කෘෂිකර්ම අර්බුදය සහ තරුණ ප්රශ්නය
Writing from prison under a pseudonym, Ivan traces Sri Lanka’s agrarian crisis back to colonial land seizures, which left most rural families with too little land to live on. Drawing on the Kandyan Peasantry Commission and the Patha Dumbara review, he shows how land fragmentation, tenancy, debt and mortgage drove both owner-cultivators and sharecroppers deeper into poverty. Without industry to absorb them, rural families invested their hopes in educating their children, only to see those children join a growing army of the educated unemployed. Ivan argues that this unemployment lies at the root of the youth unrest of his time. He urges the government to run its food-production campaign in a way that answers the youth question too, suggesting this could win over even the young people who had turned against the state.
සහලින් රට ස්වයංපෝෂිත කරන්න රජයට යෝජනාවක්
Writing from prison under a pseudonym, Ivan argues that Sri Lanka cannot become self-sufficient in rice while nearly half its paddy land is worked by sharecroppers who surrender up to half their harvest to absentee landlords. Drawing on a 1972 cost-of-production survey and the Patha Dumbara study, he shows that tenant farmers are left in debt after paying rent, and that most landlords are estate owners, traders and salaried employees for whom paddy rent is only a side income. He proposes that the state transfer all tenanted land to the farmers who work it, compensate the owners, and recover the cost through paddy delivered to the Paddy Marketing Board. He argues this would secure the rice ration, raise yields, and free some 450,000 tenant families from what he calls feudal bondage.