34 Sri Lanka Sri Lanka ’ s 2022 protests were catalysed by the scarcity and rising costs of essential goods. In early March, protesters took to the streets following persistent multi-hour power outages and fuel shortages. Protestors also expressed a broader range of grievances beyond energy access, citing food and medicine shortages(Perera 2022). Shortages forced Sri Lankans across the country to ration portions and wait for hours to obtain fuel(Lopez 2022). On March 20, two elderly gentlemen died while standing in fuel lines(Jayasinghe 2022). Sri Lankan analyst Bhavani Fonseka said,‘The crisis has really shocked the middle class-- it has forced them into hardships they were never exposed to before, like getting basic items... They have really been jolted like no other time in the last three decades’(Pathi and Mallawarachi 2022). Sri Lanka ’ s economic crisis was years in the making. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, brothers and longtime political stalwarts in the country, oversaw years of economic mismanagement. Among President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s most damaging policies were a large value added tax(VAT) cut in 2019 and a fertiliser ban in 2021, which diminished the year’s crop yields(Jayasinghe and Ghoshal 2022b). The VAT cut in particular was considered rash and made with an eye toward upcoming parliamentary elections, rather than being a well-considered fiscal policy(Jayasinghe and Ghoshal 2022a). Economic woes were compounded by over-leveraged development projects plagued by allegations of corruption and a tourism industry ravaged by the pandemic(DeVotta 2022; Cansler 2022). In early 2022, Sri Lankan foreign currency reserves began to dry up, and with them the country’s ability to pay for imported goods(Francis and Kurtenbach 2022). People took to the streets to denounce the scarcity of essential goods and a government that‘had reduced[them] to being beggars’(Kempf 2022).