ahead of the sinhala and tamil new year india sent a shipment of 11000 mt of rice to help people of sri lanka celebrate one of their biggest festivals india had recently announced a 1 billion line of credit to sri lanka as part of its financial assistance to the country to deal with the economic crisis following a previous 500 billion line of credit in february to help it purchase petroleum productsindian credit lines to boost reserves and importation of essentials have provided a temporary lifeline to the sri lankan economyin addition to this india has already supplied over 270000 mt of fuel to sri lankain november 2021 india had given 100 tonnes of nano nitrogen liquid fertilizers to sri lanka as their government stopped the import of chemical fertilizersbesides the reserve bank of india rbi has extended a currency swap of 400 million and deferred payments owed by the central bank of sri lanka under the asian clearance union worth several hundred million dollarsaccording to ani report india recently pledged to donate medicines to peradeniya hospital which was running low on supplies due to the us dollar crisis and purchasing medicines became impossibleacute shortages remainthe situation is so grim that people in the country are fighting for daily need items the country has been hit with shortages of various essential products including medicines besides long hours of power cuts everyday has disrupted lifesoaring inflation rate has made it further difficult for people items of daily needs two days back doctors raised warning they were nearly out of lifesaving medicines and said the island nations economic crisis threatened a worse death toll than the coronavirus pandemicthe sri lanka medical association slma said that all hospitals in the country no longer had access to imported medical tools and vital drugsseveral facilities have already suspended routine surgeries since last month because they were dangerously low on anaesthetics but the slma had said that even emergency procedures may not be possible very soonthe forex shortage has crippled its ability to pay for fuel imports has adversely impacted lives people are having to stand in long queues to receive even cooking oil reports suggest almost 8 people have lost their lives since march 20 while waiting in queuesprotests continue people in the country have been protesting continuously since the past few days calling for rajapaksas resignationthousands of people braved heavy rains to keep up a demonstration outside the leaders seafront office in the capital colombo for a second daybusiness leaders joined calls for the president to step down on saturday and said the islands chronic fuel shortages had seen their operations haemorrhage cashrajapaksas government is seeking an imf bailout to help extricate sri lanka from the crisis which has seen skyrocketing food prices and the local currency collapse in value by a third in the past monthfinance ministry officials have said sovereign bondholders and other creditors may have to take a haircut as colombo seeks to restructure its debtnew finance minister ali sabry