Category: Choices

May 12, 2006 (LBO) – The May/June 2006 issue of the international affairs monthly, Foreign Policy, carries an article entitled “The Failed States Index” (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3420). It made the news in several countries and even prompted a senior US trade official to refute the classification of Pakistan as the most endangered South Asian state on the […]

May 01, 2006 (LBO) – It appears that lordships have been sold in the UK, again. Tony Blair, who criticized the Tories for selling honors, is on the back foot, trying to explain away the correlation between those who loaned large sums to the Labor Party and those who were appointed to the House of […]

Apr.13 (LBO) – In the famous five classes that the JVP used for recruitment in the years before the first insurrection of 1971, a story was told about tea. It was mostly false, but it was a simple, good and persuasive story. The story was that the imperialists forcibly displaced upcountry Sinhala villagers to make […]

Mar. 28 (LBO) – I was at a meeting in Delhi in early March when I first heard the acronym KPO, of course without being spelled out.From the context, I figured it meant knowledge process outsourcing and started using it immediately. One cannot afford to be slow on the draw with acronyms! The key point […]

Mar. 16 (LBO) — The President has announced that Sri Lanka’s clocks are to follow Indian Standard Time (IST) with effect from April 13th, 2006. This means that Sri Lanka will henceforth be at Coordinated Universal Time +5:30 or UTC+5:30, instead of UTC+6 as we are now. UTC is the officially accepted term for what […]

Feb 21, 2006 (LBO) — In some discussions in 2002-04 when the government was interested in a bridge cum utility conduit over the Palk Strait (the now forgotten “Hanuman Bridge”), someone expressed concern that it would make illegal immigration to Sri Lanka easier. My reaction was that I wished that were true. In the 1960s, […]

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 […]

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 […]