jabin jacob, associate professor at the department of international relations and governance studies at shiv nadar university. and bhavani foneseka, senior researcher and attorney along with the center for policy alternatives. can this current situation be traced to a single event or events or time? >> great to be on the show. it is important because i think the causality of the current crisis is attributed in many ways. i personally think there is a single point that can be attributed for the crisis. it is the tax cuts that happened consequent to the presidential election in 2019. in fulfilling the promise of the presidential campaign manifesto, taxes were cut in a way that reduced government revenue by 25% and reduce the tax base of the country by about 33%. a few months later, that led to a critical ratings downgrade that effectively caused sri lanka to lose access to international financial markets. the blacklisting downgrade. after losing access to financial markets, sri lanka kept repaying its debt. reserves kept coming down and as reserves kept coming down, ratings kept going