He added, “we have eliminated terrorism from at least Sri Lankan shores, we need to begin by considering the factors that so nearly caused disintegration.”

Referring to devolution of power, Prof Wijesinha said that any political solution should be based on the principle of subsidiarity, ie the idea that decisions should be made by the smallest possible unit of relevance, personal questions by individuals, community problems by the community and so on.

“What we did not want was the majoritarianism of one unit, the country, being replaced by another sort of majoritarianism,” he said.

'President Rajapakse’s government took effective measures in making it compulsory for new recruits to the public service to learn the other official language. Existing employees are also encouraged to learn this, and steps are being taken to increase minority representation in the public service. This is happening apace in the police, which could otherwise seem an alien force to many Tamils and, with security concerns less pressing, the policy can be extended to the armed forces too, he stated.

With regard to education, one of the most important innovations planned by government is the introduction of private education at tertiary level, he added.

Higher quality vocational training programmes, greater effort with regard to soft skills and other qualifications for employment, stress on confidence and social awareness and personality skills, are all essential, and need to be pursued with vigour, Prof. Wijesinha said.

This is the more important in view of the comparative success of the government programme of infrastructure development, he said adding, in addition to ensuring basic facilities, extending to fully functional schools, for those who had been displaced by the conflict, most of whom have now been returned to their places of residence, government has laid stress on better communications, through electronic connectivity as well as roads. Irrigation facilities which had lain disused for years are being restored, and efforts are being made to train farmers in processing while ensuring better methods of distribution.

'Investment is being encouraged, the plan being to turn an area which only saw subsistence agriculture into one in which the producers are economically active. But all these will need as much concentration on human resource development as on the development of the physical infrastructure. Of course this is an area in which the rest of the country too needs support, in terms of the massive changes with regard to infrastructural development taking place elsewhere too. We have already seen the increased prosperity in the East, given the developments that had been introduced even while the war in the North was being concluded', he said.