In Sri Lanka’s hill country, expectations low ahead of presidential polls Premium

Following decades of marginalisation, Malaiyaha Tamils, who were further hit by Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, see no imminent respite after the election

“There is little to look forward to in Sri Lanka,” says Kathir*, who will board a plane to Dubai later this month for an electrical maintenance job, leaving behind his parents, wife and two children. “There’s no other option,” says the 35-year-old, who paid 4,00,000 SLR (roughly ₹1,11,500) to an agent to get on a list of workers seeking employment abroad.

Weeks after his planned departure, Sri Lanka will go to the polls to elect a new President. Citizens will have a say for the first time since the painful economic crash in 2022, when they took to the streets amid acute shortages and long power cuts. The mass uprising booted out former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who fled the country and resigned.

“How does it matter who comes to power, when our situation remains the same?” Kathir asks dejectedly. Even with two jobs, as an electrician and autorickshaw driver, he struggles to support his family in the central Kandy district, which is teeming with tourists.

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The government is targeting more visitors, so the dollars they bring can refill its coffers that ran dry two years ago. Further, it is hoping to boost its foreign exchange earnings from exports and remittances of workers — $ 5.9 billion in 2023 — who have flown out. Nearly 75,000 workers have left the country in the first quarter of 2024, after some 6 lakh people left during the preceding two years, a stark increase in departures, data published by the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment showed.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who replaced Mr. Gotabaya, is seeking a mandate to take forward his government’s economic recovery programme. He unfailingly reminds the electorate that fuel queues have vanished, there is no shortage of gas, and the country is on the path to recovery with the nearly $3 billion International Monetary Fund package he signed. He claims credit for restoring stability. Meanwhile, tens of thousands like Kathir are leaving the country to escape precarity.

Families like his, living in the towns of Sri Lanka’s hill country, may still be relatively better off, compared to those working and residing on the tea estates, according to Ponniah Logeswary, of the Kandy-based Human Development Organization, a non-profit working in plantations and rural areas. “Their plight is dire,” she says.