Foreign News
What 650 Proposals Say About India-Sri Lanka Ties
More than 650 proposals from India and Sri Lanka have put the spotlight on growing demand for cross-border exchanges, with the India-Sri Lanka Foundation approving 13 new projects worth around LKR 21 million.
The projects were approved at the 41st meeting of the Foundation’s Board of Directors in New Delhi, co-chaired by Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India Mahishini Colonne and Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Santosh Jha.
Board members Prasad Kariyawasam, Mohan Kumar and Ashok Malik also attended the meeting.
The 13 approved projects span education, culture, agriculture, and science and technology. They were selected from a larger pool of proposals received through the Foundation’s Secretariats in Colombo and New Delhi.
The Colombo Secretariat received more than 500 proposals. Following the vetting process, 137 were shortlisted and 20 were placed before the Board. Of these, 13 were approved, with funding estimated at around LKR 21 million. Despite not issuing a formal call for proposals ahead of the meeting due to financial constraints, the New Delhi Secretariat received 149 proposals from Indian nationals.
The volume of applications was seen by the Board as an indication of continued interest in strengthening links between individuals and institutions in the two countries. The proposals cover activities that extend beyond formal diplomatic engagement, creating opportunities for participants in India and Sri Lanka to work together in fields such as education, culture, agriculture and scientific research.
The Board discussed the need to strengthen the Foundation’s financial capacity so that it can support more initiatives. It noted that an expansion of the Corpus Fund would allow the Foundation to consider a larger number of worthwhile projects and create more opportunities for exchanges and collaborative programmes.
The issue is particularly relevant because the Foundation relies on its available resources to support initiatives proposed by people and institutions in both countries. The latest round shows that the number of proposals can be substantially higher than the number of projects that can ultimately receive funding.
The India-Sri Lanka Foundation was established in 1998 through a Memorandum of Understanding between the governments of India and Sri Lanka. Its mandate is to promote cooperation in economic, scientific, educational, technical and cultural fields and to foster greater understanding between the people of the two countries.
Since its establishment, the Foundation has supported exchanges and collaborative projects involving Indian and Sri Lankan participants. Its activities have provided a mechanism for engagement at the level of institutions, professionals, researchers, students and cultural practitioners.
The Foundation is jointly administered through Secretariats in New Delhi and Colombo. Its six-member Board includes the High Commissioners of Sri Lanka to India and India to Sri Lanka as ex-officio co-chairpersons, along with four members nominated by the two governments.
The arrangement gives the two governments oversight of the Foundation while allowing individuals and institutions to put forward proposals for bilateral projects.
The latest meeting comes against the backdrop of a broader India-Sri Lanka relationship that includes cooperation in economic, educational, cultural, agricultural and scientific fields. The Foundation focuses on a narrower but important part of that relationship: enabling direct interaction between people and institutions.
For now, the immediate result is 13 newly approved projects covering four broad areas and an allocation of around LKR 21 million. But the scale of demand for programmes that bring Indians and Sri Lankans together underlines the growing interest in both countries to step up the relationship outside the formal structures of bilateral diplomacy.
