Asianet Pakistan Private Limited

Sherry Turkle, the American sociologist, once said: ‘Technology doesn’t just change what we do; it changes who we are. Online, without empathy and respect, we risk treating people as objects rather than as human beings.’

She said this more than a decade ago, during the golden era of Motorola, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson. Soon after, between 2010 and 2013, the analog lifestyle began to fade. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its lockdowns and social distancing, accelerated this shift. The digital revolution brought us fully online, from emails and social media to automation and AI. More than ever before, we began to socialise, share, comment, like, and dislike in a screen-mediated world.

Moral reasoning in a screen-mediated world

As noted in the textbook ‘An Introduction to Child Development’ (Keenan, Evans and Crowley, 2016), young people’s behaviour in digital spaces often reflects the responsibility and accountability they develop as they mature. As independence grows, their sense of right and wrong increasingly guides how they use their digital spaces. However, Flores and James (2013) found that moral reasoning is less connected to conduct when mediated by screens. An integrative review in 2025 echoed this concern, noting that online behaviour frequently violates widely accepted moral standards.

What is moral reasoning? It is the capacity to think critically about right and wrong, guided by principles like fairness, justice, care, and well-being for others. As Thomas Hobbes warned: without moral reasoning and order, ‘life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ Is this what happens when we interact through digital screens? Are we drifting toward a society marked by diminished moral reasoning?

Cyberbullying and technology-facilitated violence

A large part of our social life now takes place in digital domains, yet screen-mediated interactions often lack clear moral anchors. According to the ‘Digital 2025 July Global Report’, about one in three people has a social media account, and more than half of the world uses the internet. A 2021 survey by the British Council Sri Lanka and Sarvodaya Institute of Higher Learning found that most young people in Sri Lanka spend between 30 minutes and 3 hours a day on social media. But what happens when empathy and responsibility collapse? Our online society begins to echo the chaos Hobbes described.

Last month (August 2025), Indian social media influencer Makeover Yash, a popular figure in fashion and grooming, reportedly died by suicide after relentless online bullying. This tragic event is not unique to India. Cyberbullying is far more common than many realise. In 2022, Women In Need (WIN) conducted an island-wide study in Sri Lanka on ‘Technology-facilitated Violence Against Women and Girls’. The findings revealed rising levels of hate speech, harassment, threats, and bullying. Women and girls reported receiving unwanted explicit content, threatening calls, and blackmail tied to intimate photos shared without consent. Nearly one in four respondents said someone they knew had been subjected to online sexual harassment.

This form of abuse spares no one; it cuts across political ideology, age, gender, and sexual orientation. Victims experience sexual and non-sexual harassment that inflicts psychological, social, and economic harm. The psychological toll includes helplessness, distress, and suicidal thoughts. Social harm manifests as humiliation, strained family ties, and broken trust, while economic harm shows up in disrupted education, stalled careers, and tarnished reputations. A quick scroll through Facebook or Instagram reveals plenty of curse words, hate-filled posts, revenge-driven content, and vulgar language, evidence of how unhealthy and unsafe our digital spaces can be.

Digital safety

How can we make this digital society safer? Some advocate for regulation. Yet Sri Lanka’s Online Safety Act (OSA) has drawn sharp criticism from civil society and human rights groups. Though presented as a way to protect people from online harm, in practice, it risks censorship, surveillance, and shrinking democratic space.

Others suggest deleting social media accounts altogether. While simple in theory, this is rarely practical. Parents often advise it, but research shows prohibiting online engagement does not reduce risks and instead limits opportunities (Livingstone et al., 2017). In today’s data-driven world, few can afford to disconnect.

The good news is we are not powerless. Education, awareness, and the right interventions can minimise the harm of cyberbullying and trolling. Practicing digital empathy and responsible digital citizenship is a crucial step.

Digital citizenship

The concept of ‘digital citizenship’ emerged as a way to create safe and respectful online societies. It refers to confident, positive engagement with technology; the ability to participate responsibly, respect rights and dignity, and cultivate a thoughtful online presence.

Most of us are already digital citizens. Even offline, we cannot fully escape the digital world. Digital citizenship is not just about using technology; it is about behaving ethically and respectfully in digital spaces.

We must remember that behind every screen is a human being with feelings, challenges, and family responsibilities. Acting responsibly online is as important as being a responsible citizen in the offline world. In a fast-moving society where information shifts in seconds, this responsibility is vital to building safer communities.

Digital empathy

When engaging in online debates, especially on heated political issues, we often forget the human being on the other side. Online, people say things they would never dare say face-to-face.

Digital empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others through technology. Unlike face-to-face interactions, where tone, body language, and expressions carry meaning, online communication relies on text, emojis, and symbols. Practicing digital empathy means interpreting these cues carefully, listening actively, respecting perspectives, and offering support in virtual spaces.

By remembering that there is a human being on the other side of the screen, and by respecting their dignity while being mindful of our own actions, we can build digital spaces that are healthier and safer for all. We raise the standard when we call out indecent behaviour and choose to stand firmly for humanity and decency.

When analysts point out that Sri Lanka has only a handful of listed companies valued over a billion dollars compared to Singapore’s 77 or Vietnam’s 44, the instinctive response is often: ‘We need more billion-dollar companies.’ But this misses a more fundamental question that communications professionals should be asking: Is corporate gigantism really the goal?

Perhaps the more revealing statistic isn’t how few billion-dollar companies we have, but how many mid-sized businesses are stuck, unable to access capital, expand sustainably, or tell their stories effectively. Perhaps the problem isn’t that we lack corporate giants, but that we’ve failed to build an ecosystem where diverse businesses across multiple scales can thrive, innovate, and create meaningful value.

This is where the narrative needs to shift, and where PR and communications professionals have a critical strategic role to play.

The real gap: From growth capital to growth stories

When the Asian Development Bank projects Sri Lanka’s growth slowing from 3.9pct in 2025 to 3.3pct in 2026 and with US tariffs threatening $634 million in exports and 16,000 jobs, mostly female apparel workers, the communication failure isn’t about celebrating big companies. It’s about the silence around adaptation, resilience, and alternative pathways.

Where are the stories of medium-sized exporters who’ve successfully pivoted to non-traditional markets? Where are the narratives about companies choosing sustainable growth over extractive expansion? Where are the case studies of businesses that prioritised worker welfare and innovation over quarterly revenue targets, and succeeded because of it, not despite it?

The fixation on billion-dollar valuations obscures a more important conversation: How do we build an economy where businesses of all sizes, from artisan cooperatives to tech startups to family enterprises, can access the resources, markets, and credibility they need to create value?

Sri Lanka’s capital markets don’t just lack depth and liquidity; they lack diversity of thought. Venture capital remains underdeveloped not because we don’t have capital, but because we haven’t communicated alternative models of success convincingly enough. When every ‘success story’ looks like corporate consolidation and market domination, we shouldn’t be surprised when investors can’t imagine other possibilities.

The innovation paradox: Small can be significant

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: few Sri Lankan corporates are genuinely innovation-driven, and the ecosystem for research, startups, and technology remains shallow. But the solution isn’t to copy Silicon Valley’s ‘grow fast or die’ model. It’s to communicate what innovation actually looks like in the Sri Lankan context.

Take the upcoming Sri Lanka Economic and Investment Summit in December, exploring opportunities in cinnamon, seafood, electronics, minerals, and advanced manufacturing. These sectors don’t need billion-dollar corporations to succeed. They need well-capitalised, efficiently-run, technology-enabled businesses that can compete on quality, sustainability, and specialisation.

A cinnamon exporter that uses blockchain for supply chain transparency, pays fair wages, and commands premium pricing in niche markets might never be ‘worth a billion dollars.’ But it creates more sustainable value-economic, social, environmental-than a bloated conglomerate optimising for market cap.

The communications challenge is to make these stories as compelling as the unicorn narratives that dominate global business media. We need to shift the conversation from ‘How big can you get?’ to ‘How much value can you create, and for whom?’

The policy communication disconnect

When the government underspends on poverty alleviation-failing to meet even the IMF’s modest target of 0.7% of GDP on social safety nets-while a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, the communication failure is profound.

This isn’t just bad policy; it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what creates a healthy business environment. Child malnutrition increased from 12.2% to 17% between 2021 and 2024. Over half of households use coping mechanisms like skipping meals. These aren’t just humanitarian crises, they’re market failures and demand destruction in real time.

Smart communications professionals should be making the business case for inclusive growth, not as corporate social responsibility window-dressing, but as economic necessity. You cannot build a thriving economy, of any scale, on widespread poverty and food insecurity.

Yet the narrative around ‘business-friendly policy’ rarely includes wealth taxes, progressive taxation, or strengthened social safety nets. When the World Bank reports that focusing on high-earning individuals could increase Personal Income Tax revenue by 169%, and when direct taxes primarily impact the richest 10% of Sri Lankans, why isn’t the business community communicating support for these measures?

Because too often, ‘business interests’ are defined narrowly as ‘what helps large corporations and wealthy individuals pay less tax’ rather than ‘what creates stable, inclusive conditions for diverse businesses to flourish.’

Reimagining corporate success: A communications framework

So what would a reimagined communications strategy look like? One that moves beyond billion-dollar ambitions to sustainable value creation? Here are five principles:

1. Value creation over valuation

Instead of celebrating market capitalisation, communicate impact metrics: jobs created (and their quality), innovation deployed, sustainability practices, worker welfare, community investment, and long-term resilience.

This isn’t greenwashing. It’s a fundamental reframing of what ‘success’ means. When the Construction PMI hits 61.1 in August with project availability increasing, the story shouldn’t just be about growth. It should be about whether that growth includes decent work, environmental standards, and local procurement.

2. Diversification as strategy, not weakness

The focus on billion-dollar companies often comes with an implicit assumption that ‘focus’ and ‘specialisation’ mean doing one thing at massive scale. But in a small, vulnerable economy like Sri Lanka’s, diversification isn’t a weakness, it’s survival.

Communications teams should be telling stories about businesses that successfully operate across multiple sectors, serve different market segments, or maintain portfolio approaches that provide resilience against shocks. The economy expanded 4.8pct year-on-year in Q1 2025 not because of corporate giants, but because of diversified activity across manufacturing, construction, and services.

3. Sustainable internationalisation

Yes, too many Sri Lankan companies remain dependent on local markets. But the solution isn’t just ‘go global at any cost.’ It’s strategic internationalisation that builds capabilities, transfers knowledge, and creates sustainable competitive advantages.

When Japan’s JETRO highlights Sri Lanka’s potential in graphite for lithium-ion batteries, the opportunity isn’t to create a billion-dollar mining conglomerate. It’s to build a cluster of specialised, technologically sophisticated businesses that compete on quality and sustainability, and to communicate that positioning effectively in international markets.

4. Transparent trade-offs

Every business decision involves trade-offs. Growing fast often means cutting corners. Maximising shareholder returns can mean squeezing workers or suppliers. Expanding market share might require practices that aren’t sustainable long-term.

What if communications professionals led conversations about these trade-offs honestly? What if, instead of spinning every decision as win-win, we acknowledged that building sustainable businesses means sometimes choosing stakeholders over shareholders, or choosing long-term resilience over short-term growth?

This kind of transparency would be radical and credibility-building in Sri Lanka’s current environment.

5. Redefining ‘Competitiveness’

When private credit grew 19.6pct in July, driven partly by vehicle imports, is that a sign of healthy economic activity or unsustainable consumption? When worker remittances rise 19.3pct and the current account surplus grows 30.2pct, is that economic strength or dependence on labor export?

Communications professionals should be helping stakeholders think critically about what ‘competitive’ actually means. A competitive economy isn’t necessarily one with the biggest companies. It’s one where businesses can operate efficiently, fairly, and sustainably across different scales and sectors.

From narrative deficit to narrative diversity

The real problem isn’t that Sri Lanka has only three billion-dollar companies. It’s that we have one dominant narrative about what business success looks like-and it’s imported, ill-fitting, and ultimately harmful.

We need narrative diversity to match the diverse economy we should be building. Stories about:

Family businesses that have sustained themselves across generations through prudent management, not aggressive expansion

Cooperatives that create value for members rather than distant shareholders

Social enterprises that balance profit with purpose

Tech startups that prioritise solving local problems over chasing venture capital valuations

Exporters that compete on quality and ethics, not just price

Manufacturers that invest in worker skills and environmental practices

These stories exist. They’re just not being told with the sophistication, consistency, and strategic intent they deserve.

The communicator›s challenge

For PR and communications professionals, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to resist the easy narrative of ‘bigger is better’ and instead craft more nuanced, evidence-based stories about sustainable value creation. The opportunity is to help reshape how success is defined and measured in Sri Lankan business.

This means advising clients and organisations to think beyond traditional metrics. It means pushing back when ‘growth at all costs’ is presented as the only strategy. It means making the case that in a resource-constrained, climate-vulnerable, socially diverse nation like Sri Lanka, resilience and sustainability aren’t optional extras. They’re core business imperatives.

Most importantly, it means recognising that in an era of heightened inequality, climate crisis, and social instability, the old narratives about corporate success are not just inadequate-they’re actively harmful. The world doesn’t need more billion-dollar companies built on exploitation and extraction. It needs businesses of all scales that create genuine value for multiple stakeholders over the long term.

Sri Lanka has an opportunity to communicate a different model, one that other small, vulnerable economies might actually want to learn from. But it requires communications professionals willing to challenge conventional wisdom, tell more complex stories, and ultimately, reimagine what success looks like.

The question isn’t whether we can create more billion-dollar companies. It’s whether we can create an economy where diverse businesses thrive, workers flourish, communities benefit, and the environment is respected, regardless of anyone’s market capitalisation.

That’s a narrative worth building. And it starts with communicators brave enough to tell it.

The author welcomes responses and debate on these ideas. Sri Lanka’s economic future depends not on mimicking other countries’ models of success, but on defining our own, and communicating it compellingly.

Microimage, a pioneering force in digital innovation, marked its 30th anniversary on 20 September, celebrating a remarkable journey from humble beginnings to global impact.

What began in 1992 as the Microimage Hobbyists Club – comprising a group of passionate schoolboys from Ananda College – has today evolved into a cutting-edge technology company with a presence in over 20 countries.

The Microimage Board – comprising Group CEO Harsha Purasinghe, Director Suren Rupasinghe, and Director Damindu Jayaweera – joined teams from MiHCM and Futura on 20 September to celebrate this milestone, reflecting on a legacy built on integrity, innovation, and a passion for creation.

‘What a journey it has been. From a humble hobbyist club, we never imagined in our wildest dreams that one day it would grow into a global multinational, powering HR tech and digital solutions across markets. This transformation is a testament to the power of vision, resilience, and relentless innovation,’ said Purasinghe.

‘We are deeply grateful to all our past and present employees, our clients who believed in us and gave us opportunities from the very beginning, and our partners who helped us scale to where we are today,’ he added.

From its early days developing Sinhala fonts during the DOS-to-Windows transition, Microimage has consistently been at the forefront of innovation. Its first breakthrough, Helawadana, enabled Sri Lankans to type on Windows in Sinhala and became the company’s seed capital, funding its transformation into a business software provider.

Over the decades, Microimage has consistently aligned itself with major technological shifts: 1994-1998: Sinhala fonts and the DOS-to-Windows transition; 1998-2000: Time and Attendance and Payroll software during Sri Lanka’s apparel boom; 2000-2008: Web-based HRIS and Unicode Sinhala innovations; 2004: Birth of perhaps the first complete enterprise grade broadcast automation solution for radio stations – mStudio, which powers all the leading radio networks in Sri Lanka and some of the notable networks in Southeast Asia; 2004-2005: Local language SMS for feature phones, winning the GSMA Asia Innovation Award; 2005-2006: DEWN, the world’s first GSM-based Disaster and Emergency Warning System with global commendation at GSMA World Awards and 2008 onwards: Ventured into broadcast video solutions through its subsidiary, Futura Tech Labs.

In 2007, Microimage restructured into two focused entities: MiHCM, specialising in digital HR solutions, and Futura, driving innovation in broadcast and digital technologies.

MiHCM was born out of Microimage’s vision to help organisations transition from traditional HR systems to fully digital platforms. Following three years of dedicated platform engineering, MiHCM emerged as a pure cloud-native digital HR technology solution and now empowers over 1,000 companies across over 20 markets, supported by a robust network of strategic partners.

MiHCM is now a global Microsoft solutions partner for Data and AI and Digital App and Innovation and works closely with Microsoft offices across many regions. Futura Tech Labs, meanwhile, powers nearly all radio networks in Sri Lanka and has expanded its broadcast solutions to Malaysia, Brunei, and beyond.

Today, Microimage has global offices and ventures in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, with a strong partner network in over a dozen countries, and as it enters the AI era, Microimage continues to reimagine the future of work and technology.

TNA MP Shanakiyan Rajaputhiran Rasamanickam yesterday raised concerns in Parliament over the appointment of Ranga Dissanayake as Director General of the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption (CIABOC).

Rasamanickam alleged that some members of the Constitutional Council who took part in the appointment vote themselves face serious allegations of corruption. He also criticised the lack of visible progress in investigations involving members of the National People’s Power (NPP).

Dissanayake, a former High Court Judge, has come under fire over alleged political affiliations during his judicial career, which he has denied.

Meanwhile, Government lawmakers are also facing scrutiny following reports that over 300 containers were released from the Colombo Port without mandatory Customs inspection, an issue now under Parliamentary review.

The World Bank yesterday outlined a critical package of reforms it says Sri Lanka must push through to attract capital, revive exports and build long-term competitiveness, warning that export growth has slowed and foreign direct investment remains far too low to meet the country’s growth objectives.

World Bank Senior Country Economist for Sri Lanka and the Maldives Richard Walker said the country’s export and investment performance remained weak.

‘Export growth has slowed, and foreign direct investment continues to hover around 0.5% of GDP, far below what Sri Lanka needs to reach its $ 36 billion export target by 2030,’ he said, speaking at the launch of the World Bank’s Sri Lanka Development Update.

He identified several areas where reforms were critical. ‘Policy consistency is key,’ he said, adding that fiscal reforms must continue to strengthen tax administration and establish a transparent framework for managing tax expenditures.

‘Spending better and more progressively, while continuing tax reforms, will help balance growth, debt sustainability, and equity.’ He said enforcing cost-reflective utility pricing remained essential for ensuring the financial viability of state enterprises.

Walker cautioned that monetary policy must remain well-calibrated to control inflation and prevent excessive credit growth, with continued vigilance over financial sector risks, including high non-performing loans and the exposure of banks to Government debt.

He said there has been a sort of softening of monetary policy, but warned that it has to be calibrated to mitigate inflationary pressures as well as the unsustainable build up in private sector credit.

He noted progress on State-owned bank governance and ownership and said reforms should continue to deepen the financial sector and support credit to the real economy.

Walker also called for maintaining exchange rate flexibility so the currency can absorb shocks and reserves can be rebuilt.

Walker said long-term competitiveness would depend on structural reforms in three areas. The first is trade and investment.

‘Enhancing competitiveness and spurring private sector-led growth means reducing the economy’s inward orientation and streamlining trade policy,’ he said. He urged para tariff reforms, ‘really trying to remove and lift these paratariffs, which are, to some extent, moderate revenue generators, but hugely distortionary in terms of the market and the export sector.’

He also called for enhancing customs administration, ‘the systems, the capacity, and the processes to really drive and facilitate trade and not just be seen as a mechanism or means to generate revenue.’

He said regulatory and legal reforms under the Economic Transformation Act should be fast-tracked to attract investment, including finalising the Public-Private Partnership framework and establishing an Economic Commission to position, support, promote and facilitate investment.

‘Caps on foreign direct investment in certain sectors need to be revisited and reviewed to understand whether there are potential constraints to investment in important sectors,’ he said.

The second area is improving the oversight and management of state-owned enterprises to enhance competitiveness in key sectors. Walker pointed to finance, the leisure sector, agriculture, IT and service delivery.

‘There certainly is a role there to improve the performance of these institutions and also potentially look at ways of bringing in private sector participation,’ he said.

‘What is the policy right now in terms of private participation into State-owned enterprises, particularly in sectors where they are economically and financially viable commercially? What is the plan in terms of trying to bring in more private participation, which is critical for the infusion of new ideas, new technologies, and to support and boost the competitiveness of SOEs?’

The third area is factor market liberalisation, especially labour and land. ‘Right now, there is multiple legislation that goes back even 60, 70 years that investors and firms have to wade through,’ he said.

‘As a result, this means firms and potential hires of labour are a bit more cautious about taking on labour. Also, it has implications, particularly for female labour force participation.’ He called modernising these laws a low-hanging fruit to bring more competitiveness into the labour force.

On land, he said ‘Sri Lanka is about 80% owned by the State,’ but overlapping mandates and unclear ownership make it difficult for investors, reduce farmers’ agricultural productivity and undermine the sustainable use and management of land.

Walker said he is generally positive about the Government’s recent performance in stabilisation and emphasised the need to continue with policy consistency. On structural reforms, he was more concerned and pressed for faster movement in these areas so Sri Lanka can mobilise more investment, boost exports and make sustained progress toward the $ 36 billion export goal by 2030.

Sri Lanka Police have issued a public warning about an increase in online scams being carried out through popular messaging platforms such as Telegram and WhatsApp.

According to Police, cybercriminals are using deceptive methods to gain access to users’ online accounts, including tricking victims into revealing their usernames and passwords through fake links and QR codes. Once the information is obtained, the fraudsters block the original owners from their accounts and use them to carry out further scams.

Investigations have revealed that these criminals often lure victims by offering fake job opportunities and requesting payments under various pretexts.

The Police urged the public to exercise caution when responding to unsolicited messages or offers circulated through social media groups, even if they appear to come from known contacts or familiar platforms. They also advised against clicking on links or visiting websites shared through such messages.

Authorities further cautioned users to ignore requests for money transfers, currency exchanges, or the use of personal bank accounts for third-party transactions, even if made by acquaintances on platforms like Viber or WhatsApp.

Police emphasised that users should never share sensitive information such as account credentials or one-time passwords (OTPs) with anyone and should verify the authenticity of online payment requests before proceeding.

The public has been urged to remain alert and adopt secure digital practices to avoid falling victim to these increasingly sophisticated online scams.