vulnerable in our societies.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:If we can stabilize them, in my view, other things will fall in place.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Countries like Sri Lanka and countries in Africa should be very conscious of the long term costs of trying to
Ahilan Kadirgamar:resolve this crisis by just repaying the creditors.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And we will only be able to resist that if we become a coalition, perhaps, of debtor nations to be able to oppose this.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Because as a small country, as an individual country, it's very hard to confront these powerful actors.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Because they're also backed by very powerful Western interests.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So there needs to be a lot more thinking and there needs to be a lot more solidarity between Asia and Africa and,
Ahilan Kadirgamar:and Latin America in terms of dealing with this crisis.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And then we have to hold our governments accountable and say, enough is enough.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:We cannot go in this direction where we go from debt crisis to debt crisis.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:There needs to be constraints on lending.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:There needs to be new avenues of development financing that is concessional.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The external debt and trade liberalization which comes together is the main problem.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Because that is what pushes us into a balance of payment problem where we won't even be able to import the essentials.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:that we need.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So when I talk about rebuilding our rural economies, there's so much that we can do with our own resources.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And sometimes the government might have to borrow locally to be able to do that.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:It's even better if it can redistribute it through a wealth tax.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But when it comes to our external sector, we really have to rethink this idea that
Ahilan Kadirgamar:imports can come in without any restrictions.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And because we've been pushed with structural adjustment programs towards trade liberalization and capital account
Ahilan Kadirgamar:convertibility, which has what has led since the last four decades of neoliberal policies for repeated and deepening crisis.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So there needs to be a complete rethinking of how we deal with the external sector.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:We need to come up with new ideas of how we are going to mobilize our domestic resources and our policies.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:and including debt.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:It's not that we can completely get away from debt, but we have to think about it as credit that is productive.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:And there, there needs to be a lot of rethinking.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Dr.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Ahilan, thank you so much for your time and for your insights.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Thank you for having me.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:That was Dr.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Ahilan Kadirgamar from the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka, and also a member of the IDEAs executive committee.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:The president who secured that IMF deal lost the September 2024 elections.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Ideas will be keeping a very close eye on the new president, Anura Kumara Disanayaka.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So do sign up for the newsletter.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Details in the show notes.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Now, as Ahilan had pointed out, the people who bear the brunt of the social costs of debt are working people.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:So let's hear from a woman who lives about 15 kilometers outside the capital, Colombo.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:She was a freelance journalist, supplementing her income by selling indoor plants to big hotels.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:But then in 2019, Sri Lanka was rocked by a terrorist attack, the Easter bombings of three churches and three luxury hotels.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:Prathibha Fernando tells a story to our reporter Saroj Pathirana.
Ahilan Kadirgamar:After bomb blast, all the tourism sector has, like, vanished in Sri Lanka.
Prathibha Fernando:So, all the orders I've received, it was stopped.
Prathibha Fernando:That's the very first problem I had to face, a serious one.
Prathibha Fernando:And, uh, my husband's job was a graphic designer.
Prathibha Fernando:And they have cut 50 percent from his salary as well.
Prathibha Fernando:So, obviously, we couldn't pay the rent.
Prathibha Fernando:Uh, our electricity supply was cut off because we couldn't pay the bill.
Prathibha Fernando:Our water supply was cut off.
Prathibha Fernando:And then my, uh, daughter's school, we were okay financially before all these things happened.
Prathibha Fernando:So she was going to a private school.
Prathibha Fernando:Uh, it's nearly two and a half years now.
Prathibha Fernando:She's at home.
Prathibha Fernando:So, uh, that's the most painful thing up to now that I'm suffering because even now when I'm thinking about that, I,
Prathibha Fernando:uh, I always feel like that I'm a very failed mom, mother.
Prathibha Fernando:I'm a failed person as a mother, as a parent, because two and a half years I couldn't send my daughter to school.
Prathibha Fernando:Several online classes only.
Saroj Pathirana:Did you try to get her into a government school?
Prathibha Fernando:I tried, but in my case, that's a problem because my kid, she was like, studying in a
Prathibha Fernando:Cambridge syllabus from grade one, from nursery actually.
Prathibha Fernando:If I had to send her to the government school, it's going to be totally different syllabus and it's going to be in single medium.
Prathibha Fernando:And even for English medium, uh.
Prathibha Fernando:It's going to be like some amount I have to pay.
Prathibha Fernando:I'm still appealing and I'm still, still fighting with the school to get her back.
Prathibha Fernando:Me and my husband, we were selling food, you know.
Prathibha Fernando:We were preparing Sinhala things, coconut roti, manjok and kochi sambola.
Prathibha Fernando:That's, that's very famous among our people.
Prathibha Fernando:Bus road and we were like, go there.
Prathibha Fernando:We, we used to sell that because we tried everything.
Prathibha Fernando:We tried our best to do that, and then we were like doing that.
Prathibha Fernando:Then the pandemic came, so there was a shutdown and everything, so we couldn't do that anymore.
Saroj Pathirana:Then came the A, yeah, the youth led, uh, uprising.
Saroj Pathirana:The whole world was watching how young people, adults, children, everybody got together and protested, peacefully
Saroj Pathirana:protested, mainly centered in Colombo, Gold Face.
Saroj Pathirana:You were part of it, right?
Prathibha Fernando:Yeah, so I was lucky enough to get a job at a private school and then my husband as well,
Prathibha Fernando:he was lucky enough to get a job as a photographer and I was like a teacher and a media coordinator.
Prathibha Fernando:I don't know, maybe we were foolish, I don't know.
Prathibha Fernando:But we were acting according to our conscience, our heart.
Prathibha Fernando:So that was a time that people were dying in the queues.
Prathibha Fernando:There was people that they couldn't even survive.
Prathibha Fernando:They were dying in hunger and there were kids dying in hunger and everything.
Prathibha Fernando:So as people experienced that situation, we couldn't just watch and stayed at home.
Saroj Pathirana:As a result, you lost the job.
Prathibha Fernando:Yeah, we both, me and my husband, they kicked us out.
Prathibha Fernando:But Luckily, my husband got a job.
Prathibha Fernando:Now we have, we have something to eat.
Prathibha Fernando:Even I borrowed money and saved my house.
Saroj Pathirana:The government described the president as the savior of Sri Lanka, that he got International Monetary
Saroj Pathirana:Fund to support Sri Lanka, and the economy is back on track.
Saroj Pathirana:Do you believe that?
Prathibha Fernando:To be honest, I, I don't believe it at all because obviously we are the one who's suffering.
Prathibha Fernando:We are the ones facing real problems.
Prathibha Fernando:IMF is not a solution for a country.
Prathibha Fernando:So we have so many examples from Greece and several other countries.
Prathibha Fernando:This is not a method of survival.
Prathibha Fernando:That's not the way it should be.
Prathibha Fernando:That's why we fought like this.
Prathibha Fernando:It's not fair for my kid.
Prathibha Fernando:It's not fair for any kid.
Prathibha Fernando:Like, if they need to, like, suffer like this, if they need to stay at home like this, because of
Prathibha Fernando:the financial issues, there should be a system in the country to look after kids, look after people.
Prathibha Fernando:I'm considering myself as lucky, because at least I have a roof over my head with lots of debts, I know.
Prathibha Fernando:I'm still struggling to survive.
Prathibha Fernando:I'm not well.
Prathibha Fernando:But at least we can, like, eat something.
Prathibha Fernando:There are so many people, there are so many parents who can't provide even one meal per day for their kids.
Julians Amboko:Many thanks to Prathibha Fernando for sharing her story.
Julians Amboko:It leaves us with a lot to think about.
Julians Amboko:Next time on Economics from the South, we are back with Jayati Ghosh and Charleza Bugri to examine
Julians Amboko:the role of global multilateral organizations and private creditors in the debt crisis.
Jayati Ghosh:One big failure of the common framework is that it still relies on this IMF DSA, the Debt
Jayati Ghosh:Sustainability Analysis, as if it is this wonderful thing which is written in stone and which is this objective truth.
Jayati Ghosh:It's not.
Charles Abugre:Civil society, especially in Africa, have to stop believing that the IMF is the
Charles Abugre:instrument for disciplining their own government.
Charles Abugre:They are part of a global financial infrastructure that serves more powerful interests and basically
Charles Abugre:ends up creating more dependency on debt.
Julians Amboko:Thanks for listening to Economics from the South from the International Development Economics Associates.
Julians Amboko:Please do share the show with others and if you haven't already, please subscribe or follow wherever you get your
Julians Amboko:podcasts, so that you can get new weekly episodes automatically.
Julians Amboko:There are more details in the show notes about ideas, the Network of Progressive Economists from Latin America,
Julians Amboko:Asia and Africa, and some links to resources on Sri Lanka.
Julians Amboko:And you can also sign up.
Julians Amboko:To the Ideas Newsletter.
Julians Amboko:I'm Julians Amboko, the producer Penny Dale the concept is by Charles Abugre, CP C.P.
Julians Amboko:Chandrasekhar and atieno Ndomo of the International Development Economics Associates.
