Decentralizing administrative powers to locally established administrative units has been the key goal of many
governments in developing counties intended to boost socio-economic development at regional level. Sri Lanka
has also introduced many decentralization initiatives with development motives. New administrative districts
were formed in Sri Lanka with development as part of their motive, but, no new district has been formed in the
last 30 years while demands have prevailed in many corners of the country. The demand calling for the
establishment of the Kalmunai administrative district has been a prolonged and politically influencing demand
for the last 15 years in Sri Lanka’s political-development discourse. This study attempts to examine the
development impacts of establishing the Kalmunai administrative district that has been advocated by the people
living in the coastal belt of the Amparai district (referred as ‘south eastern region’), a region which has been
lacking in terms of development due to the severe impacts of thirty-year civil war as well as the 2004 Asian
Tsunami devastation in Sri Lanka. The findings of the study reveal that the establishment of the proposed
Kalmunai district will eventually contribute to multi-dimensional development in the region in the long run,
however, a conducive institutional environment needs to be built in and around the district administrative
machinery in order to ensure equity and justice in service delivery and resource allocation among different ethnic
groups in the district which would be the pre-condition for the sustainability of any kind of development impact
in the region.