(Dis)connecting Colombo: Situating the Megapolis in Postwar Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka is in the midst of a postwar infrastructure boom, with new investment directed into roads, ports, and airports as part of an uneven and contested development process. Taking the transformations unfolding in Colombo as our point of departure, we examine how the vision of megapolis has animated debates on the geographies of connectivity. The postwar Sri Lankan political landscape initially envisioned political integration, which was to be delivered through the expansion of national road networks. The political priorities in the past decade reoriented away from integrating the nation to the strategic positioning of Colombo as a financial trading hub for South Asia. Focusing on Colombo’s flagship Port City project, we problematize these models of development by foregrounding counternarratives that speak to concerns around debt, enclosure, persistent ethnic tensions, and the degradation of coastal ecosystems. Key Words: connectivity, ecological stress, infrastructure, Sri Lanka, uneven development.

斯里兰卡正处于战后的基础建设蓬勃发展期，新的投资导入道路、港口与机场，作为不均与竞争发展过程的一部分。我们将可伦坡中展开的变迁作为起始点，检视“大都会”的远景，如何激活有关连结地理之辩论。斯里兰卡的战后政治地景，最初展望政治整合，并将通过全国路网的扩张实现。过去十年的政治优先顺位，从国家整合转向将可伦坡打造成为南亚金融贸易枢纽的策略性定位。我们聚焦可伦坡的旗舰港口城市计画，通过强调有关债务、圈地、持续的族裔冲突，以及海岸生态系统的恶化等考量之反叙事，问题化这些发展模式。关键词：连结，生态压力，基础建设，斯里兰卡，不均发展。

Sri Lanka se encuentra inmersa en un auge infraestructural de posguerra, durante el cual las nuevas inversiones se han orientado hacia los sectores de la construcción de carreteras, puertos y aeropuertos, como parte de un desigual y controvertido proceso de desarrollo. Tomando como nuestro punto de partida las transformaciones que se desenvuelven en Colombo, examinamos cómo la visión de la megalópolis ha animado los debates sobre las geografías de la conectividad. El paisaje político de la Sri Lanka de la posguerra columbró inicialmente la integración política, que se suponía sería canalizada a través de la expansión de la red nacional de carreteras. Pero las prioridades políticas de la pasada década cambiaron la orientaron de la idea de integrar la nación en favor de una estrategia de posicionar a Colombo como el núcleo de las finanzas comerciales para el Asia del Sur. Enfocándonos en el proyecto insignia del puerto para la ciudad de Colombo, problematizamos estos modelos de desarrollo al poner en plano frontal las contranarrativas que hablan de las preocupaciones sobre deuda, encierro, tensiones étnicas persistentes y la degradación de los ecosistemas costeros.

Palabras clave:

• conectividad
• desarrollo desigual
• estrés ecológico
• infraestructura
• Sri Lanka

Acknowledgments

We benefited from presenting early iterations of this article at various academic venues in Istanbul, Turkey, Washington, DC, and Singapore and had productive and illuminating conversations with many colleagues. In particular, thanks go to (in no particular order) Chitra Ventakaramani, Jennifer Hyndman, Yaffa Truelove, Tuna Kuyuçu, Ozlem Altan-Olçay, Vineeta Sinha, James Sidaway, Prasenjit Duara, Biray Kolluoğlu, Shuan Lin, Vidyamali Samarasinghe, Annu Jalais, Atreyee Sen, Brenda Yeoh, Rajshree Jetley, Radin Mohammed Asri, Joelene Tan, Cecilia van Hollen, Gyanesh Kudaisya, Zafer Yenal, Jamie Gillen, Nükhet Sirman, Neena Mahadevan, Ayfer Bartu Candan, and Heather Bedi for their help in either creating the intellectual space for presenting this work or productively engaging with this work at different stages. In finalizing and tightening our article, we were aided by fantastic editorial support by Barney Warf: Thank you for this! The first author is appreciative of two great junior researchers (and coauthors) who worked enthusiastically through a difficult period and helped redress sparse initial data to ensure the completion of this research. Last, but not least, we remain grateful for all of the respondents who made the time for us; without them, this intervention would not have been possible.

Notes

1 The recent Easter bombings (21 April 2019) in various parts of Sri Lanka, including Colombo, might, however, bring other complexities to the timeline and the nature of the project, as China (on the next day, 22 April 2019) was the first country to have issued a travel advisory to its citizens to leave Sri Lanka because of security concerns. Belt and Road Initiative geopolitics might have shifted on the day, with likely realignment and Sri Lanka’s role within it needing further scrutiny.

2 We particularly draw attention to Khanna’s (2016) work because both at public events and during our interviews many advocates and policymakers explicitly mentioned his work or implicitly did so by invoking the trope of connectivity.

3 Our thank to colleagues at Koç and Bogaziçi universities (Istanbul, Turkey), who offered us many counter illustrations from the Middle East and North Africa region, which, because of space limitations, we do not go into (see also Scott [1998] for evidence from other parts of the world).

4 The Catholic Church has also played an instrumental and radical role at various moments in time in Sri Lanka’s troubled political history, including on protesting around environmentally destructive projects (see also Caron and Da Costa 2007).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the European Research Council (Grant Agreement No. 616393) for the project “Roads: An Ethnographic Project on Roads and Politics of Thought in South Asia.”

Notes on contributors

Kanchana N. Ruwanpura

KANCHANA N. RUWANPURA is a Reader in Development Geography, Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, Scotland. E-mail: [email protected]. During 2019–2020, she holds fellowships awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Max Weber Stiftung (University of Gottingen, Germany). She served as one of two codirectors at the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh until recently (2014–2018), and her research interests explore the intersection between feminism, ethnicity, labor, and postwar development.

Benjamin Brown

BENJAMIN BROWN is a Research Assistant at the Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, Scotland. E-mail: [email protected]. He has explored his commitment to social justice issues by looking at the intersection between social movements, the environment, and energy politics.

Loritta Chan

LORITTA CHAN is a Doctoral Student in the Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, Scotland. E-mail: [email protected]. She is looking at education for waste picker children in urbanizing India for her doctoral studies and is also a consummate researcher, assisting on completing the research related to this project.