Playing with the crisis
Victor Ivan notes that he predicted bankruptcy three years earlier as a political analyst rather than an economist, then sets out what the import restrictions and the fertiliser ban will do next.
Changing the nation’s fate
Not a manifesto but a method: Victor Ivan sets out how a mass of citizens could file fundamental rights petitions together, and what a Centre of Public Movement built on that would be able to do.
The crisis and agriculture
What could be done for agriculture if the fertiliser ban were lifted: co-operative societies, the wild animal problem, dairy and beef, dhal and chillies, and paddy. A practical column, unusually free of politics.
Finding a way to free the nation
Written at a politician’s request, this is Victor Ivan’s programme in five numbered parts — nation building, the judiciary, the system of governance, empowering the public, and the country’s place between India and China.
Redeeming the country
With the military unable to turn the wheels either, Victor Ivan calls for a common platform across the parties — and, failing that, for the Opposition to build one itself.
Lost hopes of freedom
On the 73rd independence anniversary, Victor Ivan traces the country back to 1815 and the Colebrooke reforms to ask how a state that began ahead of Asia ended at the bottom of it.
Structural reforms key to recreating the State and the social system
COVID as an index of state failure. Victor Ivan reads the handling of the pandemic, the soldiers placed over the civil service and the growing dependence on China as symptoms of one structural collapse.
The revolution betrayed and the fate of Sri Lanka
Not the voters but their leaders were the fools of 2015. Victor Ivan calls the good-governance years a betrayed revolution and traces the counter-revolution it made inevitable.
Setting governance on a firm footing
What the three branches of the state are supposed to do, and what Sri Lanka’s actually do. Victor Ivan’s answer is to hand the constitution to the people, with citizens’ initiatives and referendums built into it.
Cutting the umbilical cord for a new birth
Whoever wins in August, the country reaches a crossroads. Victor Ivan sets out participatory constitution-making as practised elsewhere and argues Sri Lanka must cut the cord to be born again.