The human dimension to Sri Lanka’s economic crisis

Discussions around Sri Lanka’s economic crisis have often focused either on the continuing citizen protests or on economic policy and the details of ongoing IMF staff negotiations. In these discussions, the human cost of living through an economic crisis is often discussed in statistical terms or in one-off narratives that fail to capture the nuanced impacts of increasing poverty, high inflation and widening income inequality. In order to capture some of this, Himal Southasian interviewed economist and author Sonali Deraniyagala.