A man buys himself a Rs 40 knife, and uses it to kill his wife. He later tells the police that she used her mobile phone too much – he suspected she was being unfaithful. He intended only to cut her ear off. But in a rage he killed her. A “reporter” calls LIRNEasia Chairman, Rohan Samarajiva, to ask him what constitutes “appropriate” use of mobile phones. 
A man buys himself a Rs 40 knife, and uses it to kill his wife. He later tells the police that she used her mobile phone too much – he suspected she was being unfaithful. He intended only to cut her ear off. But in a rage he killed her. A “reporter” calls LIRNEasia Chairman, Rohan Samarajiva, to ask him what constitutes “appropriate” use of mobile phones.
My advisor was one of the principal expert witnesses testifying against AT&T in a series of court cases that led to the breaking up of what was then the world’s largest company. William Baumol was the principal expert witness testifying on behalf of AT&T. He was thus a familiar name. I read his work and critiqued it. What was an easy target was his theory of contestable markets.
Yesterday, a woman journalist from a Sinhala weekly newspaper called me to seek comments on appropriate phone use. I asked why. She said that excessive phone use had caused a man to kill his wife by knifing her. She wanted to write a piece about appropriate phone use, with quotes from me. I said many things in response.
A predominantly Muslim village in Uttar Pradesh, India, has announced that women seen talking on a mobile phone in public will be fined INR21,000 (approximately USD 325). The khap panchayat, or self-proclaimed community court, has labeled the act a “crime”, according to this NDTV article. A member of the Panchayat, Ghaffar Khan, offers justification that many would describe as outrageous. “Most of the women that we have here are uneducated. Why would they need a phone? 
The tragedy of a garbage mountain slide generated a great deal of interest in solutions for the solid waste disposal problems in Sri Lanka. Given prior work in this area, we were ready. Here is Dr Sujata Gamage on Face the Nation on TV1: Part 1 and Final Segment.
MPT claims to have 25 million active SIMs and 98 percent population coverage. From the refusal to answer the question re data usage, it appears that the data consumption is less than on Ooredoo and Telenor. But this is a strong performance and testimony to the wisdom of the decision to change the internal culture of the company by bringing in external management. “We have thousands of towers, the number of which is increasing almost daily,” Amamiya said. “We use the 900MHz spectrum that can cover a greater area with fewer towers needed.
For some time we have been pointing to the fact that , the Bay of Bengal is one of the least connected by cable despite being home to six of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies. Something is being done about it: a private company and the Bangladesh government’s undersea cable monopoly are entering into a joint venture to connect the landing point of SEA-ME-WE 4 in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, and the capital of the Rakhine State in Myanmar. The private entity will own 90 percent of the cable, presumably because BSCCL could not come up with more money. It is a good thing, and meshes with the UN ESCAP vision of a Asia Pacific Information Superhighway (AP-IS) which is redundant and low cost. The cable will be 250 kilometres long and will connect Cox’s Bazar and Myanmar’s coastal city of Sittwe, said Monwar Hossain, managing director of BSCCL.
For a number of reasons, I’ve been thinking about Sri Lanka’s unusually low female participation in the labor force. As is common among policy people, I was emphasizing the benefits for households from having multiple incomes and to various sectors from having less constraints on labor inputs. Here, Janet Yellen talks about the macro-economic benefits directly: The sweeping movement of women from the home to the workplace during the mid-20th century, she said, was a “major factor in America’s prosperity.” But that progress has stalled in recent decades, leaving women less likely than men to hold paying jobs. Bringing more women into the work force with policies like expanding the availability of paid leave, affordable childcare and flexible work schedules, she said, could help to lift the American economy from a long stretch of slow growth. 
For some, it’s something they are used to. But for others it’s a new experience. They carefully touch the icons on the smart phone with tentative fingers and say “Puthalata, duvalata nang meva pulavan” (Our sons and daughters can easily do this) The group of farmers who gathered last week in Dambulla came from different areas in the Matale and Anuradhapura districts. Some had travelled long distances. They were a diverse group – ranging in age from twenties to fifties.
It is increasingly common to read/hear references to the Big Five (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft) as the entities shaping our virtual experiences, and perhaps the trajectory of human development. But why are Alibaba and Tencent not included in this conversation? This Digital Asia Hub piece provides a valuable corrective: The attributes, connections, and behaviors we capture in our data — and how we model them — shape what our AIs value, and how they behave, i.e., their culture.
On Thursday, 04th of May 2017, I will be speaking on the proposed Economic and Technological Cooperation Agreement between India and Sri Lanka at the invitation of the Jaffna Managers’ Forum. The talk will begin at 4.30 PM at the Euroville Conference Hall in Nallur. In addition to addressing the concerns of the opponents, I will be presenting ideas on why we need trade agreements to make it possible to participate in global production networks. The slides are here.
Sri Lanka’s unemployment rate is low (4.4 percent in 2016), yet its youth (15-24 yrs) unemployment rate is 22 percent. Unemployment among the more educated (above GCE AL) is 8.3 percent, almost double the overall rate. The participation of women in the labor force is 34.