The President brought about optimum learning conditions: Prof. Epasinghe

By freeing the country from the 30-year terrorism the President created an environment most conducive for learning, said ICT Agency of Sri Lanka (ICTA) Chairman Prof. P. W. Epasinghe.

The Senior Advisor to the President and ICTA Chairman said so while participating as Chief Guest at the Young Inventors’ Day (Aurora) held at Ananda College, Colombo recently. His address at the event is reproduced below:



We realise the great contribution the President’s wise leadership has made to learning when we recall the days when parents served as watchers of schools during wartime. I am glad that one of my alma mater’s alumni, Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, provided the much-needed support to the President for eradicating terrorism.

I am also pleased that another Anandian, even Minister Basil Rajapaksa, is providing the President with the equally-needed support for winning the war for economic development and peace. In the precincts of Ananda we learned great qualities, including an unquenchable love for motherland and indefatigable devotion to duty.

At Ananda I lived at a time when the World War II was waged. None of the buildings that now exist, except the Olcott Hall, existed at that time. In fact the name of Ananda College then was Ananda Maha Vidyalaya. The Army occupied part of the premises of Ananda College and my classroom then was in a cadjan-thatched shelter in the premises of Ananda College.

Everything including food was scarce then. Necessity is the mother of invention. And as the great scholar Kumaratunga Munidasa says where there is no innovation, annihilation will soon follow. The innovative trait in me made me improvise my own homemade eraser. That was part of the stationery at that time in addition to the G nib pen and a bottle of ink.

I took an empty match box, went to the plot of rubber land in front of my house in the morning. By that time the latex had been collected and there was a little portion remaining in the coconut shells used for collecting latex. I poured the remaining latex into the empty box of match. I came home asked the mother for some lime juice from the kitchen. That was the acetic acid I used to put into the latex I had in the match box that turned the latex into an improvised eraser for me.

Innovative thinking and invention can be brought into play not only for turning out gadgetry but also social harmony. If the Sinhala people can understand what the Tamil people say and the Tamil people can understand what the Sinhala people say, politicians would not have been successful in driving a wedge between the two language speaking groups.

I am happy that my alma mater has gone beyond parochial thinking and is poised to embracing the whole student body in Sri Lanka by catering for an exchange and sharing of talents, skills, facilities and encouragement with other school children. The Ananda College Young Inventors’ Society, which counts 20 years of existence, has hit the stars. This has been done literally by one of its products producing a facility that makes complicated computer activities simple for the handicapped and the non-handicapped. I understand that his name is part of the astral nomenclature.

All the other sons and daughters of all the schools including the 87 who participated in the Aurora exhibition and competitions deserve plaudits. Those who won awards and those who tried but failed to top the list both in the local, regional and international arena should be congratulated for their effort. I am glad that the Young Inventors’ Society of Ananda College, Colombo was awarded the award for the best school-based inventors’ society in Sri Lanka in 2009 by the President.