The president vowed last month to stay on until his five-year term ended in 2024, despite the anger his tenure prompted among the people. Thousands of Sri Lankans stormed his official residence on Saturday, forcing him to go into hiding and agree to step down. He was to have done so on Wednesday.

“One day this had to happen,” said Mallawaara Arachchi, a 73-year-old retired engineer, as he wandered around the official residence of the prime minister last occupied by Rajapaksa’s elder brother, Mahinda, and now also by protesters.

“They have robbed everything from the people,” he said. But with the family gone “we will be the best country in the world in the near future.”

Mahinda resigned in May, thus ending his son Yoshith’s stint as chief of staff. His other son, Namal, elder brother Chamal and younger brothers Basil and Shasheendra quit as ministers in April.

Former finance minister Basil, who also holds U.S. citizenship, was stopped at the airport from fleeing the country on Tuesday by immigration officials wary of the public response if he had been allowed to leave.

The country of 22 million has barely any dollars left to import fuel, it has defaulted on billions of dollars of foreign loans, headline inflation hit 54.6 per cent last month with more dire predictions, while schools and offices stay shut to conserve petrol and diesel.

It is the most debilitating political and economic crisis to hit the country since independence in 1948, including during a brutal civil war in which Gotabaya Rajapaksa, as defence secretary, oversaw the crushing of Tamil Tiger insurgents in 2009.

Much of the blame for the crisis has been placed on the COVID-19 pandemic that squeezed out the island’s tourism industry and dried up remittances from Sri Lankans overseas. The Rajapaksas’ tax cuts left a hole in state revenues and a ban on chemical fertilizer damaged crops before it was lifted.

Talks with the International Monetary Fund for a rescue package could yield results later this year or next at the earliest, prompting Sri Lanka to seek even more aid from neighbours India and China.

Sri Lanka’s parliament will elect a new president on July 20.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has also offered to resign, and if that happens, the parliamentary speaker will be the acting president for a few days as per the constitution before the election is concluded.

“Sri Lanka is in uncharted territory, we have never seen this level of volatility,” said Bhavani Fonseka, senior researcher at Colombo-based think tank Centre for Policy Alternatives.

“Unless both the president and the prime minister resign we are looking at prolonged instability. What we have seen so far will be nothing compared to what could happen.”

— Reporting for Reuters by Uditha Jayasinghe and Devjyot Ghoshal; writing by Krishna N. Das.

The post Rajapaksa dynasty draws to humiliating close in Sri Lanka appeared first on Country Guide.

Tens of thousands of farmers have been camped on the outskirts of the capital New Delhi for over a month, calling for the repeal of laws introduced by the federal government, which says the legislation is aimed at modernizing the country’s antiquated agricultural sector.

Farm leaders say the laws are an attempt to erode a longstanding minimum support price for their produce and want a full repeal of the laws.

“The government has constantly said that if the unions give any other option besides repeal, then the government will consider them,” agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar told reporters after the eighth round of talks between the two sides.

“But despite long discussions, no options were presented today, and that’s why the discussions have ended here.”

The two sides will meet again on Jan. 15, he said.

“There was a heated discussion. We said we don’t want anything other than repeal of (the) laws,” Hannan Mollah, one of the farm leaders who met with the government, told reporters. “We won’t go to any court, this (repeal) will either be done or we’ll continue to fight.”

Mollah added that the protesters would proceed with a rally during India’s Republic Day celebration on Jan. 26 if their demands have still not been met.

The majority of India’s farmers sell their produce largely to small retailers at a much lower price than the government guaranteed price — offered to only a fraction of farmers.

They fear that with the introduction of the new laws, big retailers such as Reliance Industries will enter the market to buy their produce at a lower price, while the government may slowly dismantle the current system of procurement at the guaranteed price.

Earlier this week, Reliance asked authorities to help stop attacks on its telecommunication masts by protesting farmers, who say the conglomerate has profited from the reforms at their expense.

— Reporting for Reuters by Nigam Prusty and Devjyot Ghoshal; writing by Alasdair Pal.

The post Indian government, farmers fail to break deadlock on ag market laws appeared first on Country Guide.