A Colloquium in Honour of Lal Jayawardena was held on the 8 th of April 2005 in New Delhi , India . It was held to mark the first year death anniversary of Lal Jayawardena, who was a well known Economist in Sri Lanka and abroad.
The event was inaugurated at the Indian Prime Minister's residence in New Delhi . Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, was a contemporary of Lal Jayawardena at Cambridge University during the mid-1950s and had worked with Lal Jayawardena on a number of international issues such as overseas aid for developing countries, North-South dialogue, etc., in the subsequent years. Prime Minister, Singh recalled these interactions with Lal Jayawardena while paying a tribute to him. Sri Lanka's Minister of Constitutional Affairs, D.E.W. Gunasekera paid a tribute to Lal Jayawardena from the government of Sri Lanka while the Opposition Leader, Ranil Wickremasinghe, recalled Lal Jayawardena's role in the 1977 reforms and the Indo-Sri Lanka Bilateral Free Trade Agreement and outlined a future strategy to further enhance Indo-Sri Lanka economic relations. President of the Global Development Network (GDN), Lyn Squire, stated that Lal Jayawardena was the first Chairman of the GDN and spearheaded its activities in the formative years.
After the inaugural session at the Prime Minister's residence, a seminar took place at the India Habitat Centre. The seminar was chaired by N. Ram, Editor, Frontline Magazine. Two contemporaries of Lal Jayawardena at Cambridge , viz., Professor Ajith Singh (Fellow, Queen's College, University of Cambridge) and Professor Rehman Sobhan (Executive Director, South Asia Centre for Policy Studies, Dhaka ) addressed the seminar on the topics of Employment and Structural Adjustment, respectively. Professor Jean Dreze (Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics) spoke on Poverty and Hunger. This was followed by a session on South Asian Regional Cooperation where contributions were made by Dr. V.R. Panchamukhi (former Director General, RIS, New Delhi), Dr. Saman Kelegama (Executive Director, IPS, Sri Lanka) and Dr. Nagesh Kumar (Director General, RIS, New Delhi). All the topics discussed were areas where Lal Jayawardena made a personal contribution or showed an interest at the time when he was the Director of WIDER, Helsinki , Finland (1984-1993).
There was a distinguished gathering of academia, government officials, and members of Lal Jayawardena's family. The event was organized by Liaquath Ali, Vinood Dubey, and Arjuna Hulugalle. Tributes to Lal were sent by his former friends including Professor Amartya Sen (Harvard University) and Professor K.N. Raj (Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum , India). The event closed with a narration of some poems by Dr. Bina Agarwal, a member of the Board of Directors of the GDN.
