It’s another one of those slow days. The Boss (hmm wonder how the word boss came about, don’t know if its short for something) hasn’t called me up since last evening so i don’t have anythign to do. At the end of an ice day i always think ok that was a waste, i must use the free time to improve myself. But no, never happens..spend my time between playing eons of stickcricket (and recording my scores on a spreadsheet table to practice my excel 
ok not really, i do it bc i’m obsessed with cricket stats even if they’re make believe!), chatting with my friends in england on msn, most of whom are doing exams around this time and so studying late in the night but i disturb them nonetheless with the silly things i say, and just doing random things.
I just got a call from one of the older chaps working here saying that the Indian govt. has decided to categorically go ahead with the Sethusamudram project (SSCP). If our govt. has any sense they will go about making things very difficult for the Indians, or at least trying to. The SSCP is a canal that cuts across adam’s bridge in northern SL and it will allow india’s ships to navigate the Palk Strait. The biggest impact on SL is that 70% of Colombo Port’s activity is made up of Indian feeder cargo that has to circumnavigate SL and therefore stop over in colombo, but with the SSCP in place this circumnavigation becomes redundant and our port will lose 70% of her transactions. In the long run i don’t think there will be much of a problem bc colombo port is anyway moving towards the main line market and the extent of feeder shipping activity in the indian subcontinent will be so great in the future that there will be enough for everyone to share.
Thats one issue, there’s more. The EIA (environmental impact assesment) for the canal was done by a research institute in Nagpur, and it’s basically shite. They haven’t gone into half the detail they ought to and they take little or no account of the environmental impacts on SL which are serious. As it stands the tides between the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea circumnavigate Sri Lanka, bc Palk strait is too shallow. But if it is deepened as envisaged in the SSCP there is every likelihood that tides will flow through it and change the entire ecosystem, disrupting fishing in Northern SL as new species will enter the ecosystem affecting fish stocks. It’ll cause sea erosion in the Jaffna peninsula, damaging coastal property. Also changing sea temperatures could affect rain fall and thus agriculture in Northern SL. There are also question marks about the extent of dredged material and how much future dredging is needed. The EIA by Nagpur hasn’t taken ANY of this into account.
All that our govt. has done is to appoint a committee to look into the matter and they’ve met the indians twice and obviously not been very convincing. I don’t think we can expect the indians to not go ahead just bc our fears, but the least we can expect is a joint EIA to get a better idea of the longterm impacts of this project.
ahh bugger it all! just got a rejection for one of my masters applications 
