Squandering Opportunities: Sri Lanka’s Overlooked Development Potential

Let me begin by asking: If people have to spend hours in buses, if the bus plays loud and annoying music and does not stop for the passengers to get off, if women/girls have to constantly defend themselves from men/boys on buses and in public spaces and are restricted to particular places and times, if men are afraid to go out at particular times and visit certain places, if people are stressed out, constantly struggle to get before the other, and not reluctant to look down upon others due to ethnicity, caste, class, sex, or political allegiance, if parents have to be vigilant of their kids, if citizens bribe to get ordinary work done, if education requires tuition classes and spending the whole day, if getting the doctors attention requires paying, and if national leaders get enormously rich after they assume public office, is this development? Would building dams and highways, cleansing areas of the poor and the powerless, beautifying and gentrifying urban neighborhoods, and/or building megapolis develop such society? Who benefit from such projects