Covid 19 pandemic and the Ukraine-Russia war changed the lifestyle of the whole world. This mainly affected the developing countries and Sri Lanka is one of them which experienced consequences severely. As the immediate neighbor, any change in the Sri Lankan economy will affect India in many ways.
With the sudden economic decline, the inflation rate in Sri Lanka went skyrocketed and once it was predicted to be the highest inflation rate in the world. As a result, the price of stationaries and other educational equipment’s increased almost 03 times. The stories from different parts of the country tell how parents can’t afford to send their children to school due to high transport costs, the high price of stationaries, and unable to afford healthy meals for children. Losing the right to proper education will affect Sri Lanka in long term as a social issue even if the country recovers from its economic crisis.
However, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka is trying to fix the mistakes which political authorities have made in the past few years and it shows some positive impact on the Sri Lankan economy. But unfortunately, the political environment of the country is not in favor of the country. Protests and strikes organized by different political parties demanding an immediate election have made a negative impact on the recovery process and might head back to worse.
Not only is the school education, University education system in Sri Lanka is also at risk. University students are having continuous clashes with security forces with massive protests which is an unhealthy situation for a country that is aiming to bloom in the industry of tourism. Most of these protests are against the government and there is no sign that Sri Lankan politics have learned their lessons and trying to uplift the country as a united team.
With all these issues ordinary children and their parents across the country are suffering without proper education and this will result in a chaotic situation in near future. As the Education Jagat team we are committed to helping education all around the world and our team is in action at the moment in Sri Lanka with a program of strengthening the library system across the country. We wish to request the Ministry of Education of India to be directly involved in Sri Lankan Education and initiate an expert knowledge-sharing program between the two countries to stabilize the social unrest in Sri Lanka.