shades fills you in

bbc: for many months last year, violent protests rocked sri lanka. the president -- gotabaya rajapaksa (“gota”) -- resigned and fled. by early 2023, the violence had abated, but peace is tenuous

just a few years ago, sri lanka was south asia’s “poster child”. it had deep roots as a democracy, an upper-middle-income economy, close to universal literacy, and a booming tourist industry

so what happened? well, sri lanka faced its worst economic crisis ever, said the times of india. shortages of food and fuel, along with soaring inflation, led to the violent protests

al jazeera offers a video primer on the crisis

the middle class led the uprising, reported the nyt. lawyers, teachers, nurses, and taxi drivers

time magazine said it was a perfect storm. internal mismanagement + outside economic shocks -- mostly covid and the ukraine war -- left the nation with a severe food and energy shortage

fortune: a bit part of the problem was that sri lanka carried a ton of debt bc of its trade deficit. that left it especially vulnerable to the global shocks over the past 2 years

reuters says gota took the situation from bad to worse. he offered populist tax cuts, emptied sri lanka’s foreign exchange reserves, and was slow to seek help from the imf

the wsj also points to the fact that in april 2021, gota banned all synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. this ended in catastrophe and helped to oust gota

but politico is skeptical this had much to do with the crisis. gota’s ban definitely hurt farmers, but it only had a minor impact on sri lanka’s overall economy

wapo detailed the complicated relationship between gota and his older brother, his former pm mahinda rajapaksa. mahinda (also a former president) had to resign in may over violent protests

and the wsj breaks down how the rajapaksas went from the most powerful and loved family in sri lanka to exile

foreign policy mag says china stands to lose a lot here. it invested big in the elite rajapaksa family. now that they are out of power, china’s likely to see little return on its investment