Sri Lanka's crisis cripples once burgeoning middle class

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Miraj Madushanka never thought he'd need government rations to ensure his family could eat two meals a day, but Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, the worst in its history, has recast his life and those of many others in its burgeoning middle class.

Families that never had to think twice about fuel or food are struggling to manage three meals a day, cutting back on portions. Days are spent waiting in lines to buy scarce fuel. The crisis has derailed years of progress toward relatively comfortable lifestyles aspired to across South Asia.

An island nation of 22 million, Sri Lanka is hurtling towards bankruptcy after amassing $51 billion in foreign debt. There is hardly any money to import items like gasoline, milk, cooking gas and toilet paper.

Before things began unraveling, Madushanka, a 27-year-old accountant, studied in Japan and hoped to work there. He moved back home in 2018 after his father died, to look after his mother and sister.

Madushanka finished his studies and found a job in tourism, but lost it in the shadow of 2019 terror attacks that rattled the country and its economy.

The next job evaporated during the pandemic. He's now working for a management company, his fourth job in four years. But even with a reliable paycheck, he can barely manage to support his family.

Food prices have tripled in recent weeks, forcing the family to seek out government handouts of rice and donations from nearby Buddhist temples and mosques. Madushanka’s savings are finished.

“Right now, there is only enough to survive -- if there are months where we don’t get extra benefits from outside, we have to just hold on somehow,” he said.

Even past crises, like Sri Lanka's nearly 30-year long civil war that ended in 2009 or the devastating 2004 tsunami, did not...