Sri Lanka is facing an economic crisis, and too many of the solutions offered are economic mumbo-jumbo. Interest rates, ‘structural adjustments’, privatizations, tax changes, etc. All very complex, you couldn’t possibly understand, but you can.

If we don’t have power, build renewable power plants. If fuel is scarce, take the bus. If food is running low, grow some. If dollars are short, earn some. If people are suffering, offer rations. Our common problems have common-sense solutions, which are pooh-poohed by the people that got us into this mess. They offer incomprehensible monetary theory instead, when we have real problems. We have to talk about real solutions.

It’s like we’re fighting a fire and nobody wants to talk about water. It’s like the house has burnt down and nobody wants to talk about building a better one. We have real problems. We need to talk about real solutions.

Building Power Plants

When it rains we have hydro energy, but when it doesn’t we import fossil fuels. This is a recurring problem, and it won’t go away with any financial adjustment. The obvious solution, which a child could understand, is to build power plants that capture the energy we have. Like the sun.

Will this solve power cuts immediately? No, we need rationing, which we’ll talk about. But we’re talking about a long-term problem. We need to talk about long-term solutions. C’mon. We’re not children. We need to fix this for them, not just take out more loans and pass the problem on.

It is worth taking out loans (ideally bilateral, from other countries) to build a real asset of renewable power plants. Energy prices are only getting more unstable and the long-term value of fossil fuels is violently negative, especially for countries like us. Sri Lanka doesn’t even have fossil fuels, we have no choice. We have to become almost completely energy-independent.

Parakramabhu said, “not one drop of water shall reach the sea without first serving man.” We need a Parakramabhu Project to capture the sun.

Improving Public Transport