Me and my life

Since October 2011 (the month I joined the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo), we have been going on for pickets, protests, silent pickets, candle light vigils, public awareness campaigns, signature collecting events against an illegal institution (SAITM should not be called an institution but a business venture). We have walked to University Grants Commission, Ministry of Higher Education, Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka Medical Council, Presidential secretariat, President's house, and parliament. I am not sure whether there are any other places where we could have walked to make our pleas heard. Our voices fell on deaf ears both of the rulers and the ruled. Our peaceful protests were returned first with water cannon, then with tear gas and currently with lathi-charge. I pray that days of rubber bullets followed by real bullets and bombs will not come. Us and our protests were labelled with various terms including radicals, political parties, disruptors. Soon we will be tag...

This is a very convoluted and difficult to understand post. It is directly on my thoughts on 25/04/2017 press interview. Our politicians start their discussion on free education and reaffirm that they are committed to protect free education. In the middle of the way they say that SAITM is equipped with all the professors, lecturers and consultants and state medical faculties do not have that. But they do not come with a proposal how they are going to recruit the staff to state medical faculties. Okay, lets hope that government gives SAITM hospital and gives clinical training and that solution is accepted by all other parties. What is the government planing to do if many more private faculties come up and request for government hospitals? So if government starts to give hospitals on what basis would they be giving. Definitely it should be on bidding basis. It would be like government bidding the patients for private entities. Isn't there a ethical issue and how could the patient...

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau This is not a philosophical post about independence. This is regarding what happened in the next few years after independence and the silent atrocities done to a segment of its people. Today generally I see the estate Tamils or Indian Tamils (although it is not the correct term to describe them, the most correct term would be Sri Lankans of recent Indian origin) being ridiculed, they are considered for menial tasks and odd jobs. The health ministry has many programs targeting the estate population. The university entrance of them is considerably lower compared to other population. School drop out rate is higher among them. Why does it happen like that? The answers are the excerpts from the book "Palmyra Fallen" by Rajan Hoole. "In three Citizenship Acts dragged over fourteen months, the governm...

In 1971, university entrance was based on a quota system according to the medium of instruction. District quota system was introduced in 1977. These two were done to rectify the disparities due to availability of resources. The first one created many angered youth and a 30 year long civil war. The second one is a hot topic for people to discuss whether it is good or bad. But recently with the private medical college issue and everything, the district quota system is being used as a justification why a private medical college is essential in Sri Lanka. And the craziest thing is that the justification being told by the government ministers, past higher education minister.  First of all, the district quota system should have been an interim measure and there should have been a proper plan/ vision on how to share the resources across the island, so the student studying in a rural school in Monaragala and the student studying in Colombo have the equal access to resources, so a day co...

There are two moments in my life, in which I was ashamed of being born in this country due to events occurring in my lifetime. The first is on 19th of May, 2009, the first of post-war days, in which people were celebrating the victory of the bloody war in the streets, amidst thousands of fellow citizens were stranded homeless affected by war. No one cared to remember the civilian casualties and at least pray for them, nor the political leaders claimed to care about those people both dead and alive. That was the first moment, I strongly felt that Tamils were alienated from this country, though during war times, Tamils had to be searched for a long time at check points. The second moment is on 9th of January, 2015, the day the Presidential elections were released and the social media were flooded with those statuses yet again separating the minorities from the country. All the hopes, I had for this country got shattered when I saw some of my friends had shared those statuses. It reinfo...

The day the election results were released, on 9th of January, racist/hate posts started to appear that the "country has been betrayed, Sri Lanka is going to be destroyed, Tamils and Muslims voted out the Mahinda Rajapaksha, Sinhalese are going to be extinct in this country, Tamils and Muslims are taking revenge". I am disgusted, distressed and worried of these posts on social media. I hoped there would be a new beginning for the ethnic minorities with the new president but we are compelled to fight these racist ideas even though it is in social media. Even when Tamils and Muslims are taking the most possible democratic way to express their opinion, these racist posts are appearing on social media. They voted as Sri Lankans, for the leader of unified Sri Lanka. They voted MR out because he failed in reconciliation in the past 5 years not because MS had addressed the ethnic issue adequately in his election manifesto. I would say Tamils and Muslims are taking a leap of faith ...