By W.A. Wijewardena –

Central banks and communication policy

Of late, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) has been at the receiving end from both Parliamentarians and the public. This has not been due to its failure towards the nation. Rather, it reveals the failure of its communication policy in explaining what it does in a language people can understand. When people in the social media age learn from posts circulating there, central bankers trying to educate the public through lengthy technical papers will not serve any purpose. It simply adds fuel to the prevailing animosity among the people about Central Bank activities. This is where CBSL stands today.

In times of economic distress, this communication gap breeds panic, fuels destructive rumours, and accelerates financial instability. True monetary policy fails within the high-walled rooms of Board meetings or through the publication of dense, incomprehensible, graphic-filled, formulaic communiqués. It succeeds when the average person on the street understands why prices are rising, how fluctuating interest rates affect his hard-earned savings, and what the regulator is actively doing to protect his daily livelihood.

Bridging this deep gulf between complex economic theory and ordinary human survival requires far more than administrative competence or technical expertise alone. It requires a rare blend of deep economic insight, genuine communicative empathy, and a profound democratic conviction that the public has a fundamental right to understand the forces shaping their financial destinies. In this context, the contribution of ex-central banker Sri Darshana Narampanawa towards meeting this purpose merits our attention.

Historical struggle for transparency: 1978 vision

When Sri Lanka began opening its economy in 1978, the CBSL also introduced a new open central bank policy that needed to be explained to the public. Governor Warnasena Rasaputra, who steered the Bank during this challenging period, thought it necessary for the Bank to adopt a new communication policy. He believed that an open market economy could not function effectively alongside a closed, secretive, and aloof central bank. His stand was that if the domestic market was to be opened to the global flow of capital, foreign enterprise, and private initiative, then central banking must also evolve. It had to become transparent, accessible, and open to public scrutiny. He believed that public economic literacy was a prerequisite for the survival of a market economy.

Governor Rasaputra’s ambition was to establish a dedicated, highly readable communication window within the Bank that could translate complex economic policies into accessible ideas. He explicitly modelled this vision on the style of the International Monetary Fund’s celebrated Finance and Development magazine—a publication renowned for making global macroeconomic trends understandable to non-specialists. Recognising that career central bankers lacked the literary flair, public pulse, and narrative touch required to engage the masses, Rasaputra hired Mervin Silva, ex-editor of Silumina, Sri Lanka’s leading weekly newspaper, as the Bank’s communication agent.

Silva was knowledgeable in journalism but not so good at central banking or economics. Hence, Governor Rasaputra requested this writer to help Silva design, structure, and simplify the technical matters slated for public distribution. Working closely together, we launched two landmark publications tailored specifically for a dual-language audience: Satahana in Sinhala and News Survey in English. My job was to select articles for translation, and Silva’s job was to perform the overall editing of the two publications. I recall they included articles contributed by Central Bank officers, duly edited into simple language by Silva and vetted by me for accuracy, and those taken directly from Finance and Development.

We wanted the ordinary citizen to understand exactly how global trade dynamics, domestic inflation, and State expenditure directly impacted their household budgets. The initial success of Satahana and News Survey proved a vital point: the Sri Lankan public possessed a healthy, vibrant appetite for economic literacy when the material was presented with respect, clarity, and simplicity.

Institutional drift and birth of Darshana

Tragically, the institutional gravity of any bureaucracy almost always pulls against the forces of openness. Satahana and News Survey too suffered from this ailment. Accordingly, over the subsequent decades, an unfortunate institutional drift occurred within the Central Bank. These two publications gradually lost their original, public-facing focus. Instead of serving as vital conduits of popular education and citizen empowerment, they were slowly co-opted by the academic and research wings of the Bank. Over time, they transformed into dense, high-level research organs containing econometric modelling and academic prose written by specialists, exclusively for specialists. The ordinary citizen was once again pushed outside the institutional gate, left entirely unable to decipher the elite academic discourse that had replaced the simple, welcoming prose of the early open-economy era.

Recognising this growing communication deficit, a fresh attempt to revive public outreach was initiated in 1998. The sharp, reality-minded, and reform-oriented Governor A. S. Jayawardena approached this writer with a request to launch a brand-new quarterly journal. His goal was to reclaim the lost territory of public economic education and fulfil the Bank’s democratic duty to inform.

When I told Governor Jayawardena that another central bank officer, Dr. M. U. A. Tennakone, had started such a magazine titled Darshana and abandoned it after his retirement, he perused a previous issue and asked me to continue its publication. Thus, with the help of a few officers in the Rural Credit Department, of which I was the Director, two issues of Darshana were released. They contained articles written by central bank officers plus those translated from similar journals in English. I recall that the magazine was very popular among students reading economics for the Advanced Level examination and their teachers. But the subsequent central bank management did not have the same heart to issue this journal and, hence, it met with a natural death.

Narampanawa revival: A two-pronged revolution

It is against this stark, decades-long background of aborted starts, institutional drift, and mounting communication gaps that the extraordinary work done by Narampanawa must be contextualised and appreciated. Stepping into a landscape where CBSL had largely retreated into its elite shell, Narampanawa undertook a task that amounted to reviving the spirit of Rasaputra and Jayawardena. However, he did not merely replicate the past; he adapted it brilliantly for the challenges of the modern era.

My observation is that Narampanawa’s approach to communication was not as a secondary public relations chore or an administrative afterthought, but as a core, indispensable pillar of monetary policy implementation. He understood a fundamental economic truth that many economists ignore: monetary policy cannot stabilise an economy if the public’s expectations are driven entirely by fear, confusion, and ignorance. If the public does not understand why a central bank is raising interest rates to curb inflation, they will react with hostility, panic-buying or selling, and financial hoarding, thereby undermining the very goals the policy seeks to achieve.

Narampanawa’s intellectual triumph was his ability to break down these high-stakes economic mechanisms into everyday language, ensuring that the ordinary person could see the method behind the macroeconomic medicine. His ground-breaking contributions to CBSL fall into two distinct, highly innovative categories that have redefined institutional communication.

Demystifying central banking through children’s literature

The first, and perhaps most revolutionary, category of Narampanawa’s work is his brilliant approach to presenting complex central banking policies in the form of beautifully crafted stories addressed directly to children. This was an expansion of the work initiated by another central banker, W. M. Karunaratne, who retired from the Bank as an Assistant Governor. With his retirement, that work too was discontinued.

Narampanawa, naming his work “A guide to children about day-to-day events,” restarted from where Karunaratne had left. These stories tackle the most sophisticated, intimidating concepts in economics and translate them into charming, relatable narratives. His stories, numbering 10, focus on the following:

* The Evolution of Money: He authored narratives detailing how money evolved in Sri Lanka from ancient times—through a fascinating history of barter, coins, and colonial tokens—to the modern rupees and cents we carry in our pockets today.

* The Role of Commercial Banks: He demystified commercial banking, explaining to young minds why a bank is the safest and best place for people to keep their hard-earned money, shifting public perception away from informal, risky hoarding.

* The Virtue of Thrift: Using timeless natural metaphors, he illustrated the profound importance of savings, comparing the financial discipline of saving money to the industrious nature of ants accumulating food for future use during difficult seasons.

* The Mandate of CBSL: He managed the near-impossible task of explaining how CBSL operates at a macroeconomic level, showing children how the institutional regulator serves the population by maintaining price stability and financial system health.

* Respect for Currency: He focused on civic education by writing on the importance of keeping the physical currency notes issued by CBSL clean, treating money as a symbol of national pride and shared sovereign value.

* The Medium of Exchange: He broke down fundamental economic utility, explaining in simple terms exactly why people need money for transactions and how commerce drives human society forward.

* The Foreign Exchange Market: In perhaps his most impressive literary feat, he simplified the complex mechanics of cross-border trade, explaining how money is paid from one country to another and how the foreign exchange market operates without using terrifying technical jargon.

* Commemorative Numismatics: He shed light on the cultural and historical value of money, exploring what commemorative coins and notes tell us about our national heritage, achievements, and milestones.

* Financial Fraud Protection: Crucially, Narampanawa integrated vital consumer protection into his stories, teaching children—and, by extension, their families—how people can protect themselves from financial cheaters, pyramid schemes, and digital scammers who deploy various predatory designs to steal livelihoods.

Expanding on this literary repertoire, Narampanawa went a step further by designing a highly engaging comic book that explains the comprehensive operations of the Central Bank entirely through cartoons. This creative choice was a stroke of institutional genius. While these publications were ostensibly meant for children, they serve as equally potent, highly educative material for adults.

Narampanawa recognised a profound psychological truth: when it comes to the complex, heavily guarded world of central banking, everyone is essentially a child despite their age. When confronted with terms like “quantitative easing,” “yield curves,” or “statutory reserve ratios,” even well-educated professionals can feel completely illiterate. By utilising the universally accessible mediums of children’s stories and comic illustrations, Narampanawa stripped away the intimidation factor, allowing citizens of all ages to learn about their economy without shame or confusion.

“The Unshakeable Lighthouse”: Visualising 75 years of institutional resilience

The second major pillar of Narampanawa’s invaluable contribution is the magnificent coffee table book he meticulously designed to mark CBSL’s 75th anniversary, celebrated in 2025. A diamond jubilee is a momentous milestone for any national institution, but all too often, it is celebrated by publishing advanced research articles authored by professional economists addressed to professional economists.

Narampanawa, guided by his superiors, told CBSL’s history in pictures and short narratives. In this context, the title of the book, taking a cue from the iconic, colonial-era Chatham Street Lighthouse, now serving as a Clock Tower, is an apt selection. Erected originally by the British, it was the first true lighthouse in the country and is presently preserved and maintained by CBSL as a treasured national heritage site. Standing majestically in front of the modern Central Bank headquarters, this stone sentinel possesses a history that mirrors the unyielding spirit of the institution itself.

Older generations will vividly recall the horrific morning of January 31, 1996, when a devastating LTTE truck bomb exploded directly at the gates of the Central Bank. The blast ripped through the core of the city, claiming dozens of precious lives, injuring over a thousand innocent central bank officers and those in nearby buildings, and leaving the Central Bank building itself partially destroyed and hollowed by fire. Yet, amidst the smoke, catastrophic destruction, and debris of that dark morning, the historic lighthouse stood majestically, completely unharmed. The decapitated head of the suicide bomber who drove the bomb-laden truck to the Bank building had been flown about 100 metres and neatly deposited at the foot of the Lighthouse-cum-Clock Tower, demonstrating that neither the Bank nor the Tower could be brought to its knees by these cowardly acts.

Narampanawa has not done this work alone, and it has been a team effort. Hence, credit should also go to others who had helped him produce these new-generation central bank communication materials. That team includes his superiors who had guided him and his colleagues who had worked with him. But Narampanawa stands above all of them as the leading figure of this enterprise.

Golden blueprint for future technocrats

The lasting legacy of Sri Darshana Narampanawa’s communication approach lies in the restoration of public trust—the most valuable, yet entirely invisible, asset on any central bank’s balance sheet. When a central bank communicates transparently, imaginatively, and simply, it demystifies the State’s economic machinery and fosters a profound sense of collective national ownership over necessary economic reforms.

Narampanawa’s work has conclusively proven that a central bank can remain deeply technocratic, fiercely independent, and highly rigorous in its research while simultaneously being warm, accessible, and deeply communicative with the public it is sworn to serve.

As Sri Lanka navigates complex modern economic waters, future central bankers and institutional leaders must look to Narampanawa’s career as a definitive, golden blueprint. The historic struggle that began with Governor Rasaputra’s open-banking vision in 1978, carried forward through the creation of Satahana and News Survey, and later revived under Governor Jayawardena through Darshana, has finally found its modern, ultimate validation in Narampanawa’s tireless, creative efforts.

Like the colonial lighthouse that stood firm against the shockwaves of 1996, a central bank’s communication must remain an unshakable beacon of truth, illuminating the economic landscape for the ordinary citizen. He has successfully reminded the nation of a core democratic principle: the currency issued by CBSL ultimately belongs to the people, and therefore, the knowledge of how that currency is managed must also belong to them.

Ultimately, Narampanawa is an unsung hero of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, leaving behind an unspoken charitable contribution. I say it was charitable work because he did not receive additional remuneration for this work outside his normal duty list. He left this legacy within the Central Bank when he retired a few months back for others to follow. For taking central banking out of the high-altitude atmosphere of academic isolation and placing it firmly, beautifully, and simply into the hands of the ordinary public, he has earned the deep appreciation of this writer and, indeed, the enduring gratitude of the entire nation.

*The writer, a former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, can be reached at waw1949@gmail.com