India-Sri Lanka 5th Joint Committee on S&T Cooperation
Part of: Prelims and Mains GS-III
In News: India and Sri Lanka extended the existing S&T cooperation for 3 more years, with focus on new areas like waste-water technologies, biotech, sustainable agriculture, aerospace engineering, robotics, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence, as well as industrial collaborations.
Relations between India & Sri Lanka
India and Sri Lanka have a great legacy of intellectual, cultural, and religious interaction and relationship of more than 2500 years old.
Trade and investment and cooperation in education and other sectors have gone up in recent times, and in this line, cooperation in S&T becomes very critical
The advent of Buddhism to Sri Lanka during the time of Emperor Ashoka was the result of cross-border discourse
Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka, to this day, contain shrines for Hindu deities
The colonial expansion of European maritime nations reshaped the Sri Lankan economy.
Labour from South India was brought to Sri Lanka to work in plantations which in post-independence era created tensions with indigenous communities and continues to persist till date
The Indian freedom struggle had its influence on Sri Lanka as well. There was cross-border support for the revival of culture, tradition, local languages, spiritual practices and philosophies, and education.
Both countries transformed into modern nations with constitutional and institutionalised governance under colonial rule.
The nearly three-decade long armed conflict between the Sri Lankan forces and the LTTE came to an end in May 2009. During the course of the conflict, India supported the right of the Sri Lankan Government, much to the anger of Srilankan Tamils
