Week-15-2026

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s victory marked a high-water point for Sinhalese nationalism. But the NPP’s recent success in the North shows that its power is receding. Reading Rajesh Venugopal’s 2018 economic history suggests that the structural conditions which sustain this ideology are becoming weaker.

Customs seized a consignment of four books written by a Tamil writer. Writers and activists condemned the government. The culture ministry reviewed the books but recommended releasing only two, intensifying criticism.

Famously bureaucratic and long neglected, the IRD is getting a facelift. Mick Moore is hopeful: fixing the tax department’s personnel and technology woes will help solve a good chunk of the country’s budgeting problems.

Whisper words of wisdom this evening, at Lakmahal’s non-fic book club, on Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me.  AI is laying-off Colombo’s techies. ’Fully automated luxury communism’ presumably isn’t the