“starkly diminished lives”

A grim recent NY Times overview of Sri Lanka’s grinding economic disaster:

“The part of the economic crisis that they have felt deepest was self-inflicted by the government. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the president toppled by the protests, banned chemical fertilizers on a whim in the spring of 2021 to push the country into organic farming.

The effect was catastrophic, with the United Nations estimating a 50 percent drop in agricultural production. By the time the government reversed its ban in the face of protests, it had run out of foreign reserves to import fertilizer.”