 Hello, you're watching People's Dispatch and this is the second part of an interview with Ahilanka Dergamar, a senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna. In the first part of the interview, we looked at the origins of this economic crisis as well as the food insecurity that many Sri Lankans are facing. In this part, we'll be looking at what happens when Sri Lanka accepts the conditions of an IMF loan and is there any possibility of re-envisioning the economy of Sri Lanka? What steps need to be done to undertake that? Yeah, on the IMF, as I mentioned, we've gone through, you know, 16 IMF agreements, the most recent ones were after the war in 2009, then again in 2016. You know, in 2016, many of us analyzed what that agreement involved and the recent IMF staff report that just came out a few days ago is repeating many of the points that were said in 2016. It's the same recipe, except Sri Lanka is in a much harder situation. We are not in a position to be able to negotiate. We are in such a weak position, begging from every bilateral actor and every multilateral actor. So this time, the conditionalities are going to possibly actually get implemented and that's the worry. But how did we get here? We didn't have to go to the IMF. For two years, they sat on it. The opposition also did not try to push the government to change direction. They have also been saying go to the IMF. The government quietly has been wanting to go to the government. Our think tanks in Colombo, which are mainly neoliberal think tanks, they've been calling for. So this common sense has been created that the IMF is the magic bullet that is somehow going to solve this crisis. A comrade of mine, Devaka Gunavadana and I think in the next day or two, get to bring out an article in the Daily Financial Times in Sri Lanka on what we're calling a post IMF crisis. Our economy is unraveling and within it in the next two years, because it's now a moot point. We are going to the IMF. The government is definitely heading in that direction. We have to worry about what the consequences are going to be and declines. It's really going to be a crisis for the people. The foreign earnings of this country are earned by working women, as I mentioned. Women working in the PSA, women working in the garment sector, migrant women going and working under horrible conditions as domestic workers. And what did we do with that? We imported luxury goods. We beautified the urban areas. And now again, the fix is going to be austerity, which is going to affect the people. And that's the concern. And I mentioned our long history of free education, free healthcare, and various government services. 99% of Sri Lanka is electrified. And the people who use the lower limit pay about a fourth of the production cost of electricity. Now, what is one of the IMF demands is that you market price energy. What are our fisher folk going to do with these huge increases in global oil prices? So it's going to be a real crisis for the people. And so it's just the beginning in that sense. So what is the alternative? It's the question that I also often get posed if you're saying don't go to the IMF or the IMF is going to create a crisis. What is the alternative? And one, I think it's really important that we prioritize our imports and we recreate a public distribution system. We had a robust public distribution system until the 1970s. There was the cooperative wholesale establishment, the food commissioners, department, all of these together allowed for the state to import essentials and distribute it to the public. So we need to reestablish that public distribution system. We need to prioritize our imports, giving importance to the food system because it really has become a food crisis. We are really concerned that you might be reaching family type of conditions. How are we going to provide this relief? How are we going to subsidize it? Already taxes have been cut, the economy is shrinking, incomes are falling and there are a number of businesses that are going to go bankrupt as well. So it's very hard to increase income taxes and we don't want the value added taxes. So we need something radical like a wealth tax to be able to redistribute wealth. Given that wealth distribution has been in the other direction from the bottom to the top, now we need to figure out a way to really distribute wealth to the working people. And then a focus on agriculture, the rural economy and the food system. So we need to, you know, and this dependency on tourism, obviously Western actors, powerful agencies want a country like Sri Lanka to consider tourism as the way forward because it keeps us dependent. They want us to go through an IMF agreement and continue to go and borrow in the international capital markets where we borrow sovereign bonds, US dollar loans, which are on the average, the last 15 years, 7.5% interest rates. So every 10 years, by the time you repay it, we double the amount that we have to repay. The interest costs have become equivalent to the principal. So we need to change our economy. We need to think of ways of developing. We need to substitute for imports. So there needs to be a whole re-envisioning of our economic trajectory. And that would only come when there is a reconfiguration of political forces. An economic crisis of the scale is definitely going to lead to a reconfiguration of political forces. And the danger is that it can also be towards the fastest direction. It could be a fastest fix or it could be a progressive alternative. I think it's going to be very difficult to continue in the direction that we have continued so far. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Ailan, for that very illuminating analysis of what's happening right now. What are the parts ahead? We'll be following what's happening in the coming weeks and months as well and hopefully be able to talk to you on what happens as well. Thank you so much.