-By LeN Political Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -09.Aug.2025, 10.55 PM) The Pathfinder Foundation, one of Sri Lanka’s most visible policy think tanks, has made a career of commenting on South Asian geopolitics — from the arc of India’s maritime ambitions to the depths of Sri Lanka’s port strategy. Its seminars, often staged in hotel ballrooms under the glow of PowerPoint projectors, have hosted everyone from Indian naval chiefs to American diplomats.
Yet on the one issue now roiling New Delhi and Washington — the escalating US–India tariff dispute — Pathfinder has maintained a curious, almost monastic silence. The omission is all the more remarkable given its founder, former minister Milinda Moragoda, has long styled himself as a bridge between the two powers.
To insiders, the quietness is not a mystery but a symptom of Pathfinder’s unique bind. Mr Moragoda, a US citizen, is said to have one foot planted in Washington’s policy circles and the other in India’s strategic community. His admirers cast this as an asset: a rare figure who can read both capitals fluently. His detractors call it something else entirely — a permanent balancing act in which no foot dares to move for fear of losing the other.
“The right hand works the Washington circuit, the left hand works New Delhi,” remarked a senior foreign policy analyst, “but when those two start throwing punches at each other, he’s frozen in the middle, crown tilting, smile fixed.”
The result? A think tank that has hosted panels on US–India ‘strategic convergence’ in the Indian Ocean, but which cannot bring itself to address their tariff war, lest it alienate one benefactor or the other.
The foundation’s reticence comes amid questions about its financing. Critics claim Pathfinder enjoys discreet support from both US and Indian sources, though the exact nature and scale remain undisclosed. For years, the foundation’s events calendar has been heavy with Indian regional security themes, often featuring retired Indian officials and Indian-aligned maritime academics.
A senior Sri Lankan diplomat suggested that Pathfinder’s positioning has, intentionally or otherwise, aligned more closely with Indian strategic narratives than with a strictly Sri Lankan perspective. “They are planted by New Delhi, but they dance to a Washington tune,” he said. “When the two orchestras play different scores, the choreography becomes impossible.”
While the think tank stays quiet on the tariff spat, its founder faces a much more personal problem: calls for a full investigation into a ₨1 billion loan taken decades ago from Mercantile Credit. The loan, critics allege, has yet to be repaid, and with the election of the National People’s Power (NPP) government under President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, demands for recovery have grown louder.
The President himself recently made a pointed remark — without naming Mr Moragoda — about “very rich people, posing as entrepreneurs, living in five-star hotels while owing billions to state banks.” Civil society activists were quick to connect the dots.
“This is public money,” said one NPP economic adviser. “If the state has allowed ₨1 billion to sit unpaid for over twenty years, we must ask why — and who benefited.”
Speculation in Colombo’s business circles has swirled around whether the original loan, or proceeds from it, found their way into a well-known supermarket chain — identified by critics as Keells.
If so, some argue, the public has a right to a stake. “If ₨1 billion in public money helped capitalise that company,” argued one lawyer, “then taxpayers should have an equivalent shareholding today. At the very least, Keells should face a transparent audit of its historical financing.”
Keells, part of the John Keells Holdings conglomerate, has not been formally accused by the government of wrongdoing in relation to the Mercantile Credit loan. However, the whispers have proved persistent, in part because of the sheer scale of the unpaid debt and the enduring mystery of where it went.
Pathfinder’s editorial choices have also attracted attention for their apparent asymmetry. While the foundation’s papers and conferences have devoted extensive energy to warning about the “risks” of Chinese investment in Sri Lanka, critics point out that it has been far more circumspect about investments from India or Western powers.
A former Sri Lankan trade official recalled that Pathfinder staff had visited the Chinese embassy in Colombo on several occasions for “friendly briefings,” but the public output rarely reflected that warmth. “They talk to China,” the official said, “but the published reports almost always tilt negative. It is as if they are being polite in person, but critical in print — which, again, pleases one set of funders while not alienating another.”
Further complicating the picture are Mr Moragoda’s family and business connections. Opponents allege that Pathfinder’s advocacy has sometimes dovetailed with the commercial interests of individuals close to him. One frequent subject of Colombo’s political gossip is his brother-in-law, a businessman of Tamil origin who, despite his background, has publicly adopted a Sinhalese nationalist posture.
According to critics, Pathfinder’s networking efforts have sometimes created opportunities for this associate’s ventures — a charge both men deny. “It is not unusual,” a Colombo political columnist noted, “for think tanks to act as convenors for private deals under the guise of public policy.”
In a separate controversy, Keells has been accused by some labour activists of favouring certain Christian church members in its hiring practices — an allegation the company has rejected as baseless. Whether or not the claim is true, its persistence reflects the deep vein of mistrust that now runs through Sri Lanka’s debates over corporate privilege and political patronage.
For the NPP government, the Moragoda loan case could serve as an early test of its pledge to pursue economic justice. If it presses for repayment, it risks a confrontation with one of Sri Lanka’s best-connected former ministers — a man whose Rolodex reaches into both Foggy Bottom and South Block. If it does nothing, it will feed suspicions that even this avowedly anti-elite government is unwilling to touch the most gilded of sacred cows.
Meanwhile, Pathfinder’s silence on the US–India tariff war continues to speak volumes. In a year when Sri Lanka itself is trying to navigate between competing global powers, the country’s most internationally networked think tank has retreated into the shadows.
To its fiercest critics, this is the final proof that Pathfinder is less a research institution than a symbolic prop — a body that exists to give intellectual cover to policies shaped elsewhere. “It is not really Sri Lankan,” one retired foreign ministry official said. “It is an outpost. An elegant outpost, yes, with nice luncheons and glossy reports, but an outpost all the same.”
The irony is that this very limbo mirrors the predicament Sri Lanka faces writ large. Like Pathfinder, the country must juggle its relationships with India, the United States, and China. Like Pathfinder, it risks paralysis when those partners collide. And like Pathfinder, it will eventually have to choose whether to speak plainly, or keep its counsel in the hope of pleasing everyone — and perhaps end up pleasing no one.
The questions now in play are straightforward but politically explosive:
Will the NPP government order a full public accounting of the ₨1 billion Mercantile Credit loan?
Will any stake in Keells — if indeed public money seeded it — be reclaimed for taxpayers?
Will Pathfinder disclose its funding sources and policy priorities, including the influence of Indian and American connections?
And will the think tank break its silence on the most consequential US–India economic clash in a generation?
For now, the official answer to all four appears to be the same: no comment.
-By LeN Political Correspondent
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by (2025-08-09 17:28:45)
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