In an article published on 31 December 2025 in the Daily FT, LIRNEasia Chair Professor Rohan Samarajiva highlights how the Ditwah disaster exposed major vulnerabilities in telecom networks. He emphasizes that numerous telecom sites across the country were affected, leaving many districts without mobile or data services for days, which restricted access and delayed restoration efforts. Professor Samarajiva questions whether post-disaster telecom infrastructure rebuilding should aim for mere resilience or true “building back better.” Resilience, which means restoring networks to pre-disaster conditions, may simply repeat failures. Building back better, he emphasizes, requires treating telecom infrastructure as critical and addressing the root causes of failure. 
In an article published on 31 December 2025 in the Daily FT, LIRNEasia Chair Professor Rohan Samarajiva highlights how the Ditwah disaster exposed major vulnerabilities in telecom networks. He emphasizes that numerous telecom sites across the country were affected, leaving many districts without mobile or data services for days, which restricted access and delayed restoration efforts. Professor Samarajiva questions whether post-disaster telecom infrastructure rebuilding should aim for mere resilience or true “building back better.” Resilience, which means restoring networks to pre-disaster conditions, may simply repeat failures. Building back better, he emphasizes, requires treating telecom infrastructure as critical and addressing the root causes of failure. 
Gayani Hurulle participates in panel on Connecting the Unconnected at APrIGF 2022 in Singapore
There is little debate about Asia’s increasing economic and political significance. The COVID-19 pandemic that originated in the Asian land mass has retarded, but not reversed, the progress made in taking millions out of poverty and in moving the centre of gravity of the world economy back to Asia, where it was until the 16th century.
LIRNEasia and ICRIER jointly released the findings of a nationally representative, 7000+ sample survey assessing access to services during COVID-19 in India. The research highlighted two distinct stories on the state of digital in India.