A Simple Statistic

If you believed all the B.S. they teach you in school(specially social studies/History/Sinhala classes) Sri Lanka is a blessed country.No Natural disasters.Beautiful.Lot's of natural resources.Great location.Everybody wants to be here.If you drop a twig anywhere,it will hold root ,thrive and bear fruit!.My ass!.

Tsunami busted the myth on the top of the list.Most of the people who are talking about beauty haven't set a foot outside Sri Lanka (I'm saying it is not .Certainly we are not the only country that is beautiful).I have read so much crap about natural resources but I don't know anything which is commercially viable in large scale which can generate revenue in a long period of time.Location myth is still tossed around .India builds Sethsusamudram or a big port in South India,Sri Lankan location myth is history.Big boys don't need footholds in countries to wage war anymore.Technology of warfare has changed.The next big B.S is we can make all the food we eat and agriculture is the way to go.JVP wants 1000 tanks restored.Average Sri Lankan farmers plot of land is so small he can barely survive.
Here is a nice statistic about population density.
Population Density
To clear things up let's remove small countries which are less than 10000 km2.
1.Bangladesh 1002
2.Taiwan 636
3.South Korea 492
4.Netherlands 395
5.Lebanon 368
6.Belgium 340
7.Japan 337
8.India 329
9.Rwanda 320
10.El Salvadore 319
11 SRI LANKA 306
We are 11 out of the whole freaking world ,people!
Then check this out.population distribution inside SL .The Density is higher in South -West and lower in North-East.If the Elam is established we can easily jump to number 5(a quick calculation based on 2001 census and area taken as 1/3 and 2/3 of Sri Lanka gave 375 and 85 respectively) in the list.Even without Ealam there won't be a migration from South - West to North-East.It will be viewed as settlements.So we are screwed and better learn to live with it.
We don't have any resources .Nobody knows when the when next tsunami is going to hit us. We are living on top of each other ,have less private space between each citizen , it is freaking hot in the afternoon and worse of all we don't know when we are going to be blown up.That's why we cannot think straight and see what is written on the wall in bold letters."YOU ARE SCREWED".Unless we act now we will end up figthing for food and water.The country will be one big tsunami refugee camp.
The only natural resource we have is people .Our future is in manufacturing and services .Not in agriculture.Our future in Mutli story housing schemes.Not in tiny plots of land of 10 perches like chiken farms.Our future is in urban planning,preserving whatever we have on empty spaces for public use(beaches ,forrest etc..).Our future is in Science and technology .Thats why this(education value) debate is important.
Thats why we have to question while other countries have 40-50 % of college grads why we are satisfied with 3% .That's why we have to understand why after 209 years of English language domination why only 5% of people can read/write English.That's why we have to question why the unemployment rate goes up as the education level rises.