Sri Lanka's Structural Adjustment Program and Its Impact on Indo-Lanka Relations

Sri Lanka celebrates 50 years of independence in 1998 with the majority Sinhalese engaged in a protracted conflict with minority Tamil1 rebels determined to create a separate state. Given that the nearly 60 million Tamils in India's Tamil Nadu state act as a sociocultural bastion for Sri Lanka's Tamils, an analysis of Indo-Lanka relations inevitably regards the ongoing ethnic conflict, the 1983 anti-Tamil riots, Tamil sentiment in Tamil Nadu, and the Sri Lankan Tamil rebels as significant variables. That acknowledged, this article considers Sri Lanka's post-1977 structural adjustment policies as an independent variable to analyze Indo-Lanka relations in the 1977-87 decade. India's and Sri Lanka's foreign policy decisions are made in reaction to international systemic influences, the geostrategic environment in South Asia, the respective leaders' personalities and their parties' ideological proclivities, and both states' multiethnic and multireligious character. The article attempts to take all this into consideration in analyzing the impact of structural adjustment reforms on Indo-Lanka relations.