-By A Special Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News - 20.Sep.2025, 11.00 PM) When Colombo’s Cinnamon Grand played host to the grand launch of the South Asia Sustainability & Security Research Institute (SASSRI), it was pitched as nothing short of a historic moment. Diplomats mingled with academics, Indian think tankers from the Synergia Foundation talked about maritime security, and keynote speeches spoke loftily about “sustainability,” “resilience,” and “Sri Lanka’s strategic geography.”
On the surface, this looked like Sri Lanka stepping into the intellectual big league. The reality? A bizarre cocktail of half-baked ambition, imported agendas, and the familiar Sri Lankan penchant for dressing political vanity as scholarly purpose.
SASSRI is marketed as a policy institute that will elevate Sri Lanka into the same league as India’s Observer Research Foundation (ORF) or Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute. But even the most charitable observer will notice: this is not the birth of a serious intellectual hub; it is the planting of a franchise.
From day one, the fingerprints of foreign actors were visible. The inaugural event wasn’t a forum of Sri Lankan researchers unveiling groundbreaking papers—it was an Indian foundation parachuted in to tell Colombo how the Indian Ocean should be governed. For a country that has repeatedly been reminded of its “sovereignty,” the spectacle was more humiliating than inspiring.
Let’s be clear: no serious think tank is born overnight. It takes decades of credibility, independence, and intellectual grit. SASSRI, by contrast, was conjured up with glossy banners, vague promises, and a suspiciously well-oiled PR machine. Its mission statements sound more like a foreign consultancy pitch than a grounded local initiative: sustainability, security, resilience, governance. Who could disagree? But who is actually driving the agenda?
The deeper question is whether SASSRI is really about scholarship—or about influence. Sri Lanka already has multiple think tanks, from the Institute of Policy Studies to various university research centres. They may be underfunded, but they are at least rooted in the local academic tradition.
SASSRI appears less about filling a gap and more about opening a door—for foreign policymakers, defence contractors, and well-networked NGOs who see Sri Lanka not as a sovereign nation but as a convenient “testing ground” for Indian Ocean security narratives.
The symbolism of inviting India’s Synergia Foundation to headline the launch was not accidental. New Delhi has long seen Sri Lanka as part of its “strategic backyard.” What better way to soften influence than through an intellectual Trojan Horse? Create a “Sri Lankan” think tank, give it a glossy international brand, and channel Indian perspectives into Colombo’s policy bloodstream under the guise of academic collaboration.
Every think tank stands or falls on its funding model. The Brookings Institution is respected because it discloses its donors and guards its independence. Chinese think tanks, by contrast, are widely seen as arms of the state. So where does SASSRI sit?
So far, no transparency has been offered. Who is funding this project? Is it international donors? Foreign governments? Private consultancies? Or the usual Sri Lankan mix of retired generals and politically ambitious businessmen sniffing for contracts? Without clarity, SASSRI cannot be taken seriously.
Worse, the whiff of donor capture is already strong. Western embassies and multilateral agencies are forever searching for “local partners” to launder their policy interests through. SASSRI looks perfectly designed for that role: a shiny Colombo address, a sprinkling of academics, a banner about sustainability. One can almost hear the grant applications being drafted.
But even leaving aside the politics, the intellectual foundations of SASSRI are laughably thin. A think tank is supposed to generate original research, challenge policymakers, and provide data-driven insights. Instead, SASSRI has so far functioned as a glorified event-management company.
Its launch event was full of platitudes about “maritime security” and “regional stability,” but no concrete research was presented. No white papers, no policy briefs, no data sets. Instead, panelists waffled about the importance of Sri Lanka’s location, as though repeating geography lessons from grade school somehow counted as analysis.
Compare this to the Raisina Dialogue in India, where the Observer Research Foundation curates detailed papers and attracts heads of state. Or Singapore’s ISEAS, which produces volumes of cutting-edge regional research. Against that backdrop, SASSRI looks like a bunch of undergraduates given a microphone and told to “sound serious.”
Here lies the greatest irony: SASSRI is pitched as a contribution to Sri Lanka’s governance capacity, but in practice it risks undermining it. By outsourcing intellectual leadership to a “private institute” with opaque funding and foreign partners, Colombo effectively sidelines its own ministries, universities, and local experts.
The government should be investing in its national think tanks, empowering universities, and strengthening the Office of National Security. Instead, it is cheering on an imported platform that may ultimately feed policymakers with half-digested foreign talking points.
Even more dangerously, such institutes can become policy echo chambers, reinforcing donor priorities rather than national needs. Want to talk about maritime security from an Indian perspective? SASSRI is here. Want to discuss sustainability in a way that pleases European funders? SASSRI will oblige. But when it comes to hard questions—about Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring, domestic governance failures, or corruption—do not expect any courageous reports.
None of this would be possible without Sri Lanka’s own intellectual class playing along. For every foreign donor planting a think tank, there are local academics willing to lend their names for prestige or payment.
SASSRI’s board includes academics from defence universities and private colleges, many of whom are less known for rigorous scholarship than for chasing consultancy fees. In Colombo’s small intellectual pond, titles like “Director of Policy Studies” or “Senior Fellow” are too often self-awarded rather than earned.
The tragedy is that real Sri Lankan researchers—those working in provincial universities, those digging into the archives, those producing painstaking field studies—rarely get the spotlight. Instead, think tanks like SASSRI parachute in with air-conditioned conferences and claim to be the “voice of the nation.”
The question must be asked: is SASSRI a genuine think tank model or just a glorified talking shop? So far, all evidence points to the latter.
Real think tanks build archives of knowledge. They publish peer-reviewed papers. They train young researchers. They influence government decisions through depth of evidence.
SASSRI, in contrast, has launched with soundbites, selfies, and sponsorships. Its intellectual weight is wafer-thin. Without a radical change of approach, it will quickly become another NGO-addicted institution—irrelevant to serious policy debates, useful only as a cocktail circuit for Colombo’s elites.
The lesson from India and Singapore is clear: credibility takes decades. ORF became respected not because it threw fancy launch parties, but because it consistently produced rigorous research. ISEAS matters because ASEAN governments trust its analysis.
If SASSRI wants to avoid becoming a punchline, it must show independence, depth, and courage. That means publishing uncomfortable truths about Sri Lanka’s political system. It means taking on corruption, not just parroting donor agendas. It means hiring real scholars, not recycled bureaucrats.
But will that happen? Given its shaky birth and opaque DNA, the prospects look grim.
Sri Lanka does need strong think tanks. It needs institutions that can analyse global trends, warn of risks, and propose real reforms. But SASSRI, in its current form, is not that institution. It is a shambolic distraction—a glossy façade masking foreign influence, local opportunism, and shallow scholarship.
In the coming months, as it hosts more roundtables and issues press releases about “strategic dialogues,” Sri Lankans should ask a simple question: who benefits? If the answer is foreign governments, donor agencies, and a handful of Colombo insiders, then SASSRI deserves not applause, but scrutiny.
For now, the South Asia Sustainability & Security Research Institute looks less like a temple of ideas and more like a circus of opportunists. And unless it radically changes course, history will remember it not as the birthplace of Sri Lankan thought leadership—but as yet another reminder of how easily this island can be seduced, bought, and undermined.
-By A Special Correspondent
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by (2025-09-20 17:39:02)
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