Political Economy of Epidemic Kidney Disease in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), taking the lives of thousands in poor farming communities in Sri Lanka, is commonly seen as a problem peculiar to the island’s north central dry zone agricultural region. The prevailing bio-medical focus is on identifying one or more “environmental nephrotoxins.” While delineating important controversies on the etiology of the disease, this article seeks to broaden the discourse on the hitherto neglected political economy of CKD in Sri Lanka. In so doing, it seeks to bring together the bio-medical debate on the impact of widespread and unregulated use of agrochemicals on public health and kidney disease with broader global interdisciplinary perspectives on the industrialization of agriculture and the consolidation of food production by transnational agribusiness corporations. The article concludes pointing out environmentally sustainable and socially equitable development and organic agriculture as the long-term solutions to CKD in Sri Lanka and elsewhere.