அதிகார சமச்சீரின்மை குறியீடுPower-Asymmetry Index (PAI)
Documented structural balance between the Tamil-mandated parliamentary block and the central state's military and constitutional weight.
PAI = w₁·MS + w₂·PS + w₃·CV
§1What it measures
PAI is the structural-balance audit. It does not measure 'how oppressed' a community feels; it measures three named, Tier-A-sourced ratios that together describe the constitutional and physical balance under which any remedy must be assessed.
The weights w₁, w₂, w₃ are publication choices, not empirical claims. Any reader can recompute PAI with their own weights from the same cited sources. The model's argumentative value is in direction over time, not absolute level.
§2Inputs & sources
Ratio of state military and policing personnel deployed in the Northern and Eastern Provinces to civilian population in the same provinces. Used as a province-level density figure, not a per-village figure (PAI never reports per-village density — see refusals).
- ◇SIPRI Military Expenditure Database (Sri Lanka annual series)
- ◇IISS Military Balance (Sri Lanka country chapters)
- ◇Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research — Normalising the Abnormal (2017) and successor briefings
- ◇Department of Census & Statistics, Sri Lanka (provincial population)
Ratio of parliamentary seats held by Tamil-mandated parties (TNA, ITAK, ACTC, EPRLF-V, and historic predecessors) to the seats required for a constitutional veto under the 1978 Constitution (two-thirds plus referendum).
- ◇Department of Elections, Sri Lanka — official general-election results
- ◇Centre for Policy Alternatives — post-election analyses
Binary 0/1. 0 when the Tamil-mandated block holds no effective veto over constitutional amendment affecting language, devolution, or accountability. 1 when it does.
- ◇Constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (1978), Article 82 (amendment procedure)
- ◇Centre for Policy Alternatives, constitutional reform tracker
§3Worked reading
Under the most ordinary weighting (w₁ = w₂ = w₃ = 1/3), PAI in the current era reads as heavily asymmetric: MS remains structurally elevated relative to the rest of the island, PS sits well below the veto threshold, and CV = 0 across every post-1987 parliament.
The model's point is not that asymmetry is unusual — most multi-ethnic states have asymmetry. It is that on the documented record, the asymmetry has not narrowed across forty years of competing constitutional reform proposals.
If, in successive parliaments, PS crosses the veto threshold or CV moves to 1 on language, devolution, or accountability amendments, the structural-balance branch of the case is rebutted.