Sri Lanka, March 11 -- We were supposed to have become a rich country decades ago. At Independence many predicted that Ceylon would become the Switzerland of the East. Instead communal strife, corruption and misguided economic policy held us back.

Every decade had its share of self-inflicted economic wounds. The 1950s saw the emigration of many of the nation's best and brightest due to Sinhala Only - depriving us of our leaders at the crucial moment of our country's rebirth. The 1960s and 1970s ushered in an era of misguided economic policies that scared investors, destroyed incentives, and bred corruption, creating a queue economy, rife with shortages. In the 1980s, economic policy course-corrected, only for growth to stall in the wake ...