The increasing levels of investment and wealth are evident everywhere. In Galle, I visited a boutique hotel which is now being rented out in high-value packages. The owner has spent a considerable sum in tastefully redecorating a lovely old house to international standards, putting in a beachside pool, beautiful antiques throughout , combined with comfortable furnishings and modern bathrooms.
When you arrive at Negombo airport these days, the duty free goods on offer include fridges, washing machines and dishwashers. Apparently these high-value consumer durables are much in demand by returning cash-laden Sri Lankan workers from Dubai and other parts of the world.
The road into Colombo is lined with new, or under construction showrooms, for all the desirables of modern living- European kitchens and bathrooms, marble flooring, cars and gleaming tractors.
The road surface from the airport has been upgraded and widened, though passage through Colombo itself is still a suspension-destroying chicane of potholes.
Massive hotels and Casinos are under construction or now completed, and the colonial-era colonnades of the old town look ripe for re-development as a tourist enclave.
The city itself was abuzz with visits from neighbouring heads of state, and while security was tight, you are no longer stopped at regular intervals by machine-gunned checkpoints, or held up by VIP motorcades crossing the city at speed at any time of day or night .
The newspapers, besides the usual glowing encomiums to the achievements and wisdom of the powers that be, still feature horror stories of death tolls from speeding private buses in the side columns between the sports and fashion features.
Speeding private buses
The deadly contest played out daily on Sri Lanka's roads may be an instructive natural experiment for economists interested in comparisons between private and state provision of services.
The throaty roar of the souped-up diesels of the private buses , spiked with a bottle of petrol per tank to give better acceleration, is a familiar sound to drivers on the narrow coast road to Galle.
The hairy swerving and dodgem' driving of their apparently insane owners contrasts with the lumbering, relatively sedate progress of the government buses plying the same route.
The private operators are competing with each other in a ideologically -sound free market, to be the first to reach the next stop, and the reward of paying passengers who are keen to select the fastest (and therefore fittest?) private bus.
The incentives of a full bus to the operators are obviously great, justifying the 2 year engine replacement cycle that is a consequence of adding petrol to your tank, and the attrition rate from the too-frequent, too-often fatal collisions, that anecdotally are more common in the private fleet.
Pity the poor passengers, apparently knowing these dangers, yet paying a little more for the excitement and thrill of a private bus ride, since the Government buses are too far and few between to meet the demand.
English language rehabilitation
An important lesson about an underlying cause of conflict in the sorry recent history of Sri Lanka seems to have been learnt. English language learning is now being endorsed as an uncontroversially good thing. No doubt tensions and pressures remain in Sri Lankan society. No doubt triumphalism and chauvinism remain as dangers that could rekindle violent responses.
But as long as national educational resources are being aligned with an essentially fair distribution of economic opportunities, through making the international business language a key medium of communication for the business of the state, hope exists that steady economic and social progress will prevail as the ruling paradigm.
