The CIA Factbook on Sri Lanka<\/a> lists it as home to approximately 23 million souls of mixed cultural descent (Sinhalese 74.9%, Sri Lankan Tamil 11.2%, Sri Lankan Moors 9.2%, Indian Tamil 4.2%, other 0.5%) with most of the original inhabitants believed to be from India.\u00a0 The island was controlled by the Portuguese and the Dutch in the 16th<\/sup> and 17th<\/sup> centuries, respectively, before being ceded to the British in 1796.\u00a0 It remained under British control for 152 years before gaining its independence, as the dominion<\/a> of Ceylon, in 1948.\u00a0 The nation changed its name to The Democratic Socialist Repulic of Sri Lanka<\/a> (or simply Sri Lanka) in 1972 when it transitioned from an independent country associated with Great Britain to a solely sovereign country.\u00a0 It has been mired in sectarian violence and civil war between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil separatists, to varying degrees, from this inception until the decisive victory of the government over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.<\/p>\n Because of it location in the Indian Ocean, the island offers strategic value for maritime trade, which explains why it was highly sought after and contested for by the European powers in the 1600s and 1700s.\u00a0 Sadly, the promise of its location has not translated into prosperity.\u00a0 The problems with the economy are described, on the more diplomatic side in the NBC News article What is happening in Sri Lanka?<\/em><\/a>, by Rhoda Kwan and Meredith Chen, as the worst economic situation the country has had to endure since it gained its independence from Great Britain.\u00a0 Other articles are more blunt and describe Sri Lanka\u2019s economy using in the words of Sri Lanka\u2019s latest Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as having collapsed.<\/p>\n So, just what went wrong?<\/p>\n There is no shortage of conjectures as to the root cause and explanations range from exploding foreign debt, to the dearth of tourism caused by COVID, to ill-advised tax cuts, to rising inflation, to out-of-control government spending, to collapsing currency, to political corruption and mismanagement.\u00a0 The article EXPLAINER: Why Sri Lanka's economy collapsed and what's next<\/em><\/a>, by Krishan Francis and Elaine Kurtenbach of AP News, explores most of these points in greater depth.<\/p>\n Each of these factors have no doubt contributed to Sri Lanka\u2019s economic crisis as either a root cause or an intermediate one but an compelling narrative suggests that the national economy had enough resilience to withstand the issues listed above and, instead, points to one key decision that served to bring down the whole house of cards.\u00a0 The critical decision was made by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa (part of the Rajapaksa governmental clan<\/a>) in April of 2021 when he banned chemical fertilizer and forced Sri Lanka farmers to use organic methods.\u00a0 This policy had an almost immediate and disastrous effect or, as journalists Talal Rafi and Brian Wong put it in their article The Deep Roots of Sri Lanka\u2019s Economic Crisis<\/em><\/a> for the Diplomat:<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/commoncents.blogwyrm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/CC_07Jul-Sri-Lanka-Map.png\")
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