SL Economic Crisis, Geopolitical Rivalry in the Indian Ocean, Human and Planetary Sustainability – Prof. Asoka Bandarage
This episode of ‘At HydePark with Indeewari Amuwatte’ focuses on Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, global financial dynamics, and the challenges of debt restructuring.
Prof. Asoka Bandarage, author of ‘Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World’, highlights the ongoing economic collapse, the importance of understanding global economic shifts. She points out the intensifying global competition for resources among major powers such as the U.S., China, and India. She stresses that Sri Lanka’s leadership and population must be more informed and proactive in addressing the crisis.
The transcript is shown below.
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[Music]
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and a very warm welcome you’re joining us here at Hyde Park on Adana 24 and
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tonight we’ll be talking about the world economy Sri Lanka and how Sri Lanka’s
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path to recovery from crisis will be shaped forward uh with the ongoing uh
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incidents in the world and challenges as well as how Sri Lanka remains resilient
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to these ongoing challenges i’ve invited to our studios a prominent scholar uh
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who is of Sri Lankan origin who is based in the United States Professor Ashoka
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Bandar a very warm welcome to you thank you very much uh there is a long list of
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accomplishments I uh I have here as our team has dug this up but I like to
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highlight you’ve written this book crisis in Sri Lanka and the world you’ve authored the the book and it’s published
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now i think this was sometime last year um but uh beyond that this year we see
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that the especially with US President Donald Trump um and his approach to
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trade wars we see a number of challenges that our part of the world will face
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because of what’s happening there what is your analysis of Sri Lanka’s situation today and how these world um
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not just the wars but but also challenges and impact and constraints to
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supply chain to demand is going to impact us here in Sri Lanka
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yeah there’s so much going on in the world and it’s difficult to keep a focus but I think the it’s there’s a necessity
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to keep a focus on the on the economy because as we see uh Sri Lanka’s economy
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is collapsing uh and although uh goods are available
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there’s still a shortage and of essentials and uh high inflation uh lots
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of people are leaving the country you know an exodus of young professionals so in a sense the uh crisis continues now
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some are hoping that with the change of regime in the United States and the uh
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demise of the liber so-called liberal order that there could be uh better uh
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prospects for the global south including Sri Lanka but that’s hard to imagine
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Because as far as the United States is concerned whether it’s the Democrats or
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the Republicans they’re interested in their own expansion one could say imperialist expansion and also there’s a
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war for resources around the world with uh not only the United States but China
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um India and other countries uh scrambling to grab natural resources as
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well as strategic locations and so on so the um challenges
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continue for Sri Lanka whether uh despite the change of the administration
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in in the United States are you saying that Sri Lanka will uh will be able to
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navigate uh these challenges in spite of these uh ongoing challenges yeah I think
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it requires the leadership of the country as well as the population to really look
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at what’s going on to to be more educated and informed and to move from a
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sense of powerlessness to taking their power uh this uh new administration was
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brought brought to uh power with a massive uh mandate and so it has the
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backing of the uh the majority of the population and how to really exercise
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that mandate is a challenge uh which means for example uh
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renegotiating the IMF deal uh which is not to Sri Lanka’s advantage when you
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look at the fact you’re saying it’s not to Sri Lanka of Sri Lanka because it was seen as the only alternative to the
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economic crisis but do you think Sri Lanka had any choice in drawing an agreement in favor of Sri Lanka given uh
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the the the severity of the crisis we had faced at the time yeah I get into
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some of the details of this in my book um there is evidence that bilateral
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loans were available at that point and that Sri Lanka didn’t necessarily have to declare default but having done this
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now we have to move forward um which means sort of looking at
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various ways to make the IM IMF IMF deal more palatable to the population uh you
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said there was evidence of certain bilateral uh loans that were available if you could maybe explain that to us
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what was available at the time um there was a Chinese bilateral loan that was available for I believe 2.9
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billion and uh instead of taking that there was pressure for Sri Lanka to move
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towards the IMF deal and because it’s difficult to extricate the political and
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the economic because we have to also understand the Sri Lankan issues in the context of the superpower rivalry and
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the cold war and the attempt to move uh Sri Lanka away from the sphere of
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Chinese influence into the IMF fold and uh bring uh more directly under western
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control so there was a lot going on at that time in terms of uh uh external
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influences in terms of making economic decisions but now that that’s happened
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um and the 2.9 billion IMF uh loan is
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considered the only alternative but you have to look at the its terms and that’s not really discussed much it’s sort of
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accepted as a given there’s no alternative uh to the IMF deal but how
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could uh the debt service payments that are being uh uh made out of Sri Lanka’s
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government revenue which is extremely high be brought down uh because that’s
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something that needs to be negotiated uh for example over the next 10 years it
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is shown that almost 26% of government revenue will go to
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servicing the external debt which is very high by 2028 when we start repaying
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our loans and interests are you saying when with all that government revenue going in for servicing debt and um
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interests accumulated over um do you think we are still not ready with a plan
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to recover these uh revenues that we will lose and to replace the revenues
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yes for example some things are not being considered uh very seriously for example an amendment to the 2017 foreign
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control exchange act which deregulated uh financial uh outflows so
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organizations like global financial integrity uh have shown that there’s a lot of
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misinvoicing plunder as they put it that a lot of exports revenue in foreign
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exchange is uh uh hoarded in banks abroad and this includes Sri Lanka
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situation and if that money it is claimed that there’s some $53 billion
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uh in outside the country if some of that at least some of it can be brought
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back it could definitely help repay the debt and get Sri Lanka on a stronger
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economic footing mhm uh how can we draw comparison or learn from countries that
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have acquired monies that were due to the country but have been hidden from uh
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yeah and I think that the whole global financial architecture needs to be questioned and in terms of uh
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restructuring loans there’s got to be uh international mechanisms so that
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countries like Sri Lanka don’t have to go on their own to make these negotiations but if there’s an
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international framework that would be you know more beneficial to uh
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especially the debtridden countries in the world and there are some 54 to 70
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countries that are debtridden so Sri Lanka’s situation is not unique and
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another thing that needs to be taken into account in terms of economic recovery is not to go back to getting
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ISBs international sovereign bonds which the IMF deal projects that starting 2027
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I believe that Sri Lanka would go back to um getting uh uh getting ISBs
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international sovereign bonds and those have very short maturation periods and
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very high interest rates so it would be in order to have a moratorum on uh on
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obtaining uh international sovereign bonds which have caused so much uh uh
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havoc to the Sri Lankan economy because of uh you know much of it the debt is
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owed to uh international sovereign bond holders mhm uh Sri Lanka when uh Sri
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Lanka um declared default and then soon last year sometime in December um Sri
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Lanka exited the default status but what do you suggest could have been done
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different at the time yeah that’s a long story isn’t it um I
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think we have to look at not only uh changing the global financial
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architecture which is um really uh very
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uh exploitative visav the the poorer countries the debtridden countries but
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also the larger global economic system especially the neoliberal order
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uh and in my book in this book as well as my earlier books like colonialism in Sri Lanka I explore how the the roots of
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the current crisis the installation of an export import economy and the uh
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weakening of self-sufficiency and local production which made the country
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dependent on imports for even the basic essentials which meant that Sri Lanka
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along with so many the dependent economies became uh subservient to
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intern the wageries of the international market so when uh there were problems
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outside the country you know the prices of exports going down imports going up
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the country is then in a foreign exchange crisis unable to buy its own uh necessities and it leads to uh shortages
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as well as other social problems so there’s a repetition of this cycle
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throughout starting from the colonial period to 2022 and even to date so I
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think that um questioning of the global economic
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system with its uh uh exploitative relations visav the uh uh poorer
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countries you know uh needs to be uh looked at and this was something that
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Sri Lanka took leadership during the 60s and 70s in terms of calling for a new
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international economic order with better terms of trade for the poorer countries ries and it’s certainly time for a new
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international economic order which u you know puts the planet and people before
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profit and we also have to look at what kind of an economic order do we have in the
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world today which is really controlled by a handful of billionaires and a small
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cery of uh finance capital institutions like black crop for example the largest
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um asset manage management company in the world it’s valued at $10 trillion
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they are also incidentally the biggest uh uh ISB holder on Sri Lanka sri Lanka
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so that’s why that there has to be more of an education and awakening on the part of people not
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only in Sri Lanka but around the world about the realities of the integrated
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globalized economy that we are living within uh you spoke about Sri Lanka’s situation
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and in the 60s how Sri Lanka uh called for a new order uh and also to counter
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the exploitative nature of uh certain economies on uh the poorer countries but
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today do we’ve been talking about what brought Sri Lanka to where we are today the crisis how Sri Lanka plunged into
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such a deep um crisis at times people said it was
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beyond repair but now Sri Lanka remains remains resilient but still more needs to be done we are at the this period of
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moratorum where we await repayment of certain debt but there are other
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scholars and academics and economists who come on our shows and say if we don’t do things right we’re going to
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fall into a deeper crisis so uh I believe it’s important we talk about where we went wrong and what we should
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not uh repeat absolutely and that’s why sort of the
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global southern countries taking a more collective approach is also important especially say the debtridden countries
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there are groups like debt justice there have been calls for debt cancellation so even if it is not an outright debt
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cancellation you can have debt renegotiation and also using uh funds
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that are available to the country like for example this uh foreign exchange that is uh lying abroad how can that be
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brought back and to uh also take a more
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uh activist position visav the external powers who are controlling uh or
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beginning to control more of the natural resources and the strategic installations of the country how to use
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that strategic position and the natural resources to the advantage of the
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country uh and to balance these uh external uh interests
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uh where did we go wrong didn’t we know all this before yeah I think it is not
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just Sri Lanka i think it is the world at large it is a human it’s really a human problem you know uh because this
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struggle uh for survival environmental survival
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social survival is not particular to Sri Lanka although I think it is felt more
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acutely here because of the recent crisis and the superpower uh struggle the cold war context within which Sri
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Lanka is facing this but it is a a global issue of uh ordinary people
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losing control over resources and external forces grabbing those resources
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and making decisions for them so it’s really a call for justice and dist uh
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distribution of resources um as well as planetary protection because you know
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Sri Lanka is a country which is uh environmentally threatened with co uh
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rise of uh uh coastal erosion deforestation you know pollution soil
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water air so those should become the priorities
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uh over uh over uh profit uh for a handful of uh
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billionaires outside the country or even for an elite within the country while you specialize in international
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development political economy women gender studies multiculturalism conflict analysis
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resolution peace security South Asia population and ecology you’re very passionate about environment i
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understand um we’ve been talking about climate change the impact how the
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country has to prepare going forward and also the possibility of debt to nature
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swaps uh how do you how would you relate this to Sri Lanka’s context what’s the
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possibility and potential for Sri Lanka really going forward as we look at massive um amounts of debt that we will
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have to repay going forward yeah this is a very controversial question as you may know because on the face of it it makes
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a lot of sense you know you have to pay the debt and you have all these natural resources why don’t you protect the
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forests in return for uh debt cancellation of some sort but then uh
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there is the issue of also development and meeting the needs of people it is not a completely anti-growth position i
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mean it’s the the poorer classes that have to increase their consumption and the richer classes that have to bring
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down their consumption so you cannot simply take away uh resources from
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people who need it and also there is a element of putting the onus of
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environmental protection on the countries in the south and the poorer classes because there is also uh sort of
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uh pollution has become uh a commodity uh that you can buy the right to pollute
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and have poorer countries safeguard their uh resources and nature whereas
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some of the richer countries and corporations and pollute as they like because they have the money to pay to
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buy uh the right to pollute so the commoditized mechanisms to address
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nature uh are not always the most uh uh viable ones before we speak further I’d
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like to go back to uh where the crisis was what really brought us there and
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what we should do to avoid such crisis we spoke about this but I’d like to really look back and see what brought us
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to where we were in 2021 yeah i think like many other countries
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around the world COVID 19 uh the Ukraine crisis uh all of these
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you know um uh came together in creating the uh supply chain problems and a lot
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of countries you know fell into uh uh economic crisis even in the United
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States you know there were shortages and so it that’s what precipitated it but it
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is the underlying structural uh factors you know that had laid the
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framework for these kinds of crises to emerge when countries become dependent
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on imports for their basic survival and exports to gain the foreign exchange but
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the moment that export uh production goes down or the revenue goes down then
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the country is uh unable to buy its own um necessities so I think you have to
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look at the roots of that and then really question the whole model of
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globalization which is not to say that all of globalization is bad and that we should have autoarchy and that you know
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it’s not completely going back to that but it’s a more of a balance between localized production and then global uh
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uh interdependence and I think the food sovereignty issue is so critical with
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regard to that and there are in fact um many groups uh talking about bio-
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regionalism local agriculture you don’t really hear that much about it in
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mainstream media but there are groups you know talking about more balanced approaches to economic development and
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uh justice you spoke about food security um I think couple of years after the
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crisis too we’ve been talking about um how essentials how there’s a shortage of
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essentials at times but this really translates into lack of strategy here in
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Sri Lanka uh how can we move from um we’ve been talking about consistent
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consistent policies uh governments to continue with certain policy decisions
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that were taken by previous governments as well but regardless of that what do you suggest should be or propose should
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be Sri Lanka’s uh direction in economic decision making and uh uh especially
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when we talk whether whether it’s manufacturing whether we have to focus on exports really or agriculture
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yeah I think it has to be a combination with priority being given to uh local
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food self-sufficiency and local agriculture because agriculture is as you know is really weakening and a lot
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of people are leaving farming and and around the world land is being taken
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away from small farmers and being sold off to transnational corporations and
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private interests for agri business and they don’t necessarily meet the local
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food requirements because a lot of agri businesses uh provide for uh export
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agriculture so there’s got to be very careful uh approach to uh land
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commoditization because 80% of the land in Sri Lanka is still held by the state
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and there has been an attempt to uh privatize this land give freehold rights
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to the farmers now on the face of it it looks like a very good thing but if you look at the history and I’ve followed
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this from starting from the colonial period uh there was an attempt to privatize land and make it a commodity
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and that often led to the farmers the small holders losing control over the
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land and external groups are taking control and their focus is not so much
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self food self-sufficiency mhm so I think with this land alienation and
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commoditization schemes that one has to be very careful and also the land like
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the mineral resources the uh maritime resources are also being grabbed by
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external interests not just in Sri Lanka but around the world and there are also strategic and security uh interests
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behind that so I think that to prioritize local needs of survival and
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creation of livelihoods which is also why people are leaving the country so where is the future if so many of the
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young especially professionals are leaving the country uh that has to be
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stopped or managed rather than encouraged uh because that that becomes
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a part of the export of labor part of the export model uh I mean lots of
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people have been working in the Middle East for decades and that is the primary
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source of foreign exchange for Sri Lanka even now but that has had its costs in
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terms of family community and yeah uh you spoke about external interests uh
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this also brings us to foreign policy but before that do you think Sri Lanka is in a state of helplessness really uh
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when it comes to managing these external parties especially uh major powers who
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have interests in the country uh given our strategic and geopolitical location and also our strategic uh areas of
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interest for these countries yeah sometimes it seems like Sri Lanka has become subservient to three masters not
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just one but it’s a question of how does how does how is that turned around and
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Sri Lanka gets the benefits of this strategic location as well as all the resources and everything that the
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country has to offer so I think that the foreign policy is really key in terms of
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taking leadership in negotiation and balancing these different uh interests
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and uh uh rather than become subservient
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mhm uh when talking about uh the the population and our situation here uh
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there is a stark um revelations about the rate of unemployment in the country
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uh especially after the crisis but this also is a part of our remnants of the
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challenges we faced postcoid a prolonged period of uh shutdown and we had the
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informal sector uh going out of business and the tourism sector affected and this
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impact had ripple effects on the economy but today tourism uh seems to uh be
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booming or at least improving but is this sustainable have
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we looked at sustainable or sustaining this kind of economic activity uh even
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after we faced not just two crisis it was a triple blow on the economy
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yes u tourism is booming but it’s a very fickle industry as you well know because
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the moment there is a natural disaster or a political disaster tourist arrivals
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go down and so some of the other export oriented sectors but the whole economic
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model this uh capitalist model the especially the neoliberal model has been
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built on export production over local production so that has to be questioned
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uh in the world at large because it’s not a challenge that Sri Sri Lanka can
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face alone but I think that uh given uh looming food crisis and so
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on that it is important to uh put prioritize local production and
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sustainability and then uh uh look at exports uh production so on and so forth
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mhm uh so unemployment unemployment Yes yes it’s a really a very uh sad
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situation that so many people are leaving the country especially young professionals
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uh when it’s a country with so many resources and so much to offer and I myself is a product of the free
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education system i was also at the university in Sri Lanka for a year so I
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know that what a fine education system healthcare system we’ve had which were
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also very important in terms of uh keeping population in the country and uh
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also providing uh livelihoods and along with the demise or the weakening of
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those sectors there’s also the weakening of production so that people don’t have
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opportunities so rather than encouraging people to leave I think it’s important
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to create job opportunities within the country uh even if it is maybe uh remote
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work which has become very popular around the world do all these young professionals have to to go abroad can
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they you know be in the country but you know still be connected to global
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technology and uh uh productive activities mhm your book explores the
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emergence of uh the crisis in the context of an accelerating geopolitical
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conflict between China and the United States and today’s context I think uh
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since the book was published there have been developments we spoke at the beginning of our discussion uh Donald
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Trump trade wars has has these trends changed in your view or has Sri Lanka um
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maybe is Sri Lanka in the face of uh facing more severe crisis going forward
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what what what are the uh signs and warnings you have well it seems that
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it’s Sri Lanka is facing more severe crisis if you look at uh especially the
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role of India and Indian intervention i mean India was very helpful during the
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crisis in terms of making uh loans available and food supply and so on and
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so forth but in return Sri Lanka has had to uh agree to much that uh India uh is
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wanting in terms of uh control of the energy security sector uh and so on and
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so forth so that’s u a very uh difficult one for Sri Lanka because India is
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obviously the big neighbor and uh is very important to have good
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relations but how can Sri Lanka sovereignty independence and freedom be
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upheld in the process of these uh negotiations right I think it’s time we take a short
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break here at Hide Park will return to talk about India South Asia and how Sri Lanka’s economy will remain resilient
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throughout the next few years to look at long-term development for the country we are in conversation with Professor
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Ashoka Bandar a scholar and academic specializing in a number of areas and
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the author of two books including crisis in Sri Lanka and the world
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[Music]
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welcome back we’re in conversation with Professor Ashoka Bandar the author of
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not just two books but five books crisis in Sri Lanka and the world uh
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colonialism in Sri Lanka Sustainability and Well-being uh the separatist
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conflict in Sri Lanka this was published in 2008 if I’m not mistaken women population and global crisis uh as I
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said you specialize in a number of areas now I’d like to talk about conflict
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analysis uh this also links to our uh conversation earlier about geopolitical
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crisis etc but really in an era where we talking about u increased engagement of
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countries in these crisis that that we believed a few decades ago will not is
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not a future we will be seeing again in this uh across the world but here Sri
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Lanka uh the tiny land but yet um sensitive to these challenges we’re here
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and we see a lot of extremist crisis uh extremist elements also playing uh a
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major role in in the country post Easter Sunday attacks do you in your analysis
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see that Sri Lanka has got the the strong structures and frameworks legal
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framework especially to counter these emerging global threats from coming into
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our shoes yeah great question um identity
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politics uh has been weaponized not only in Sri Lanka but around the
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world and divisions are manipulated and
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created and this goes back to even the colonial period where I discuss the origins of the so-called ethnic conflict
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and that takes attention away from the economic issue of a small elite
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controlling resources uh and the livelihoods of the majority and people are pitted against each other
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along ethnoreigious lines and now even along gender and sexuality lines and so
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that’s become a part of uh uh the control of populations and I think that
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people have to wake up to this reality
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and recognize the commonality of their issues the necessity for environmental
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uh protection and social protection so I think that
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um also when there are economic crisis and poverty it said that 31% of the Sri
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Lankan population is now below the poverty line whereas in 2016 I think the
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figure was something like 4% right and and this again is not just in Sri Lanka
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when there is poverty and despair it’s easy to manipulate people so you can
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have extremist ethnic and religious organizations manipulating people
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uh and taking that attention away from the common economic issues to creating
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miracles cures for example and this is very common uh and that’s also becomes a way of
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survival for people of escapism some people commit more crime than others
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take drugs some others are leed by these extremist movements so they it is
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related to the economic questions and I think these are things which are very
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difficult to legislate against and that’s why I think that there has to
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be awakening education on the part of people and particularly those who are in more privileged positions the the
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majority of people may not be in a position to really question they are trying to survive they’re trying to get
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two meals per day send their children to school but there is still a class of
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people not only in Sri Lanka but around the world who are more privileged who
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can question and I think that their allegiances are very critical in terms
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of the direction of the world where they put their energy because even in the US
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as you know the society is so polarized now uh and that takes attention away from
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the commonality of the experience and the fact whether it’s the Democrats or
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the Republicans it is a handful of billionaires who are really controlling
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uh the economy and who have the not only the economic power but the political
35:38
power and the the the control of technology surveillance so on and so
35:44
forth so I think that there has to be a sort of awakening on the part of people to these realities otherwise it’ll
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become very difficult to curb these kinds of extremism but but there should
35:56
be some triggering point trigger also from ignorance to awakening where do
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where do you think we figure that out you spoke about education but that’s also a vast subject um how do we narrow
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this down where do we begin education this is this at school level university
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level because we are also in a discussion whether the school curriculum should be amended to to um to also fit
36:23
the modern developments uh if you can give us some explanation on this yeah
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this is really a v vast question i think we’ve come to the point in human
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evolution where we have to question what does it mean to be human because on the
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one hand we have sort of technological advancements in AI and biotechnology and
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the attempt to create a transhuman species that is more connected to
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technology than nature so I think it’s
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the survival of humanity itself is at stake not just of other forms of biodiversity
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so that uh is there a future for humanity and does
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that call for fundamental transformation of consciousness and recognition of
37:18
ourselves as a species in nature and our connectedness to each other and other
37:23
life forms and that seems like very abstract and utopian that
37:31
we’ve come to the point of such technological advancements now of uh
37:39
discussion of computer brain interconnections that we have to stop
37:47
and question this extreme technological
37:52
advancement and talk more about h human development what does human development
37:59
mean is it simply technological advancement and economic growth or is there part of our human connectedness to
38:08
each other as a as a family as a species and our connectedness to other forms of
38:14
life that we need to preserve what does that call for so it the questions are at
38:19
a very fundamental level uh you speak about the philosophy to you
38:25
know how the human evolution uh this this trend we’re talking about AI to you
38:30
know uh industrial revolutions and then where do you think we’re going to go gen
38:36
alpha let’s talk about them yes you know they are increasingly
38:41
connected to technology and have difficulty with relating to each other and that has created uh
38:50
uh problems in terms of communication but even the education system is going
38:55
towards more uh technology use of technology so I think that we have to
39:03
question technology itself what kind of techn it’s not
39:09
uh against all kinds of technology but what kind of technology what what is it
39:14
that human beings need in order to survive because there’s got to be
39:19
controls in terms of techn technological advancement technology is also displacing populations in ter because it
39:26
said by 2030 onethird of the labor force would be
39:32
AI um so I think that whole model of
39:39
economic growth and capitalist development needs to be questioned
39:44
but will will the cycle return to some sort of normaly the the normal that we
39:49
talk about now not just relying on technology but to look within to go back
39:54
to our roots will that be a natural evolution at some point there is a discussion there is a discussion and
40:01
call for more balanced approaches to living uh how much do we need how much do we
40:08
need what is enough because the whole system is driven in a way by greed
40:14
there’s no control on the growth paradigm So that we’re talking about a paradigm
40:20
that puts planet and people before profit and there is a global discussion
40:28
but we don’t really hear that much uh about it in the mainstream discourse so
40:35
we have to really expand the global discussion and its relevance to Sri
40:43
Lanka mhm uh you’ve uh you are a product of uh uh free education in Sri Lanka
40:50
you’ve traveled to the US uh you’ve uh lectured at some of the top universities
40:55
in the United States again uh contributed uh also to major institutions uh by way of your u
41:03
contributions in academic and scholarly uh articles and um essays but at the
41:09
same time uh how do we look back at our education system it’s the I I suppose
41:16
the system remains unchanged regardless of the years the decades we’ve passed uh the the same
41:23
kind of education you’ve seen uh back then continues to be taught to the
41:29
future as well so what kind of amendments changes do you propose
41:36
yeah that’s um it has to change with the times with the needs
41:43
um but it’s a very competitive education
41:49
system because the the global economy is very competitive
41:57
and the change has to come within the education system
42:05
to move people students towards a more balanced
42:10
way of living in the world so the education system has a role to play in imparting this more sustainable way of
42:18
living uh so it is key but here you find that some of the best teachers are the
42:24
tuition teachers why can’t they be teaching within the within the secondary
42:29
schools rather than you know outside in privatized uh uh institutions so there
42:36
is a fundamental changes that are needed which is not simply preparing the
42:42
students to pass their fifth uh exam i I forget what it’s called um
42:50
scholarship scholarship exams which you know very young children are under so much pressure to uh perform and it’s all
42:58
quantitatively driven uh and it is very difficult to change that because that’s
43:04
the nature of the global economic and social system that we are living in but having a conversation about that uh is a
43:13
starting point to really find a more balanced way of living in the world and
43:19
the state can actually have very important role to play there uh we we spoke about uh a few billionaires
43:27
controlling to the west and then the global south as well as our part of the
43:32
region you specialize in South Asia and write a lot um in the face of these
43:37
geopolitical um challenges and the security crisis especially when we talk
43:42
about the dynamics of the Indian Ocean region how do you think South Asia what is the missing link here uh of course
43:49
India Pakistan we’ve that’s an old story now but where do we begin to link this
43:55
region in order for all of our countries to benefit not just from the growth of India but also as a region to have each
44:03
other’s back is Sri Lanka uh possible as a link absolutely in
44:08
1971 there was a declaration to make the Indian Ocean uh zone of peace calling
44:15
for demilitarizati
